001e this Thursday May 25th 2017 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance a moment of silence and the performance of the national anthem by the Willow Springs Elementary School Fox strings Ensemble under the direction of Elanor auan and Aaron Riley for e e e thank you very much that was a beautiful job and thank you parents for coming and bringing your children to help us tonight and display their to that my Willow Springs I think that may be the largest band we've ever had perform I'm so proud of them great job students thank you parents and I don't know if principal Dylan Taylor's in in the house T might thank you all right we next go to the certification of the closed
002meeting compliance in order to comply with Section 2.2 372d of the code of Virginia it's necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a close meeting on May 25th 2017 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 closed meeting do I have a motion moved by Mrs Strauss seconded by Mrs Corbett Sanders all those in favor raise your hand that is unanimous a few announcements before we begin tonight's meeting if you would like to review a copy of the agenda or any agenda item that's being discussed tonight that information is on the table by
003the auditorium entrance tonight's agenda is available by going to Schoolboard on the FCPS homepage and selecting board docs under upcoming Schoolboard meetings the meeting is also being streamed live online select Schoolboard from the main menu uh then click on the watch live button on the Schoolboard meetings web page please turn off or silence your cell phone I will now call on Miss Chu for announcements thank you chair each June the national Safety Council sponsors national Safety month this year's theme safe for Life reminds us that safety is no accident it is a choice we need to make throughout our lives as we're all empowered to make safe decisions for ourselves and for those we care about over 186,000 FCPS students depend on School Employees to provide a safe environment in schools prevention identification and abatement
004of Hazards are integral parts of every employees job the FCPS office of Safety and Security has established emergency plans and provided appropriate training for all employees to cultivate safety throughout the school district thank you thank you Miss Chu um I will now call on Miss daret kofax for National Gun Violence awareness day thank you madam chair National Gun Violence awareness day is sponsored by the National Academy of P Pediatrics and the national PTA amongst amongst dozens of other groups this day of awareness is acknowledged Nationwide by a movement to wear orange in honor of victims and survivors of gun violence high school students in Chicago began the wear red orange campaign in 2013 on the birthday of their friend and gun violence victim 15-year-old hia Pendleton hia was killed in a Chicago Park after taking
005final exams on average 48 childrens and teens are shot and seven die from their injuries each day in the United States one tragic example comes from our own Community a November 2015 Edison High School student Joseph Bose was a victim of Senseless violence and a random act of gun violence in Northfolk Virginia where he attend attended Hampton University the color orange symbolizes the value of human life in 2013 teens on the the south side of Chicago asked classmates to honor their murdered Friend by wearing orange the simple call to action has grown into a national movement and orange is becoming the symbol of gun safety millions are coming together to fight for an end to gun violence in America and the school board recognizes the effort to bring more awareness and Remembrance to the victims
006of gun violence by those wearing orange on June 2nd for National Gun Violence awareness day at this time I would like to invite those in the audience who are here this evening to support this initiative to join me and my colleagues at the Das for a picture with the board and I want to thank especially FCPS parent miss Karen McDaniel vot for bringing this day to our attention thank you e e thank you everyone for joining us here tonight now I'm going to call on uh Dr Lockard for a special announcement thank you madam chair I'd like to take just a minute this evening uh to share um our thanks our gratitude tonight is uh Dan paris's last Schoolboard meeting serving as the interim Deputy superintendent uh Mr Paris has done a tremendous job stepping
007in he's been an incredible help not just to me but to our entire system over these past six months we are all truly appreciative of him interrupting his well-deserved retirement to come back and serve FCPS and the community uh that he spent so much time uh of his life giving to and that he truly loves so thank you Dan and now I believe the fish are really calling you this time okay thank you Dan you're not going to get away that easy we're going to get you up here for a photo with all of us and yes we are e e for so with that I do want to recognize that we have our former uh student School Board rep in the audience um Ben presso Ben thank you for for joining us tonight and
008and Dan we will really really miss you well now turn to citizen participation uh tonight 10 citizens have signed up to address the board speakers are requested to to limit their remarks to not more than 3 minutes the school board will not hear statements involving issues that have been scheduled for public hearings such as capital Improvement program budget and boundaries complaints regarding individual students or school-based employees should be directed to the appropriate School principal or other school official speakers should refrain from using personally identifiable information in cont in connection with an individual student speakers are expected to deliver their comments with the decorum and respect appropriate to the conduct of the public business please be mindful that there are often young children in attendance at these meetings or watching at home so language should be
009appropriate for all age levels thank you for your cooperation and thanks to those who have come out to speak to us tonight our first speaker is Julia Sans Miss s you need to go around to the other side um and then yes and then you're facing us here so the microphone is right there sorry no problem uh thank you for joining us all right thank you hello I'm Julia Sans I'm a student from Falls Church High School and I'm a member of the LGBT community like every other student my age I deserve to have access to information about important aspects of life such as sex and family that is relevant to my life in a safe educational environment whether or not students like me have access to this information can literally be a matter of
010life and death removing LGBT content from fle curriculums can increase rates of SED infections bullying and mental health issues some of you in the audience may have seen the horrors of the AIDS crisis upfront and I'm certain every LGBT person in this room feels as haunted as I do by the immense death toll that resulted from it today we know that the crisis which is still continues today disproportionately affects the gay community due to a lack of proper relevant sex education we have a chance to prevent something like that from ever happening again in our schools in our community mental health too is affected growing up even with all the progress that the community has made being gay or trans was still treated as a taboo an adult topic not fit for children or public
011discussion we didn't understand ourselves and we weren't the only ones people are afraid of things they don't understand and that fear turned into abuse but in reality we weren't abnormal children we had crushes and wondered what we could grow up to be worried about our grades argued with our friends and kissed her parents good night we were and are just like your children the only difference between us and everyone else was that all of those normal childhood experiences were tinged with a fear for our safety and shame it doesn't have to be like that anymore just by continuing to have an authority figure acknowledge our existence and treat us and our sexuality and gender as normal we can continue to promote self-esteem health and safety within our schools thank you [Applause] thank you our next
012speaker is Anna [Applause] McNiven hello members of the school board thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak my name is Anna I am a member uh a resident of Fairfax County and I want to encourage you um as Miss Hans did to continue the LGBT inclusive curriculum because it is what I needed as a teenager I am out proud and confident today but being a teenager was a different story when I was 12 years old and was starting to realize that I was different I had no frame of reference for what was going on I had no idea who I could go to for advice if I went to my parents they might freak out if I went to a teacher they might report me to someone if I talk to my friends
013someone might beat me up as far as I knew I was alone I might have been the only one in the world who had ever felt the way I felt it was isolating it was scary as a 12-year-old it's terrifying I can't imagine how much my life would have changed if my school had been more inclusive all teenagers need accurate information from Educators they trust they need a safe space to figure out their gender identities and their sexual orientations in a healthy and positive way they need to hear for so many reasons that there's someone who has their back is that going to be you you can give them this environment you can give them the simple knowledge that they are not alone that their identities are valid and that their health and happiness is
014just as important as everybody else's my identity was completely excluded from my school's Health curriculum simply because I was a little bit different but it doesn't have to be that way anymore you have the opportunity to change things you can choose to include the LGBT kids who are in your school right now who need your support you can give them the education and the support that they need right now this isn't much to ask but as someone who needed it I can tell you that it will make a lifetime of difference thank you thank you our next speaker is is CH mohanti [Applause] Ortiz hello my name is chia mahanti Ortiz I'm an educator and also the mother of a Robinson alumnist class of 2016 and a Robinson Jor class of 2018 first off I
015would like to thank those board members who have shown their commitment to all FCPS students including those who are LGBT my eldest son Kaden is a young trans man wolet Robinson he was threatened with physical harm rape and even death by classmates who did not understand that he posed no threat to them whatsoever the school board's inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity in its non-discrimination policy does a lot to protect all students including those like my son however this is not enough I am speaking tonight to support uh tonight in support of sexual orientation and gender identity being included in Family Life Education it is more than evident when transgender students are physically harassed and now a trans female student has been attacked that we desperately need this education shared to all students and
016sadly to many adults as well school board members are elected on the understanding that they are to work towards the education and protection of all FCPS students not simply those that fit into their definition of acceptable that is why I find it very unsettling that Elizabeth Schultz spoke against transgender students at the family research Council panel on May 5th portraying them as sexual harassers who would become aroused in locker rooms I have and will continue to extend invitations to all board members and others who are open to learning about transgender students I believe that education is the key to overcoming false fears being gay or transgender is a part of life diversity it is not a choice there have always been and there will always continue to be LGBT students within the FCPS School District
017they are the ones whose rights are being denied and who run a greater risk of physical harm all board members hold an obligation to and a responsibility to educate our students on sexual orientation and gender identity FCPS will benefit from being a welcome School District open to the betterment of all of its students thank you for allowing me to speak Tonight George Basera George Basera oh I see Mr Basera he will be followed by Jessica L Landon to be followed by Bethany Molino Mr Basera sorry going to be kind of quick good evening superintendent uh Lockard and school board members I'm here this evening to lend my support to retaining Family Life education lessons that are inclusive of LGBT people and teach about gender identity and sexual orientation I'm very appreciative of staff and the
018fleak members for creating the crosswalk on this year's report is very helpful also continuing with Community review of the report for about 3 weeks after the the report was handed out yesterday or today hopefully in the future though there could be some in-person meetings for the community members to speak at I understand it might get dicey and it's a Hot Topic but I think the people also need to to come out and to see their reactions on both sides as I see Improvement in parent engagement and transparency in this area I'd like to comment maybe to to Dr Lockard about the principal hiring Community involvement process at my daughter's school I was informed last Tuesday or Wednesday that the principal was leaving in an email by her on Thursday the HR department of the regional
019assistant assistant superintendent sent out an email informing the community that this Tuesday 3 days later there will be a community meeting in on this matter I unfortunately could not intend because as you know what I was doing on Tuesday was trying to help you guys out in terms of the system uh at the same time it was mentioned that all written comments were due this Friday Memorial Day weekend so basically probably due today because no one's going to do anything tomorrow so in about a week's time probably the most important decision that parents do care about is the principal ship in only one week time I asked leadership team if this was something normal yes they said it was something normal at the same time I think we need to do a better job of
020parent engagement community outreach Community involvement carrying culture which you guys have stressed out for the last two years how do parents get involved in this with a working family with a composition folks in this County have two jobs where is the Outreach to the minorities parents who might not have that availability because it wasn't also in Spanish or Korean or other languages so I'd like to say Dr Lockard with a week's time I really don't think that's enough time maybe two three weeks still not enough time but I understand the urgency of the end of year in making decisions but one week is definitely not enough time to get people involved with week is seriously not enough time we do other decisions on boring other stuff that sometimes the board M does stuff so I
021really do hope that this can be relooked at I understand the urgency and the time at the end of the year but with those people in those communities that's the most important thing on their life's decision of their kids is who's running the ship next year in the following Years thank you very much Jessica [Applause] Langdon good evening thank you for listening to me tonight my name is Jessica Landon and I'm proud to say that I've been an FCPS employee for the last 14 years I am also a resident of West Springfield and Miss Schultz is my Schoolboard represent pres ative tonight I would like to speak to you from a parents perspective about the current Family Life Education or fle curriculum in my role as an educator I've often heard the phrase we need
022to provide windows and mirrors to our students this means that we provide a window for students to see into others lives and mirror so that students can see their themselves representative represented as a parent I cannot help but agree with this statement speaking for my family we live in a diverse Community where different family types are represented by leaving LGBT in the current fle curriculum the school system is providing windows and mirrors to students you are providing a mirror to my son's friend and classmate who has two moms when same sexh hold house samex households are discussed in addition a window is provided to my son to see that his friends family and his cousins are accepted and normal from all of my research I can see that discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation
023starts in middle school if changes were to be made to the curriculum in my opinion they should be done at younger ages to address different family makeups there are many different types of families we should be providing a curriculum that allows students of non-traditional families to have a mirror into their family while providing a window to students who are raised in traditional families what kind of message would be sent to students if LGT issues are taken LGBT issues are taken out of the fle curriculum it is a it is vital that we continue to give our students windows and mirrors again thank you for listening to me this evening Bethany [Applause] Molino good evening as a colleague to 60 and educator to 580 students weekly I am genuinely invested in nurturing a healthy educational environment
024in fairfx County Public Schools as a mother of two I'm grateful that my personal beliefs and values parallel the school's Mission which is to inspire and Empower students to meet High academic standards lead healthy ethical lives and be responsible and Innovative Global Citizens as an individual I am committed to protecting the framework of Integrity that our community is built upon therefore I'm here tonight to support the continued inclusion of gender identity and sexual orientation lessons in the 7th to 10th grade Family Life education curriculum in 2014 Fairfax County Public Schools reinforced its culture of respect by adopting the portrait of a graduate initiative it teaches skills and broadening perspectives conveying understanding exploring and exchanging ideas engaging others in thoughtful discussion ensuring examination of a full range of viewpoints acknowledging and understanding diverse perspectives demonstrating empathy
025compassion and respect for others strengthening comprehension and deepening awareness reasoning weighing evidence to reach conclusions showing strong understanding and belief of self to engage in reflection for individual Improvement and advocacy in order to lead by example and meet the expectations of the initiative we put in place we must continue to Foster safe respectful conversations about all of humanity in our fle lessons in the classrooms we teachers mostly control the information shared with our students however we know they are collecting information from numerous other sources when the bell rings from the wisdom glean through handheld internet access to the extracurricular education on the school bus adolescence are constantly inundated with someone else's version of a truth thankfully students at FCPS receive proven science-based facts in their fle lessons as a parent I appreciate being made aware
026of what my child is being taught in my absence as an educator I am confident that what what we teach in our fle lessons is factual unbiased and respectful as a once adolescent with my own set of awkward and unfounded truths I am grateful for the opportunity to have falsehoods corrected without shame or discomfort Benjamin Franklin was said being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn so please continue to support a willingness to learn Embrace and grow by supporting gender identity and sexual orientation lessons in the 7th to 10th grade um fairfx County fle curriculum thank you Laura guy Laura guy is Laura guy here yes thank you um good evening I uh thank you for H listening to us I'm an alumni from Stewart and these students were not
027able to get om the docket to speak tonight so I'm going going to give them my time if you don't mind and let them explain their feelings about go right ahead all right my name is Carlos Hernandez I'm a 12th grader at Jeb Stewart high school and I feel that we are being silenced and the whole name changes you I feel that a lot of students uh have an opinion that they want to give out such as us three we want to give our opinion on the name change we've tried to go to meetings tried to talk about it but we feel there's a good majority at the school that feels it's their job to go ahead and silence us they want to go ahead and call us racists bigots just because we have um
028an opinion that's different from theirs they don't see our side of it that we could be perhaps worried about financial issues or tradition or things like that and they only want to go ahead and label you just for having an opinion that's different from theirs good evening my name is Victoria Haver and I a senior at Stuart JB Stewart high school and I'm here today because I love my school it is truly tragic that my school is renowned for its poor condition and low academic achievement this is not because of the school's name nor the dedication of its staff but rather to the resources we as a community dedicate to it which leads to an exodus of experienced teachers and a feeling hanging over the students that the community doesn't care in our school we
029have rats and cockroaches you can't walk through the hallway and sneeze without hitting somebody on the back of the head because we're there's an overc capacity um there's talk of making students pay for their IB exam $113 each for each exam I would love to see the energy and the pledges of fundraising of those in support of the name change be committed instead to the Improvement of the school the reputation of the school is derived from its standard of Excellence not from its name thank you very hello my name is V Hera I'm also a senior at Jeb Stewart um the main argument that I've heard about the name change is that it's because Jeb Stewart um had slaves and i' also would like to make the statement that as did the founding fathers he
030did have slaves yes but if you were going to do it based off of that then you're going to have to also change the names of everyone post I mean pre Abraham Lincoln um because all of them also had slaves and just like the founding fathers Jeb Stewart did free his so um that's not necessarily a pro to changing the name considering the cons of taking the money and putting it towards something that's not really helpful to the community or any of the students that attend the school uh just as Victoria stated walking through the hall as impossible seats are broken during one of my tests I looked up and saw a cockroach I highly doubt that spending this money in the direction of a name change is the best place to put it thanks
031thank you thank you for coming out tonight thank you very much Robert riby Robert rby oh I I see Mr rby good evening I would like to read to you our mission statement FCPS Pride envisions a public school system in which each person is respected welcomed and safe regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity gender expression I'd like to introduce a parent Amanda Brewer whose story will underscore how important it is to include uh LGBT kids in Family Life Education hello and thank you for letting me speak tonight f is important topic to me more important than probably many others and it should include sexual orientation and gender identity because all kids need education in on their side and this would help all protect all the LGBT kids in the school system and this could
032top could stop some of the senseless violence that happens when people are taught false information as facts after a kid found out that my child was trans after a brief conversation in the classroom they waited outside of the classroom and attacked my child she has a concussion and has been out of school for 2 weeks now the one thing that is also on hold is one of her biggest passions is rugby and her coach and vhsl is way ahead her coach has created an environment where the kids look at each other and they celebrate their differences they don't use them to hurt each other there's LGBT and Christian and Muslim and black and white and Hispanic they're all represented on the team and they all know that they're equal when they're on the field when
033the school district votes on rights and then resends them you guys are showing the children that you're not quite sure where they stand as people in the school district and that's not okay progress isn't easy it's really hard but it's necessary and we need to work on that thank you thank you I normally I don't respond but I I would like to say we do not allow or tolerate any child being attacked at school I hope you have approached the appropriate authorities to report this and I'm sure uh Dr lockart will will want to know U about this situation in your name thank you uh Rodrigo Vasquez hi hold on okay I promise not to speak in Spanish this time um to many people dism Mrs P understood you um so I I'm here in
034in support of of LGBT inclusive family life education um for for a variety of reasons and a lot of great people are going to talk about why that is uh for me it's it's it's two things one it's it's a health topic when we provide comprehensive education our communities are healthier I don't think anybody here does not want a healthier community in an ideal world that would be the end of the argument and this would be done and we'd move on to other matters but I don't think this is an Ideal World um on the other hand this is a personal topic because I wish I had comprehensive um education Family Life Education growing up because that would have been something that would have benefited me um as I moved forward in life um I
035also want to talk a little bit really quickly I have two minutes about um something personal uh about 6 years 3 months and two days ago I came out to my mom um it was a really challenging experience um it wasn't something she was uh ready for I had been an immigrant Advocate talking about my immigration status about being undocumented and proud and talking about being gay was like a complete flip side she was a little cut off guard um but but but remembered one important thing it's something that I think everyone here at the board can can share is she had a commitment to me just as if you have a commitment to students period and I hope that we can maintain that choosing to have policies that are inclusive of lgbtq students demonstrates
036our commitment to students period later on in my life I came out to my sisters as I was talking about um a partner that I had I'm the oldest of four so I I try to lead by example in everything that I do leading with compassion support telling them that they need a study and that there are no limits to what their dreams are and that was coming from someone who's undocumented um later on in my life when I when I was coming out to them I told them that because of my sexual orientation I could be discriminated in a variety of settings and them as extremely young they're they're in high school now but they were um they were just coming into middle school and I told them that they were extremely confused because
037they said Rodrigo you're just like us though there's nothing different other than who you want to be with why can you be discriminated and I think I want to end the these these these these 20 seconds that I have left letting you know that my younger sisters at such a young age are able to comprehend something that so many folks maybe even in in front of me have difficult time understanding but in the words of Sylvia Riva as we go into pride month I want to relay something that she says it's we have to be visible we should not be ashamed of who we are we have to show the world world that we are numerous there are many of us out here we're not going to go anywhere thank you thank you Joanne Walton
038Miss W hi good evening uh members of the school board School Board Dr Lockard support staff uh thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight regarding the Family Life Education curric ulum um I'm here tonight as an ally in support of the Fairfax County Public School lgbtq plus students and I was saddened to learn that some members of this community do not feel safe speaking publicly um to you due to the way that they're being treated um like many of you I have several lgbtq friends who grew up hiding and hoping that no one would discover their secret this is no way for anyone to live in a free and just society and we know that now and these friends lives would be very different if they had been accepted as children for
039who they are if they had seen themselves represented in the sexed curriculum as they called it back in our day and uh due to the positive changes that we've seen since then in creating awareness and acceptance of the lgbtq plus Community since we were growing up my friends children now feel that they are able to tell their parents that they are lgbtq plus um um but we must do more we must continue to make our society safe for all people to live their lives how they are without fear of judgment and condemnation for simply being who they are like the speakers before me I ask that the school system retain Family Life education lessons that are inclusive of lgbtq people and teach about gender identity and sexual orientation and we also need to make sure
040we're provide providing positive school-based supports such as lgbtq inclusive curriculum supportive Educators comprehensive anti-bullying and suppor of school clubs because these things improve School climates for these students and quite frankly for all students I look forward to a school system where each person staff student family member is respected and safe regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity and gender expression and as an educator myself having taught uh inclusive preschool and kindergarten for 10 years before having my own children who are sccps students um I want this for all children um who feel unaccepted in our schools um we can do better and I thank you for your time thank you we now turn to student representative matters and I call on Miss Chu thank you and just really quickly I'd like to first thank all
041the students who came to speak today I don't think I've ever been in a single meeting where so many students came out and not only attended but spoke so thank you for your courage and advocating for your peers and your beliefs I'd also just like to take a moment um to commend some of our students for their achievements this year every year in this time so many of our students are recognized for the achievements uh in particular the US Presidential Scholars Program was established by executive order of the president 1964 and each year up to 161 students are named Scholars one of the nation's highest honors for high school graduates of the three students awarded from Virginia this year I'd just like to congratulate the two who are from Fairfax County Public Schools so our
042students are really showing that our county is great force and these students are at the Forefront of high school graduates moving on to college the US Presidential Scholars Program also Awards distinguished teachers and this year three Fairfax County Public Schools teachers were awarded so I just like to extend a congratulations to Mrs Yuki Melvin from Lake bradic Secondary School a teacher in Japanese as well as Mrs Sylvia Osco and Dr Thomas Larson from TJ so those are just some of the great awards that are suddenly coming back at the end of the year and we're seeing the great achievements that our students and teachers have had uh finally as it's the month of June this is always the time of graduation and prom and trips to the beach with friends so I'd like to take
043this time to remind parents Guardians community members and students of the importance of safety uh seeing as this month of June is national Safety month it is never never too much to consider the safety of yourself and your friends every single year there are news of students who become victim to fatal drunk driving incidents or distracted driving or bin drinking so I just like to take this time to remind the community of The Perils of drinking and other substance use and to take this time to remember the safety of themselves thank you thank you very much Miss [Applause] CH item 4.01 confirmation of action taken and closed meeting 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
044action taken regarding student disciplinary matters board members have discussed each individual case and at this time we'll make several motions to confirm the recommended action I call on Mrs Strauss for a motion thank you madam chairman I move to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who was charged with a serious criminal offense related to an alleged community- based incident and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent do I have a second seconded by Mrs Corbett Sanders all those in favor raise your hand um Hines Huff Schultz Corbett Sanders Strauss Evans Moon mlin darnet kofax and mline all those opposed all those abstaining PCH and Wilson that motion passes I call on Mrs Corbett Sanders for a motion I move to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who assaulted another
045student and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent do I have a second second seconded by Miss Hines all those in favor Hines PCH Huff Schultz Corbett Sanders uh Strauss Evans Moon mlin daret kofax and mine all those opposed all those abstaining Wilson that motion passes we next go to item 4.02 the FY 20108 approved budget uh I'm going to now call on Dr lockart for a few remarks thank you madam chair uh tonight we take action on the fiscal year 18 budget after many many months of planning and meetings work sessions Community forums and so forth I'd certainly like to thank our budget chair uh Tammy daret kofax Vice chair Ilan Moon and certainly all of the school board members for all of their hard work as well as members of our
046budget task foot budget task force for their input and Service uh to our system as we work through our budget process I'd certainly be remiss if I didn't thank our wonderful budget staff under the skilled leaders ship of Susan Quinn as well as our assistant superintendent of financial services Kristen Michael and director of budget Services Alice wiggington they have put in countless I mean countless hours uh to provide Schoolboard members and the community with transparent and accurate information about our very complicated budget uh the budget staff members this year answered 113 budget questions and each of those certainly uh come with plenty of pages of uh information and detail I want to make sure they know how much we appreciate their dedication to FCPS and our community as a whole thank you madam chair thank
047you very much Dr lockart I will now call on Miss darnet kofax for the motion I move that the school board adopt the FY 2018 approved budget as detailed in the FY 2018 advertised budget Modified by the adjustments included in this agenda item do I have a second second seconded by Mr Moon um Miss darnet copex would you like to speak to your motion before we go to amendments yes I will Madam chair and uh I will have comments now and and then I will try to be brief during other times so budget reductions come with a price and the price should not be our children's future this budget does not meet all the school systems needs and it certainly does not adequately fund the shared vision of the Board of Supervisors and the school
048board a vision of unpar parallel Excellence for all of our schools and for each and every one of our children we cannot sustain the level of service that our community expects of our schools if we continue to follow the path of harsh reductions due to revenues that fail to adequately support our systems basic needs this funding model is not sustainable if these words sound familiar to some of you it's because these are the exact words I spoke when I presented to our Board of Supervisors during a budget hearing in April 2015 when I had the privilege of chairing this board these words this funding model is not sustainable and variances on the above theme maybe ones you have heard in one of this year's 27 my colleagues work sessions or board meetings devoted to our
049budget or you may have heard me say these words in the additional 26 budget meetings I personally had with individual members of the boards of Supervisors or part of of community meetings and conversations with staff for my personal grand total of 53 meetings related to budget this year while serving as this board's budget chair and I don't share this with you to be flippant or to prove my work ethic I share this with you to illustrate why this process is unsustainable Fairfax is looked upon as one of the Premier models for a public school as what a public school system should be and indeed we are but the community has lost faith in this process process the community has budget burnout our parents teachers employees budget task force and other Advocates have been forced to
050spend countless hours for year after year advocating negotiating passionately testifying to try to get the funding we need we truly appreciate your partnership unfortunately most times we have not seen the results we had hoped for and with this burnout is lost human capital lost potential human Capital that could have been better spent on perhaps areas like volunteering in classrooms developing Innovative programming for our emerging student populations having more time to work on multiple Pathways to graduation identifying project-based learning models and this list can go on and speaking of humans who are much more than Capital the our amazing staff they have worked tirelessly to ensure that this process is transparent and they always conduct themselves it with the utmost professionalism even when emotions are running High I thank you to Dr lockart Who was put
