001good evening everyone this June 25th regular meeting number 22 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 Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Clarinet Choir under the direction of Adam Foreman flag of the United States of America and to the repu for it stands one nation God indivisible withy and justice for all [Music] the still [Music] [Applause] thank you all what a lovely rendition and thank you for spending your first days of summer break with us we appreciate that very much in order to comply with Section 2.2-inch that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a closed meeting on June 25th 2015 to the best of each member's knowledge only
002public 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 is there a motion made by Miss Smith seconded by Miss Strauss all those in favor um that would be Moon Reed mine Smith Daren at kofax velov uh stor Strauss uh Evans and Miss Schulz um abstentions Miss McLaughlin with Miss um m with Pat away from the table thank you all right announcements before I begin the announcements our student representative is not here who usually tells me are there Boy Scouts in the audience tonight oh there's some all right we' we' got some over there too just can you can you tell us in in your loudest voice um
003where troop you're from and what badget is you're working on thank you and and over here and you in the green thank you welcome to our meeting tonight we appreciate you all being here thank you so much and I understand um we have a former Schoolboard member in our audience to um Steve hunt and Michelle [Applause] a few announcements before we get begin tonight's meeting if you would like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item that is being discussed tonight that information is on the table by the auditorium entrance you may access tonight's meeting agenda and related meeting documents by going to the FCPS website selecting Schoolboard and then upcoming meetings and agendas the meeting is also being streamed live on the FCPS website homepage click on watch Schoolboard live I
004ask you to please turn off or silence your cell phones and as you can see we have a full agenda this evening and I just want to remind those in attendance that this is the board's business meeting and everyone should act with respect for each other and for all of those present please refrain from Outburst or cheering it is not really appropriate in this context if the board is not able to conduct our business in an orderly fashion we will then ask security to escort those out who are causing A disruption out of the auditorium please do not approach the Das while the public is invited to listen to tonight's proceedings we ask that you not interrupt our meeting we appreciate that thank you so much and I next call on Mr St for a
005resolution honoring somebody we wish was not leaving thank you Mr chairman it is absolutely my pleasure to honor an individual I've had the opportunity of working with for about half my term on the school board somebody who has made a tremendous difference for the communities that I serve as well as for the children and parents and really Community itself that that we are a part of um debie Miss Tyler would you mind coming to the podium so we can uh properly recognize you I know you're used to be in a position where you are talking to many and in this case you're talking to hundreds and but for all the right reasons in this case it's really our opportunity to honor you for your years of service and tens of years of service to fairx
006County Schools but I'd like to particularly note the the last really five or six years of we've had an opportunity to work together and not only myself but obviously other board members here have been part of that um it has been absolutely one of the best U relationships I've had of anyone that I've served with on as part of my service to the schools and and to to the school board not only because of what you've brought to every one of those conversations and what you've brought to the position but but I would say what I think is kind of the the classic part of Debbie Tyler which is you can take maybe the elementary school principal out of so you can leave elementary school but you can't really take the elementary school principal out
007of Debbie Tyler because that has been your approach and I mean that in terms of the warmth and caring and compassion commitment and really your Collective and collaborative style and I'm going to read a resolution here that I think describes some of that but I wanted to at least put some of my own personal feelings behind that and and share what we've done so successfully together I believe and and I know we have some of the things that we've worked most successfully on that are just coming to fruition um with a few of our schools this year but but uh regardless it's it's clearly the product of yours and many other labor but but product that that I know of you spent many many late long hours and you've sacrificed much personally which is part
008of why I recognize you're doing this now to to try to achieve some bigger and better things for yourself which you should but um it's one that we coly owe you a great deal of debt and thanks and mostly the the students that you've had a pleasure of making a difference for uh deserve that the most so to thank you the most so uh without further Ado whereas Deborah L Tyler has served FIS County public schools for 29 years with excellence and dedication effectively and energetically representing the interests of students staff schools and diverse communities and a variety of positions including special education teacher at Bucknell elementary school special education and general education teacher assistant principal and principal of pin Spring Elementary School principal of Eagle View Elementary School cluster Ford director and assistant superintendent
009and most recently Region 3 assistant superintendent and whereas as principal of pine Spring Elementary School Miss Tyler support of the pursuit of academic Excellence resulted in a 12o schoolwide achievement index gain the largest of all Project Excel schools during her tenure pin Springs Elementary School also earned the distinguished tial one school award from the Virginia Department of Education and Miss Tyler was awarded the milin Family Foundation National educator award and whereas in her position as cluster 4 super assistant superintendent Miss Tyler championed the cluster 4 literacy leaders initiative to close the literacy Gap in all cluster four schools she worked collaboratively with her colleagues and shared practices and techniques to expand cluster for instructional programs and improve student achievement and whereas Miss Tyler and her leadership as a region 3 assistant superintendent fostered the tenants
010of professional learning communities and encouraged All Region 3 school and pyramid teams to collaborate exchange ideas and share strengths in order to create the best learning environment possible for All Region 3 students whereas Miss Tyler's compassion enthusiasm and unwavering commitment to improve the quality of public education in FX County inspired her colleagues to develop initiatives to to enhance student performance and achievement and to strive for excellence in the classroom now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board extends its highest accommodation and deepest appreciation to Deborah L Tyler for her inspirational leadership and outstanding service to FX County Public Schools and for her unwavering dedication to students teachers and administrators I so move thank you is there a second seconded of my business Smith all those in favor it is unanimous I would
011like to invite Miss Tyler friends family colleagues to come forward for the risers for photographs with the board and presentation of the clock and framed U resolution then we'll give you a chance to to tell us what we did right no spe con [Applause] I'm not going so I would like to take a little bit of time this evening um to share some of my insights of my 29 years in glorious Fairfax County Public Schools so honorable school board members and distinguished leadership team I have spent the last few months since my decision to retire trying to absorb and reflect on all that is FCPS the Common Thread that I heard over and over again through award ceremonies High School graduations and in each of my 44 schools and throughout the district was the importance
012of story story is our most fundamental prek through adult method of teaching that begins when a parent first holds their child and transcends to our schools and throughout our lives what was the story behind the student who faced seemingly insurmountable OB obstacles but who somehow triumphantly walked across the stage to receive that coveted diploma what were the stories behind our teacher of the year principal of the year and support employee of the year there are incredible stories throughout our district that reside in each and every one of us that can serve to build on the greatness that is FCPS our story is being continuously Rewritten and based on our shifting shifting demographic and through opportunities that challenge Us My Story begins through a loving extended family who valued education even though the opportunity for themselves
013was limited and sometimes not accessible a family who was determined to provide the foundation for the betterment of each subsequent generation when I came to FCPS as a special education teacher in 1986 no one could have convinced me that I be standing before you today as an assistant superintendent but this is a reflection of what makes FCPS so great it is an organization that attracts those with innate and sometimes not realized Talent and allows them to soar I have witnessed this for myself time and time again with others when I left my immediate family FCPS adopted me nurtured me and allowed me opportunities that helped me reach my potential and change my life FCPS you are a changer and an opportunity Giver so as I walk away today I want to leave somewhere as is
014with you whereas knowing that our greatness lies in our people we must continue to honor and acknowledge every individual from custodians bus drivers teachers and administrators to build and maintain our Collective good whereas in recognizing that we have the power to touch and CH change lives our approach must always be humanistic it is the human factor and Humanity of our work that makes it most difficult yet brings so much joy whereas we acknowledge that we must always base our decisions with an open mind and an open heart not just for the benefit of a selected few but for your most vulnerable and for the good of the collective whole whereas I can now comfortably and confidently walk away with the knowledge and self assurance in knowing that you will continue to keep the main thing
015the main thing the best interests of all students teachers and staff thank you FCPS for allowing me to touch my passion [Applause] Miss Tyler you've moved yourself from the podium over there but I do have some I I think some of our board members have things to stay but I I I will start um I started with uh Debbie Tyler when she was the cluster director when I first got on the board and I was so impressed with your knowledge of the region um understanding the diverse needs of our students knowing what need it's happen and how it needed to happen and basically your passion for your work I was thrilled to see your efforts rewarded through your career growth and your positive changes that you brought to the schools and for our students I