051in a very difficult position this year I thank you to Dan Paris Mr Marty Smith Miss Susan Quinn Miss Kristen Michael Miss Alice wiggington for your tireless work meeting with us and answering a multitude of questions including providing written answers to 113 budget questions there's also additional staff that went into that and I want to mention their names and thank them so much they include Kelly Burr Diane delich Steven drer Marissa Faria Jan Garcia Janette giron Debbie Griggs Brooke gersen Hector Hermosa Amy love Karen Mitchum Matthew Norton Audrey Ryder Stacy schert Rachel Silberman Alfonso aaf and lein Z this is a team that worked so hard for us to get to this point and I can't thank you for how much that you've done I believe that our board and our staff have worked hard
052to ensure that what we have here tonight has the least impact upon our students and we have prioritized cuts that could be put back hopefully in better budget times I want to thank my colleague Mr Moon who was with me every step of this budget process process for your partnership and for your wisdom I was M with with Mr Moon recently when he was speaking to a constituent Mr won was telling the constituent that as a board by the code of Virginia we have no ability to raise funds for our needs and as such we must learn to have the great skill of compromise compromise and by compromise that very nature means that not everybody gets exactly what they want and when individuals don't get what they want passions arise I hope that tonight passions
053do not get in the way of good governance we have had to compromise on what we want for our students we have had to compromise on the salaries and benefits for our teachers and employees this budget has in it many compromises so tonight my colleagues if we've already talked about a topic and have come to a compromise consider is this good governance to bring It Forward again if we have not ever talked about a topic in one of our 27 budget meetings why not and consider is it good governance to bring for tonight for the first time we are not a broken system we are not a failing system we are an excellent school system but due to sustained budgeting constraints we are not meeting our fullest potential we are not meeting the emerging needs
054of our system these are the facts that an underfunded budget brings however I have great hopes that with a renewed joint budget task force and continued collaboration with our funding bodies this will allow us opportunities to continue this conversation and better times will come thank you to my colleagues for your very hard work now let's have a productive discussion and finalize this budget discuss this budget tonight thank you thank you Mr Anette copex Mr Moon would you like to speak to your second just briefly Madame chair uh you know first of all I want to thank you our budget committee chair M Kofa for her tireless work uh to a to all those meetings 53 meetings all together including work sessions you know amongst 12 of us 12 board members probably there were hundreds of
055meetings we attended and mean I want to thank my colleagues and working so hard it has not been certainly easy budget year for all of us this is my 18th and there are a lot of things in the main motion that pains me but at the same time you know my colleagues have year you heard me say that at the end of the day we need to have a budget to educate our children I see a a many proposed amendments to the m May motion from my colleagues and I want to thank my board members of think thinking through those amendments and and and putting them forward for uh our consideration this evening uh probably on many of those amendments propos amendments I will not be able to support uh I don't know which amendments
056will get majority support to be part of the main motion at the end of this evening but no matter what the main motion ultimately will be motion uh will ultimately become I am going to be supporting the budget again because we need to have a budget from July 1 without budget we cannot educate our children we cannot operate our school system I want to thank you know in addition to all those staff members and MRX has already identified I want to thank all the STA members sitting up there and and those who are watching us on TV maybe they not be may not be watching us on TV because they will spent enough hours answering our budget questions and meeting with us because whenever we board members and supervisors and other committee members ask a
057questions it's not just a financial staff in a staff in the finance office who answered those questions those questions go out to various different departments and they spend countless number of hours in in in answering those questions so I want to thank all of you uh uh this I seconded this motion with some shag green because as I stated earlier the main motion contains things that I didn't want to see but they are there because we need to balance the budget you know about a week ago maybe even less than a week ago I think they finally made a I think they are scheduled to make a final decision today I don't know whether they actually did it as of now the Mong County Council they are fully funding their school systems request they are
058already spending $1,500 more per student student compar to fail facts and they are fully funding school systems request for the next fiscal year and unfortunately our school system does not enjoy the same kind of a luxury uh just want I give you just two different numbers the transfer additional transfer we did receive this year from the County Supervisors is even less than what the buom county is giving to their school district even though we have a 17% more students they are giving more they are transfering more to their school district than we have received from County Supervisors that's the reality we are working with so there are things in the main motion I didn't want to see but that's a something that that's the reality that's not something that I have to work with so
059with with that I just want to give you a few more numbers just for the community that about 86% of our budget goes in for instructional purposes for instruction about 6% goes into Transportation facilities management is a 4% only about 4.4% is for the general support and we need all those different categories to support educating our children and in this year's proposed budget the main motion calls for about 4% of our budget going into the meat the niche of ever increasing benefit cost increase plus what you want to provide as a modest enhancement of the salary for our teachers that's a 4% when overall budget only go is only going up by 3.4% the main motion calls for 4% enhancement for the benefits and salary for our teachers after all our employees other the most
060important piece that we need to educate our children in classrooms thank you thank you um we have uh several amendments so I'm going to turn to the Amendments now and after we finish with the Amendments um other board members may want to speak to the main motion um as as amended I now call on M for an amendment I move to amend the main motion by a reducing supplemental funding for online classes and having base schools provide the Staffing resulting in a savings of .9 million B reducing hourly salaries and operating expenses in the superintendent and Deputy superintendent's office by .5 million C reducing TJ admissions office by one full-time equivalent resulting in a savings of .1 million D eliminating the international at middle years program resulting in a savings of $1.4 million e reducing
061SAS in eight high schools Lake bradock Langley mlan Robinson South County TJ West Springfield Woodson resulting in a savings of .7 million F El eliminating fles resulting in a savings of $2.9 million G eliminating payment of AP and IB fees resulting in additional savings of $3.2 million H maintaining esol costs at FY 20177 funding resulting in a savings of $2.9 million I increasing class floor from 18 to 19 resulting in a savings of $3.7 million J allocating 14.7 million to restore class size K allocating $1.6 million to restore substitute pay s a second second second by Mrs Huff Mrs Schultz would you like to speak to your motion yes and um this is an Omnibus what I've called an Omnibus Amendment um you know it's um interesting that um some of my colleagues uh leading
062up to this were very appreciative to staff as rightly we should be um it's an extraordinary effort to get to this point um and it takes um practically tomorrow morning we're going to start on uh the fiscal 19 budget the amount of time but I'm going to thank first of all the taxpayers because it's your money that you're giving to us to Governor school system for you than for us to make decisions on your behalf and um second of all I'm going to thank um the example of Montgomery County being brought up and the fact that in Montgomery County for example they decided to cut 90 specialist positions to preserve class size um so their school board made choices and I can't can't say that any of these choices are tenable I think that my
063colleague Miss daret kofax was exactly correct that um any budget is difficult but any budget also establishes priorities and one of the major priorities um for me from day one last year when we started talking about the budget was driving dollars into the classroom driving dollars into the classroom and one of the largest complaints um that has persisted from uh students from families from Educators um from administrators um has been the size of classes um the inability to schedule classes uh because of the master scheduling problem um resulting in these large classes the inability to offer some classes in some schools uh because classes are so large um listening to children have to take having to take uh uh some of their classes especially things like foreign language or their art history classes in the
064high 30s in their High School classes we talk often about elementary school class sizes but um I've said from the beginning that the middle school and the high school children are in our blind spot our children go off to middle and high school and we don't know that um their French class has 36 kids in it or their art history class has 38 kids in it and um a quarter of them have special needs that it's difficult to navigate physically in the space of science labs and so there are decisions to be made um Montgomery County chose to cut 90 specialist positions they cut millions of dollars in positions somewhere in the budget to prioritize driving money to the classroom the other thing is is that um we are struggling this board made a decision
065ill-conceived well-conceived it's neither here nor there but we made a decision last year to cut substitute pay the result has been almost a catastrophic um difficulty for our Educators to find Qualified substitutes um so that they can either do their Collaborative Learning time um to take their personal days um and so on and if you're struggling um the these are often retirees these are certified teachers these are people who can maintain a class you know if you have a teacher go out um on a a long-term or short-term need the first thing you want in that classroom in front of those children is someone who can maintain the curriculum you don't just want a warm body and um we we have not unfortunately the decision we made last year has had unforeseen consequences and so
066we've arrived at a position where I think this board has got to make some prioritization decisions and I I have I have Have No Illusion that the Omnibus Bill will pass but these are reasonable decisions they're small Cuts in some places where it's a choice we have to make a decision about what's important are we going to drive uh the majority of our effort to focusing on what's happening in the classroom for example I have things on here cutting online classes and having Staffing come from the school um frankly sorry um uh Mr Paris and and Dr Lockard but there's there are some operating expenses and some hourly wages that occur at at the very top level that's a good place to start um things like uh We've grown the TJ admissions office that doesn't
067need for full-time yearr round um individuals I think that we can offer for something that serves a very few number of our students we can transfer some of these dollars so each one of these has been reflectively done um the IB Middle years program is only offered to some students in some schools in some regions of the county and that was something that we grew in recent years at the same time that there was a wailing and nashing of teeth that we didn't have the budget the IB program is extraordinarily expensive um and certainly more expensive down to uh the middle Year's program so uh it's it's not table um but when I look at our esol costs our esol costs have grown 22 and half% in four years 22 and a half% in four
068years the number of students is going down next year I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that we will maintain existing funding for fewer students next year those are reasonable decisions that's that's prudency with your tax dollars um that focuses on getting things uh back into the classroom and the last one that's on here that I will comment on is we talked and finally this board move to moving the floor the floor the smallest classrooms um from 17 to 18 and I want to take it up one more to 19 there are are schools that get vast amount of more additional resources through our needs based Staffing tens of millions of dollars at this point it's going to be almost $50 million this year get an additional resources driven to schools with the highest needs
069to make very very small classrooms and kids don't come in perfect sizes but I think that if we drive to a norm where we lift the floor we're not going to radically impact um uh changing a classroom that has 13 and making it 14 or 14 and making it 16 but you make a lot of difference to a bunch of kids when you take a classroom that has 32 and you're able to buy it down um a couple and that's not just for the students that's also for the quality of Education that that happens in that classroom for the teacher workload the type of Assessments um the more uh substantive assessments that that teacher is able to do more time for the children to be writing um instead of uh pencil to paper um uh
070you know uh a worksheet Factory and so I think this is respectful um I think it is um comprehensive in terms of the types of cuts instead of going deep um in one area it takes a little bit from every place but then at the very end it keeps the focus the classroom Mrs Huff would you like to speak to your second thank you I want to thank Miss Schultz for this work um we have continually talked about driving the resources directly to the classroom um in uh Mr Moon mentioned compromise and I think in the name of compromise I'll not be supporting this Omnibus Amendment as it's been titled because Schultz has also going to be um bringing these forth individually I think that gives us an opportunity to truly compromise here at the
071table to um make some decisions as a group that can try and make sure that we do do that that we're listening to what our teachers were saying what our students are coming to the podium and talking about their classes being overwhelmed and high so I do look forward to hearing the conversations going forward tonight Mr Wilson thank you madam chair um I I also would like to um just express my gratitude to Mrs Schultz for um putting this proposal together it it's not an easy thing to um to put together a list like this and and and and really think through all of the ramifications of the various changes that she's proposed and you know I think that the the basic concept of of reducing class size goes directly to an issue that uh
072I think I've heard almost from every teacher that I've talked to since joining the board that class size uh we it we have to constantly focus on making class sizes um workable for teachers I mean I've heard it referred to by some teachers as give me another student hang him from the ceiling you know I mean they're bad crowded in some cases and you know we we we are very focused on our teachers rightly so but this piece of it I believe is critical and I think this type of proposal takes us a Step Beyond um where we where we have been in the past like like Mrs Huff I'm not sure that I can support this Omnibus format but I do think that it's a courageous thing that you've done to put this forward
073to us for consideration because it's certainly got the wheels turning in my head about you know what are the other options that we can do M mlin uh was very helpful going right after Mr Wilson because in the interest of a long evening uh I'll try to just say that I appreciate how he captured it um Miss Schultz look at this list and I think what you've presented to us is a very compelling conversation about our mission critical spending um what we want to be able to do what we need to be able to do there's certain items that you know for years serving together on the board I would say absolutely you know class size versus this it's a no-brainer for me it's class size there are some other things on here that I
074would be very interested in having our budget conversation and I will Begin by saying that I know how hard this board has worked and you especially and really digging in to say what more can we do instead of looking at the same laundry list of cuts every year so I appreciate the fact that you're identifying things that we haven't seen come from staff or for the budget task force and I think we have a responsibility as a board to look at exactly what you have here for our fy19 budget but there are some things that we have to really understand impact and so um it's for those reasons that the Omnibus Amendment you have in front of me I'm not comfortable with voting on tonight uh but I am comfortable in some of the other
075ones talking about them that you've presented and given us that other allart menu to choose from uh but I think it's important to make sure the public understands the 12 of us may have a a diverse perspective on any one of these items that Miss Schultz has presented in front of us but what it does demonstrate is that uh when we can collectively have the conversation not just with each other but also talking with our superintendent and staff to understand the the impact that each one of these has in in how we deliver instruction I hope it does mean that we um going forward can look at ways that we mitigate things like class size uh by being more strategic so um Miss Schultz thank you for the time you put in with this Miss
076SS yeah thank you um I I will not be supporting this amendment um I think uh a couple things while I think it's extremely important for us to be creative and strategic and try to look at things in a universal way we definitely want to do everything we can to avoid class size increase I think this list of cuts um just a couple things um there are things on here that attack the classroom and so I think we'd be trading you know a classroom problem of large class sizes for another classroom problem of cutting programs and cutting important support people in buildings that serve classrooms so there are a lot of things on this list that I could not at this point support um I also have to say we have spent months throwing ideas
077out being creative being strategic talking in to staff researching investigating having conversations putting things on a table publicly so that we could publicly ask staff questions talk to each other get a sense of where the board is on these things and then move on do it as an iterative thing so that then at our next of 27 work sessions we could bring the next um iteration of that idea and then at the next one we could bring the next iteration of that idea I've had several ideas myself and I think we all have we've rolled up our sleeves for months and we've worked on this we've thrown things out there I've I've had some ideas that I have abandoned over the last few months because it was clear to me that they weren't going to
078work either fiscally or politically um and I I think some of the things on this list the the public has not seen as a serious consideration until 48 hours ago I mean the people I talked to in the community my constituents the um employee associations teachers uh principes you know people in the community who follow what we do and care about the budget had no idea we were going to be seriously talking tonight about um um uh eliminating the IB Middle years program or reducing SAS in the high schools I mean they're just you know um I I think these would have been great things to talk about start talking about for months ago but um I I don't think it's fair to the community to to vote for something like this at at this
079point I think if if this is an introduction to what you know we maybe one board member would like us to be talking about for the next year I think that's fair but I can't support it tonight Mrs Corbett Sanders sure thank you um first I would like to thank Mr Darin kofax and Mr moon for um leading the charge on uh this process and the patience which has been exhibited throughout a very laborious um process and um I know I have not always been as responsive and timely as I should be so I apologize for that um but I do want to talk a little bit about where we're at and um also thank Mrs Schultz for her Omnibus um Amendment the reason that I think this is such an important Amendment um one
080that I'll tell you up front I'm not going to support but I think what you put into this amendment is is really well thought out you spent a lot of energy and a lot of time and you were willing to explore things beyond the list that we've looked at for the past couple of years and so I think that it is an excellent opportunity to use this list as part of our discussion as we begin you know everybody says all you ever do is talk about budget when you're on the school board well the reality is that um our budget should reflect the priorities of the school system um our budget is under is a challenge when we are not in charge of our funding sources um but what we do have is an opportunity
081to take things that we learn year over-ear so for example last year I put forth a followon motion encouraging uh the school system to align our budget with our strategic plan I am um encouraged by uh recent conversations that although that didn't happen this year it will happen next year and it will be something that allows us to then use as a way of informing decisions on how we spend our money and so when I look at your Omnibus list my concern is that we really haven't unpacked the list to determine what the impact is on um students on the system and the other piece of it is I don't think we've really looked at it through the lens of equity and so I'm concerned when I see things like increasing the floor for our
082highest need students um two students per classroom um in exchange for not addressing class sizes at the other end now that doesn't mean that I don't think we need to do something about class sizes and you will see as a followon motion tonight that I'm going to encourage my um colleagues to have uh the superintendent and his team address class size in the same strategic manner that we have addressed concerns over teacher pay and compensation that is build a plan provide the opportunity for people to um weigh in on the plan because we know that there are a thousand people that have signed a petition saying uh cut CL or class size counts but what we need to do is do this in the same strategic manner in which we addressed the salaries and it
083should be something that we're all around a table trying to get to um for one of a better term getting to yes on class size and so uh Mrs Schultz thank you there are some things on this list that I find intriguing that if I could unpack them I certainly um think I could support but um I need to dig a Little Deeper on some of them if you want to explain it to us so before I go to go backs I'll make brief comments I I will not be supporting this I believe we'll have another opportunity to talk about some of the individual pieces of it um I I share um Miss hine's concern that this was something that uh we we only received two days ago and that the public has not had
084any opportunity to weigh in on um at all um but beyond that uh there are quite a few things in there that would be very painful Cuts uh all of us would like to reduce class size I there's no one up here who would not like to reduce class size um but I'm not willing to do that by undermining um other programs um a $3 million cut in Esa funding um that would be devastating to um to many of our schools and many of our programs cutting IB Middle years programs we we've had no conversation about that and I I cannot support that the IB Middle years program is is an excellent program cutting all foreign language and elementary schools um and then um uh charging uh fees for everyone taking AP and IB testing
085fees I I I really just like the even the fees that we have in this budget which is um a much more modest proposal than than we had in previous versions we've we've cut it back and and and cut it back significantly but to have parents pay hundreds if not thousands of of fees for for AP and IB testing I I can't support that uh nor u i could I support uh having the class siiz floor raised again uh resulting in another hit at our highest poverty schools we've this budget already includes a an increase in the in the class floor and it it hits our our very highest poverty schools which um uh we we cannot be be trading some um uh we we cannot be be doing that to just specific schools the
086SAS I will talk I'm we'll be talking more about that but um I I will not be supporting uh this at all um and I have uh Mrs Strauss I will just briefly say I do not support this uh Amendment um in totality and I also don't support any of these subgroups within it thank you Mrs Schultz yeah so um because some of these things are not going to appear in later amendments I want to just do a little bit of clarifying that has happened at work sessions there's nothing on here that I haven't talked about in the hundreds of hours of work sessions that Miss daret kofax brought up in fact many of these have t been talked about relentlessly um and uh I'll I'll identify the sosus because that is one thing that
087uh only been brought up in passing I have gone to every single one of my High School principles and five of the eight that are listed here I put up in the spirit of compromise are my own these are where children from the Springfield District go and I went and I talked to them and I said could you this is something that we've added recently again we've talked about um we we've grown programs or added things over time when we were struggling and now we're coming along with the muscle memory and increasing class size so in the spirit of compromise I offered up five of my own schools um and in shared sacrifice the only the only others are TJ uh Langley and mlan so I think that that is um more than compromise um
088the the other things that are on here I'm not cutting esol $2.9 million I'm keeping it flat I'm not growing it as much as we were talking about again I said we grew it 22 and a half% in the last four years and we're going to have fewer students next year so it's reasonable to say there are some things that we're going to have to choose to keep flat in order to do other things there's nothing on here that showed up 48 hours ago it's just that the ideas came together in the 14.7 million plus the substitute um in this particular fashion so it's disingenuous frankly for anyone to um uh uh malign intent when we've we've talked about these um uh really honestly in depth and and with tremendous I think Integrity um all
089of us have spoken about this um recently I was reminded about you know um an adage don't tell me um what you value show me your budget and I'll tell you what you value well um I I I think that we're going to see by the end of the night whether we value class size and driving money into the classroom um this is a brave way to do it that's true um but a $ billion budget um where we're taking 53% of the County's uh budget to fund FCPS requires bravery it requires leadership leadership is difficult and the muscle memory of going to raising class size and um not necessarily providing some of our um dollars for some of the most significant things like substitute pay and instead choosing to leverage fees on parents um
090AP and IB fees are not being leveraged on children of need all of of those needs are already covered under free and reduced males so that we provide for um children who need providing for but when you are getting college credit and you were able to add vast amounts of resources um to your college Years on the taxpayers dime shared sacrifice of being able to pay for a test um a $90 test is is really not that big of a deal when you're getting college credit and changing the trajectory of your life so um I I think it we hasten um the evening if we move forward um but months of creativity doesn't mean that it stopped months ago um and we didn't necessarily cover all our priorities there's a reason why we hear people
091um begging us um teachers Educators parents students begging us not to increase class size and and and break the classroom again this year with this budget Miss PCH uh thank you I I want to clarify first of all that um that we are making cuts to ESO already this year ESO transitional is being cut at the cost of $23.7 million um and the increase in class size which was a compromise we came to from one student to half no one wants to increase the class size but we have gone through many many iterations of um discussions and compromises that that is increased ining um for ESO Clauses as well so it's a reduction in 12 sorry five positions not million sorry 23.7 positions esil and 12.5 in class size um so there is already a
092reduction there there is a reduction unfortunately in a lot of our departments and a lot of our programs uh we are not where we were last year at this time in the budget unfortunately we did have a bump from the Board of Supervisors last year that allowed us to have a more positive end to our budget that allowed us to keep many of our programs and to make investments in teacher salaries um that being said it's not going to be a fun night uh we have had many of these conversations so I will not be supporting these amendments um we do not want to increase class size we did hear from our um principal associations that because the the communication was made much earlier in the year although unfortunate they were able to prepare and
093make um make their their classrooms ready for next year um I hope we can make investments in the future and I know that we have follow on motions that will help mitigate some of that and I will be supporting that but I cannot support the amendment at this time Mr D copex I will not be supporting this amendment um I will only spe speak to two specific parts of it um eliminating the payment for AP and IB fees is not something I can support I sent to my colleagues um probably over 50 letters from A group of students um at Edison High School who who it would be an undue hardship for they may not qualified for free or reduced meals but they are full IB candidates and that cost to those families is nearly
094$1,000 um there's also intricacies involved in the AP and IB if we do not um if we do not uh offer payment for these courses um then the the lists um out there which we say we don't care about but we we do as far as ranking of high schools that offer rigor to their to their students through their through our various programming some of my high schools because of students who are on that marginal list um where they don't qualify for free reduced meals but it would be a hardship for them they would make the choice not to take that IB curriculum or perhaps pay for um AP fees uh or the or P for the pay for the fees to take the AP test we talked about this significantly and this is one
095of the things um that I that I did ask my colleagues to say you know if we've already come to a compromise does it really have to come to the table I guess these these items will and we'll continue to have this conversation but we talked about this at length and um I will not be supporting it mainly for that reason okay seeing no other lights I will call for the vote on um Mrs Schulz Omnibus motion um it's up on the screen in front of us I'm uh not going to read it again I think we um so all those in favor raise your hand Schultz all those opposed Hines palek Huff Corbett Sanders Strauss Evans Moon mlin darnette Kofa mline that motion fails with M with Mr Wilson away from the table I
096call on Miss mcglaughlin for an amendment thank you I move to amend the main motion by a eliminating the athletic fee totaling $1.5 million B increasing the budgeted lapse rate from 2.0% to 2.16% to generate an additional savings totaling $1.5 million is there a second second seconded by Mrs Schultz uh would you like to speak to your motion I will thank you Miss Evans um I do hope my colleagues um are aware that uh this is an issue that not just I but many other board members and certainly Community have brought forward and expressed concern uh about um the proposal to charge the $100 on to our families whose children um participate in a high school sport um as my colleagues are aware we received letters from over eight of our high school booster clubs
097uh over 57 parents and students as well as from the Fairfax County athletic Council that represents Youth and adult recreational uh League uh organizations throughout the county uh the request has been that we not uh balance our budget uh with this fee for our families and as many are also aware uh we are blessed in this County to have uh such dedicated parents who run our athletic athletic booster clubs and it is not an exaggeration to say that they bring in hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars every single year uh through the Brewster memberships through the running of the concession stands um um from the gate receipts to the fundraising to the sponsorships that they go out into the community and get and it's been invaluable it does mean that Fairfax county is
098truly blessed to ensure that our Departments of Student Activities at the school level uh have the facilities um such as Synthetic Turf fields that uh not only help with sports but help with physical education classes uh our band uh practices and and countless other things um The Proposal I have in front of you um I will uh share with you that I spoke with staff and I would invite either um Miss Quinn or um Miss Michael to speak to this but essentially how I'm looking to fund this $1.5 million is that uh the staff um essentially look at what is going to be our budgeted um salary lapse rate what we estimate um will happen in terms of uh vacancies turnovers and money that doesn't get spent in our annual um salary uh accounts the
0992.1% over the Last 5 Years um has been a estimate and it I did ask our clerk to post this chart that I sent to all of you and so if you look in your email you'll see the chart and it's um now listed above for the audience but as you'll notice um since 2012 uh or even just going to 2013 where the budgeted lapse rate is 2.1% um it's meant that we've had about anywhere from 34 to $24 million that are unspent by the end of the year by going from 2.1 to 2.16 uh it's a it is going to yield essentially 1.5 million what that does mean is if you looked at fiscal year 2016 instead of having 24.3 million million uh you would U basically have about 23 million um if you
100did an easy rounding um by basically adjusting the lapse rate estimate by uh essentially uh one 1600th of a decimal point uh what this really means uh for my colleagues is that when you end up with 24 million plus dollars uh in unspent funds I think it's far better that we end with 23 million and we figure out for fy19 where where we need to figure out how we're we're going to uh you know budget for things but trying to charge our families $100 uh and saying to them we'd rather end with 24 million. three versus 23 million um I I I worry about what we've communicated to our fam Ames and so there in talking to staff there is no budget Risk by tightening the Assumption here by 1600th of going 2.0 2.10 to
1012.16 and again I would um actually since Miss Michael you are the CFO um I would welcome you sharing what we talked about on Monday what we talked again today in terms of um this proposal and um how we would manage this uh to not have a negative impact on the budget and and but certainly I think do a great service to our families that volunteer so hard for our schools thank you the um chart on the screen I did provide to you as we talked earlier this week multiple times um you are correct that our ending balance coming from our compensation accounts has decreased from 34.3 million to 24.3 um when we look at your proposed amendment you are asking to use 1.5 million of that um total 24.3 um ending balance um what
102we had talked about was when we look at our ending balance um and as we work to develop the budget for next year um this risk of 1.5 million is is very small um and in the event that we would um be short in terms of that funding for next year the school board does have a flexibility Reserve thank you Miss Michael uh so I I do very much hope that when we look at our carryover that's simply what we're talking about here and to our families who have been so dedicated to this school system and everything that they bring every single year I hope we will demonstrate to them our willingness to avoid this type of fee on them this year Mrs Schultz would you like to speak to your second um just predominantly
103that uh items that appear in this budget that look to Target certain student populations or certain parent populations um like student athletes where um uh the athletic boosters in at each high school work very hard to um fulfill the sort of extra needs that are unmet the that provides a$ hundred million in unappropriated monies that um appear in our schools and to say that only students in high school and only students in high school who are athletes we're going to balance the budget on their backs is an is an unreasonable approach um you know I've heard the phrase or word Equity or Equity lens repeatedly from my colleagues but this is not an equity lens to say um we're only going to go after a certain population um to to balance our our budget and
104so this is a far more uh pragmatic approach to go into a salary lapse that's going to occur anyway and not further tax because that's really what this is we're taxing certain families and certain students for participation and um frankly students often say that um Athletics are their Outlet their stress outlet and when we have very high performing or um students who feel like they're they need to perform at very high levels that athletic Endeavor probably is is their their social emotional Outlet um it keeps them engaged and involved and I I worry that we're going to um encourage by creating a barrier to participation in athletics say well if you want to be a student athlete your parents on top of buying football helmets and cleats and um special rowing gear and and and
105that you know oh by the way you know your free and appropriate education is covered but any extracurricular activities are going to be targeted at additional fees just on um families of athletes and when you have uh multiple children who are involved or children who are involved in um multiple Sports over the course of their High School career it adds up and I think it's um an unnecessary approach by this board to seek to balance the budget on um on a handful of families Mrs TRS well I think none of us want to see bringing back fees of any sort so I appreciate Miss McLaughlin's efforts um I'm very uncomfortable pushing the lapse rate we do have a structural fiscal deficit which means means that our reoccurring revenues are not sufficient to cover our basic
106needs each year we struggle to create what we call a beginning balance in order to pay our teachers in order to meet our basic requirements and this is why for nine years going now we have every year are looking at making budget cuts um by pushing the lapse rate even though this appears to be small it's a little bit like gambling um if we don't make the lapse rate um and by the way we must maintain a balanced budget throughout the year the lapse rate has to do with our largest um file and that is the salary file the lapse rate is made up by um what we believe will be the retirement rate the vacancy rate and the turnover rate we don't know exactly what that is until we've actually come through the year
107we have some sort of idea beginning in by the end of October as to what that will be there was one year actually where we projected wrong and we began running a deficit significant deficit starting in in October of a year um I really don't like to push the lapse rate um as the chart that was shown shows that we have had a declining um uh a declining acrel at the end end because we have been stretching this lapse rate and this indeed if we decide to do this it will put pressure on the FY budget because we have this reoccurring structural deficit I just think this is a is a dangerous place to go as much as I don't want to charge fees either but I don't think this is where we look to
108find more money even though it looks small I just think this is a very dangerous thing to do thanks sorry Miss signs yeah thank you um you know I think user fees are a part of all public budgets I mean I think that's just a reality the County charges fees for you to use you know the parks and um I think it's just a reality we do a certain amount of that it's a it's a small part of the budget but it is part of it that said I don't like the athletic fee either um but I prefer an amendment that's coming next I think Miss mclin and um so I'm probably not going to support this but I wanted to ask staff just a few clarifying questions about laps so my understanding is what
109we call laps is uh when we lose when teachers retire during the school year our employees I guess retire during the school year and they are Mo most likely to be relatively senior as they retire and they're likely to be replaced by um newer employees who are less expensive and right we pay them less um so that's a savings and we base our um assumption about what that savings will be on past experience right so and is that a best practice yes um and the other component of laps in addition to that turnover is vacancy so during the year when we have a vacancy the time that it takes us between when that person leaves and we hire the next person is vacancy savings so that combined with turnover is what our lapse is and
110yes it's standard practice to budget for lapse um if you didn't each year you would have funding available that you could have spent during the year right okay and um it's it's just one of the areas where we sort of calculate um we we take educated guesses about you know what what every budget does that right sort of educated guesses about what we'll need but this is a big chunk because um our our employees are a big chunk of the budget and in past years we have um paired back that assumption right in order to have less money falling out at the end of the year because that's you know some because we need to right we need to um but I what I'm another question I want to ask is I think related to
111that is that our ending balance you know at the end of the year as a percentage of our budget um is about less than 2% now am I right there that is correct it's less than 2% okay and that is low in in the industry right correct what you see more typically is somewhere right around the 2% level we've really worked over the years to tighten all of our assumptions and to get that percentage to decrease so last year it might have even been down all the way to 1.6% but it's something we constantly Monitor and you're correct compensation accounts um for just under 90% of our budget in total right so that's why like Mrs Strauss I worry about um you know doing this even even a little bit because it's very tempting you
112know we do this small change and it brings in uh you know $1.5 million we can Avo avoid doing something else but I worry um uh getting into the habit of thinking that's like a bank account we can go to all the time um and uh so I I would rather find another way to replace that um athletic fee in the the budget so I won't be supporting this amendment but I I appreciate the effort Mrs Corvett Sanders yes um thank you and thank you Mrs Hines for your questions because I have similar questions um I really appreciate that Miss mclen was willing to explore and dig into an area that I had not even thought of um but then I started asking questions and unfortunately we didn't have as much time as I'd like
113to to Really explore this area because um and I don't know if this question should be uh directed to Mr Ry or Dr Remy or to uh Dr Lockard but um in trying to better understand what this salary laps it's kind of our projection it's our our best guess of how many people will be retiring over time and how many vacancies we will be having for a fixed period of time and so we benefit by having those seats empty and th the question I have is have we run any statistical models on the impact of the infusion into our salary system last year and the um expected additional infusion this year on our retention numbers because if our retention numbers are actually going up as a result of offering a uh more competitive package than
114a or more competitive salary then we will have a lower lapse rate is that correct correct if as a result of our higher salaries next year fewer people leave the system right then we will see a decrease in that savings from turnover we haven't run any models to try to assess um what impacts the funds that we're adding to this year's budget will have um but you are correct in your assumption that if fewer people leave we'll see a decrease in the savings from turnover that Dr Lockard I do you want to answer part I just wanted to add you know obviously we're working very hard to impact the number of vac vacancies um that we not only start the year with but have throughout the year so that would have an impact as well
115okay so so there may be for one of a better term uh we really don't know what this is going to be as a result of some of the stuff that's happened the Investments we've made we have we have a general idea do we think it's 2.1% do we think it's 3% we think it's 1.9 I mean do we have any so we maintained for fy18 our budgeted lapse rate at that 2.1% um we are comfortable with that um when we look at this projection um but beyond that we haven't made any Assessments in terms of the impact of the salary increases okay that that's helpful um I would love to unpack this a bit more um but I don't think we have this time tonight um another question I have and I raised this
116at the work session is that if we were to actually have athletic fees is there a way that we could ensure that we tie the collection of those fees and the use of those monies towards our athletic programs and my thought on this is that um we made a decision early on in this budget process not to cut ninth grade Sports not not to um eliminate some of the programs and but those programs have a cost and those those programs in Fairfax County are above what the state soq is am I correct and so if we can find a way of if we were to go if we end up at the end of the night with a athletic fee that we we can send an assurance to our community members that are paying this
117fee that this money these monies would go into things like the million dollars that we're investing in a turf field um this year and um improvements for our um athletic facilities and things like that Mrs up did I can I get a name I be your pardon yes you're correct okay thank you are are you finished you are okay Mrs H okay thank you I want to thank Mrs glin for bringing this forward we were able to sit uh together trying to brainstorm ideas with Miss Michael and Miss Quinn um to eliminate the athletic fee and drive down um the class size or prevent from increasing it more accurately um so I appreciate this I will be supporting it I appreciate Miss um Michael's perspective Ive on the low risk of doing this so I
118don't see it as gambling or um any of the other sorts of terms that we implying that this isn't um this isn't responsible because I did hear that we can do this responsibly with a low risk and prevent from charging our families another fee um especially to another program an athlet a program in athletics that brings in many dollars through through gate fees and and other ways as well as the benefits for our students Mr Moon as I said earlier when I second the main motion that you know this main motion contains many items that I didn't particularly like and this was one of those and fees I don't like at the same time I talked about compromise these AP and IB feeds and athletic feeds were compromise es there were other proposals which went
119into uh you know for example you know paying higher fee per every sport I believe that this one is $100 per year whether you play one sport two sports or three Sports so this was a compromise the AP ibp proposal that was again the compromise because we were dealing with a limited resources I didn't like them but we had to make some compromises so I am not going to be supporting this and Labs wise having a 2.1% as the lapse rate built into the next year's budget proposed by superintendent interim superintendent was based upon historical data they look at the trend if you look at Labs is comprised of both turnover and vacancy as explained by staff and there is another turnover that is in the budget for the next year which has increased is
120which goes into pay savings compensation based savings for this year fy17 that amount was 19.1 million dollar but step looking at the trend and the data they increase that amount by another $8.4 million so next year's budget has 20 27.5 instead of 19.1 Now by changing the LA lapse rate from 2.1 to $2.6 million we are just increasing just expecting just assuming that that amount will Contin to grow and that's going to result in ending balance to become lower which we always need to balance the following budget because if you look if you remember the amount of money we need to put as the beginning balance for fy9 which we all realize that that's going to be another difficult budget year 59 is $ 33.5 million we have to find that amount of money from
121this year's ending balance plus savings to be approved throughout the next year if you look at the amount put up there uh percent of compensation budget unspent the percentage has been going down ending balance from compensation accounts it has been going down from fi2 all the way to fi6 that's going to go even further down by just raising the labs rate if we can raise the labs rate by uh 0.6% to pay for athletic fees I can ask for another $1.4 million so that we don't have you know we don't have to make such a substantial cost es transitional high school program $1.4 million for that particular program is close to 25% cut from that program I can ask for that one 1.4 million ion I can also ask for another $1 million so that
122we don't have to raise Elementary School the floor class size formula from 17 to 18 million dollar just just raise the lapse rate I can ask for another you know another further increase in Labs rate so that we don't have to ask the students to pay for AP and IB fees I can go on and on and on and on on I don't think that's a way to do the budgeting so I'm not going to able to support this Miss PCH sir I I was going to share the point that Mr M shared about the base savings I think it's important to note that we are incorporating those additional $8 million um and that this would just be pushing our problem down the road so while no one wants to implement the fees and I
123really appreciate the valant efforts um from Miss mclaff and also from staff to try to find ways around it I do think we found the best possible compromise for now Mr Wilson uh thank you madam chair um I I am going to support this amendment uh to to and oppose the implementation of a fee on our athletes and their families in our schools um there has been an outpouring of emails and contact to me about these athletic fees um and and you know whether however you want to phrase it we are voting tonight whether we like it or not we will be voting to impose a fee on those families and it is my strong belief that that will cause families who struggle month to month meeting their budget to not have a child enroll
124in sports it it it will happen um and the truth is is that the bank account is the Fairfax County taxpayers but in this case the bank account is specifically those families with athletes and you know we are talking about a very small change to the lapse rate a lapse rate that results in a fairly large ending balance from compensation accounts uh and and we're going to take money out of the pockets of families specifically athlet families with athletes in order to avoid a very small fiscal bit of fiscal discipline uh and you know I've mentioned before that that this moves us towards a pay for Play Type concept it also opens the door to what other fees can we think of uh and and I'm not going to support adding fees when we we
125can put our heads together and figure out better ways to fund the program then than asking our families to pay fees so I won't be supporting this or I will be supporting this and I I'm not going to support fees okay before I go to to go backs um I did have a a couple of questions um basically when we talk about laps and I guess Dr lockart I'm either asking you or or or uh Miss Michael this um we ultimately recapture that correct I mean it comes back to us the next year and it goes into balancing the next year's budget is that correct any unspent balance at year end whether it's from laps from a compensation account or any other account is available as ending balance and yes we've been using our ending
126balance to help us balance the future Year's budgets so when we look at our fy18 budget um that you're voting on tonight it does have 33.5 million um in that savings that came um from fy16 and some from fy17 so if we were to approve this we would that 33.5 5 million would come down is that correct no we typically have been setting aside funding at year end to help us balance not the budget that's already started but the upcoming year I see so when we look at any funding that may be available from our fy7 year end we would be using that to help us fund our fy19 beginning balance all right um I uh very much dislike athletic fees um uh the last time we did this um it it took us a
127couple of years to finally get find a way to get rid of them um I I do agree that they um they do impact students and so I I would very much like to have a budget that does not have athletic fees and I um have been looking at a few did look at a few ways myself to uh to find a different way um none of them um met with the approval of of my colleagu so I haven't offered them but um this is very tempting because it's you know it it it basically changes estimates but I I do think that we have to be very careful you know a 1% buffer there is um is quite small and I I would not want to borrow from uh a budget that's going to ultimately
128be another very difficult budget so you know you know as Mr Moon said we we originally had a a $100 per sport fee in there we've managed to bring that down to $100 per um per you know year fee rather than per sport so we're doing a little bit better I still really dislike these fees um I will still look for other ways to do this I agree with Miss um Mrs Corbett Sanders that it would be excellent to find a way if we end up at the end of the night with these athletic fees to tie them to um to athletic programs and to make sure that the the fees are going back into the athletic programs which we we do spend a significant amount on on our athletic programs and Facilities as well
129um at at this time um I I I can't see doing this though by by changing an estimate um and with that I'm I'm going to go back to miss mcau so uh I do appreciate um my colleagues trying to um look at the chart and I would like Madame clerk to pull the chart back up um when I looked at way to remove this fee because it's the right thing to do we shouldn't be targeting a certain segment of our families and a certain segment of our students uh I looked at what would be the least um con concerning to to our board uh one option was the fact that every single year the school board has an $8 million reserve it sits there we don't spend it it's $8 million sits sits there
130but I thought that might make people uncomfortable because we don't know what could happen in 20 FY 2018 so I won't do that instead I'll go and ask staff what is our history and the history is right in front of you the lapse rate is at 2.1% but as explained to be by misss Michael it actually ends up being closer to 3.16% because you take the 2.1% plus than the 1.06 you're seeing in that column in the bottom so what it really means is they estimate conservatively that our lapse rate will be 2.1% it actually comes out to be 3.16% for that given year which means we have an extra $24 million than we expect Ed so the fact that 2.10 to 2.16 is 1600th of a percent change it means we're still going to
131be a whole percentile or 50% more conservative than what we've historically been seeing the lapse rate is trying to explain to our families that we dinged them on a $100 fee we we've made the schools now go collect $100 per kid and all the administrative headache that comes with it and for what because everything we're looking at tonight even for our follow-on motions are when we look at our year year in Balance will we look at some extra money onetime money for this onetime money for that this is simply saying all of our onetime money things we're thinking of in the grand scheme is it appropriate to be as Mr Wilson put it taxing some of our most dedicated families a restricted group of students and signaling to them we would rather keep 8 million
132in our Schoolboard bank account we will have 20 million or more dollars that we expect in our laps projections and historically we've been having anywhere from 34 to 24 but as one colleague described this we're gambling and we're being dangerous I I really think it's important important that we at least capture what we're talking about here our CFO of this school system said we can absorb this it's not dangerous it's not gambling it is the right thing to do we've heard from our community on it and I really do hope my colleagues will recognize I'm not putting up something here that is going to create any danger at all and if you're so worried about 1.5 million out of your lapse rate you still have not only 20 million plus dollars there you got another
1338 million sitting in your Schoolboard Reserve account but signaling to our families that we're going to tax them um $100 because we want to eek out 1.5 out of them I think that's actually a more dangerous and gambling message to send to our families Mr Moon again as I stated earlier that if this motion passes I'll be proposing other motions to in further increase the laps rate so that I can save the programs I want to save uh and when you look at this declining amount of the balance in compensation accounts fi6 24.3 we needed to have 303.5 to meet the requirement for the beginning balance and that's exactly the amount we need again for fy19 which county executive has told us that fy19 is going to be as tough as fy18 so we need
134to be very prudent in coming up with the lapse rate and how we spent our money and as I stated earlier our step our step has already increased the basis savings base savings by from 19.1 to 27.5 that's 8 $8.4 million Miss Corbett Sanders I want to correct the record a little bit the record is that we are targeting one group for a fee and that no other group pays fees and and um many of you know that I did not raise athletic children I love them dearly but they were not athletes however they were very engaged in um band and they were also very engaged in crew um and in both of those places but band in particular they paid fees and the fees go into Fairfax County Public Schools accounts and the fees
135go into accounts to cover the cost of operating those programs that have both an in school piece and an extracurricular piece so the consumables fee this year was $140 that went to cover the cost of sheet music and all the thing and replacement of instruments and things like that and it wasn't negotiable it was a required fee for every student who was taking band and was in the band program so I absolutely understand and if it were up to me I wouldn't charge a fee for anything um but I want to make sure people understand that this is not targeting one group but it's also why I feel very strongly that if we end up at the end of the night with a fee that we need to ensure that there's the transparency to make
136sure that those fees go to our athletic programs and there I can go through some of the other aspects of the fee structure for band students if you want but the 140 is still more than 100 Mr Wilson uh thank you madam chair um I I agree that what M Corbett sandard says is that if your child um and I've had athletes and had had non-athletes um uh in our public high schools and it is true that nonathletes who participate in extracurricular activities uh will have to their families will have to make payments so that they can participate um but that's not really the question this is the board at the very top of the FCPS organizational structure looking down on our student population and saying these students have to pay this fee a family
137that is involved with crew you know and I'm one of those families I can you know I can choose a different sport for my kid but if you if you're playing the sport at the school you know and you're a football player you don't have another option it's a club uh you know the club of crew is is voluntary and these sports are the ones that are approved Fairfax County Sports that we're talking about imposing a fee on and I would venture to say that the families of those parents who are playing sports in the high schools they don't feel like they're not paying anything if they're the parent of a football player or the parent of a baseball player parent of a field hockey player I'm guessing that there's quite a bit of pay
138going on by those families and and so I think what you're suggesting is maybe we got to table this and let's look at what all the families are paying for all their different activities you know I mean that's but we're not doing that we're just making a decision because it's convenient to say let's put the burden on families of athletes playing one of the 22 Fairfax County Public School sports and that's not fair Mrs Schultz yeah I just I want to pick up on a phrase um Mr Wilson said earlier before we vote on this um a a bit fiscal discipline um $1.5 million is point 57% of our $2.8 billion budget 0535 s% you've heard that we've got a um 24 and a half 25 million laps um pot of money that we could
139choose choose to have a little bit of fiscal discipline with um an $8 million board Reserve that we roll over every year that we don't spend that we keep for something we and we say we never going to touch it because something might happen you know um I don't know what that something is um but when we're talking about we're choosing the word in here is not fine arts and I I'm a parent who's raised children who um are in athletics and in Fine Arts um you know my oldest just grad graduated with a a minor in in music I mean I appreciate all of this but what would the community be saying if instead of athletic fees this said Fine Arts fees the entire conversation at this board table would be changed because we
140oh we can't Target certain families families are paying fees that's correct they're paying participation fees because they're they are participating in theater or Fine Arts or fbaa or anything else but they don't have the school board settling a $2.8 billion Budget on them with those fees those families have engaged in those activities and their fees Associated now here comes the school board and the school board is saying in order to solve our $2.8 billion problem we're going to come after you a particular type of family with a particular type of student and we're going to settle our budget by you having to pay the fee to help us the 12 of US settle this budget that's the difference so seeing no more lights I will call for the vote um and I'll read the motion
141I move to amend the main motion by a eliminating the athletic fee totaling $1.5 B million B increasing the uh budgeted lapse rate from 2.10% % to 2.16% to generate additional savings totaling 1.5 million um all those in favor Huff Schultz mlin and Wilson all those opposed Hines pul Corbett Sanders Strauss Evans Moon daret kofax and movine that motion doesn't pass I call on M mlin for another amendment thank you madam chair I'm going to give this one more College try um and I do believe that some of my colleagues um had expressed support during our most recent budget work sessions and I I truly hope there will be support for this um I move to amend the main motion by a eliminating the $100 athletic fee totaling $1.5 million B implementing an annual one
142time $50 activity fee for high school students who participate in in one or more extracurricular activities totaling 1.7 million C increasing the Staffing Reserve totaling .2 million is there a second seconded by Miss Hines uh Miss mclaughin would you like to speak to this yes uh briefly so as um we have all discussed here about how we feel about fees for our families uh one thing that uh I I felt very strongly is that if we do feel there was a need for the 1.5 million in our budget that we try to be more Equitable in what we ask of our high school families and in addition to Athletics we do have many other extracurricular activities uh mcgomery County uh Public Schools does charge an activity fee in their high schools as opposed to to
143an athletic fee theirs is $32.50 a year um the ability charge a $50 activity fee it would be a one-time fee um staff has vetted what activities would qualify under that it would be Sports it could be some of the other um staff-led clubs but it's something that our our staff did vet I think this is a more Equitable approach that if we're asking families to help support the extracurricular which means not stuff during the school day not instructional but extracurricular um that this is a way uh that we can be more Equitable to our families and I do appreciate the context that Miss Corbett Sanders wanted to provide about what our band families bring to the table each year um I do want to also as the parent of two graduates who played um
144two to three Varsity Sports every year um that it wasn't for free uh we typically with every single sport had to pay about $200 or more for the um uniform and spirit packages that went toward the uh the um playing the sport itself uh and as I noted earlier our athletic uh booster families bring in uh hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars every single year I really hope that there will be support for this Amendment because we need to demonstrate to the athletic families that we're not going to Target them in isolation to pay for the 1.5 million that we do appreciate the countless hours and the countless funds that they bring to sustain our very um Na you know nationally recognized um programs and so uh I I do very much hope
145that there will be support here tonight especially in live of the the communication we receive from our schools and our community to please not put a fee on just our athletic families Miss H would you like to speak to your second sure thanks in the interest of time just reminding everybody we are on item three of 21 motions on this one agenda item so I will not repeat all the conversation about athletic fees um I do think and I appreciate Miss mcclin bringing this up and um putting it together uh it seems to me kind of like a no brainer um if you have a a child who plays two sports a $100 athletic fee for each sport is $200 for that year this says that instead of that we would be charging that child
146$50 for all the activities that that child participates in for the whole school year uh if I'm reading that correctly that just seems pretty obviously a better way to go and uh it also has leaves some money left over uh to help to chip away at our class size by adding some teacher position so I will support this thank you and I have uh Mrs Strauss I am inclined to try this I don't like any of the fees it's a real it's not a good thing and they're hard to collect but my sense is we have to balance this budget and as Mr Muna said there are lots of there are a lot of things in this budget that we wish we didn't have to do but this kind of the road we're going to
147we're we're going to have to go down we just don't have enough money and at least this proposal um balances out across all activities the downside of this I I think it may have a dampening effect on our clubs and a lot of the other things that we really want kids to participate in we may find ourselves M here next year saying oh this is a terrible idea but um in order to balance the budget and if we're going to charge some sort of fee um I am willing to try this this um I think it's it's not a great idea either but it's we we have to find some way to balance this and at least this spreads it out across um all of the wonderful wonderful after school things that all of our
148kids do so I hope it does not have a dampening effect but I am willing to vote for this and we'll try and see what happens thanks Mr mine so I want to thank Miss Miss mlin for for trying to be creative here and um uh my one concern with this proposal is um the administrative burden that it's going to put on um our schools and central office and I I want to ask staff if someone can answer um how we foresee um the determination being made about which students do activities where the responsibility for that lies if it's at the school level or and how is central office involved in that so as we think about charging um a potential activity fee for next year um one of the things that we've been really
149working on in terms of supporting schools is eCommerce and having parents be able to pay fees online um so we do think that will really help in terms of the collection of fees um we will need involvement from schools and should this pass um we'll immediately get together a group of people to help us figure out the best possible way that central office can support schools and collecting this fee um and how we would operationalize that at the school level uh and I mean do you do you see this as being a a particularly large burden or I I I want to get a sense of um of of how easy this is going to be are we creating a massive amount of work here so I think um what I would say is we
150previously collected athletic fees in the past um at that point in time we didn't have e-commerce at the school level you know so my hope hope is that the administrative burden moving forward um for collecting fees will be less than it was previously um again we would have to work through the details in terms of the best way to support schools in collecting this fee um but we certainly have tools in place today that we didn't have when we had student fees in the past and in terms of the cost for using e-commerce is that um a new expense that's going to reduce the amount of Revenue we're going to bring in for from this fee or we do pay a small Merchant fee in terms of the transactions um but when we look at
151fee collection in the past we allocated funding to to schools to support an increase in time hourly time that they may have needed in terms of bringing staff in you know so my hope is that while there's that um small Merchant fee in terms of collecting fees that this wouldn't significantly impact the fee um collection amount that we're getting overall okay thanks Miss Michael so um I mean the message I would convey to my colleagues is I um I would like us to get to a point um where we we we could take a more College uh fee model to this um and and Miss mlin um has has certainly worked with with me and and um I appreciate getting um um our legal council's reading on this uh that Virginia code does not allow
152us to to um collect flat fees essentially from students Allah um a university level act um um activities fee uh and um I my my one fear with the current proposal on the table is that um we are going to have this administrative issue um so I I I don't know where I am on this it's it certainly sounds like um we have colleagues supporting this so I'll I'll look to hear what others think on this thank you um Mrs Corvett Sanders thank you uh just two questions one is uh we don't have a carve out for children on free and reduced meals no we would when we costed this fee um every fee proposal does include excluding students that are eligible for free and reduced price meals okay and the second part second question
153is similar to my question about athletic Fe fees is there a way to ensure that um the fees collected in this process would go to support those enrichment um activities the Athletics and you know basically reinvesting those fees into um the services and that the students would be getting and participating in yes there is okay um and we can we can find a way of making that happen correct we currently provide when we look at activities in athletics stiens that support those programs right so we could account for this Revenue in our program budget when we're doing the activities and Athletics program and showing this funding offsetting those costs to the system fantastic thank you very much um the last piece is just a comment to the rest of my colleagues on the board which
154is in looking at this uh budget I encourage everybody to look at the budget from the point in time that we're at but also look at it in the context of preparing for an equally challenging um budget year next year not only with the challenges uh we've already heard from the county but also with a um clear indication from the federal government at this point that there will be um cutting budgets uh that uh support many of the programs that uh we rely on in this uh County and so looking at creative ways of solving budget problems I think are important thank you Mr Wilson uh thank you madam chair um I will not be supporting um this amendment um while I would agree that the $50 activity fee uh spreads the pain uh but
155it kind of misses the point um which is that now the board is choosing to impose a fee for activities on all high school students well so next year I guess when we have a million and a half dollars we need we'll we'll impose a fee on Middle School families who have kids that are participating in activities maybe the year after we impose an activities fee on Elementary School families that are taking part in activities I I mean the point is is that the school board has an opportunity to show a little bit of fiscal discipline and is choosing instead to impose a fee on all of the families that have children in high school it's not fair Miss P yes thank you um I too when I am a little bit bit torn uh