016so enjoyed working with you over these last four years and I have learned so much from you Debbie I truly have but as we know all good things must come to an end and with you retiring new adventures await you I know your new adventures will rejuvenate you bring you new challenges and continue to light that passion that everybody sees when they're with you and when they speak to you I want you to stay in touch and I am most looking forward to my invitation to celebrate when we can all call you Dr Tyler Dr Garza okay this this could be a little difficult for me um i' I've grown just in the two short years I've grown so fond of Debbie um first of all for the person that she is but uh also
017certainly for the professional uh that you are and the leader um um so we're very sad to be losing you Debbie um but we're very happy for you and congratulate you on this important step um in your life but I I will tell you that we're deeply grateful for her dedication her service um and the children that we that we serve and the impact that you had in our schools uh Debbie is a very talented and dedicated School leader and we admire her for these great skills but I will tell you uh what I admire most about Debbie is her heart because she's always always been a Ardent Champion for children and particularly for the students students uh that need us the very most and I've always shared that with her but I've always respected
018uh that about her so we wish you the very best Debbie we thank you um your legacy in FCPS uh will be lasting and certainly we'll have continue to have a positive impact um on our schools and our children and I will tell you as Mr St pointed out some of that um the work I've seen you initiate and Implement and uh impact is our starting to pay off in very big ways and and that will continue so I know that you can continue to look back with pride on the work that you've done uh in the school system and know that it's going to continue to do great things for children in the school in the school system so we wish you the very very best in all that you do and don't ever
019forget you're part of FCPS as family and we we welcome the opportunity to see you here and there and learn about the great work that you continue to do to impact and support other Future Leaders throughout the country so thank you Debbie Mr Moon uh thank you madam chair just uh something very brief to note for those of those of my colleagues who may not remember this and also those in the audience and uh members in the public who are watching us on TV that we when we Fest County Public Schools open a new school we picked the very best ministrator to lead the SC when Eagle View was a it was no one other than David Tyler that's how I got to know her pretty well at the time uh I did talk to
020many members many parents in the Eagle View Community because I know quite a lot in the Eagle View Community and they had a tremendous respect and praise for you st I knew Debbie back when you were at Pine Springs and um just a remarkable princip principal and I remember you you helped with the retreat one year with the school board and we were so impressed with what you had done at Pin Springs and the recognition and the tremendous work in helping the students there who who did need a lot of extra tender loving care and you gave it and when we moved to clusters situation you were one of the first people that came to mind yes this is a true educational leader who knows how to help all children succeed well so we were
021all delighted when you were willing to step forward then and you step forward many more times but an outstanding educator tremendous example of what um what a caring and very intelligent educator can accomplish with our children who as as as Dr Garza has said with our children who need us the most thank you Debbie Miss mclin well I didn't have the pleasure of working directly uh with Debbie and with my schools uh I did have an opportunity to inter face with her when it um involved some other issues and I greatly appreciated um the warmth and the professionalism uh that you brought in all of our interactions together and in listening tonight to my colleagues and Dr Garza I just simply want to add my deep appreciation to you uh for 29 years of touching
022so many lives not just our children but all the employees who got to work with you and in support of the great work you were trying to do for our schools uh you will be dearly missed uh but we also hope that as Miss daret kofx noted uh that your next journey in life will bring you even Greater Joy because you've brought so much joy to our school system anyone else Mr Vela hello soon to be Dr Tyler um as I reflect on your service we kind of came in at the same time you as the region uh superintendent and I as a board member um and I think actually you have the hardest job in Fairfax County Public Schools um when I look at the schools in in your um in your region I
023saw a list the other day of the schools that uh have accreditation issues and I I think a majority of them are are in Region 3 and it concerns me for a couple of reason there I have a couple of concerns first of all that we burn you out and we burn out the people that are reporting to you and the state has set up sort of a perverted uh accountability system that uh works against the people who want to work with the children who have the greatest needs as you have worked in your career um your predecessor told me that one of the most difficult problems that we had in Fairfax County Public Schools was attracting and ret retaining the best Educators and principles in the region and it's understandable why that would be
024right if our accountability system is based on measures that do nothing more than simply reflect the socioeconomic challenges in those schools then how how are the actual efforts of you and your colleagues and all of the Educators how are those seen how are those rewarded why would one want to go into that so I'm sorry I'm going off on a a tangent but I know this is something that you and I have talked about passionately and I think as a board that we have very important work to do to Advocate with our legislature um our state legislature the Congress um I hope the public who is here will help recognize that there is a great need for reform of the accountability system which is creating what I regard as essentially perverse uh incentives so I
025hope that uh you as you go forward Dr Tyler that you will help us help to educate the folks in the room and help us to educate our legislatur that we can bring about these changes so we don't burn out people like you and we get the the young teachers and the quality teachers and principles to want to be in your region and flourish there so I thank you very much for your service mels you are about to be a very lucky man because I'm sure that we have taken more than our share of this lovely lady in the last 29 years I think you get the next 29 exclusively congratulations and we're going to miss you Mr movine so um Debbie I think this is a very sad night for all of us but
026clearly you've you've made such a big impact on our community which is why such a big crowd has come out for you tonight um and uh but I will say you know my observations of having worked with you over the past few years is that um you have um really put your heart into everything you do uh the public doesn't realize how much time you or any of us put into the work that we do you know you're out there on weekends on week nights very late trying to support a community that very much needs needs um you as a leader um and that's been very admirable um I will also say that you are a very non-nonsense person uh and you do things very quietly but you get them done and I think that's
027the kind of leader that all of us can aspire to be um you know you aren't a showwoman and I think we can all admire you for that so thank you so much thank you we wish you all the best please stay in [Applause] touch we next have another resolution and this is um agenda item 2.05 live a resolution naming the interior Courtyard at Freedom Hill Elementary School and I call on Miss Reed thank you madam chair I will ask Miss Diane gerdek to come to the podium please and while she's doing that I'll speak a little bit can one person make a difference just ask the Freedom Hill Community Diane gerak has served as one of the most passionate advocates for the Freedom Hill Community she's responsible for bringing a vast array of improvements
028to the school as well as opportunities for students and families her leadership passion and commitment have proven invaluable over her many years at Freedom Hill I've worked with Diane since 2009 when I joined the board she is tenacious and committed to push for what is Right fair and best for Freedom Hill students parents and staff well what has she done what influence has she had in addition to being a mom of four children she has I I actually asked for the uh the Committees and the contributions and there are three pages of them here since 2004 so I'll just share a few um Spirit day fundraiser spaghetti night dinner auction Box Tops for Education PTA Treasurer president oh let's see sixth grade representative chess club liais on 5K Pumpkin Run skate night variety show faculty
029basketball game before and after school activities coordinator 5K run variety show landscape committee before and after school activities everybody getting tired yet newsletter it goes on and on so this lady is really a a a Super Woman I don't know how she does it with four children um but she is so dedicated and I want to thank her personally for her sustained tireless support on behalf of the Freedom Hill Community and Diana I'll be seeing you at Kilmer and Marshall I would ask that at this point I get to read the resolution that was just my words now I'll read the official words and then we'll get uh some folks up for some pictures whereas Diane gerdek a parent in the Freedom Hill Elementary School Community from 2002 through 2015 was an active member of
030the PTA and a constant Presence at the school she performed countless hours of volunteer service tirelessly working in support of improving the school School increasing resources and strengthening the Freedom Hill Community whereas while her four children attended Freedom Hill Miss gerak served as PTA treasurer for three years and president for seven years member of numerous other committees she helped to organize fun runs Bingo nights and faculty basketball games and coordinated before and after school activities and holiday events and whereas Miss gak's success at expanding PTA fundraising efforts enabled Freedom Hill to prosper as the PTA increased its contribution of school resources including the purchase of smartboards sports equipment and a new sound system through Ms gex's efforts and PTA financial support Freedom Hill was able to implement its science technology engineering art and math program
031and there's more whereas Miss gerdek was involved in the planning of the recent renovation of Freedom Hill she worked to obtain PTA funding for the new school Marquee the enhancement of the school playground and the beautification of the grounds she encouraged the restoration of the Interior Courtyard for use as an outdoor classroom and an area of respit for staff and whereas the naming of the Freedom Hill Elementary School interior Courtyard in honor of Miss gerak and her family will be an enduring tribute to her many contributions to Freedom Hill and her untiring commitment to its Improvement now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax count County School Board names the interior Courtyard at Freedom Hill Elementary School the Diane gerdek and family Courtyard in honor of Miss gc's many years of selfless commitment to the