156when this was first presented it did sound like a like a no-brainer um in further discussions with some principles and with Mr kerran who I see us here tonight I know we have a new program so it may not be the impact but I'm a little bit concerned as to how um the way clubs are now that have this drop in basis and how a lot of our activities work where we do want kids to participate as much as possible what kind of Burden this will have on either teachers um who are sponsoring those clubs the ability for those clubs to happen um do you I want to I guess I'd like to hear how confident we feel that we can provide support for schools um so that it's not overly burdensome for this fee
157I don't know if well Miss Michael if you can speak I don't know if you have the beginning of a plan or Mr Curran has an idea of how this would be implemented in the schools or if we have no idea right now and we hope it can function appropriately so we've been working um all year long as we've been implementing e-commerce to find efficient ways in terms of fees so one of the things that we've been talking about but we'll need to have further conversations particularly with Mr Curran um and principles is um automatically putting the fees from the student notice 5922 which is the fee notice and putting them on student accounts so parents could pay them online and then for students who didn't particip ipate we would then remove those fees but
158we would still need to think through a plan but I do think with the tools that we have that we're in a much better place in terms of collecting student fees than we were when we implemented fees previously and so say you know a students have a club that may meet five times a year what happens when a students arrive to that club will will there be a roster of everyone in the school who has paid the fees so you're asking me to think through a plan that we haven't completely developed but I would think something like that we would come up with a way you know to show who has paid the fee and and but we would work with schools to develop a plan that would work um or or develop multiple plans
159depending on what each school's needs are yeah I'll just add to that I I think that would there would be some uh differences depending on what it is for example if a student's trying out for a a team we're not going to require the fee until they're on the team team um and so we'd have to work through the different scenarios uh with Mr Curran and our our principles and schools okay uh I appreciate that I don't know Mr ker if you have anything to add or any concerns I think you've been doing some research on this as well give the man a mic there the uh we we've looked into it we you know seeing how this is based somewhat from Montgomery County when we hit the fees last time and um and we
160did the athletic fees we worked with them closely because they had been charging at that time it was a fee an entry fee similar to the college activity fee that is charged so everyone paid it they've now shifted that a little bit we've reached out to them for some feedback on how they manage this um we don't have that yet but looking to a model of of how that works our surrounding counties don't currently do a feel like this they they do it differently or they have no fee at all so we're looking at different models that exist um that we would develop the plan related to it so as Miss Michael so um said it so succinctly we still need to develop a plan right I appreciate and I don't know if you so
161Miss Michael are you fairly certain that there's not a scenario where it'll be impossible or close impossible to implement this in a way that lets us continue with these activities so our goal is we would work through this implementation with school staff would really be to ensure that whatever we plan we put in place would support them in their activities obviously we want to ensure that students have the ability to participate so we'd really work to make sure our fee collection um is as helpful as possible and is not creating an unnecessary burden for students okay I appreciate that um Mr Curran thank you I I think I can support this I would want to maybe have an update if we could from staff when that plan is created so that we can know what
162it will look like in schools I realize it might not be for a mon a couple months but it it would be good for us to know um what that will look like for our schools and families thank you so much Mr D acrx as I talked earlier um and as Mr moon talked earlier as well the $100 athletic fee is not something that we want to do it is not something um we're happy about but it is one of those compromises we came to after a lot of deliberations um it was originally $100 per Sport with a cap on it we now came down to this fee it's clear that there that bringing forth this activity fee um is not yet um the staff has not been able to think the out the way
163it happens and I share your concern Miss p about people who stop in who is a teacher going to charge who was not because clubs are are very very different um I I do want to say that you know when when tough times come there are tough decisions to make and that's what this whole night is going to be about things that we don't want to put out there but we have to because next year's budget is going to come and we're going to be in the same position that we've been in for the last seven years um I know we had some concerns the the last time we implemented an athletic fee I'm glad to hear that e-commerce is coming up I know surrounding areas do charge um fees uh Lowden county is over
164$150 I believe and as Miss Corbett Sanders talked about I I don't think my colleagues who talk about singling out certain bodies um these are all extracurriculars and um people were talking about putting fees in for academic things and not thinking twice about it and that's coming up again and um I also for the um extracurriculars um just as Miss Corbett Sanders said band is charged chorus is charged a fee you have to buy certain things that there's a there's a fee for a lot of our Fine Arts programming a lot of it and um so at this point I will be not uh as much as I dislike the fees I will be not I will not be supporting this amendment Miss Chu uh so of course the vote is in your hands and
165I apologize if I say anything that conflicts with plans that have been made from the leadership team but just a little bit of insight that I've seen this year from a lot of our high school clubs um a lot of students do pay dues and this is a quick turnaround because it goes into their Club account and then is then put back into the success of their club or helps them travel go to competitions participate so that's just one thing that I found is their means of of raising money and I think the differentiation of activity fee that comes to our County and their dues are helpful but I have reservations about if something that qualifies as an extracurricular could be a mental health and wellness activity Club such as um what's it called um
166active minds or TJ my matters for example is how we call it at our school or if a club such as one that I visit did um called The lgbtq Club at a certain school also qualifies as extracurricular because these are places where students can feel like they're in a safe place where they talk about their family and personal issues and I have reservations about having a charge for them to be in a classroom to talk about their issues that they don't find they're able to handle anywhere else um a lot of the safe spaces do take place in what qualifies as a club in their school so it's after school before school over the weekend but a lot of the times these students are doing something that often doesn't require money other than staying
167in a classroom or at a student's home so I I just think that is something that should be considered if that could qualify as an extracurricular and that does get into the nitty-gritty details of the plan but I have doubts about charging students for talking in a safe place thank you Mr Moon now I'm very conflicted before this evening I was not going to support and and I have talked with some board members colleagues that to see where they were and I was not going to support and then after having heard about convenience of e-commerce I thought because I was not going to support initially because I thought was a Ministry burdens will be on a lot of Faculty advisors uh so uh for collecting small amount of fees so I was not going to
168support then having heard about e-commerce maybe through e-commerce maybe it's not as hard to collect those fees then now M Chu talks about those other club activities so I'm going to put the burden on the maker of the motion to uh explain to at least for this one board member uh when you said when the motion states extracurricular activity obviously we're not talking about curricular activity it's a extracurricular activity for for the public you know if you could tell us the differences between co-curricular and extracurricular and what extracurricular activities would basically entail whether any Gathering by a group of students to to do any activity outside the class is an extracurricular activity you know for example it could be even Bible study group whether extracurricular activity and then they got to start paying the fee
169so uh I mean you may not have you know you know might not have as clear uh uh delineation of all different activities but I think for public and at least for this one board member uh it would be very helpful do I go and do I only answer Mr Moon and then I wait for my go back or what yes correct and and and and thank you for asking that question Miss mclaughin but um please do answer Mr Moon's question and then uh I do have you down for go to go back okay to Mr Moon's question um the way that this this whole proposal was developed was by looking at the mcgomery county model which we asked staff to go look at so extracurricular means outside of the curriculum it's after school so
170it's not anything tied to the curriculum that we deliver Montgomery County as I understand it also a extracurricular activity is um applicable to staff-led clubs and part of the reason we would want to do that is because because we're talking about trying to capture our operational costs and when you have uh staff teachers who are going to be spending time overseeing organizing these extracurricular clubs whether they're Athletics whether they're any of the other things like Miss Chu mentioned you have the National Honor Society any number of things those would all qualify um in terms of the concern then Mr Moon and you were asking given that this has been functioning and working in Montgomery County and given they've been able to execute on it I have every faith that if Montgomery County can do it
171Fairfax County can do it and we are we also need to be mindful to what Miss Chu said most students participate in more than one activity so it might be that they're in the mindfulness Club but they're also in a sport so they already paid the $50 fee because they were in the sport and a third of our high school students play a sport so we're already going to be capturing up a third of our students so to the point of the administrative fee as well you're already charging a third of your students just try to not put it on the backs of onethird of your students okay thank you very much Mrs uh Mrs mclin with that explanation uh if he limit these extracurricular activities to to the activities understanding that too we require
172faculty members to supervise you know they need to spend their time A lot of times we may be giving stiens and using our resources Etc I think it might make sense to require them small amount of fee and especially knowing that you know student could be in multiple activities we're not you know charging fee for every sing activity this is a onetime fee and as you said onethird of a high school students are already in sports so they're not going to pay twice for playing sports and doing a math team so uh with that uh I I will support this to those board members that earlier today I might have you know told told that I wouldn't be able to support this sorry I'm changing my mind on this one we are all entitled to
173do that we are persuaded by our colleagues at the table that's what this meetings are all about uh so uh that's where I am I'll be supporting I'll be supporting Mrs mlan at the same time I want to see how this actually get carried out throughout next year and want to have some report back from you know superintendent whether this became an honorous burden upon our schools or something that wasn't as bad or or even get the feedback from students and parents so you know just charging athletes versus spreading the pain and burden uh Out Among War students as might be a favor approach Mrs Hub thank you so I um I hear a lot of my colleagues concerns over the burden of the of collecting the fee however haven't heard that at all about
174the burden of collecting the athletic fee um and I do have confidence that our staff can figure it out I have all kinds of fees collected through my school bucks and all sorts of areas so I I have confidence they can figure that piece out um and as far as the concern over mental health activities the research on Athletics and students mental health is proven um as far as a safe space coaches are often mentioned as a student's number one mentor and person they feel safe going to um so although I hate the fact that I'll be um raising my hand for any fee I consider this the lesser of an evil uh of the $100 fee and so I will be supporting it as I've understand the budget will be supported and so that
175means we're either going to be supporting $50 or $100 right before going to go back I'll uh take a turn um I I too have gone through this the same um mental process of saying you know where where is the greater and the Lesser burden and I do want to thank you Miss McLaughlin for trying to find a a different way you know a different path so I did have a couple of question questions I believe it was stated earlier that the activities that this would apply to has been vetted um does that mean that there is a specific list or is there a guideline whether that would be a question for Dr Lockard or if that would be a question for Miss Michael or or Mr ker I'm not I'm not sure is is
176there a guideline that is attached to this or is there a list how will we know how will we know uh going to miss Chu's point and thank you so much Miss Chu for giving us your perspective at this time it's no co-curricular so extracurricular activities clubs things like that there's an application process and a a matrix that is maintained so we know in an approval process per our regulations and so no extracurricular or no co-curricular activities would be included in this but all the extracurricular would okay so so there is a definition and we would turn to that definition to to say these are the ones that to which it would apply and and these it it would not uh okay um and so I I do I appreciate also Dr lockart mentioning that
177um as as far as the athletic fees that if I heard you correctly that if a student tries out for a team and doesn't make the team that we're not planning to apply the the fee to a student who does nothing else I did hear about that from the the last time around with the athletic fees that apparently there were some students who tried out were you know given a fee and then you know didn't didn't make the team and that seems terribly unfair so I I too have gone gone back and forth thinking well maybe if we're spreading the the pain that's that's probably better I think um this again will um be I I I feel I probably would prefer this to having it just on Athletics um and keeping in mind that
178the athletes would um you know uh they would pay uh again we need to clarify we're talking about one fee regardless of how many activities a student is in they could be in three Sports and four clubs and it would still be $50 correct so um spreading it around a little bit it's still I still don't like the fees um I still think that uh one of our tasks needs to be to figure out how to um eliminate them because I I don't like any of them but um uh I I um feel that this is probably slightly prefer I do want to point out too that we have an alternative you know and we've seen Alternatives in the past with our uh budget proposals we've seen uh there was years ago I don't even
179remember it but I believe we had inal Sports in our middle schools and then uh at at one point we had to we had to remove things from uh we had to remove activities we've looked at cutting specific Sports because we didn't have the money for it anymore and we've we've managed not to do that this year we're not cutting Sports so um with with that I I think at least um spreading the the uh the pain around and and looking for ways to eliminate in future years is preferable um so I do have Gob backs and uh the first one is Miss McLaughlin well in the interest of time I just want to quickly say that I appreciate my colleagues giving this very careful consideration uh as has been stated several times this evening
180um we're very blessed to live in a county with very engaged parents and all of uh our amazing extracurricular activities um in Not Just Sports but band and chorus and um many other avenues it's it's just incredible um but I I I do really appreciate those who will consider supporting this I'm very very hopeful we get to seven or more because I think it's important we send the message to our families that we wouldn't just single out you know one population and saying that we we trying to find ways to cover costs and so I think this would be a a very um impactful message to our families of trying to be more Equitable if we're signing a fee so um again I I do hope I can count on as many board members support
181as possible have Miss Corbett M Corbett Sanders sure just a couple of quick um comments you know I am wondering how we're going to treat eighth period at TJ because that's part of the instructional day technically but those are co-curricular extracurricular activities and if we're talking about everybody paying for these types of fees then we need to make sure that everybody does it any response in the development of the plan that'll be addressed as that is part of the school day we considered a regular part of the school day I believe that would be addressed in that manner that it's part of the school day so no there wouldn't be but it would need to be addressed in full Corbin Sanders are you um um I'm a little stunned because that is an equity piece
182you know as it is um Thomas Jefferson High School has a preferential um Staffing model for uh number of students to a classroom and um the students get to choose from a multitude of different um clubs and activities and there are extra resources associated with it and so um I have a heartburn that we talk about we don't want to Target or we don't want to um put a burden on one group versus others but I also don't think we should be in a situation where we are giving preferential treatment to one group of students versus others and so um that fee if we are going to charge it should be charged uniformly across the whole population and not uh excluding one school that is already benefiting from uh smaller classrooms and smaller class sizes
183and are able to trade out academic teaching positions to support them and uh so I would encourage that we find a way for that Equity piece to make sure that if we're going to start charging then everybody gets to share in the uh the fees structure and I would once again remind people that Fairfax County Public Schools collects the fees for band and they go into a Fairfax County County Public Schools not a Boosters account so I in principle can support this but let's be Equitable folks and if we're going to charge $50 for a participation fee then everybody's going to be paying it and not carving out one School Mr Wilson uh thank you madam chair um I have a a couple of questions um that perhaps uh uh um Dr Lockard or the
184staff member could answer um I guess the first one um we'll pick up on uh Miss Corbett Sanders comments about which activities will be included because I believe I understood your answer to say that if you're a student at TJ and participating in an activity uh that would be the same activity at another High School you wouldn't pay because that activity is held technically during the day is that correct so our thinking and we would need to research this further is that if TJ students are required to attend that eighth period activity if it's not student selected then I don't believe it would meet the state's definition of where we can charge fees um because the state's guidance say it has to be student selected um but we certainly would be very happy to go
185back and to confirm this and research this and get back to the board as part of our implementation plan yeah um I guess more generally I guess if you could um describe to me which extracurricular activities are not included and give me a few examples of what we're talking about sure when we developed or when we costed out this plan we know that we cannot charge for what are called co-curricular activities so a great example of that is marching band um marching band many people would think of it's it's outside of the school day students do it during the summer but it's part of a graded curriculum course so this um extra activity extracurricular activity fee for example would not apply to marching band and can you give me another example or two I'm just
186trying to get a flavor for what are we who are who are the the winners of this theater so for example if the theater production is part of that graded activity for theater class we couldn't charge for that either because that would again be co-curricular Coral performance Coral performances Coral Orchestra um so the the um you know the the uh sharing um concept that's been um brought out is an odd juxtaposition since actually nobody wants to share this uh because nobody wants to pay it out there in the family population so um this let's call it what it is it's an imposition of a fee um now the second question I have and it's selectively imposed it sounds like um the second question I have is what happens to the family that refuses to pay
187this fee I can speak to the the first time the athletic fee that we implemented the a IC fee we treat it like any other fee like a student obligation and in a student obligation if you don't pay your chemistry lab fee you still move on and you still have access to that science class currently in Montgomery County let's say in their platform in their in their as I understand their current um policy or if we take us around in County Lowden County with their their athletic fee if they don't pay it they are not allowed to participate so in the development of the policy and feedback from from school staff from principles and and from the other people involved how we Implement that and how we start it and stop it needs to be
188part of the development of that policy do we turn away or do we say okay we'll treat it as another uh fee within the school well I would submit that that's a pretty critical question Tom seriously I mean I don't have any more anything else to add but I think there's enough questions here that you know we are premature in even contemplating a fee such as this Mr mine so um I appreciate Mr Wilson's um concerns and you know I continue to also have unresolved concerns about um the the administrative piece of this and the collection methods um I'm I'm not satisfied with staff's answers tonight and that's not because they aren't doing their job it's because one has had had a chance to really think this through fully um uh I don't think we
189fully understand the administrative burden on of this at the school level and I don't think that's been articulated by anyone tonight um the the one thing I will say is I will be advocating for um including in our legislative program um advocacy that would request the the freedom of of school boards to collect um fees and and to to change the the Virginia code and in that way um because I think that would clear this up I think um it's far more easy to do this to to implement a fee on flat fee on everyone um I would have far fewer concerns about the administrative burden and the tracking of of the Student Activities um I just think this this opens up so many cans of worms and um I I cannot support it m
190DZ I I I too I'm troubled particularly with what we we don't have answers to our questions and it's not that staff did not have time this came in less than 48 hours ago to you I know that um there um the uh the answer with the co-curricular um and what happens to TJ students is is is uh troubling because of the inequity that the students because they already have a privilege of having an eighth period activity fee activity block which no other school has and then they won't have to pay because of that because the where they're coded is also troubling that's why this type of conversation would have been much more productive at a work session rather than the on the night of P passing the budget if it was Miss mclaughin I
191guess I that was one of the that was one of the that was that was one of the days that I missed the budget yes because my son graduated from college that is true um so um I am not going to support this and again it's because of of of the reasons I stated uh miss miss mlin so I appreciate that Miss coax um is aware that she may have been traveling um with her daughter because it's a very exciting year she was heading off to college but we did discuss this at several work sessions we actually did bring it up as what do other school systems do and I want to thank Miss Huff who actually identified Montgomery County for doing the activ it fee and while I appreciate the many concerns that some
192board members are bringing please understand we're trying to mitigate the lesser of two evils here and the bottom line is onethird of your students participate in sports so we're going to collect the fee from onethird of the families but rather than targeting just our athletes whose families alone bring in a million dollars to maintain our Sports Fields our baseball and and softball fields we're going to turn around and say to them you get to pay the $100 fee because we're trying to figure out how to close the budget so I will simply ask that this isn't about something that came in at the last minute I've been talking about this for multiple work sessions everyone has known about it it didn't come in 48 hours ago number two staff said to us this is how
193we understand Montgomery County executes on it GE mcgomery County can do it I sure heck have every faith and belief in Fairfax County to execute and be able to make it work too the question is simply who do you want to stick a fee on to and I'm really hopeful in listening to people on this particular amendment that we have a majority who understand do you want to Target just your athletic families with everything they do for this school system or do you want to recognize that an activities fee that's been done by another School Division staff will be able to figure it out by talking to Montgomery County we're not creating something new and original that doesn't exist anywhere but if you want to send the signal to our athletic families that you get
194to be the target I think not only will we find our athletic families deeply disappointed but our net result may actually be lower because the athletic boosters have said you saddle us with a fee and that affects our ability to bring money to the table the system's going to suffer too and I don't want that please support this activities fee it's the administrative burden's already there all right uh we have several Gob backs um Miss PCH thank you um I appreciate that this conversation is not easy um I know we did have conversation at the work session um and I appreciate that and personally Miss mclin I think phone call would have been helpful as well I know we're all busy and doing a lot but there are a lot of questions that I think
195a lot of us have tonight so um with that I I have been trying to ask staff and as I go around some of this information so one of them is I understand we looked at Montgomery County we looked at Lowden County ladden County this a sports fee um I believe is do we know if there's any uh District in Virginia that does this activity fee I'm aware of others that do a an athletic fee I'm not aware of any nor have I and it's not I don't know if they do or don't if there's any that do an activity fee per se I do know there are others outside of this area that do athletic fees athletic fees but no activity fees that you know of in the Commonwealth that I'm aware of okay
196and and Mr Kar I know you you have been doing quite a bit of research as well when you spoke with the folks in Montgomery County um it's sounds like they went from a a fee across the board to all students to then just those participating did they have some feedback on you know when they made that change to just students participating did it seem um burdensome worthwhile for the effort that was put in did it did it lose students from clubs what was their impact in their school system we're still Gathering that data the the we spent a lot of time on The Upfront years ago when we were doing the athletic fee because they had already they were at the activity fee side and we the same similar question came up on on
197the side with that board at the time um so they were doing it as again very similar to a college that you pay for college tuition you come in there's an activity fee Associated everybody paid it across the board we really don't have much feedback at this time regarding when they shifted and what what caused that shift and what the implementation was like when they did that shift when was that shift I'm not sure I was surprised when their answer came back to be honest with you I wasn't aware they had they had changed it from everybody that so you're waiting to hear back on more of that information okay I appreciate it you know it is worrisome I don't I'm not I'm still not sure how I will be voting on this um it
198did seem like a no-brainer at the beginning I think there was information that we didn't have that we're starting to try to to to get now um so I I will just put that to rest for a minute Miss HS yeah thank you so I'm sitting here next to Dr locker and he's showing me I hope you don't mind I'm getting um you know his kids are in Frederick County Maryland right and he's showing me the system that they have and my goodness they have a lot of fees number one but um also it looks really simple right I mean from the parents perspective and from the school systems perspective it just seems like it's really not a big deal once we get it electronically you know enabled um then it seems like it's kind
199of automatic I I think we may be worrying about stuff that we don't need to worry about and when you balance whatever the you know the unknowns might be um against you know the idea that we would be replacing a $100 athletic fee per Sport with a $50 a year fee that really spreads the responsibility around and is so much easier for families to handle um I don't know I don't want to repeat myself but I continue to support this and I hope that most of us do Mrs Corbett Sanders sure um I would be inclined to support this if we had a commitment to petition the state to allow us to ensure that all students that are taking advantage of extracurricular activities are treated in an equitable Manner and that if we're going to
200have a fee on for all of our other students who participate in clubs and and Co extracurricular activities then we would also do the same thing for students that are participating in the eighth eth period at um TJ in the same clubs or similar clubs I I believe I believe um we have no more Gob backs and so um I will just say briefly I agree with um Miss Corbett Sanders that we do need to have equity in this and I would hope that if this passes to tonight we could create a um a system and a and a reg that would make sure that um it did apply equally um and of course uh everyone needs to to keep in mind that as with all of all of our fees um I I I
201will assume this but I'm I'm going to just say it for the record that um those who qualify for free and reduced meals would uh would would have a would be um would be waved but I I do agree it needs to um apply across the board so um I believe there are no more Gob backs so with that I will call for the vote um on Miss McLaughlin's Amendment uh I move to amend the main motion by a eliminating the $100 athletic fee totaling $1.5 million B implementing an annual onetime $50 activity fee for high school students who participate in one or more extracurricular activity totaling $1.7 million see increasing the Staffing Reserve totaling uh $0.2 million all those in favor raise your hand Hines pek Hoff Corbett Sanders Strauss Evans Moon mlin all
202those [Music] opposed Schulz Wilson darnette kofax and mine that motion passes so we now go to um I call on um Mrs Miss Schulz for an amendment yeah and I'm just going to clarify excuse me if if I could interrupt just one second I wanted to recognize former Schoolboard member Ted velov in the office in the audience thank you for joining us here today Mr vov we appreciate it with that I will go back to miss Schult okay I I'm just going to clarify because I'm going to read it I think it's been corrected um we had a script issue that if Miss McLaughlin's passed it affected the subsequent Amendment so c um is right on the screen um it's different than the script so I'm going to read it as it is on the
203screen not on the script so um I mooved to amend the main motion by a directing uh the superintendent to reduce hourly salaries and operating expenses in the superintendent and Deputy superintendent's office by .2 million maintain B maintaining esol costs at fiscal 17 funding resulting in a savings of $2.9 million C allocating 1.5 million to reduce class size d increasing substitute pay for retirees certified teachers and bachelor degree holders by allocating 1.6 million is there a second seconded by Mr Wilson M Schultz would you like to speak to your Amendment I'm not going to take up much time because most of this has already been said but um similarly as before the the money has been um disaggregated from the Omnibus amendment to reflect you know two components um one is uh savings at the
204top and uh the second is uh keeping our esol costs I will reiterate this point um esel costs um reflect uh I think it's about 133% of our budget um which is significant at $1,700,000 and all this is doing is um after 22 and. half% increase over four years keeping it flat for the success successive uh fiscal year where we're actually going to have a reduction in the number of students and um uh honoring that by attributing some of the money to reducing class size and the rest to move the much needed substitute pay um back to where we had had it before to ease some of the um stressors of teachers being able to get um qualified uh substitutes in the classroom Mr Wilson thank you madam chair and and I I will be
205brief as well um uh I'm supporting this um Amendment um because it goes to what I think is the critical issue as I said earlier of teachers who have come to me it it is about their experience in the classroom and how they can um deal with the number of students and we just cannot add to to meet our budget demands more kids to the classroom we've got to be we've got to take a more creative approach and Mrs Schultz has come up with a with a proposal that is well certainly not perfect um does have a basis in what is happening in our schools and does reflect a reasonable way to get at that issue of maintaining class sizes where they are so I will be supporting this amendment Mr jet kofax I will
206not be supporting this amendment um maintaining the Esau CL uh cost flat um right now miss and and I think U Miss Schultz is aware of this um if she's not the the needs that are coming into our system while the children the amount of children may have lessened slightly um their needs are much greater we're seeing children coming to us um um with little to no in English skills um Z limited to literacy and their home language zero numeracy skills and we are seeing these children um in some cases at a much um higher grade level so we don't have the opportunity or a much older so we don't have the opportunity we do when we see a child like that in um the the primary years but if we see them in secondary
207schools or high schools um we have less of an opportunity so um while it is a significant portion of our budget 13 % um at I'm sorry I'm going to correct myself and you so you don't get it wrong it's 4.3 I'm sorry okay that sound that sounded a little off um but um it it is a significant portion of our budget but at some point uh you know we have to really look at this issue and um in coming years I I I don't think we will be wanting to keep it flat or lessen it because we need to invest in these children in order for them to um get the service they need to be successful in our community later on Miss Hines yeah so I don't think anyone has asked um staff
208the question yet if we um you know what would be the effect of this on um you know how well we're able to meet needs in uh Esau and um you know so what exactly is that cut of 2.9 Million dollars look like what would it do um any ideas sorry do we know how much what we would lose with the $2.9 million cut in what is proposed well some of the things um that Miss darat kofax already mentioned are some of the things that we would be concerned about um in terms of services to students so again we've seen an increase in the number of students coming to us with interrupted formal education so this year alone we had 700 over 750 students come into the school system with interrupted formal education that means
209that those students not only do they need basic academic Services um they also need obviously intervention and Remediation services to try to catch them up but they also need counseling and social emotional supports and services and those are the kinds of things that we would worry about um being reduced with the cut to the Esau budget okay thank you and I have seen a few presentations of that program um and it it is pretty intensive it does require extra resources but so far it looks like it's making a difference for those kids who come to us and uh really are probably the the the the toughest have the toughest challenge to be successful right we get we get students here now in high school who have no English and have interrupted formal education in their
210own language maybe they're not literate in their own language and yet we're expected to get them to ontime graduation right and in order you know that just takes a lot of resources and you know the school system in the last few years um has done research-based work in um in and invested in a program that seems to be working and by this point I was hoping actually that that program would have grown and be embedded in more of our schools than it is you know because we have those kids throughout the county so you know I feel like it's it's working but the only challenge is that it's not enough that's my feeling that's what I've heard and so I worry about cutting at a time when we really should be investing more we know
211what works we're investing in what works um and I I would hate to pull that away at this point so I I won't be supporting this amendment Miss Corvett Sanders thank you and I appreciate my colleague's comments about the Esau cost because we are possibly seeing lower numbers but it's my understanding it the students that are coming to us have uh greater needs and so at this point I am reluctant to cut Esau cost I do appreciate the work that's been done this year on um realigning resources and changing the structure of our um adult Esa um programs and are um transitional and I know that you're planning on doing more work in that area and I am optimistic that you are looking at it in not only terms of the most most effective uh
212way of reaching these students but also doing it in an efficient way as well so I appreciate it and I look forward to hearing more about that as you um come to us with uh with plans for that um I also wanted to mention the uh substitute pay I'd like to unpack this a bit more because we started this conversation at the board table and we asked staff to go back and look at the substitute pay and the substitute um the whole Demand versus supply for substitutes question because it's my understanding that we actually used uh we had more substitute hours this year than last year minimally is that correct Dr Remy is he here nope he's not here but um Dr Remy isn't here um Sean McDonald director of town acquisition but yes we
213did have um a higher use and a higher number of hours used this year so the question is if we are driving up the number of hours then uh it's a demand issue and the conversation we had at the board table when we talked about this was that maybe we needed to put some policies in place and you guys were going to look at what was driving the increased demand and do we need to look at uh perhaps creating opportunities that will um bend the demand curve as people like to say and so I would like to know a bit more about that before we address this um address this issue in a budget amendment tonight and so um do you have any idea of when you guys are going to come back to us
214with more on the substitute policy our hope is that we would have um more information early um in this early on excuse me early on in the fall um we are looking at um the the menu of options that we potentially would be able to offer great I appreciate that so I look forward to seeing that when it comes forth and um Probably sounds obvious but I can't support this amendment Miss mcaca just quickly um I want to Echo something that uh Miss hin said um you know the the reality is that we don't quite know what would holding it flat do uh I very much appreciate what M uh Dr precidio said that um we are getting us more and more students with interrupted education levels so while the numbers may be going down
215the need of students is far greater and so while again I appreciate Miss Schultz trying to look at ways that we can hold expenses while we try to mitigate increasing class size the reality is that I don't know what this change would do and I will never support a a a budget uh item that I don't understand what the impact would be so if we had a staff response that said if you cut this by $3 million you know or you you hold it flat and we're not increasing it by the 2.9 here's what the impact might be then we could have a informed board discussion on it so I will say Miss Schultz I would welcome our board looking at these types of costs so that we can educate ourselves as governors of this
216school system but also help educate the public and the board supervisors on why are our esol costs going up but we haven't had that work session discussion and we need to have that one first before we would make a change like this in the budget before going to go backs I'll um say that I I will not be supporting this amendment um it is a cut of $2.9 million out of the budget is that's in front of us out of Esau um at a time when we have increasing esol needs even if not in um increasing numbers in every area we do have increasing numbers of esol 1 and esol 2 however uh this January we I'm told we registered 562 Esau level one students which was a 77% increase over January of 2016 that's
217a that's a significant increase and that's that's our reality and we need to be able to uh meet the needs of these um students um who come to us with uh without English language skills with very uh low uh levels of English language skills and I just wanted to point out too holding um holding something sounds sounds like a a fine idea until you kind of look in in a little more we could say well let well why didn't you hold the whole budget flat then well because we have increasing costs um Esa teachers also are um getting a step increase esol teachers will be getting um the salary enhancements uh um we have um they will also be getting uh we have to pay more vrs we pay more benefits so if you add
218all of these things in there are increasing costs for the same level of service so uh keeping something flat doesn't mean um uh that you aren't lowering services and and um reducing the service to a particular type of student and so the idea of taking the 2.9 Million out of esol funding um to to go to um these two particular needs I'm I'm not going to be supporting that um I have um Mrs Schultz yeah I just want to um put a couple things in context I understand where we're going on this um it is um much more intellectually honest to state that you are not going to increase funding um rather than saying you're cutting funding um if if you are keeping cut funding flat that is the the equivalent is that you're not
219growing it as much as you expected and and I I I want us to be uh very careful with our words um and careful with uh attributions this evening um you do have esol costs that are approximating $4,000 a student that's an addition to the education costs so just for esol it's approximating $4,000 a student we're also getting close to 5,000 students in Esau who are aged 18 and above so in um in the vernacular of looking for some fiduciary uh discipline um this was asking us to find a better way to be more efficient with um a a you know $3,900 a student esol um expenditure I understand that we have more um needy students students coming it doesn't mean that we can't find better ways to do it um there are there are
220innovative ways that we've all seen you know particularly those who went to nsba um opportunities for the delivery of services and wraparound services that are comprehensive that meet the needs of the student um but doing things the way we've always done them and just growing the budget another 2 and 1 half% another 2 and a half% increase when you have a 3% projected downturn in the number of Esau students means we have to get more wise with how we spend our dollars and that's okay if we make the decision tonight um not to um uh ask the superintendent to show some discretion in how we deliver those services and attempt to become um a little bit fiscally Innovative in how we deliver the services um and instead we grow the class size and we don't
221pay um substitutes more that's okay we're trading one pain for another and if that's the the the the the the choice the board makes that's okay but you you have to go into it eyes wide open and say there are two re again two reasonable choices here that we could choose as a board to direct the superintendent to do and buy back some class-size time and buy back uh all of the substitute pay increase and if you want to choose not to do that that's fine mrman thank you Madame chair I'm not going to support this motion uh that whether you are eSource students or special education or General ad we are all legally required to teach them meeting their needs you know es students have a A peculiar needs of Their Own and we
222are trying to meet their needs as much as as best as we can uh you know they may quite a smaller class size more in more intensive language instruction if that's what they need we are required to provide that kind of instruction uh by just cutting just just holding eil cost at FY 2017 level trying to find $2.9 million of savings unless we're going to increase the class size for those classes we may have to cut we may have to hold our teachers pay raise at their curent ever that's one of the way of doing which I'm not going to support our teachers need their compensation rat their benefit cost is going to go up I'm not going to just single out easer teachers you're not going to get your pay RS all right with
223that um I will call for the vote um the um motion is uh to amend the main motion by directing the superintendent to reduce hourly salaries and operating expenses in the superintendent and Deputy superintendent's office by 0.2 million maintaining Esau costs at fy2 2017 funding resulting in savings of $2.9 million allocating $1.5 million to reduce class size increasing substitute pay for retirees certified teachers and bachelor degree holders by allocating $1.6 million all those in favor Huff Schultz Wilson all those opposed Hines P Corbett Sanders Strauss Evans Moon mlin daret kofax and mine that motion fails I call on Mrs Huff for an a motion thank you I move to amend the main motion by directing the superintendent to reduce Department budget by an additional 1% resulting in savings of 3 million allocating these savings to
224lessen the increase in class size by an additional 3 million is there a second is there a second Oh seconded by Mrs Schultz um uh Mrs Huff would you like to speak to your motion yes um so just uh keeping in sync with the fact that uh we continue to call teacher compensation and class size our priorities um I feel as important that we try and meet that in as incremental a way as we can um I appreciate that Dr lart did come forward with a 1% um initially for the budget and I I think in the interest of really driving the dollars to the classroom that uh this would be a a good way to continue to try and prioritize this in a in a way to support that the many teachers students and
225families we've heard from over this uh budget season Mr Schultz nope interest of time okay um I have Mrs Strauss just very briefly I won't support this um there's already a a substantial cut and our problem is the more we cut support to actual classrooms and and teachers um we deprive our teachers of the tools that they need to actually be be successful with the students and we hold them accountable for Student Success and we have to at least give our teachers a shot at being successful and supporting them in their classroom thanks Miss Hines yeah thank you um um here's what I worry about with something like this um you know it always sounds tempting to say take the money out of central office and and put it in the classroom you know as
226a classroom teacher myself that was always what I thought um but the reality is we've taken a lot of um resources out of central office over the last eight years already uh and when I talk to people in the buildings they're starting to feel it they're starting to feel like they don't have the same uh support responsiveness you know I know everybody in central office is doing the best they can but there are limits to how much you can cut and still continue to support the buildings you know so there's there's a a point there and so the other reason that I worry about this sort of thing is that whenever we direct the superintendent to find you know so many million dollars in savings I remember several years ago when I first got on
227the board we did that someone said direct the superintendent to find $7 million in savings and put it here and I thought oh that's like magic money of course I'm going to raise my hand and vote for that but the reality then six months later was we ended up with $7 million in cuts that we didn't like right and we were angry about some of it and so what we have in the um the main motion the budget that we're going to vote on tonight is already $3 million in cuts that we have seen that the superintendent has shown us you know we've seen that there will actually you know be some positions that are loss there may you know there may be reductions in force you know because of that because we've taken so
228many Cuts there's really not a margin there uh to work with um and so we've all seen that we've thought about it we've decided that we could live with it this is another $3 million in Cuts so it will double what we've already seen and we have no idea what it looks like we have no idea what we will lose with this additional $3 million in in um in cuts and so I'm not sure at this point that it's responsible well I mean that sorry that sounds judgmental I don't feel like um I I would be responsible in supporting this at this point much as I would like us to um do more about uh protecting class size so I I won't be supporting this amendment Mr Moon he Madame chair other than the fact
229that I'm not going to be supporting this motion I didn't really mean to speak for the interest of time all right uh Miss mclin I want to thank Miss Huff for bringing forward this um Amendment and I'm extremely supportive of it and to my colleagues I'm going to explain why um yes Miss Daren kofax is correct we went from a one student class increase to a compromise of a half of a student increase but it still means that on the backs of our classrooms we are looking at a $14.7 million cost saving that's I believe over 160 teaching positions that we will not be offering that we will not be having and it's going to impact our teachers and yes I know we have a staffing reserve and yes I know we can strategically try
230and address things but the bottom line is this board is sending the signal to the community that we're comfortable with those cuts but we're not comfortable with the fact that we would be asking for a 2% reduction in costs at the central Administration level in those departments this is in no way a disrespect to the hard and incredible work that Central Administration provides in support of the classroom but this board has said over and again again where is our priority the first priority is inside the classroom we hear from our teachers that they are overwhelmed we hear from our families the class sizes are too big so when moff brings forward something that says we the direct the superintendent to find additional 1% in savings from his Department budgets number one they are the operational
231experts we are the third largest corporation in the Commonwealth of Virginia and while we are an educational nonprofit We are still an organization with 28,000 employees it is very common for nonprofit organizations as well as corporate organizations to have to cut costs you ask any board of directors and they will tell you asking your management team to make a one or 2% cut to your operations and in this case it's not to the entire budget but it is to central Administration it's effectively communicating our values and our values are saying we want to protect the classroom unfortunately we are still facing with a class size increase and and we we've all been battling with that but how do we communicate to our families and to our teach teachers and to our students more than anyone
232that we didn't think it was appropriate to find another 1% cut in our our Central Administration operations and to miss hein's concern it's it's a valid one in the past what we said was direct the superintendent to go find $3 million more dollars and prior superintendent turned around and went to the most valuable programs we had in the school buildings and offered to cut those this is very spe specific in saying to the Departments and so I have faith that in looking at the list which while we are willing to accept 160 position teaching positions we won't have for next year but the 1% Cuts coming out of central Administration identified 19 positions 11 of which the goal is to repurpose those employees to find another position within the system eight which are current vacancies
233we're we're basically thankfully not looking at a major cost of of a reduction in force having people lose their jobs and now having to go collect unemployment that's not what this would be but identifying efficiencies can be done it doesn't even necessarily have to mean that people lose their jobs but if we repurpose where those people are and in fact some could go back into the classroom because we have all those Staffing Reserve positions and many many people in central Administration used to be teachers and used to be administrators in our building but miss Huff I do thank you I don't think this is um irresponsible in any way and my one final note is that we asked staff about this five months ago and they have had a lot on their plate I think
234it was incredible the amount of budget questions that came from the school board members from the Board of Supervisors and so this is in in no way trying to be a criticism I will actually take criticism as a board member that we didn't give you a majority voice very early on to say that we think it's important to find cost savings outside of the classroom so to my colleagues we should have done this five months ago uh there is a whole lot of explanation for why we didn't get there but I never said just only find 1% I think 2% would have been reasonable from the start and that's where we should have gone so I will not be supporting this amendment I we need to be mindful that we have already taken Cuts uh
235significant Cuts in central office this year and certainly in years past uh we've taken quite a bit um as we've gone through the very difficult last decade of of um not having uh the funds that that we believe we need for our school system um we do we don't really know what the the actual impact on actual people of this would be we do know that the central office cuts that we've had so far do affect real people in real ways it affects services to the schools and um on the other hand um I I appreciate the attempt for at creativity on this class size issue again you know none of us wants to increase class size um but with you know each of these we're talking we're still talking about an increase in class
236size we're still talking about um uh not eliminating the the half a student increase but maybe reducing it by um uh some some percentage so um and even there we we don't have an analysis of what that would mean for individual classes we do know what impact we have for the half a student class size um but um I um I I have great reservations about um taking this U taking more from our uh Department budgets uh Miss Hines yeah just quickly um I would just want just point out um you know I don't think it's Apples to Apples to compare asking uh school system staff um to cut the budget by a certain amount to uh in a private Corporation asking management of that Corporation to make the same cut private corporations have profit
237margins um and you know they they can work within those public entities don't when you take money out of a public entity it it you know it comes out of something that presumably we think is important to do and I would point out when you talk about what kind of a margin we have here um FCPS Fairfax County Public Schools has the lowest central office to school-based ratio of school systems in the DC region and that's according to the Washington area Boards of Education guide um by far we are the leanest when it comes to that by far in the region so I do worry that you know we need central office staff too and if we if we cut um with without knowing what we're cutting I I I don't think that's wise Mr
238Dar C in the interest of time I'll say I agree with Miss Hines um we uh but I do want to say I just want to point out that staff reductions did start at 2 million we then went back and asked for another million so we already did ask for additional monies uh you spoke about the lowest level of non-school-based positions in the area I looked at that ours A 6.8 compared when you look at Montgomery County County 8.3% and Prince William County at 99.1% and that's just a few that I just looked at in the last 2 minutes um so we do we are very very lean um again the lowest level of non-school based positions in the area comparing to other school districts and I think to say we the reason we have
239Central Administration it is to support our classrooms and if we continue to cut and cut and we cut randomly there that is not good governance and that's not what should be done I think we can always look at it um later on or next year but we already started at two we went up to 3 and I think that's where we need to stay right now M mlin appreciate the comments my colleagues have made I do want to um follow up on something though the board never had a discussion um with our chair and vice chair of the budget on what we wanted to direct the superintendent toine in terms of cost savings and that probably is where we should have started so I appreciate that Miss Co kofax is saying that they came to
240and she asked them to go find three million but the board should have had the conversation first in saying what do we think is reasonable and to um Miss hein's comment I I made a point of saying nonprofits because nonprofits are annually faced with the same same thing especially what we've seen since the recession and if anyone spends time talking to management teams even in nonprofits they will tell you trying to find two or 3% cuts to your budget it's never preferable but it is not bad times bad times is when you're cutting 10% or more and no one's talking about that we're talking about 1% more and to say that we are so about supporting the class classroom you can't support the classroom when you increase the class size first and that's what really
241concerns me about this discussion about and this hesitancy and the if we don't trust the superintendent and their Department assistant superintendants to identify the 1% more that they think they can live without so we have fewer teachers with large class sizes then I don't know who we supposed to trust to be able to make that decision I'm not telling the superintendent what to go cut in their departments we said you know your Department's best and you should be able to find 1% so we can save Staffing in the classroom and I I stand by the fact that that's actually good governance and I think it's also authentic governance to what we State our values are which is to support our teachers and students in the classroom first Mr Moon I was very mindful of time
242where we are we are on number five out of 21 amendments okay and it is almost 11:00 I have a 7:30 appointment in the morning I'm hoping to be able to make 7:30 in the morning uh with that with that said with that said I do trust trust our interim superintendent and I do trust our senior staff members sitting up there and those who may be watching us on TV that is why when Dr Locker came up with could only come up with $3 million of a cut the central Administration could live with I trusted him if he believed that that he could have come up with a Mor cut from Central Administration he would have come up with a moral cut and $3 million was all that he could ever come up and I
243do trust him I do trust him that's where I stand on this motion Miss p i to was going to wait but um Mr moono half of the words out of my mouth um I I do trust our staff and and I think beyond that is that we are at a point where we don't want to do this kind of cutting every year a little bit around the edges try to make it Equitable try not to impact one program one extracurricular Activity one classroom too much and try to keep it equal across the board um that being said I think we've worked together for many months now to try to do the best we could with what we had for this year and I trust and I look forward to our staff um looking more
244deeply and saying let's figure out if there are ways that we can take deep Dives which they will be doing with the budget task force for the next coming years to say we've been doing this the way we have for many years are the areas just as they made changes to the transitional eel program which is painful we lost many staff but I believe that it will help more of our students achieve their goals and be able to graduate from high school so to that end this year it feels like a little bit of a a transition into getting into those conversations of saying next year is going to be just as bad if not worse so let's start to look at our programming look at the way we um administer programs and see if
245there are better ways for us to do it but to do it thoughtfully strategically um with the deeper conversations and to move forward from there we wish we weren't here this year but this is where we are um they are not good Cuts but I think staff has done an excellent job and I really appreciate the work um and to make making cutting cutting more ends um I was approached by one of the people being cut this year um and it's never easy and um we don't want we want to we care about our staff as well so we appreciate that and the support they gave our schools and we do have very limited support um for our schools right now miss mlin one thing I I think is important for us to be mindful
246of is that while we do trust our superintendent and staff they do their best draft proposal and they bring it to the elected body to decide is this what you think is going to be best for the system so they give us a draft and then we begin the dialogue originally staff's best recommendation was to increased class size by an entire student with a $28 million hit to the classroom this board deliberated on it directed staff that we're not comfortable with it and we said let's look at something with half a student staff said let's look at cutting fourth grade strings we heard from the community we deliberated on it we said that's not going to work for us we'll need to go back language immersion was on the table we said that's not going
247to work it went back now along the way we got good news from the state we had some other assumptions come in and so we were able to mitigate some of the things I just mentioned but the bottom line is we had a former superintendant who was shared with me told staff don't bother looking at reductions that the county executive told us we were going to meet to make until after the November meals tax vote so staff had to scramble around after November to come together with a budget without meals tax revenue and without any prep work and figuring out what to do and by the way then she departed sooner than expected so I do appreciate the hard work staff tried on this but let's not forget that this is a partnership and the
248whole point of this exercise from January when the superintendent proposes their their budget to where we get in May we're supposed to refine it and asking them for another 1% I think is reasonable Mr Moon you know Madam chair I believe that we not be blaming someone who is no longer with us for something that we had a total control superintendent comes to Schoolboard with a recommendation bold makes decisions all right with that um I will call call for the vote um the vote is um to amend the main motion by directing the superintendent to reduced Department budgets by an additional 1% resulting in savings of $3 million B allocating these savings to lessen the increase in class size by an additional $3 million all those in favor raise your hand Huff Schultz mlin Wilson
249all those opposed Hines Corvett Sanders Strauss Evans Moon darnette kofax mline that motion fails call on uh Mrs Huff for another motion I move to amend the main motion by directing the superintendent to reduce Department budgets by an additional 0.5% resulting in savings of 1.5 million allocating those savings to lessen the increase in class size by an additional $1.5 million Sarah second seconded by Mr Wilson uh Miss Mrs Huff would you like to speak to yes I'll just add a couple of points to the previous conversation um I I think it's important to note that when we had the work session on class size we uh did a show of hands on the compromise of going to uh an increase of class size by 1 to.5 and that vote was a vote of seven to
250five so there was not a super majority on this direction to the superintendent I would say it was marginal and um showed the hesitancy and I think it is prudent for us to work towards um getting it down a little bit to show difference to that um strong minority who did not want this increase in class size uh and that's just a strong minority on the board I would say I've talked to a majority in the community who don't want this increase in class size and to the point about Central staff giving support to the teachers that is absolutely true but it's a circular argument because the more students we put in our teachers classroom the more support they need and um and so here we go around and around versus one of the supports
251we give our teachers is an appropriate class size so I hope my colleagues can support reducing this increase in the class size Mr Wilson uh thank you madam chair um and again I'll be brief I think that um uh in the last conversation I think the points were made very eloquently by fellow board members um you know this is half again of uh what the previous Amendment proposed and uh I would just underscore that this amendment puts it into the hands of a capable superintendent to look and take that deep dive himself with his senior staff to find the places to find the savings to send the message to the community to our teachers that the focus is on supporting them by keeping class sizes as we're limiting the increase in class size by as
252much as possible and so for that I would support this amendment Miss signs um yeah so um thanks Mrs to Mrs Huff for uh really trying to chip away at this um I have on this amendment the same concerns about you know taking more Cuts in central office in a blind way not knowing where they're coming from and um later I will have a followon motion that um we do uh pretty much the same thing in fact a little bit more uh try would add $1.7 million to Staffing to minimize the effect of the class size increase in a targeted way and would take it out of year-end uh which is the year end balance ending balance which um I to my mind is is a just a better way to do it financially um
253so I will obviously I'll be proposing that so I'll be choosing that over this approach um so I won't be supporting this Mrs SCH not entirely sure how the money that's here versus the money that's in the follow on motion that here it's in a blind way but in the follow on motion it's not in a blind way and and and that's where I'm asking everybody to be a little bit discreet with the language because um Miss Huff is actually correct I I actually never saw the votes that evening um we didn't have a recorded vote I actually don't know the numbers um of who voted it was all of a sudden it was we're directing the superintendent to increase class size and um ever since then uh I've heard not one single teacher come
254to me and say gee it would be great if you just increased my class size because that would just make my life a lot better um and so so if we were barely there to provide the initial Direction now is the time through the course of and I I'm scared to ask Miss Michael how many budget questions have been asked the question is who what are we asking budget questions for if we're not going to attempt to use information to make the budget better this is our opportunity to show our work you know we've asked staff to invest time to answer questions for what questions sake and I mean data sake you know and now is the time where we can thoughtfully say Okay that was the initial Direction we've had a main motion that's
255that got crafted I don't have anything to do with the main motion the main motion happens um and now is the opportunity for me to say where my values um as an elected official and uh having a fiduciary responsibility to my my constituant and to taxpayers is how to direct the use of their money for their benefit it isn't my money and it isn't our money and I've heard nothing but teachers saying and administrator saying you know um yeah we can get by I mean Mr Eli stood right here and I had to say Hey listen if you had the choice between a class size increase and not a class size not a class size increase which one would you pick and he said not a class size increase so um to this point sta
256the staff and and the and this may be my last chance to say it the remarkable Mr Paris and Dr Lockard have done our bidding but if our bidding has been sort of well go in that General Direction you don't head across country in that general direction for long you can start driving West but sooner or later you got to figure out which way you're going I for me I've I've heard enough that class size Matters I've heard enough that you know we we have a hard time recruiting right now they're recruiting and they're not 30d at the tables for FCPS and and and I want that to be a 30 deep and what a message it would be what a great thing it would be by the end of this budget that we can
257say we did what Montgomery County did Montgomery County saved class size you know how they did it they did it by making central office cuts and saving teacher jobs this 1.5 million isn't class size remember these are teachers this is bodies these are people in the classroom and if we dedicate ourselves as a board to driving money into the classroom it's a good thing so I will be supporting this Mrs Corbett Sanders thank you um couple of questions yearend funds we have any idea what we're looking at yet I would anticipate it'll be similar to previous years but I don't have any exact numbers yet ballpark I'm sorry I just that's okay um okay additionally last week we had a work session and at that work session Dr Locker you put up about $43 Million
258worth of cuts am I correct yes I believe so okay and we had a lot of conversation about it so um I do want to make sure everybody knows that we've had exhaustive conversations about the details of those budget cuts and what the possibilities are and I do appreciate that we are continuing to try to find more opportunities but I want to set the tone a little bit about the class size because I think that everybody around this table is very committed to class size and when the class size issue first came up there was alarm over the concerns about the impact that um changing the Staffing formula would have um and what we saw was that the most dramatic impact on the Staffing formula is actually in those schools that uh had the floor
259raised for them versus at the um top end and because what we do have and I want to confirm it with you again I'd like someone to confirm irm that we have a regulation that actually puts a cap on how large our Elementary School classrooms can be and that regulation is still going to be in effect so we're not going to be doing not going to be rolling that back or actually increasing our class size caps what we're doing is we're talking about Staffing and then I looked at where all of our um class siiz impacts are and you'll see some follow-on motions which I'm going to be introducing because I'm very concerned about when you look through there are um disparities of which regions have uh will be taking the highest hit on class
260size impact but the bigger thing is that not one middle or high school goes without losing teachers we actually have quite a few elementary schools because of the protection and the regulation that we have in place to protect our elementary school class sizes the elementary schools um there are a number that will not lose any teaching staff um there are a number that may be losing teaching staff but if you uh look at their track record of trading out teaching staff they have some flexibility there but the the real concern on class size is it hits hardest on our middle schools and our high high schools and it hits those um schools with the uh highest needs to even a greater impact am I correct I am okay thank you um so I absolutely appreciate
261Mrs Huff's um recommendation to you to put increased pressure pressure on central office to um cut their operating cost my concern is that we actually had a work session we've had a lot of conversation and I agree we could tell you to go ahead and just cut it but I don't know how that impacts the uh ability to provide those supports to those schools that um really do need in some ways a greater um support from central office because of um the complexity of the needs in those schools so I can't support it but I do want people to remember that our elementary school regulation is still in place we are not changing that and hopefully we will get support later on to develop a plan that will address C class size uh going forward