032school and to recognize the exemplary standard that she set regarding volunteering and support of the public school education of all children I so move is there a second second and by miss schs all those in favor and the vote is unanimous congratulations family friends and colleagues come on down for a [Applause] picture officers look right here count three one two three congratulations thank you yeah we'll do it again go everyone look right here count three one two congratul [Applause] next we move on to our agenda item number three uh 3.01 citizen participation in accordance with the board's policy a maximum of 10 speaker slots are available on a first come first sered basis for every regular meeting in addition up to five video submissions may be accepted in advance the school board will not hear
033personal attacks on any person complaints regarding individual students or school-based employees and they should be directed to the appropriate School principal or the school official tonight we have 10 speakers plus five video submissions each speaker is allotted 3 minutes to speak I ask that each speaker please limit your remarks to know more than those three minutes and and I will strictly adhere to this 3-minute time limit when the buzzer sounds please exit the podium for your time is up the 10 speakers are aan Kelly Bennett shup Steven Gold Laura Hanford Thomas Valentine Maryann VI vikinger excuse me um Emma chatton Steven hunt Todd sedac and Rodney bristen starting with Avan Kelly good evening my name is aan Kelly I've been an FCPS student since kindergarten and I just finished my sophomore year in high school
034I'd like to speak about the potential additions to the F curriculum regarding sexuality and gender identity the reason why so many LGBT people face disproportionate rates of mental illness and other health issues is solely because we face so much negativity in eral and abuse from society teaching that LGBT identities are normal and valid is crucial to the mental and emotional health of LGBT students by providing tolerance-based education we can create a school environment with much less identity based bullying and harassment and LGBT students will be able to figure out and be be comfortable with their identities at a much earlier age and with much less heartache confusion and so clothing that my peers and I have faced trying to figure out our identities research shows that LGBT youth who have an environment where their identities
035are validated and respected face much lower risks of mental health problems and other health problems LGBT inclusive L education will help Foster an environment where lgpd students can feel respected and secure in their identities and will thus live happier and healthier lives furthermore the fact remains of any parent that these changes do pass any parent who does not want their child attending these lessons will be able to op their child out of these lessons however if these changes do not pass any child who any parent who wants their child to learn these lessons but is unable to teach these lessons themselves will not be able to op their child into these lessons and besides there's nothing wrong with offering information to students in fact it's beneficial to offer as much information on as many topics
036as possible especially considering the fact that conversations about sexuality and gender identity are already occurring among students in middle school and and stimes even earlier I believe that education leads to understanding which leads to acceptance and through an emphasis on tolerance these lessons will teach students how to give LGBT people and identities the understanding and respect they deserve providing accurate information about gender identity and sexual orientation diversities will help ensure students have a broad understanding of the world in all of its diverse peoples and will help inform students decisions about how they will choose to interact with and shape their world as both during their school years and as they move forward into adulthood above all else I see this as a students rights issue this is about LGBT students rights to be able to
037understand themselves and feel safe and included in their classrooms this is about all students rights to be able to learn about important relevant topics to be able to form their own opinions on these topics this is about our right as students to a broad thorough and inclusive educational experience so please give us the education we deserve thank you Bennett shup followed by Steven Gold um I would like to uh Begin by thanking uh you for allowing me as a youth um to represent myself and other youths um personally I identify as a female and someone who is gender non-conforming and it hasn't been easy um when I came out in seventh grade which I should now mention is the average coming out age my peers had little grasp of the concept and were quite cruel
038to me um I was verbally and even physically harassed due to my appearance and sexual orientation Not only was I receiving this feeling of hatred from outside but from within as well I had not been exposed to the necessary knowledge that I needed about my homosexuality even though I came from a supportive background I can only imagine when lgbtq plus child from an unsupportive background would feel I would expect that since they had not had effective in education on the subject they would unsafely try to change something about themselves that they had not been that they would not be able to change and science does agree that conversion therapy is ineffective and detrimental to mental health for my lack of acceptance and loneliness due to the fact that I thought I was alone in my
039sexuality I tried to end my life twice I firmly believe that if in seventh grade I had been given a l on sexual orientation and gender identity both I and my peers would have been more accepting of lgbtq plus students and had that happened I would not have to be standing here tonight telling you that I tried to kill myself please don't let another young gay teen try to do the same knowledge is power and with this implemented in seventh and eighth grade knowledge could become acceptance too if we are a community that Prides ourselves on acceptance and diversity we need to teach everyone about everyone and that includes the LGBT TQ plus Community if homophobia and hatred is taught then acceptance understanding and kindness can be taught as well and I believe that that
040is what the addition of lgbtq plus information into 7th and eth grade fle and health classes would accomplish as sadly we have seen by what has been said by those opposed to the changes the proposed addition to the curriculum is not only right but necessary to prevent the spread of more intolerance and hatred thank you Steven Gold followed by Laura Hanford good evening my name is Steven Gold I'm an attorney with my own law practice here in Fairfax County and I have two daughters that went through the Fairfax County Public School System I am also a member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax and for a number year of years I've been a facilitator for the our whole lives or owl class that is part of the children's religious education program at uucf owl
041is a human sexuality curriculum that was developed as a joint project by the Unitarian Universalist and the United Church of Christ the owl program starts in the first grade has an elementary school module a module for 8th grade and and high school there are also separate modules for young adults and mature adults although we are not currently offering them the owl curriculum while it teaches anatomy and physiology emphasizes values and relationships at the high school level we get into is issues such as what is consent date rape and how to get in and out of relationships we also teach that LGBT people are normal within the spectrum of human development development and are worthy of our acceptance and respect our students are encouraged to explore their own gender identity and to talk about it openly
042in class in fact there is no subject that is off limits and the students know that their privacy will be protected we do not share their comments with the parents unless we perceive that a particular student safety is at risk many parents have told us that the class has a had a positive and Lasting effect on their children's lives I am understand that the Fairfax County Public School System covers a much wider range of viewpoints than we have at uucf and that the school board must respect those other points of view when contemplating changes in the Family Life education curriculum nevertheless I believe that we are doing our children a disservice by shielding them from information about LGBT people and other issues of gender identity I constantly hear from my students what they are not
043allowed to talk about in their fle classes and that has made the county program subject to ridicule that should not happen when the overwhelming consensus of the scientific Community is that LGBT are normal within the spectrum of human development Fairfax County should not find itself an outlier when it comes to recognizing this principle I believe that the fle CAC report is an important first step in bringing that program into the 21st century thank you Laura Hanford followed by Thomas Valentine thank you I'm Laura Hanford I'm a mother of five with my oldest and seventh grade my husband and I have a combined three decades of government work in human rights we've written laws ourselves so we're very familiar with process which is my focus tonight first this vote is not about bullying or hatred every
044child is precious and equally deserving of our protection you've already told us you're watching out for our kids at risk which you should be secondly I'm wearing red because I believe in a God who loves us and gives us good gifts of sexuality and gender but whether we're wearing red or purple tonight we're all here because we love our kids so let me get the real point and that is process that has been profoundly flawed from the beginning culminating in I am sad to say outright Deceit by this advisory committee this school board and this Administration in 30 of the busiest days of the year you presented us with a curriculum so extreme on gender and sexuality that it offended families and people of Faith across the county your own directives on community engagement say
045that your desired outcome is that stakeholders feel a part of the solution is this a room full of satisfied stakeholders by Statute the committee on Family Life must demonstrate broad Community representation and yet public comments show that over 90% of your community oppose this curriculum the makeup of your committee was the exact opposite 90% voted for it so the new the new curriculum was then presented to the public on the grounds that it aligns with Virginia State Health standards a statement this school board as widely circulated as has this Administration in all its official Communications so with this in mind I'm a research freak I researched all these statutes is their teaching on gender constructs in the State Health s sols or mandatory instruction on dating relationships and family morals or on family structure and
046roles H it's not there sure there's plenty of benign even good material in this new health curriculum but none of those controversial new teachings are there they're not even addressed ironically on every controversial new measure that you're adding either to health or family life you are so far out of sync with the new health standards we that we align better with those standards now then we will if you pass these recommendations but the most troubling aspect of this is that you tried to pass these new measures under false pretenses this is a breach of public trust we deserve better we deserve to be told the truth and we are the rightful Shapers of our parents instruction you are here to assist us in that not usurp that position so I'm asking you keep your word