262Dr Lockard I see your light on are uh would you like to have an opportunity to speak to this amendment I'm gonna yield my time to Mr Paris excellent thank you Dr lockart you know I think the Silver Lining to these two proposals is when you're in last place you can't be in last place on Earth meaning that we say use information in the wayy guide our central office lotman is the lowest in the entire region and to say what go find one more per. well I've been on I've been in this discussion for over a decade and I've seen it step down in central office and I was on the other side of the coin I was a teacher I was a principal I'm married to a teacher and I would say hey just
263cut it from central office cut it from central office you know and nobody wants class size to go up I don't want class size to go up right but to we have worked hard not to pit central office against school-based people you had your principles come here and talk about it we've worked very hard to do it and to say I think it's disingenous to say hey you're not willing to take another 1% cut in central office than you just disrespect teachers by raising their class size if that's what you're saying then we need to have a much longer conversation what you have is a revenue stream problem you can't pay teachers what they deserve your central off people office people are their work their workload is up too I've been sitting in there for
264six months right and I hope that we can find a balanced budget and I think your superintendent did bring you a very thoughtful and balanced recommendation to uh to solving this budget issue and I think central office folks have done their share to to contribute to that in the Long View thank you very much Mr Paris Miss mclaughin oh lucky me I get to follow Mr Paris what take what one one passionate individual after another um so uh I I I do think it's important what Mr Paris was trying to uh capture and I will say uh for my colleagues and myself the last thing this board would ever want to create is an environment that says we're pitting Central against the school and that's a very important message for you to reiterate because we
265all get to say at the board that that's never what we would want to communicate what we are faced with as you can imagine is the challenge of our community saying to us where are you going to find the the cost savings when we have a revenue stream problem no doubt about it um to Mr Moon's comment in the prior Amendment vote I wasn't trying to unfair ly malign anyone who's no longer here I was just stating a fact that if a management team doesn't have enough time to be able to do the deep and meticulous dive to look at how they're going to close what we were facing at the time you know $50 million Cuts it's harder to do and it's just a philosophical difference with a superintendent who is no longer here
266so thank you Mr Moon I can't necessarily have the debate with that person and I was actually trying to defend staff and saying they serve the superintendent they serve at the direction of that former superintendent Dr Lockard has been phenomenal this is been the best budget experience I have had in my six budgets on this school board I've never seen a superintendent be more responsive to board input I hope he takes with good measure that this work here tonight was our best efforts to refine the hard work that all of you have put into it but I did get elected by bradic District voters six years ago or five and a half years ago because of what I said I I wanted to do for our community which is to try and ensure that we
267do the best we can um in funding our wants versus our needs and we need Central Administration we also need to have smaller class sizes and sometimes we've got to figure out how to get that done I don't think it's unreasonable that when Central Administration looked at a 1% cut we identified that there might be 19 positions we eliminate but with repurposing and with eight of those being vacancies we were looking at a net loss of two to four people's jobs um this half of a percent means that we would be looking at potentially 10 positions but again are there other vacancies or are there other repurposing of so people don't lose their jobs but we look at ways to again find efficiencies in one place to protect the classroom in another in the end
268to my colleagues I I don't want to I I've heard where you are so I'm just going to wrap this up and saying I still believe this is how we communicate our value system of what's Mission critical and I don't think it's problematic to ask for half a percent um and Miss Huff just thank you for putting it forward I'm going to go to miss Darren at copex I would ask uh everybody kind of check their lights because I'm I'm going to go to GoBack I just want to make sure everybody has a real GoBack I'm Miss daret copex just just to speak as I I did the last time um and echoing Mr Mr Paris you know the the cuts we've already seen we we felt um were were significant enough at this point
269given um what we had asked of our interim superintendent um we did not have one meeting on class side we since I'm talking about by the budget numbers by the budget we had seven meetings on class size so we didn't come to this point um without a lot of struggle and a lot of conversation so um again just a I was not supporting the other amendment I will not be supporting this thank you um uh Miss Schultz I beg your pardon well okay so she's got to go way way back um Miss Hines yeah thank you just a couple things um the board did have a straw vote on class size right here at this table back in February right yeah I remember it because I I voted against it I was in the minority
270and I was very disappointed so I remember it well um and since then you know my budget questions have been all about trying to find another solution and I have used the answers to propos Solutions you know I've proposed and tested out ideas several you know over been working on it for months um and there you know you just you find that there are no easy answers and the other thing I discovered in the answers to the budget questions is that when you actually look at a list of the schools the elementary schools anyway um and the effect that uh the class siiz increase would have on each of those schools um there are many many schools that actually will not be affected by it that's the reality and so I also discovered in that
271work and thanks to staff so much for the answers to all these questions that we can I think we can do some targeted work which I'm going to bring up later as a follow-on motion um to you know mitigate the any effect that this class size increase may have to make sure that we stay on the class size caps and we take care of those schools that have chronically large um classes and so I through the work I also feel you know a little bit little bit more comfortable about this class size increase than I did at the beginning I feel like we can manage it for this year and I just say one more thing Montgomery County I don't think we should use them as a model here tonight they spend $1,500 more per
272child than we do and their ratio of central office to school-based staff is significantly higher than ours they can continue to cut and cut and cut for four or five years and maybe they'll get as lean as we are so you know I I I don't I think to compare us to Montgomery County when it comes to cutting central office to save class sizes not again not Apples to Apples it's not fair we're already the leanest system in the in the region Mrs H I believe you have the last word okay thank you and and it's not a go back to convince my colleagues and um but it is to address what Mr Paris said and although I'm sure the intention was for it to not be accusatory um I do want to reiterate that
273it it's not about pitting employees against each other but about championing students and as elected officials about representing our communities so um I think that is important work and um and I think that we all respect that that's what we are doing here at the table and um and it is with um it's not easy work and like I said I'm sure it wasn't meant to be accusatory and I know it comes from the passion of of the hard work that staff has done on this all right with that I will read the amendment um we will go to the vote M Miss Evans I think we at the for the late hour and staff time I think we could dispense with the reading can we just say oh it's short um uh the motion
274is to amend the main motion by directing this superintendent to reduce Department budgets by an additional 0.5% resulting in savings of $1.5 million B allocating these savings to lessen the increase in class size by an additional $1.5 million all those in favor raise your hand Huff Schultz McLaughlin and Wilson all those opposed Hines Paul Corbett Sanders Strauss Evans moon darck kofax and and mine that motion fails I call on Mrs Huff for another amendment I move to amend the main motion by utilizing funding from the FY 2017 flexibility reserve of 1.7 million to increase the budgeted beginning balance for fy18 by $1.7 million adding 20 positions to the Staffing Reserve to mitigate the impact of the class siiz increase by $1.7 million is there a second second second seconded by Mr M Schultz uh Mrs
275Huff would you like to speak to your Amendment yes thank you and uh Miss Hines is well aware that I stole this from her and um what I've basically done is taken her followon motion and created as an amendment identifying the one-time funding Now versus waiting for a followon motion the reason I've done that is because I know that my colleagues at this table um do care about class size and this is a way to to comment on it now before this budget's voted on versus waiting on it as a followon motion afterthought and so I have talked to finance staff and Miss Michael has been uh incredibly helpful and I appreciate in talking through this the dollars would come from the flexibility Reserve uh which will fall out as one-time funding at the end
276of this year Miss Hines Fallen motion is asking to use use the endof year one-time funding so as I said earlier I'm just taking that those dollars now the flexibility Reserve is something that we use for uh issues such as uh snow plowing if extra teachers are needed in the classroom and we don't have any more in the Staffing reserve and I have cleared with Miss Michael that we are is a very safe assumption that at this point that flexability Reserve will fully be falling out at onetime funding and there wouldn't be risk to doing that now miss Schult M said it perfectly this is another opportunity for our colleagues to find um a small amount of fiduciary discipline and demonstrate that um we can move dollars back to the classroom and save teacher jobs
277um and protect class eyes Mrs TR um I don't support uh funding it in this way the f flexibility Reserve is only $8 million it's the only flexibility Reserve that we have for the entire school year um it is used for um uh emergency unmet needs sales tax is an interesting place uh sales tax is um is um distributed allocated as it comes in and there are some years where the sales tax um does not uh come in as projected by the state or uh the or the local uh it is also used for unusual staffing needs um it is also used for uh any other kind of emergency weather or catastrophic loss uh if we take 1.7 million out of the reserve if we have an emergency we will have to take it out
278of the running budget which can be extremely painful I far um I will support um Miss Hines follow on motion I think that's a much safer place to go rather than taking the flexibility Reserve misss yeah thank you um yeah so I I appreciate Miss Huff letting me know ahead of time that this was coming because they look the same but there is a difference um the effect of each of these on the classroom would be the same the effect of Miss hub's Amendment right now and my follow on later would be the same to the classroom we'd be putting $1.7 million roughly 20 positions into the Staffing Reserve to protect um to protect class size uh to to mitigate uh any class size increase that might affect those schools uh but it's it's where
279the money comes from that is different in each and yeah that that flexibility Reserve only $8 million that's a tiny part of our budget $1.7 million is 21% of that I think that's a pretty big chunk out of a a safety Reserve that we have as opposed to taking it out of um ending ending balance um which has some flexibility built into it it's larger than 8 million uh and we kind of won't won't necessarily have feel it at all and if we do it won't be for another fiscal year so um neither is ideal but I think taking it out of ending balance is is fiscally smarter and safer in my view so um I won't be supporting this amendment Miss PCH yes um I think flexibility Reserve is not a very good name
280for what it is it really is as Miss um Strauss pointed out pointed out an emergency savings account it's not a very large one we wish we could have more um and as Miss Hines pointed out it it is slightly more than 21% um of that $8 million Reserve so um I don't think it's the best way to do this if I don't know if we pass this just so we can say we're not making that increase or we're investing but really I think we need to go the most fiscally responsible route um once again uh repeating a little bit with Mr Paris said we do have a revenue problem here um and until we fix that or or make major major adjustments um we're going to be looking at these small portions so I
281cannot support this and I do hope that my colleagues will um make the same decision to continue to keep that emergency account because it is exactly that an emergency and we we by state law cannot um go below our budget thank you Miss ml so I think there seems to be some confusion with some of our colleagues about Miss Huff's amendment in front of us she's not talking about the flexibility reserve for fy18 she's talking about right now and it's May 25th our budget cycle ends in about a month there's not going to be a snowstorm there's not going to be a catastrophic weather event it's going to be $8 million we put into this budget it's not being spent it means it's going to end up in exactly the same pot that Miss Hines
282then wants to use in her followon motion so all Miss Huff's trying to do here is help the board be intentional inside of the budget instead of the follow on motion but it's all the same dollars it's all the same carryover and it concerns me that anyone would characterize Miss Huff's Amendment as not being responsible that it's being risky we are a month away for a reserve fund that basically didn't get used in this fiscal year so it's going to year end and she's just being intentional with the money Miss Huff thank you for letting us have an opportunity to put it in the budget now and not as a follow on motion if we all believe in Miss hein's wonderful follow on why wouldn't we want to commit right now into our budget to
283do that because it's all the same Mr Moon okay couple of things M Mich the flexibility reserve of $8 million is in separate account Reserve $8 million if he use part of the right now 1.7 that's going to be reduced 6.3 unless we replenish this 1.7 million somehow to make it to $8 million it's going to be reduced it's going to remain reduced at the level if you use 1.7 that's correct Point that's been it's been that way as long as remember we set aside $8 million flexibility Reserve when we had to use them we replenished money and then money remained it's $8 million it carried forward from year to year so that been my understanding correct me if I'm wrong on that no that is the process that we've used um when we've used
284the reserve in the past the flexibility Reserve we have replenished it and another quarterly budget review and then continued to carry forward that 8 million as part of our final budget review okay okay thank you you know that's what I thought and and year and budget review is what second meeting in July it gets approved at the second meeting in July correct even though even though I'll be supporting even though I'll be supporting uh m H followup motion later on and I intend to support my own actually joint from me and Mrs mclin a followup motion and I asking step to prioritize a putting in for Bull's consideration in yearend certain budgetary items that we don't make the final decisions on the yearend budget review items until the second minute in July I think for
285me that's a better time to make those decisions looking at the what the year and year end balance will be you know being mindful of the requirement that we need to somehow find $33.5 million to meet the required the beginning balance for fi9 uh so I am not going to support Miss Huff's motion and I would very much welcome Miss hubs joining us at the second meeting in July when you make a decisions on those following motions I point a clarification on my Amendment um uh okay so you question of the um of Miss Michael yes because Miss Michael you and I discussed that this would work just like Miss Hines and the flexibility reserve for fy19 will be replenished from end ofe Monies to return to the $8 million Reserve figure it's all the
286same pot so at the end end of the year if we keep the 8 million the 8 million from fy7 fy18 and pull from the carryover fund for Miss Hines the same thing can happen with those carryover funds we don't use for Miss Hines followon and put it back the 1.7 million into the reserve for FY 18 so if in your motion we were to use funding from the flexibility now you're correct that the board as part of the final budget review could vote to put the funding back to carry forward that $8 million in the flexibility Reserve so if we need to add that to my motion we can but when we had discussed it that was definitely how we discussed the intent of of this that it would it would be it would
287have the same end result as Miss Hines which would mean that the flexibility Reserve would stay at 8 million through replenishment at year end yes then the flexibility Reserve would still be at 8 million miss Corbin Sanders and I apologize I stepped away from the table so I probably missed something but I'm just trying to clarify a little bit um the flexibility Reserve that's a um $8 million Reserve fund that is not rolled into our carryover it's actually a carry forward is that correct yes so it's not fungible that if we don't spend the 8 million we get to go spend it we have to keep that 8 million as a reserve year to year correct correct so what happens is the flexibility Reserve is not part of our adopted budget process but instead it's
288allocated and when it's unspent this year as part of the final budget review in July the board carries it over or carries it forward or you could also say reappropriates it the following year for the same purpose right so it's not it's not really um for us to take money out of it then we have an obligation to put money back in to start the next year with 8 million correct correct so what this amendment does versus the follow on amend uh motion I'm I'm just trying to differentiate between the two and and maybe Miss Huff you can help me on this this amendment we take the money out so we guarantee we know that there's $8 million there so we're going to deplete that fund by 1.7 million and we're going to put it
289into the Staffing reserve and um then at the end of the year so that's step one and at the end of the year when we expect to have some carryover we're going to then use the carryover to replenish the fund and then move forward so it's a two-step process whereas Miss is hin approach is a one is an a same goal same exact goal and no one actually has to walk the money anywhere in terms of the steps I understand that technically it's an extra step the and as I stated in the beginning the purpose being that as a priority it's part of our budget versus as after we pass the budget okay now I I I see where you're going but I guess my question is and this is an this is one of
290the things that I'm having a hard time with the Staffing Reserve is that when we allocate the Staffing reserve and we actually use the Staffing Reserve then that becomes part of our um operating costs because we are right we are actually presuming that um the number of Staff allocated in 2018 and given the same size schools they'll be used the same Staffing for 2019 and so this is to supplement those highest um impacted schools so I understand that but I guess my I'm having a hard time if if what our objective is is to um address this in a way now end of year money carryover money is actually onetime money yeah this is onetime funding as well right so in the event um in either of these motions if the positions need to be
291permanently added to the Staffing Reserve to be used going forward we would need to build that into our fy19 budget development process okay thank you before I go to go backs I'll say that um I I do support U Miss hein's approach on this um if we didn't have that one coming up I would be awfully tempted um on this one to um kind of cross my fingers and and and go for it but um I I do support um the approach uh with the follow on motion so um I'm um not going to support support this in in in lie of that um I do have a couple of gobs Miss mlock the it's late the only thing I'm going to say is that it the rationale of which one of these to support
292one says we're going to direct the superintendent to prioritize so there's no promise we don't know until we get to the yearend review what our actual year in balance is going to be and as Mr Moon keeps talking about in a helpful way we got 33 million we're hoping to have as uh you know a carryover amount to to fill in so miss Huff's whole point was for the 12 of us to say with intentionality this mattered and we put it into this budget but the 1.7 this isn't going to come out well but I'm just kind of frustrated staff I'm just sorry cuz honestly I'm watching this and it is moving deck chairs around with the same $1.7 million which is about1 12th of 1% of our budget we're keeping you here till midnight
293and really there's no rationale for it at all um Miss Huff you did a great job I I I don't think there's anything more you could have done to explain that this is no different than what Miss Hines is doing except for we had an opportunity to say in advance Advance we made this a priority year-end money is onetime money and your your fy17 unused funds whether you go and replenish it in fy18 or you put it toward what Miss Hines is saying to do it was going to all be the same thing Mr moon for the sake of a time all right um I will call for the vote uh the um vote is on the motion to amend the main motion by utilizing funding from the FY 2017 flexibility reserve of $1.7 million
294to increase the budgeted beginning balance for FY 2018 by $17 million B adding 20 positions to the Staffing Reserve to mitigate the impact of the class size increase by $1.7 million all those in favor Huff Schultz McLaughlin Wilson all those opposed Hines pul Strauss Evans Moon darnet kofax mine all abstaining Corbett Sanders that uh vote uh motion passes no fails I beg your pardon that motion fails thank you thank you Mrs Strauss for keeping me straight uh I call on Miss mlin for an amendment so to my colleagues I expect this to be very quick uh I move to amend the main motion by a eliminating FCPS payment of all test fees for each AP advanced placement an international baloria student who does not qualify for financial assistance totaling $3.2 million B allocating 3.2 million
295in additional funding to reduce the class size increase see changing FCPS policy to state that taking the test is no longer required in order to receive the extra 1.0 GPA quality point is there a second is there a second I'll second second by uh Miss Hub uh Miss U mlin so uh I will be brief and I don't mind if I'm the only hand that goes up uh as I shared with our budget chair Miss kofax uh she had hoped that we would just go with the $600,000 uh budget change on AP and IB test fees and that was considered the compromise among the board members what I shared with her is while I understand that's where the board came um this is an issue that I have been hearing within my district since before
296I joined the board in the six budgets I've been working on the board I continue hear it from families and from teachers who who say if we're talking about wants versus needs why are we paying the $3.2 million for our non- needy families for something that is an elective test and I know that there's a whole debate out there about IB and it's not elective and that you need to take the test in order to get the diploma uh but the reality is that our families spend easily ,000 or more in order for their children to apply to foure colleges between the SATs the act the SAT 2s the application fees families come up with the money and they pay for it if they need financial assistance they get it Montgomery County and Lowden County
297have the same demographics we do especially Montgomery County they don't pay for AP and IB test fees they don't colleges are no longer taking credit for a lot of these tests because they want you to get your education from their University so when I think about wants versus needs I needed to be able to demonstrate to my community that I still understand that this is not the most Mission critical thing we should be spending our money on I believe we should be making this decision based on evidence not emotions and while I appreciate that students will write in and say this will be a hardship we have 12,000 students every year graduating from mer system another 12,000 in their junior year and so unless we want to survey the 24,000 Juniors and seniors and their
298families on this one and maybe that's what we do next uh I'm venturing to guess most will say that where are you going to Target your money paying for our test fees while we may not want to in in this regard we actually allow families to go back to making the decision themselves if their child's prepared to take the test and wants to take the test but I have not seen any evidence and I want evidence before I ever get convinced that Montgomery County and Len County can do it without a risk to their students so I don't understand why we think we can't accomplish it here in Fairfax County so that's why I put this forward this year Mrs HFF um you were seconded did you want to speak to the did you want
299to speak to the uh to your second thank you that is perfectly fine um Mrs Corbett Sanders thank you Miss mcclaflin we've talked about this a lot and I actually appreciate all your um your emphasis on data driven decisions and uh data driven decision- making is something that I think most the members of this board believe in my concern on this one is that we don't have data um to the contrary within our own system I know that you have some uh data from Montgomery County and lden but I would suggest that there are some very different um concentrations of poverty and concentrations of um students that may not be uhm eligible but they are living uh based on the cost of living in Fairfax County they their families are living on the edge and
300so what I would encourage is that we um continue with the compromise that was reached a few months or what six weeks ago and that we monitor it and when we monitor it we monitor it for a couple of areas one of which is does it have an impact on the number of um classes kids are taking does it have an impact on the demographics of the students taking the classes and whether or not they're actually taking the test and so um perhaps rather than trying to structure a evaluation of this right here at the table uh we could suggest that staff at some point come back to us with uh ideas on how we would what metrics we would use and um so from that standpoint I think we should continue with the original
301compromise of six test Miss Schultz yep um just quick quick statistic reminder that I've said before um only 48% of students uh taking the AP exam get a four or five so 52% are basically failing um only 16.6% of students taking an IB exam are getting a six or seven um 46.5% are getting a 5607 and we're paying for um there are 6,324 students who take one or more IB exams there are 165,000 16435 who take one or more AP courses and so we are for those students the fraction of the students that are actually taking the exams and the fraction of the fraction of the students who are excelling on those exams we're paying for them to not pass exam so I I I think that we need to Choose Wisely um uh how
302we're spending the money and once again we're having the ability to reduce class size and potentially if you reduce class size it would be interesting to find out if a lot more of those students actually passed the exams is daret CeX Miss McLaughlin and I have had lots of convers ation on this and we um come down on different issue sides of it and um we're going to agree to disagree in a collegial way um I do uh know that uh we already came to a compromise and the compromise allowed us to um pay for the IB test fees um for those kids who would to get the diploma it takes to it the cost is six IB classes to take and so that's why we agree to that um sometimes um anadil data is
303more um important than well it's maybe not more important but it does it's important to listen to so I sent to my colleagues um letters from students who I who were who were in that zone that Miss Corbit Sanders spoke about they um don't qualify for free or reduced lunch but due to the fact um of where they find themselves financially um it's it's not it it it's would be a real hardship for them so um I I just want to read three sentences from one letter one of the many many letters over 75 letters that I got from one school and several from other schools many of my classmates families will be put into Financial stress in order to pay for an IB exam this extra burden being put onto a student can pile
304on top of their curtain stresses if the school board were to implement the policy of students paying for their own exams then there would be a sudden drop in the amount of IB classes taken countywide students would become more inclined to take standard and honors courses as they do not wish to burden their family with more financial problems than they already have no longer will a student be able to test their academic knowledge to their fullest potential as they cannot pay for the exams um education should be something that propels us towards success not a barrier please don't make us pay for our exams so um that is where I stand that is why I stand where I stand and at this point um I I I uh I appreciate the compromise that we came
305to miss pck thank you um so I was one of those students high school was the very first time that I was not Fe and reduced meals um had I not had two older siblings who were no longer living at home um it would have been a lot tougher and and our AP tests were were paid for and so I was able to take classes to be an AP scholar and to um use those for credit for college I hear what um Mr kofac said I agree that it's a good compromise uh I had a lot of concern about our IB program but after speaking with um one of my IB principles uh he agreed that it's also a good compromise to ensure that students are a able to take the courses necessary and take
306the exams to qualify for the IB diploma um but also um to address some of the mental health issues seeing in kids taking a few too many in some schools we have 45 kids in the county who are taking eight IBS and that is a little bit too much so um I think we need to move cautiously as well I think it's important that we are decoupling the um the cours work from the exam but I do think that we need to do this uh the compromise we've done to then look back and look at the impact um as Miss Corbett Sanders has alluded to in some of our changes as well um and to see what happens with this change before we look forward at at Future years so um I'm happy that we
307came to a compromise I think having the the six exams paid for is a is a good way to start and look at impact and ensure that our students and those who may be right on the verge are still able to complete their AP and IB diplomas so I appreciate the effort but I will not be supporting this amendment all right I uh will say for myself that I um am am not going to support this amendment I have grave concerns about the AP and IB testing fees um again we've we've come up with an approach where the first six are paid for by FCPS and but we still are are going to be charging for um for anything above that you know we're down to6 million um by by only charging for those that
308um that go above a certain um number but I I still do not like these fees I um think that they do discourage students and um I I have particular concerns about feed on um our our um High academics so um and again miss mclaughin and I have had many conversations on this and we just plain see it differently and I I appreciate her point of view but um just just feel very very differently so um unless uh okay Miss McLaughlin and again please check your um lights because I I don't think most of these are gobs so uh real quick uh there was a lot of questions earlier about a change that was going to occur with an activity fee or an athletic fee and we really haven't had the conversation about what's going
309to happen with um the AP and IB test fees so I I do want clarification um in terms of this because my Amendment very clearly stated that we are changing the FCPS policy to state that taking the test is no longer required in order to receive the the quality point if you take the class you get the quality point it doesn't matter if you sign up for the test or not so um Dr Presidio can you just confirm that is what will be happening even with this the the main motion where you you get the first six paid for and then after that uh you're on your own but the quality Point happens regardless of whether you take the test yeah thank you for asking that question it's really important obviously to the families so
310um we would amend the regulation um so students would no longer be required to take the test um if they're enrolled in the class but they would still retain um the extra grade waiting thank you and the second thing is that in terms of administrative process so because Montgomery County L County don't pay for those exams except for the students who qualify for free and reduced lunch um the families themselves and the students make that decision do I want to take the test or not and just like the SAT they sign up for it and they pay for it online is can someone walk me through what we're doing with this process in terms of who's registering these kids who's paying the fee and then when they hit plus six how is that is it
311a different process kicks in because even though we're saying we will pay for the test some kids might take Calculus BC and said oh my that subject matter was way over my head I'm not going to get a three or above I'm not going to take the test but so we obviously as a system to be economical don't want to be paying especially in the AP program to sign up for kids for the first six of it turns Out Among those first six they don't even want to take that test so has anybody thought yet about how this going to be done and if you haven't unlike the other conversation I'm perfectly okay if you still need to work out the details and you can just tell me that and we'll call it a night
312yeah I mean I I would say just a few things I mean we still have details to work out for sure um it's a cleaner process on the IB side I would say um obviously both for the AP and the IB programs the school has to purchase the test to begin with right so the school has to order the test for the students so we already have that administrative recordkeeping piece um and on the IB side we're tracking the number of exams and scores for the diploma we don't track it the same way on the AP side um and we don't have the coordinator support on the AP side that we do on the IB side so we're a little bit better positioned in our IB schools than our AP schools but we already have
313some infrastructure in place and the the piece now is going to be the tracking and the monitoring of the number of tests that students have accured um over the course of the four years as well as that we'll now be asking students before we purchase the test where we used to purchase 100% of tests for the 100% of the kids enrolled now we will be saying hey Johnny and Susie do you want to be there will be an advisement process for they so we the students and the families can indicate to the school system if you're under your six tests yes I want it please pay for it and I'm planning to take it no I don't want to take the test don't buy it for me correct that's correct thank you Dr pidio all
314right with that uh we'll take the vote and and I do believe I will take Mrs Schultz's suggestion to not read this one because it's a little bit longer so um all those in favor raise your hand H Schultz McLaughlin all those opposed Hines P Corbett Sanders Strauss Evans Moon Wilson darnette kofax and mine that motion fails um I call on Miss Schultz for an amendment I move to amend the main motion by a reducing supplemental funding for online classes and having base schools provide the Staffing resulting in a savings of .9 million and B allocating these savings to reduce the impact in class size by .9 million is there a second seconded by Miss McLaughlin um Miss Schultz I I think we've said everything we need to say about looking and trying on this
315board to demonstrate in the budget not in followon motions that we'll get to it later that we um should demonstrably make an effort on reducing class size so vote for it don't vote for it that's okay your vote will speak volumes Miss mclin so I I hope I can maybe speak for a lot of people and limit the conversation Miss Schultz wall several times tonight we have all appreciated your efforts to dig deep into the budget my issue is I've not had any ability to talk with staff about what does this actually mean in terms of the impact on the schools and how this then gets done and so I will say going forward something like this I would have wanted at our at least our last budget work session to have the conversation this