047and keep these recommendations in alignment and secondly start over with a process that engages and respects everyone and might I suggest you begin with a moral code we can all support tell the truth next up is Thomas Valentine followed by Maryann viiner thank you madam chair uh good evening I'm a 21-year-old college student um I've born and raised here in the county um so here we are again um in the board is poised appears poised to Ram through more radical policy changes um but before you do I have two questions number one who wrote or is writing the objectives regarding gender identity and sexual identity is it doctors or scientists if it was they would tell you that gender dysphoria is a debilitating mental disorder they would tell you that the belief that one is
048the wrong sex are born in the wrong body is just like the belief of an anorexic girl that she is fat they would tell you that the idea that one is the wrong gender or gender fluid is a false belief that needs to be contained and eliminated not acted upon and lived by they would tell you that those who identify as transgender are more likely to commit suicide and suffer other mental health problems even after gender reassignment because it massed and even encouraged the underlying mental disorder so if these facts are not included in the new objectives it means that doctors and scientists certainly didn't write them but simply ideologues who want to force their beliefs onto the children of the county number two who asked for these changes it certainly wasn't the Department of
049Education because even the fle fact sheet on the FCPS website admits that the department of education does not explicitly use these terms sexual identity and transgender and that FCPS is operating under its own autonomy here let's be honest and it definitely wasn't the parents because according to the F public comment summary 435 commenters oppose these changes compared to 54 supporting them so I must conclude that the only people who want these changes are ideologues who want to force their beliefs onto children I am here today not because of intolerance or animosity but out of compassion because I personally struggle with a debilitating mental illness it's not similar in content to G dysphoria but is similar in its Mo that disorder makes my mind believe something that isn't true about myself and about my environment so
050I think I know what it's like to struggle with with these things and I've certainly met people who have struggled with these things so I don't want anybody here to believe that me or anybody else here is acting out of hatred my struggle with mental illness is ongoing and will last the rest of my life so again believe me when I tell you that I'm not trying to stigmatize or demonize anybody I want the best for everybody it breaks my heart sincerely it breaks my heart that so many transgender people commit suicide or suff suffer other mental health problems after a lifetime of suffering because their under underlying problems were encouraged and not solved I do not want Fairfax County Schools contributing to this EP epidemic by acting out of a false sense of compassion
051and presenting transgenderism and gender fluidity as normal and healthy and as things to be explored they are not the science says so please reject these unscientific ideas please do not force them on to the children of Fairfax County thank you Maran backer yes good evening I'm Maran biner and I've been an FCPS parent since 1994 through last week when my daughter graduated from Fairfax High School I'm here to thank you and to make a request for first thank you for adding sexual orientation last fall and gender identity this spring to the non-discrimination policy it has been nearly 20 years since I first spoke to the school board to ask that sexual orientation be added to both the non-discrimination policy and the anti-harassment policy I also want to thank you and fleak for the proposed changes
052to fle related to gender identity all of these changes are good for the students and for the staff now my request many community members worked tirelessly way back then for the changes related to the inclusion of sexual orientation in the anti-harassment policy also known as anti-bullying please allow me to tell you a story about what happened after that change was made I'm now quoting from my statement to the school board from March 21st 2002 after you made the change in the srnr I could hardly wait for my seventh grade son to bring home his copy at at the start of this school year I was probably driving him crazy saying did you have the srnr presentation today finally one day the answer was yes so my son knew why I was excited I needed to
053know that the addition really did happen that the kids really were told that it's not okay to harass someone about sexual orientation so here's how the conversation went so how did it go my son said they didn't even mention it what well they mentioned it after I asked about it what the guy going over the srnr changes just clicked right past that slide what slide well the one that had sexual orientation on it he just clicked right through it so I raised my hand seventh grade boy wasn't there a change on that page he clicked back and said oh yeah The Bullying part and he clicked on so I had to ask again no I mean a change in the harassment stuff then he went back again and pointed it out but he didn't explain
054what it meant or even say the words sexual orientation now me so let me get this straight the person doing the overview of changes to the srnr didn't say anything at all about it not being okay to call someone a this slur or that slur or even that's so gay right great what do I need to do now I believe that councelor doing the presentation had good intentions what he didn't have was the help in knowing what to say and how to say it good people remain silent at times because they are at a loss for words I'm asking you and Dr Domin ah Dr Garza to help school system employees learn how to intervene and model respect for all students okay end of story I hope my point is clear policy is ineffective without