316is one of the main budget task force recommendations so this is directly totally understand Miss mlin finish her comments no no I appreciate that Miss Shon I'm I'm totally okay with that but regardless of whether the budget task force identified it there's a lot of things they identified that I didn't agree with them including parking fees that don't even match the region so if that logic would be another reason why I couldn't support it the bottom line is it it's about a million dollars and I'm not going to do something that affects the schools that I have no idea what this looks like so I'm happy to have you keep this in in your budget notes and we bring this up first thing for fy9 Budget preparation um but I just wanted to help you
317at least understand the work you put in to explain my vote for why I can't support it Miss Hines um yeah likewise yeah this was this is on the list of 100 things that the task force came up with a couple of years ago we also I we have not looked into it I would have to ask staff right now at 1157 what effect this would have on online classes what effect it would have on Bas School staff um and this is just not a conversation we should be having tonight didn't know this was going to be a serious conversation tonight until 48 hours ago and um you know saying that vote for it don't vote for it your decision will speak volumes I mean I hope we can avoid that kind of rhetoric tonight
318you know if I'm voting against it it's this it's not because I don't care about class size I really hope that we're not going to start going there tonight Mr Wilson thank you madam chair um actually I am going to ask staff to just give me the one minute explanation of what what this would entail and what would the impact be if the if the budget task force supported it um it it does seem to Warrant an explanation uh to the board even though it is at the obviously at the very last moment so put the timer on and I'll give you 60 seconds so I would say the big picture issue is obviously we staff our schools based on the number of students that are enrolled in the school at the high school level
319in particular students can take courses then at the online campus and many students do we have several thousand students um typically in the course of a year that will take one or more classes online so essentially what you have is you have um Staffing that's attributed to the school based on the total population but some of the students are actually taking one or more classes online they're often taking one or more classes online though in addition to what they're taking is a full load in the school the other issue that I think is complic when we have this conversation with High School principles is that it's not like you would just have a whole class of students for example 30 students taking Algebra 2 online you might have two or three that are taking that
320and five or six that are taking something else so it does present operational challenges and issues um for the High School principles to staff their buildings um on the face of this um I think there's Merit to consider it and to look into it and that's how it showed up on the budget task force recommendation list but when we have conversation with High School principles they have a lot of concerns about how they would actually operationalize it thank you um Miss Dar kofax Miss Schultz yeah just um if if we have a lot of issues about operationalizing something that the budget task force recommended that has to do with online and and it's a question of whether we're paying somebody to teach online versus somebody in the building to teach it and and staff the
321online component um I have concerns that we have a major problem in operationalizing shifting curriculum that's being taught in a building that probably is actually being taught in 25 buildings that a kid wants to take online and then we can't figure that out and um I'm again I don't want to go into extraordinary links but the speaking volumes is that there's been every opportunity and at every opportunity tonight it doesn't matter what um what the item is how high up the chain it is um which is going to be the next one or how low down or keeping it flat or looking for the the the speaking volumes is is it doesn't matter where it comes from in the budget we found a way to get to know tonight and that does speak volue s
322and I and I don't and I don't pull back that that language I don't think it's rhetoric I think it's actually um uh very substantive observation that it doesn't matter if it's fees if it's esol if it's Administration if it's it doesn't matter it doesn't matter what it is we found a way to get to know tonight and that's okay but the getting to know is going to speak volumes because we we had a bare majority that voted to increase class size and now it appears that we have a super majority that wants to make sure that it stays increased and not find even in the smallest ways to ask staff we have highly competent staff highly competent Central staff highly competent uh administrators of our buildings and if we ask for modest accommodations that
323reflect the value of this board that class size Matters and driving dollars back into the classroom matters then we should be able to direct staff and the superintendent to do so and we're choosing not to and and I stand by that statement um Miss Corbett Sanders um this one's intriguing and with 0.9 million you go wow that's really great and it's impact we don't quite understand but we do know it will have an impact on Lower Staffing for our high schools now every one of our high schools is being impacted by the change in our staffing formula for classrooms actually our high schools are being impacted at a greater rate than our elementary schools because we don't have a regulation for our high schools to make sure that certain classes don't get too big and
324so although I agree with you it would be great to find .9 million my concern is we're bringing we're taking .9 million of Staffing out of the high schools that have already been staffed um Additionally the audit committee actually was presented with a report where they did do an audit of the online campus and that audit um showed that it was a pretty effective organization but that it could actually to be able to meet the continuously growing demands for online courses it actually needs to have more support and me become more robust and so so I think it's worth looking at but once again I think it's something that if we were to put this on our to-do list of we know that online is growing we know that there's greater demand we know that
325the Staffing uh supplements for online courses impact high schools we know that our high schools are disproportionately impacted by the change in the Staffing formula it just there it makes me uncomfortable I can't support taking more resources out of our high schools without um ensuring that we keep pressure downward pressure on those classrooms in high school and um so I appreciate it I think that we H should and this was brought up earlier um have a discussion about the 2019 budget starting this summer as part of a uh broader uh Retreat or broader discussion amongst all of us a brainstorming of what our priorities are help that drive the um budget process and connect it to the uh strategic plan Miss daret copex I it's late and I don't want to really go down this
326road but since we have gone down this road I I I do want to say um good governance again good governance is not bringing something up 48 hours ahead of time when you've had 27 opportunities to deal with it it is midnight and we have so much more to go I do not think this is the right way to do these things this is my opinion um and but if we haven't talked about this in one of our 27 meetings and and we get flippant responses you can vote for it or you can't you can find a way to get to know maybe there could have been a way to get to maybe if we would have done it in one of our 27 meetings and not see it for the first time tonight miss
327Schultz before we take the vote the the budget task force met last fall and has been meeting this has been on on on every um uh work work table that we've had presented to us all of the worksheets um our choice this is not 48 hours in advance it isn't a governance issue this is a choice issue this has been presented to the board for a very long time I'm just bringing it up as an option to reduce class size all right with that we'll take the vote on the motion all those in in favor raise your hand Huff Schultz Wilson all those opposed Hines Corbett Sanders Strauss Evans Moon pchi darnette kofax uh mline uh that motion fails with Miss McLaughlin away from the table I call on Miss schz for an amendment yes
328I have uh uh a move to amend the main motion by a reducing hourly salaries and operating expenses on the superintendent and Deputy superintendent's office by 0.5 million and allocating these savings to reduce the impact of the increase in cost size by .5 million is there a second seconded by Mr Wilson Mel yes um I spent a fair amount of time um as people know with program budget one of the um surprising um things to find in the program budget are in certain departments um copious amounts of hourly salaries and operating expenses there's a million dollars of operating expenses in the deputy superintendent's office uh um off the top of my head about $26,000 in hourly salaries plus um and that's just in one area of the Deputy superintendent's office and this is um a
329a potential opportunity for us to say okay well we'll start from the very top um we'll find a way to um tighten the rein on hourly salaries and operational expenses um and Lead um lead from the top the uh pace of the leaders the pace of the pack and I think it would demonstrate to the teachers in the classroom that we can Fray even from the very top of the organization and direct the resources back into the classroom Mr wlson seeing all right I'm Miss Corbett Sanders aren't many of the hourly salaries associated with our temporary you know for example I've had a rash of um temporary principles in my area and temporary uh building managers to fill in in ult times doesn't that come out of the uh hourly salaries yeah it does no
330typically that would be paid out of an acting school-based administrator account is that it Mrs SC all right with that we'll take a vote all those in favor of the amendment raise your hand Huff Schultz Wilson all those opposed Hines Paul Strauss Evans Moon mlin darnette kofax mine all those abstaining Mrs Corbett Sanders are you abstaining uh M uh and with that the motion fails the motion fails I call on M Miss Schultz for an amendment deference to my colleagues who've shown no interest in um raising the class floor from 18 to 19 um I courteously yield uh 13 and I should have um said for those who um are watching at home that um Miss Schultz had alerted the board earlier that um she was withdrawing her amendment number 11 and amendment number 12
331so we were on amendment number 13 and um Miss Schultz has um has withdrawn that Amendment so we are now back to the main motion which will be projected on the screen I'm told all right the motion is to adopt the FY 20108 approved budget as detailed in the FY 20108 advertised budget Modified by the adjustments included in this agenda item a eliminating the $100 athletic fee totaling $1.5 million B implementing an annual onetime 50 activity fee for high school students who participate in one or more extracurricular activities totaling $1.7 million C increasing the Staffing Reserve totaling $0.2 million so that is the motion on the table is there discussion Miss Hines yeah thank you so is this our opportunity to actually talk about the budget this is our opportunity to talk about the overall
332budget yes it is Miss I'll try to keep here we are after midnight um but I want to first of all um thank Mr Paris for um boiling it down we have a revenue problem that's really truly where we are all this pain all this struggle that we have is because we have had one good news budget year in the last decade and we're back again to another bad news budget year I I looked up a Washington Post article from February 14th and this was when the um County Board of Supervisors got the proposed budget from uh the county executive and um the very beginning of the article says um talking about hard choices that the wealthy suburb this wealthy suburb must make as it struggles with tepid Revenue I don't know how those things
333fit in the same sentence wealthy suburb tepid Revenue year after year after year of this school system the most important public investment in this community being underfunded um Sharon boliva chair of the Board of Supervisors is quoted in this article talking about the funding that's available as if she has no control over that that's the other thing then maybe I want to make sure everybody understands in Virginia there's a structural problem with school funding School boards in Virginia are dependent we cannot raise revenue we depend on on other elected officials to to raise revenue for the schools we we count on other people to be leaders in that and I won't suggest that it's easy but leadership means making hard and sometimes unpopular decisions because you have to keep that focus on investing in the
334community um we know that raising revenue is necessary for those Investments and as we sit here tonight and talk again about raising class size and talk talk about how once again we're not able to do what we know we need to do for our teacher salaries we have to stretch out the investment that we started making last year in a teacher salary scale that is not competitive in this region we are losing teachers and and we have to slow that down this year um the the bottom line here is that year after year of this seriously risks the reputation of this school system and this whole Community there is a reputational risk to what we keep doing year after year not investing in this school system is not sustainable so what I wish we had
335tonight I wish we had our Board of Supervisors sitting in the audience here all night till right now and listening to us I wish we had the general assembly sitting in this room all night listening to us watching how painful this is um I I plan to take the public testimony video that we had in our our budget public hearing a couple weeks ago and and send it to everyone on the Board of Supervisors and all of our Northern Virginia delegation in in the general assembly just so because those messages are for them if we could raise revenue those messages would be for us but we can't those messages are for them so here we are um you know H having to raise our hands hold our nose and raise our hands for another budget
336that is not worthy of our kids not worthy of our teachers not worthy of our community um but we need to have a budget so I I will support um the main motion Miss mcin I know it's really really late so I'll try to just hit the highlights um I will be supporting the budget uh there are previous years where I've not because I simply didn't feel that it reflected the values that we've promised our Community uh to the class siiz counts Advocates I hope they were watching tonight only to see that there are 12 members at this table who care deeply we might see different ways to try and protect the classroom um but in the interest of solidarity I do still believe that every single one of us through our own um lenses
337of examining a budget believe that we were doing the best we could tonight um I want to thank my colleagues for your engagement tonight um at times I know it's been difficult but I actually feel like I at least understood where people were coming from and uh to miss Schultz I really do think you need to take this script and you need to put it into your fy19 binder and we should go through everything that you've put forward to us as part of building the next year's budget to staff who is still awake and you've been through not just tonight but countless other budget Cycles too all I can say is I'm happy to start tomorrow with at least my voice of saying I hope we can find ways to really look at where we
338are directing our funds how we can find ways to protect the classroom and to miss hein's point when the general assembly couldn't find the leadership and the ability to prevent the vrs acceleration so we got hit with $25 million imagine tonight everybody if we'd had $25 million that we weren't paying toward the vrs repayment that there's no reason that the general assembly couldn't have given us that um return to to the normal repayment schedule and so um I I do believe that there's something in the middle here in terms of we need to be as efficient as we can but we do need to rely on a relationship with the Board of Supervisors in which there is an a genuine commitment of being with the wealthiest counties in the United States we can't keep exhausting
339our tax ta payers our residents our teachers and our students with this kind of budget um debating every year and it is exhausting spending nine months in our communities talking about the budget takes away from us doing the best work we're supposed to do which is how do we innovate The Learning Experience in the classroom and I I I want everybody to know I am committed to that and to miss kofax and Mr Moon thank you for hurting the 12 of us C um I and I appreciate the the tolerance shown for those of us who felt we still needed to bring amendments tonight Mrs Strauss I want to thank the hard work that everybody has put into this budget we are all very tired of having tough budget years I particularly want to thank
340um uh Christen Michael and your staff and your unending patience with all of us and the community this is just it is not only is it difficult work it's discouraging work um thank you Dr Locker thank you Mr Paris for always being honest it's very helpful um I find it ironic that as a country there's a strong consensus that we need more than any time in our history in educated citizenry to we need to expand and grow our economy with high level jobs jobs that require training High Level Training Fairfax County everyone every leader in Fairfax County talks about the need to uh expand uh our Industries not be dependent on Government Contracting looking at I looking at basically White Collar work and um stepen Foster and the uh the advisers from George Mason they
341talk about how important the quality of our schools are to the quality of living in Fairfax County and to the state everybody agrees on that and yet as um Miss hin said we've had one one year out of the last 10 where we didn't have to make significant Cuts where is The High Ground whereas the determination in our state and in our County and in our nation let's be honest to actually educate our children to the level that we know we need our children need our country needs and the global economy needs um it really is too bad about what we uh what we talk about public schools and public education for our children and then what we seem to fail to understand that we have to pay for it so that's a little discouraging
342but um everybody has worked so incredibly hard so I thank you very very much and everybody is doing more work because we have fewer resources to the heavy lifting we remain incredibly dedicated to our children and our teachers in our classroom this is the first time that I have seen the uh principal's Association and the principles come and talk to us so honestly about our need to pay our teachers more um we are we are dead in the water if we can't attract and keep uh good Personnel in our classrooms and they spoke as one voice to warn us we must pay our teachers more and that that in fact was our single most um uh objective in this budget we've made a lot of other sacrifice to do it and we still didn't really
343hit the goal that we would have liked with pay increases but we will succeed in increasing pay so thank you to everybody for your hard work Mr era kofx Mr moon for hurting the cats you do a good job and for everybody else it's late we patiently listened to each other and Tred to uh do the best that we could but again I think a very patient staff sitting over here you answered so many questions and we've at least got a balanced budget but I sure hope we could get out of this rut and actually do what we know is needed for the children here in Fairfax County and in this country thanks Michels um sadly I'm not going to be supporting this budget [Music] um I I I feel like um staff did everything
344we asked her to everything everything and more you did the heavy lifting for us um you delivered herculan amounts of information to help us make decisions um Mr Paris uh you were a a master behind the scenes um Dr Lockard in your interim position you have um risen to an occasion and and guided us um when you certainly didn't expect to be doing so the real issue to me is um the direction that came from this board and that we chose the muscle memory of solving this budget again on the backs of teachers and on the backs of classrooms and we we made choices and that's okay um and and the board will own the choices that they made and the consequences of those choices but one of the things I thought was interesting tonight
345was when Miss Evans made um mention of a of a past fee a past I I forget which kind of fee and that it took years to get it back out again years once you start levying fees once you start raising classrooms sizes you don't just get that back that becomes an irrevocable change for years to come and that is not a for this next year and then we'll solve it you know we bemoan already that I mean we're already talking about we can't solve this year's problems in the fiscal 18 budget because fiscal 19 is going to be so bad we can't fix it now and that that to me is on the 12 of us solely it has is does not in any way defay the amount of work that the staff has
346done it does not in any way um defray what Dr locker and Mr pris have done um leading the staff at our behest it has to do with what has come from this board and where the will of this board is to direct the staff because we're the ones that are in charge it's not the staff's budget it's not the superintendent's budget it's not the system's budget it's ours and this is a you know don't tell me what we value what you value show me your budget and I'll tell you what you value and um we we we went to raise class size when there's a national teacher shortage um when there total compensation issues in certain Lanes of our teaching uh um um profession in Fairfax County when we're quote unquote ostensively losing teachers
347to neighboring jurisdictions that that's their workplace and when you raise class size you're also cutting teachers those are cutting teachers jobs so we're saying that there going to be 2,180 more students and yet we're cutting teachers so I don't believe that this reflects the values of uh the people um who I represent I it doesn't represent my values um in bringing the money in a $2.8 billion budget back to the classroom um putting the the teachers in the classroom and the kids in the classroom learning first um it was making hard decisions in other places and choosing to direct the revenue that we got we can bemoan the revenue all we want but the revenue is the revenue the taxpayers in Fairfax County said overwhelmingly they were not going to give us any more money
348with the meals tax they said it and we knew right then that the gauntlet had been laid and that our task was was a very weighty one coming into this this year and I would have hoped that everything would have been driven to preserve class size preserve the the workload on teachers preserve families who already rejected quote unquote more tax by saying don't fee us into um solving your budget you solve the budget that's what we elected you to do you are the fiscal stewards you are the governors you are supposed to be the servant leaders and I don't feel like as a servant leader that this is reflective of getting the dollars into the classroom and certainly not in certain areas of the county where you have classrooms bursting at the seams and teacher
349workload issues I want to Value them and um I am going to Value them by saying no to this budget Miss po thank you um sorry I'm trying to go back and find our last presentation there is some bad news but there's also a lot of good news for tonight so I'm going to try to start with some of that um I am proud to say that now for our second year since four of us have been on this board we've been able to do a step at an MSA for our teachers and I think that is critical very important and something um I hope we can continue to do and we'll continue to do um moving forward in addition oh they have left us they were here for most of the evening but we
350were able to compensate apparently aison uh they work immense hours Way Beyond what they are paid and so um and provide great great um support it is very late for our students um in addition I'm trying to find some of the other pluses of our budgets um we did have some compromises I think that were really important originally we're looking at um increasing class size by one student we have reduced that to have a Stu half a student we were looking at increasing the Staffing floor um which would have affected some of our neediest classrooms um we we cut that in half as well and found other places to make Cuts including in central office um unfortunately we will not be able to do everything we wanted um to improve our teacher salaries um and
351our other salary scales but we are moving forward step by step and we will get there we've made great effort great improve movements to our transitional High School um redesign I want to thank the staff for CH polio and all his leadership and and Dr presido um and I hope that we can see more of our students getting the support they need um to graduate on time there are a lot there are a lot of things that we aren't able to do in this budget um I I wanted to start with the things we we can do this year um I also want to thank Mr Paris who is here I believe Beyond his time with us he's still here it is 12:30 you've been free for 30 minutes we owe have we owe you
352have you we owe you more than that but um I appreciate everything you have done Beyond um your your really fabulous words tonight on point you are showing just how committed our staff are here in Fairfax County Public Schools and you will be greatly missed um as he said we do have a revenue problem here I will repeat the mes tax did not pass the county increase was minimal the tax the state increase was minimal and our requirements greatly outdid those increases um I also want to remind our citizens here that June 13th is primary day in the Commonwealth of Virginia um and November 7th is an election day we do vote every year and we have um elections across the state this year so please make sure that you get out there and you
353vote for education for our Public Schools cuz frankly I think every single one of us here on this board wants to look at a brighter budget in years to come and it is important that we get that funding um one of the wealthiest counties in the nation a very wealthy state that has gone from top 10 funding education to bottom 43rd so um I want to thank everyone for everything we've done I think it's been tough it would have been a little bit less tough had we not been in the situation um um and it's we're about to end the budget and I hope you realize that we're starting again with fiscal year 19 very soon so please continue to be engaged share your feedback and um I will be supporting this budget not with
354a super happy face but um hopefully we will in years to come it is very late thank you Miss G Sanders thank you um this has been a really tough period of time and it's been a tough period of time because of um the tremendous Challenge on budgets I mean we are 43rd in the nation in state funding uh we don't get the funding from the federal government that we should and we had an acceleration of an obligation to pay back so this has been starting to be a very difficult year I think that as difficult as it was we also have a lot as Miss palic mentioned to be thankful for for the um Spirit of compromise that the people on this board uh really focused on over the past several months but there's
355more work to be done and I think the follow on motions will address some of the uh work to be done but it also tees up a period of how we're going to do things going forward and I look at this year and I say you know our Focus has been on making sure that we prior prioritized our teachers and we did that through uh an infusion of money for pay for teacher pay as well as uh preserving the erfc going forward and a commitment to work together with the uh County on the erfc and other and the FCS and the pension um we also have a commitment to a budget task force going on as a Advisory Group that's going to work with the school system to take deeper Dives that's progress we have
356a commitment to having an alignment of the budget with the Strategic plan that's progress we have um you know quite a bit to be thankful for but most importantly we have to be thankful for the men and women in this system that work incredibly hard every single day to try to do the best that they can do to benefit our children and um that starts at the top Dr Lockard I am incredibly grateful for the um servant leadership that you have offered this system at a time when it wasn't expected and so um thank you and uh Mr Paris uh you and Dr Lockard make an incredible team and your willingness to jump in even though you had other plans including fishing um is greatly appreciated and so team thank you to all the teachers
357parently aison administrators out there thank you for what you do every single day and this budget isn't everything we wanted but we promise that we will start working tomorrow to um maybe next week okay um oh that's true it's Friday now I apologize so we'll work after the uh break and um to do the best we can thank you so I I do want to remind everybody we're not quite done um after this we do have some followon motions however I do want to um give my my thank yous as well uh to uh Mrs darnette kofax and Mr Moon thank you so much for um all that you have um done to uh guide this effort um through you're you're signaling me all right well then I will stop my remarks and no go
358ahead Mr Wilson um go right ahead thank you um Madam chair uh I appreciate you letting me step on your final remarks there um I just wanted to Echo um the that I would I I appreciate um Miss Paul chick's um noting the many positive things in the budget and also um Miss Corbett Sanders mentioning um all of the challenges that we faced and worked through as a board uh and I want to thank uh the St at copax and Mr moon for shepher us through this process which is very difficult and long one uh and I am very proud of the fact that we we were able to maintain our promise to our teachers on on our commitment to salaries um and although there were disappointments uh during the year and uh I would
359include the vote on RFC in that category um this budget does have a lot of good things in it unfortunately I will not be supporting it tonight um because I do not believe we worked hard enough to avoid imposing a fee on our families uh in our schools um and that that's a real problem and I think we we could have we just didn't do good enough on that point and I also believe that there were members of this board who came up with I believe many good ideas and time after time um we we chose to not apply funds that we could um find in other places in the budget and to prioritize that to mitigate the class size increase and so for those reasons I won't be supporting the budget but I am
360very proud of the work that we've done thank you so thank you uh Mr Wilson and so I will continue uh with my uh hopefully brief remarks um Dr lart I do want to thank you for your your leadership on this you um have done a fine job of picking up uh when you did and um uh doing doing a great job with us Mr Paris we will miss you very much and we appreciate your eloquent words tonight um Kristen Michael and Susan Quinn I don't know how many meetings how many questions um I I know there were a lot um so many that I think we've lost track so you know we do appreciate all your your absolutely tireless efforts um I um agree that after a decade of uh cutbacks and cutbacks and
361cutbacks um we are seeing it is taking a toll um but at the same time I think it's important to um as Miss pal started with her conversation that um we do amazing work in the school system every day and we do it um in large part because of the Stellar team that we have starting with the people in this room and um going through um every school in our system um uh we just have amazing people and uh I think we have recognized that in wanting to reward our teachers we know that we need to do better with pay and we have uh started doing that um we are doing it slower than we would like but we are doing it uh we need to make sure we don't forget uh our support staff
362who are are critical to our mission as well and um I I too am uh very very pleased that we are have finally um gotten uh started on on on getting parently aison to where they are so with that um I will call for the vote uh on the main motion all those in favor raise your hand Hines palek Corbett Sanders Strauss Evans Moon mlan darnette kofax and mine all those opposed Huff Schultz and Wilson that motion passes um Miss Evans um I don't know point of something I I need to call on U Miss darnet kofx for a housekeeping motion Miss darnet kofx okay after this I move the division superintendent be authorized to take whatever actions are necessary to implement the decisions made by the school board relative to its FY 2018 approved
363budget and that all policies and regulations inconsistent with the budgetary Motions passed tonight are hereby modified and amended accordingly and the and the division superintend end is to be granted authority to make all necessary minor changes and Technical modifications to the budget and to salary scales to comply with the intent of the school board with regard to its budget actions is there a second second all those in favor raise your hand that's unanimous with Mr WIS oh no that's unanimous uh we now have eight follow on motions m madame chair could they take a two-minute break uh certainly we can take a two-minute break thank you e e e and uh we now go to the follow on motions I call on Miss Hines for a follow on motion I move to direct the superintendent
364as part of the FY 2017 final budget review to prioritize setting aside funding of 1.7 million dollars to add 20 positions to the Staffing Reserve in FY 2018 to mitigate the impact of the class size increase seconded by Mrs Strauss Miss Hines would you like to speak well in the interest of time um I I think everybody understands what this does I got to roughly 20 positions by looking at the number of schools elementary schools that would be affected by the class size increase and then I looked at how many of them already have large class sizes and I was concerned that we would not have enough funding in the uh Staffing Reserve in order to make sure that we maintain our caps at elementary so uh this is why I wanted to add 20
365positions or 1.7 million to the Staffing Reserve to make sure that we can do that thank you Miss Hines uh Miss stuss would you like to speak to your second no I'm ready to vote all right if there's no um no one else wanting to speak um all those in favor of the motion raise your hand Hines P Corbett Sanders Strauss Evans Moon mlin daret kofax and movine all those opposed all those abstaining Schultz that Mo that follow on motion passes I call on um Mr moon for a following motion okay thank thank you Madame chair actually this is a joy motion from me and M M mclin I'm going to read the motion but I'm be asking Mrs mclin to briefly talk about the motion I moved to director superintendent as part of the
366FI 2017 final budget review to prioritize setting aside funding to provide a one-time bonus for employees who will not receive a salary increase as a result of the compensation adjustments included in the FI 2018 approved budget a placeholder should be included in the super superintendent recommendations for the FY 2017 finald review and options for a bonus should be presented to the school board at the work session on the FI 2017 final budget review scheduled for July 17 2017 second I second seconded by Miss mlin um Mr Moon Mr M i my time to Mrs MCL Miss MCL um just briefly as we shared with our colleagues we think it's very important that all of our employees uh find that in fy18 budget year that they are not making less money than they did the year
367prior and given the cost of inflation Health Care increases uh we think it's important that we do our best uh and this follow-on motion helps direct the superintendent to at least um try and make sure we keep our employees whole so we hope you'll support this directive which again it's setting a priority it doesn't set anything in stone until we make ultimate decisions at the yearend budget review thank you for that succinct discuss um description um seeing no um lights I will call for the vote all those in favor raise your hand Hines pic Schultz Corbett Sanders Strauss Evans Moon oh uh McLaughlin daret kofax and mine that is unanimous with um Mrs huff and Mr Wilson away from the table thank you and that motion passes I call on Miss McLaughlin for a motion
368I move to direct the superintendent as part of the FY 2017 final budget review to prioritize setting aside funding of 1.6 million to increase the substitute pay rate for all substitutes who have a minimum of a B's degree second seconded by uh Miss Schultz uh Miss mlin would you like to speak to it uh yes ever so briefly I hope my colleagues will support this it's not setting anything in stone it's setting a direction to the superintendent um to look at this as a as an important priority we have heard from our teachers we've heard from our principals that um the adjustments we made to substitute pay has been problematic so we will have more time to review what this would look like by year end at a work session but I hope people will
369support this follow-on motion as direction to the superintendent Michels all right all those in favor raise your hand Huff Schulz McLaughlin Wilson all those opposed Hines Paul Corbett Sanders Strauss Evans Moon darck kofax and mine that motion fails I call on uh Miss Corbett Sanders for a motion I move to instruct the superintendent to work with our employee organizations to develop a plan for addressing employee employees feeling overwhelmed by workload raised in the recent employee surveys and by speakers before the school board this strategy is in line with achieving our strategic plan ignite goals of creating a caring culture of Student Success and resource stewardship the plan should be presented to the school board for discussion and action in the fall of 2017 prior to deliberating on the fiscal year 2019 budget is there a
370second seconded by Mr Moon um uh Miss Corbett Sanders we have repeatedly heard from uh our employee organizations as well as in the context of our budget deliberations that the number one uh word that has come up in surveys is a feeling of being overwhelmed and using that word is being overwhelm whelmed it has been attributed to all sorts of reasons and so rather than attributing it to multiple reasons and not really understanding it and understanding how we can mitigate against the feeling of being overwhelmed I think it's time to set a priority for us to look at um how we can address these concerns many of those concern or some of the concerns may be addressed by changing our workload or the way in which we do things some things may need uh some
371Investments of budgetary dollars to uh provide relief in the classroom or uh in the buildings and so rather than um going into next budget year which proves will likely be difficult uh without having a um Vision on how to address these concerns I would suggest we need to do it Mr Moon pass uh Miss Hines I'm sorry I know it's late I I really want to support this because it feels so good but my concern is that I don't I think that the connection to the budget is so so tenuous I don't understand why it's a budget followon motion and I feel like it's a conversation that we need to have but we can't have it tonight and I U again I don't know that it's appropriately here anyway so I don't think I'll be
372supporting it even though we need to do this all right with that all those in favor please raise your hands pchi Schulz Corbett Sanders Strauss Evans Moon Wilson daret kofax melan all those opposed Hines McLaughlin all those abstaining Huff that motion passes uh call on Miss Corbett Sanders for for a motion I'm going to suggest that I uh not do motion five but go directly to motion six thank you five okay I'll throw okay so go you're going to motion six I thought I would combine them no it's it's up to you Mrs cor let me go ahead and do motion five since it's been out there then um I move to instruct the superintendent to Prior prioritize the use of the Staffing Reserve to supplement supports for the largest sized math and science classrooms
373in secondary school second second and by uh Mrs Schulz Miss Corvett Sanders as I've mentioned multiple times tonight the um high schools and middle schools have been most dramatically impacted by the uh class size um changes or the Staffing formula and we've heard repeatedly the um challenges in those MA in the uh upper level math classes as well as science classrooms that there are so many students that they can't do the experiments because uh they're just too big of a class and so therefore um this doesn't allocate funds it just sets a priority to relieve um stress on those classrooms uh in the middle and high school Mrs Schultz Miss hin oh again I apologize um I I have already heard um from some people about worries that what does this mean for other kinds
374of classes does that mean that we're going to be putting teachers in math and science classrooms and not in English classrooms does it mean we're going to be putting teachers in high schools and not in elementary school so I I don't know that I can vote for this because I don't know if that's a real concern and mostly because I don't know how this actually gets implemented and this is where even though we have a late hour here if we're going to take this things seriously I feel like I need to ask um staff to tell me how how you do this um so for example how does this actually play out a a high school teacher a high school princip one high school principle asks for another math teacher another high school principal asks
375for another English teacher you give the math teacher but not the English teacher or you give the math teacher but not the art teacher or you're the math teacher but not the French teacher I how do we even do this it's a good question um I I think it's going to have to be school by school looking at you know the focus here is on math and science classrooms right um you know it's there's there's not an easy one- siiz fits-all uh approach to this I think the intent of the follow on motion is to keep our eye on on uh those those class sizes at the secondary level in those areas which we can commit to do um but I can't tell you the cookie cutter approach that I'd use in every place because
376I don't think there is one so then it's more of a message that we care about math and science classrooms which of course we do but again I worry we also care about other kinds of classrooms and we haven't had we haven't had a full conversation about that prioritization and so I again sounds good but I don't feel like I can support tonight M mlin so having a both a sister and a brother-in-law who are college professors and what it takes to review English papers and you know long papers I I appreciate very much where Miss Corbett Sanders is coming from but honestly I don't know why the math teacher who can actually run a multiple to multiple choice test versus the English teacher who's got a grade five page papers times 50 kids how
377how are we communicating to our English teachers that their workload is and the size of their class is any less challenging and so that's that's why I worry about this one I get the science classroom because I want kids to be do experiments but signaling out math doesn't make sense to me because Math versus English I think it's a bad message to our teachers so I'm a little bit more with you know Miss Hines on this one it's well-intentioned I'm I'm gon to be honest I'm angry that we're doing this now because some of us wanted to postpone for two weeks so we could be thoughtful and talk to each other and now we're just up down voting on follow on motion so miss Corbett Sanders I apologize in advance but this is how bad
378decisions get made by our board forcing these votes tonight so had I more time I might be able to understand where we going with this but right now with this you know licky split I I can't vote for it right now Mrs H yeah thank you uh similar to miss Hines uh my concern with this is not the intent I think the intent is excellent um and I I actually appreciate the uh comment specifically to secondary school but I do not feel like I'm in a position or have the knowledge to decide what should be prioritized from the Staffing Reserve so I'm reluctant to direct the superintendent how to do that cuz I haven't heard from the superintendent and from Educators um how it should be prioritized and my hope would be that they would
379be doing this work and prioritizing the Staffing Reserve uh where it is most needed and at this point uh would like to just go forward knowing that they will be doing that possibly if it was more general just a secondary school I would support it but I do not have enough information at this point to support it Mrs truss just very briefly I think the the motivation is exactly where we would like to be um I don't think there's enough money in the reserve to be able to uh other than on a Wednesday or Tuesday and I know our people will do that anyway because that's what they do but um this is being able to uh bring down some of the large classes at secondary level is going to have to be a task
380for another day but I appreciate the motivation thanks I also appreciate the motivation and um I I've had conversations with u Miss Corbett Sanders and I um certainly appreciate the goal here uh but like some of my colleagues I I think um it's it's a mistake to start dictating what priorities are in the Staffing Reserve because we the very reason for having it is to deal with unusual situations um a sudden influx at this location or another or a need for a lower class size at a math or a science school or a math or a science class or could be an English class so um for that reason um I won't be supporting either this amendment or the one following it with that um all those in favor raise your hand oh I beg
381your pardon um Mrs Schultz um I'm not sure whether Miss Corbett Sanders would accept and because I didn't talk to her about this in advance um a friendly amendment to just largest taking out sized math and cl and and in that way some of our largest ums second classrooms in secondary could be um potentially defrayed so it's up to her if she's willing to accept Okay so I'm going to Friendly Amendment this too um just for the largest classrooms and secondary schools all right I will respond to that by saying I still won't support it because then that suggests that it's more important in secondary schools than in primary schools and elementary schools and um Miss Corbett Sanders and I had this conversation as well which is uh why I um feel perfectly prepared to
382um vote on this tonight because I I I understand that there's a cap on Elementary class sizes but there are other needs at elementary schools so if we're prioritizing both elementary schools and secondary schools then uh we're we're just they balance each other out so um with that we have a different we we have taken out um Miss Corbett Sanders has taken out um math and science so it's his larges sized classrooms in in secondary schools um all right with that can I okay uh I guess we have another round of um comments on that Mrs H Miss Huff just quickly my question would be to Dr Lockard is this something different than you would do if we didn't have this follow on here um I'm I'm just reading it again and thinking about about
383prioritizing the use of the Staffing Reserve um no I I don't know that we'd prioritize the use of the Staffing Reserve to specifically own here I think we're always watching and monitoring those class sizes but I think this adds another layer to what are we you know how are we going about doing that and so um and is that helpful then yes and no um yeah we are looking at class sizes um I think it's difficult like I said there's our high schools are so complex the way they're uh where classes get scheduled and and how students enroll for them and so that's why earlier when I was asked the question how would we do this um I we need to do a little bit of work because there isn't a one there isn't a
384a way that works for every single school okay all right thank you just briefly then I the reason I think this that is an important question and to listen to is because there are a lot of follow-on motions and and I want to make sure that we aren't when we need to follow up on these motions to make sure that the superintendent and staff is able to do what we're asking to to to clutter it with things that they I I have confidence they're going to be doing anyway um it just makes me more hesitant to to put more file on motions because I would like them to focus I think we've passed a couple earlier that are are going to be impactful and helpful whereas this feels to me I don't know how it
385should be prioritized we made the decision in the budget to raise class size and now we have to hand it over from the operational standpoint and trust that they're going to mitigate that as best as possible all right with that I'll call for the vote well can I just respond very quickly certainly um we have a limitation on the size of classrooms in elementary school and we have limitations on the size of other classrooms when it's a special needs or a high needs English language learning class and others and so what this does is it says we need to look at our SE secondary schools that have the largest size classrooms and the secondary schools are the schools that were most impacted by the um New Staffing formula every single middle and high school in
386this County was impacted not every Elementary School and um so this just says if we have to choose between one or the other and there are tough decisions we need to understand if this school has already been hit hard can we give them some support and these are the schools that are hit harder than any others and that's our secondary schools so that's why this is an interim solution dealing with it in the near term and then my next followon uh is more similar and this is what I originally said I'll just skip five because I had a feeling but um I would like to vote on this and then talk about why we need to um pick up on what Dr Locker just said which is do some heavy thinking and put together a
387strategy of how to deal with class sizes all right with that I'll call for the motion um uh Mr Moon just briefly I I'm not going to support either five or six I'm so sorry at this point at night 1:00 I don't know what these motions actually do in you know operationalizing them I just cannot picture them so I am unable to support at this point right all those in favor raise your hand Schultz Corvett Sanders all those opposed Hines P Huff Strauss Evans Moon McLaughlin Wilson daret kofax mline that motion fails Miss Corbett Sanders I'm going to edit this a little to to try to address the concerns but I move to instruct the superintendent to develop a strategy for decreasing class sizes at the middle and high schools uh for decreasing class sizes
388beginning with the middle and high schools in the first phase of the plan the strategy is in line with achieving our strategic plan ignite goals of creating a caring culture Student Success and resource stewardship the plan should be presented to the school board for discussion and action in the fall of 2017 prior to deliberating on the fiscal year 2019 budget so what this is about folks oh go do I have a second seconded by Mrs Schultz okay I'm going to Second it just to give Miss Corbett Sanders courtesy the purpose of this is to really start the work and have the work done so that it can inform the budget process next year in the same way that we developed a strategy for addressing um salaries and compensation for all of our Workforce we need
389to do the same deliberate approach to developing a strategy for class size and it is something that it doesn't cost anything it really is allows us to focus our work in line with a caring culture to inform our decision making that's going to happen have to take place next fall Miss uh Schultz pass Miss Hines yeah thank you um I I think I'll have to abstain on this one we do need I feel like we need more time to talk about this and so I think Mrs mclin said that apparently some board members were hoping we would um table or postpone discussion of these follow-on motions for a couple weeks I do think we need some time to talk about it my concern is that I and with with with respect M Corbett Sanders I
390don't think any of these follow on needed to wait until this week to come to us I think we could have had the time to talk about it um you know and and I know we've all been busy and sometimes ideas come to you but uh we don't need to be uh digging into this tonight at this hour so I'll abstain and if it doesn't pass I hope that you bring it back to us miss Huff um yeah thank you Miss Corbett sards I can support this I think it speaks to developing a strategy in the conversation I believe staff could come back to us and say in the strategy that maybe 30 is not the right number or something else is the right number but it does indicate that we need to take care
391of our students from K through 12 um we are doing it at the elementary school level it it's not perfect but it's helped and there is a lot of strain for our students at the middle and high school level as well as for teachers so I think um getting to a strategy that addresses it uh is important Miss mlin so I know there was conversation earlier about friendly amendments I I could get behind this in terms of um if we deleted math and just said with an emphasis on science because I think okay she so it's just oh I'm sorry I thought that was on the last one so um I I will say since we already do this at the elementary school level we abs absolutely now need to think about how we're going
392to address this at the middle and high school level I'm very worried about our teachers and when we are getting above 30 it is impacting quality instruction so thank you for your modifications I am fully supportive of it because I only see something good coming out of this one miss darnette kopex so you took out Math and Science correct and um I would ask that you just say prior to to rather than the fall given the fact that um you know where we are in our um because this I'm fine with that let's just take out the fall and so you already took out Math and Science and you just say prior to deliberating on the FY 2019 budget and and it it and it's just asking for it what I'm seeing it as something
393that will be conducted in a work session for us to look at is that is that your goal yes to put on put as a priority addressing this in the same way we did for salaries okay so again while I think this is um worthwhile um I I do think now we're getting into the realm of things that we typically will bring to a forum and um and asked to prioritize as a work session so um I I I won't be supporting it as a follow on motion uh with that I will call for the vote all those in favor pul Huff Schultz Corbett Sanders McLaughlin Wilson darnet Kofa all those opposed Strauss Evans Moon all those abstaining Hines and mine that motion passes I call on Mrs hop Mrs up I move to direct
394the superintendent to develop a line of business process reflective of the unique needs of FCPS in order to educate the community and the aray of services provided and to receive stakeholder input for the school board to identify programs Andor services for review with a goal of improving efficiency and Effectiveness second seconded by um Mrs Schultz uh Miss Huff thank you um so there have been some comments made tonight that I think are important to this Fallen motion um comments such as fy19 is going to be as tough as fy18 um and I feel like the method we've been using isn't working um and there's also comment made that every year we're cutting around the edges all of the low hanging fruit is gone and so I think is this is important work that will help
395us avoid being in a situation where we have the strings Community pitted against the language immersing Community where we have class size pitted against teacher compensation um and I appreciate that Dr lard is um pushing merching forward with the task force and think that this is a complement to that uh the task force as I understand it will be identifying a couple of items to take a deep dive with community members who have a specific professional background in finances I think that having this work done uh will help us going forward to know what should the next thing that the task force takes on and and how do we continue to uh annually um get through our budget and possibly this lines of business isn't uh something that's happening annually or most likely not happening
396annually preferably not happening annually but if we are doing it on a every two years but really working our way through the budget in a regular manner um but beginning with this committing to doing this for fy19 and possibly not necessarily recognizing the efficiencies and Effectiveness for fy19 but certainly for fy20 then but do you think is an important step in starting to try and do things a little bit differently Mrs Schultz yield Miss Hines thank you um so I'm I'm just not sure about this um my experience with line line of Business Review was the county lobs right was it last year I think and as I recall it was very um timec consuming very staff heavy they had many meetings their staff had many a lot of responsibility to do this that's my
397recollection and I sat in on some of the lob's presentations and at least for my for my sake I did not find them all that enlightening and I don't know um whether the Board of Supervisors really got that much out of them it felt a little bit like a work session where the departments were presenting what they do and they were talking about I guess you know what it costs but I I don't know I I didn't see it as the Silver Bullet that some people said they thought it was going to be and I know that to my mind some kind of indep dependent review um is somehow better and and so I'm I'm thinking about the fact that our finance staff and our staff in general is going to be busy in the
398next year uh working with the um the the superintendent budget task force now I know that they'll be biting off you know maybe a half a dozen things that they're going to look at maybe a few more they will be lines of business um but uh they won't be all lines of business I guess but knowing that the superintendent's budget task force also takes a lot of Staff time and support to do what it does I don't know that um it's wise for us to ask staff to do both of those things at the same time so that's my hesitation uh about this this follow on and um I don't know if if Miss Michael or Mrs Quinn um at this hour wants to weigh in a little bit about you know whether we could
399do both of these things in this at the same time just capacity wise maybe Dr Lockard I you know I we haven't really had time to talk about this or think about it so that's the problem really that I'm having as well it's not a bad idea and you know I hate to be a broken record but when things come to us in the last week and we haven't had time to ask questions like this it's hard for me to support them Miss mclaughin so I do uh recall that in the five and a half years I've been on the board that um there's been several board members who have promoted doing a lines of business and I do actually think that uh the board supervisors have asked why the school board hasn't wanted to
400engage in this type of uh U examination of the budget um I I'm willing to support this Miss Huff I actually think that this is a very reasonable board and that we could at a work session uh have staff present a plan of what lines of business would look like that would be reasonable but I I would actually say that it would be appropriate for the public to wonder what are we so unwilling to do here yes we can always be mindful of Staff time but if the if the county has taken the time to walk through their budgets and help raise public awareness of what their services are there's something to be said for that I do very much understand Miss hein's concerns and that's why I think that passing this with the understanding
401and we're all on camera and see pull up the MP3 that says you know staff can come bring a proposal that they think is reasonable but that is beneficial but what we've been doing for the past five and a half years I've been on the board and even the years prior when I was a citizen we have not been doing something that is helpful to having a deeper understanding of what's in the budget and having the board not just the board understand this budget better but the public and even our funding authorities so I thank you Miss Huff for bringing this forward and I'll support it Mr Moon thank you Madame chair I am not going to support this uh this motion uh you know based upon what I've heard of what Board of Supervisors
402did with their uh lines of Business Review did not really result in a lot of a lot of saving or you know uh uh generating efficiency of their operation but they spent a lot of time I am not sure I as a one board member can put in more time than I have been spending you know so far so at least I believe that we need to wait until we have a new superintendent come in and give a new superintendent some time to think about how to approach our budget for the future years and have some discussion rather than making this decision tonight m d copex I have talked to several members of the boards of Supervisors whose names will remain anonymous and they had called the the the process not particularly productive and not
403fruitful more of a dog and pony show but it didn't yield a lot of efficiencies hence the reason the suggestion was made to have more um staff time working together um with them as well as Leaders the budget chair whoever that is next year combined with the uh chair whoever that is NE next year working with their budget chair and there um and uh and the the chairman of the board um Sharon boliva um that that was how that comp that's how that group came to be um and also just reminding that the staff does build the budget every year from the ground up based upon what we see um what our what our enrollment projections are what we need and um so I will not be inclined to support this Miss Corbett Sanders in
404an effort to try to um blend what Mrs Hines said and what Mrs Huff has on her motion can I suggest that we modify the motion to say I move to direct the superintendent to work with the new budget task force to develop a process for the reflect for reflecting on the unique needs of FCPS in order to educate the community you know kind of meld the two that doing the line a business have the task force identify those areas that need the Deep dive and to prioritize those as their first actions something like that apologize it's really late and I mumble I usually go to bed by about 10:30 so I'm going to take a turn here and say I am going to oppose this amendment um I agree with my colleagues who have
405said that um the lines of business that the board of super visors engaged in I I've heard uh supervisors say that it wasn't particularly useful but it was hugely time consuming and I don't see us wanting to commit ourselves to um a huge amount of time without knowing that it's going to be useful um so do I have Gob backs um Miss pulch thank you I also following along those lines um I think staff has come up with a much better process for us uh I appreciate Dr lockart looking at what we've done in the past and trying to find an efficient way to do deep Dives one at a time um and to find some true savings from my understanding of what Miss Corporate centers is proposing it's very similar to what the superintendent
406is already doing right and so I I too have heard the the concerns um and especially for my colleagues who who do raise concerns rightly so of how much staff time and our time is spent on certain processes uh I think that Dr lockart has come up with a much better proposition for us so I will not be supporting this all right unless there's an are you all right um I'm I'm going to call for the vote unless you want to all right Miss Huff so I just want to make a couple of comments um and this wasn't just put put up last week um or this week is actually the same exact motion I put up a year ago um and I also mentioned it at the last budget meeting and no one asked
407any questions at that time I said I was going to bring this forward um and I said I was going to bring it forward as I did last year um so I although I understand it's late and and people are working hard um this is this is not last minute uh and I've also heard the arguments that the Board of Supervisors have done it the fact of the matter is we can do it differently we can do it better and and I think that just because one body tried to do it one way doesn't mean you throw the whole option out uh what I do know is that we're doing the same thing over and over again and we're ending up having the same conversations um as far as staff time there are 15 15
408budget questions asked this budget season and you can look at them they're separated by Department they're separated by programs and by going through this process we're actually allowing ourselves and staff to do it in a systematic way I heard comments tonight that I'd asked that budget question a long time ago and I think it's up there but I haven't even read it because I asked it so long ago so instead of just throwing budget questions out and then having answers not even necessarily in context of how we look at the whole budget I just think this is a more responsible way and possibly a more efficient use of our time and staff's time so I hope that I can have some support for this all right with that I'm going to take a vote all
409those in favor raise your hand Huff Schultz mlin Wilson all those opposed Hines Paul Strauss Evans Moon darnet kofax mine all those abstaining Corbett Sanders that motion fails I call on Miss McLaughlin for a motion last but not least I move that the school board direct the superintendent staff to work with erfc trustees in benchmarking its management fees and rate of return on investments compared to FC RS these comparison or the these comparisons should include onee threee 5ye 10e comparisons at a minimum this analysis is expected to be provided to the school board by September 2017th subsequent updates on investment returns and fees shall be provided annually to the full board is there a second seconded by Mrs Schultz m m yes uh I spoke extensively with staff and uh the purpose of this motion
410is not just informational to the board but really truly for us to be proactive in our communication about erfc there's been a lot of dialogue in the community and there's been a lot of statements about whether or not we are as effective in the management of our County pension system compared to the the school's County pension system versus the County's pension system and I want for erfc to be able to stand by the work that it's doing or also to have that chance to look at specifically what countyy is doing with its pension system we will benefit as the school board that's responsible for erfc to look at this Benchmark and when I spoke to staff they said that this was a reasonable request it's essentially going to provide us information and then when they
411present it to us looking at the benchmarking between the the two uh pension systems we can a put any rumors to rest or B allow us to be able to work at understanding where there are differences and given that the county is going to be looking at their pension system as well it seems to be very timely but I I worry about the public dialogue that's being said about erfc and so I hope people will support this because it is informational and um yeah I welcome you all to talk to Miss Michael who's still here as along with Miss Quinn but I did vet this with them before um bringing it Forward I think this is good for us to do Miss Schultz yield Miss hes yeah so I took a look at this and
412um I we got it about the same time that we all got a letter from the chair of the erfc Board of Trustees responding to some of the concerns that we've been hearing from the community so I'll just read you the part of it that has to do with erfc investment manager fees I'll try to read it quickly um rvk Inc one of the largest independent and employee-owned investment consulting firms in the US produces an analysis semi ually which Compares asset allocation performance investment administrative expenses and Actuarial comparative data from more than 70 funds so semiannually sounds like we already get that comparison um and then she goes on to say um the fees reported in the erfc and fce rs FY 2016 cfers are not comparable because the FCS methodology for reporting fees differs
413from erfc FCS is modified Ying its Under reporting of fees for FY 2017 to match erc's reporting methodology for investment fees so I I'm not sure um I'm not sure how to mesh this with what you're suggesting that we do uh Miss mcin because um are you suggesting that you just want us to look at comparing FC and erfc and given this letter um do we expect it to be more apples to apples in FY 20107 thank thank you very much Miss Hines for um outlining that and that's exactly the purpose of the follow on motion is that currently the way that F the way that we and erfc Report our caffer um in terms of management fees and rate of return is different methodology than what the County's FCS does so right now when
414the public looks at our caffer and their caffer their caffer looks like they have lower management Fe and that we're not running our our um pension system as well so I'm wanting to promote the fact that if we in talking to staff and they said September was a very reasonable deadline that they've already spoken to County staff to get the apples tapples data so that we get a chance to then have a accurate more reflective conversation and I think this is again it's something that we want to help benefit erfc by getting this your correct about the rvk but what we're dealing with now as you can appreciate is it's the comparison of us to the county and the and the public statements that we're paying twice as much fees as they are let's put
415this information into accuracy and that's why this is not anything right now that that erfc has been able to provide us but with this direction they can Mrs stuss again I'm very reluctant to do this at this late at night I have no idea what staff would be required to do this is this information that you already have is this just like writing a two-page report we are getting an erfc report this summer but I'm I'm I don't want to ask you to do something unusual so all of the erfc data is reported to the school board on an annual basis and the report that Miss Hines mentioned the rvk or cun's report also is provided to the erfc Board of Trustees um semiannually so all that information is readily available the piece that is
416not readily available is the comparison to County's FCS um plan so we would have to work with the county and coordinate efforts to get the data so that we could have an Apples to Apples comparison and I I believe the count is working toward changing the way they report some of the investment fees so we're hoping that by that time that it would be readily available so we're not asking you to analiz the county no what we are um planning on doing is really just getting the data from the county in a format or in a methodology that's similar to erfc so that we can do an Apples to Apples comparison and if we're not able to bring that to the board by September we hope to report back to the board to see when
417that would be available from the County's retirement plan so miss mclaughin could instead of putting Say by September could just say when the information is available from the county yeah that's fine I mean I could support it I'm not asking for extra work for staff absolutely Miss mclaughin you're taking out uh by September and saying when available when available correct all right um stet kex all right uh see all right well let's uh take a vote on this then um all those in favor Hines Paul Schultz Corbett Sanders Strauss Moon mlin Wilson all those opposed Evans mine all those abstaining darnette kofx that motion passes all right we are done with the budget thank you all very much we now turn to the consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedures Roberts rules provide for
418a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through Board review and documentation has been provided to all board members in the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting 5.01 appointed individuals to serve on committees as detailed in the agenda item 5.02 confirm this preparations for the period beginning April 1 and ending April 30th 2017 is there any objection to approving the consent agenda hearing and seeing none the consent agenda is approved new business the following are new business items there will not be a vote tonight on these items but action is scheduled for a future meeting 6.01 award a contract for the Luther Jackson Middle School science lab
419conversion projects to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder and authorize the division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services to execute deliver and administer the contract on behalf of the school board 6.02 approve recommended media and lesson objectives is detailed in the agenda item is as reviewed and recommended by the Family Life education curriculum advisory committee 6.03 approve the revisions to policy 817.568 approve the revisions to regulation 1410 and procedures for reporting and investigating embezzlement fraud was or abuse and other Financial wrongdoing superintendent ma Dr lockart I will pass this evening thank you bless you Dr lockart uh this morning uh board ma uh board committee reports Miss Hines you would you like to do something briefly very briefly we had an audit committee meeting on May 24th was that yesterday yes
420um no two days ago and um basically was yesterday we um we we got a update on Staffing uh Emily carrian who has done a wonderful job in that office is going back to Australia we are going to miss her so please send her a note and thank her for her um her professionalism and the wonderful work that she's done for us in that office we had um status of follow up on outstanding audit recommendations status of current audit engagements we talked about the status of the f 18 audit plan development process and we will be bringing that on July 19th to unless I'm mistaken to the board as well at the work session right we have a work session on July 19th to talk about U one of our policies policy 1410 and we
421also need to talk about um the process for the fy18 um audit plan we um had uh talked an update on carryover fund and ending balance audit and health claims update and timing I think that's good may I suggest we forgo board reports or board matters this meeting is adjourned [Applause]