055implementation let's make sure our staff is well trained for these changes thank you Emma chatton followed by Sten hunt Carl Rogers said the only one who is truly educated is the one who has learned how to learn and to change my name is Reverend Emma chattan I am part of a global denomination Metropolitan Community churches and I am a member of MCC of Northern Virginia a spiritual Community for all people no exceptions no kidding I also co-facilitate for Friday a closed group for the parents and guardians of transgender expansive children tween teens and young adults so while I stand here alone I speak with the hopes this evening of many people mothers fathers students folks who wish to move forward toward a more inclusive and Civil Society no exceptions no kidding the proposed changes to
056the Family Life curricul curriculum will begin the process of doing just this that there has always been diversity in human society and sadly the response has often been to exclude either overtly or simply by a lack of acknowledgment the person is no longer seen as belonging and thus begins the process of prejudice fear hate separation distance exclusion and eventually elimination Steven bford writer of the movie pride has said Prejudice can't survive proximity and what Fairfax County Public Schools has sought to do throughout its history is to bring diverse people together in a positive learning environment education should lift the society together the component of change and growth in education is important we used to believe that the world was flat and so as our knowledge evolves and our awareness of the world around us becomes
057more complete so it is essential for our school systems to keep up to teach fact and not belief this is how we educate great thinkers and the facts support this change let's not make this a proxy issue regarding any other disagreements and let's acknowledge there is choice in this matter parents can opt out this should make the discussion and work here much less contentious because disagreement for whatever reason should not deny the availability of this information to those who want it inclusive information that may be significant to the education and the lives of others this is freedom what I hold most dear finally as a long-term resident of Fairfax County I have an interest in our educational system even though I have no children in the system because the children that you educate today will
058help build the future that my wife and I will live in tomorrow and grow old in so as a community we all reap the benefits of the fair Fairfax County school system and I am grateful for its reputation as a leader and one of the best in this country may it continue to be so Steph hunt followed by Todd sedac Madame chairman members of the board superintendent Garza I am Steve hunt a former member of this board and before that a chairman of the school health advisory committee and a member of the family life education curriculum advisory committee and currently I'm a qualified instructor in the fle curriculum taught in Prince William and fauler counties the code of Virginia gives parents the right to opt out of the fle curriculum regardless of what you call
059it even if the new name is the health Curriculum by moving elements of the eff curriculum into other areas and if you intend to comply with the law then you are actually opening the entire Health curriculum to an opt out option for parents now people love to complain about the standardized testing however no one stops to acknowledge that the reason for these legislative imposed evaluations is that the legislature and the people who elected them firmly believe that the public education system is not providing the quality product equal to the tax investment even here in Fairfax County we have children who are not sufficiently learning the fundamental skills of Reading Writing and math now when I had some recent surgery my therapist kept me from returning to work early with the wisdom that any effort not
060focused on healing would take away from the energy available for healing in the same way any effort not focused on the fundamental mission of the public schools takes away from the resources available for teaching Reading Writing Math Science and History without which any effort for 21st century or critical thinking skills will be wasted the expansion of the fle curriculum well beyond that required by Virginia robs those struggling children of resources that are necessary please abandon this expansion of social agendas and return to your true Mission here now to the members of the board to the members of the board who believe in a higher power I would like to address the heart of the issue we saw last week in Charleston the true evil that can come from the heart of man it shows us
061that regardless of the amount of instruction on tolerance it is only when the heart is changed that real respect for others can be found the greatest impact on on the heart is Faith and the realization that there is a higher power to which you will be held to account to have all students respect those who are different from them Faith communities influence in schools should be encouraged further hindering parental influence in their children's lives on controversial topics is perceived received as an attack on parents whose Faith while commanding the honor and respect of others does not condone all actions by passing these recommendations and disregarding the faith of many parents in Fairfax County you are demonstrating the same intolerance you hope to eradicate I urge you to follow the code of Virginia to be successful
062in your primary mission for all students before spending resources on social agendas and to respect the belief of constituents who think and act differently than you please reject all of these recommendations by the fle committee thank you Todd sedac followed by Rodney Brinson I've asked Andrea to give my remarks I'm Andrea afer president of the Traditional Values Coalition a resident thank you of Fairfax County and a mother of a school-aged child first I'd like to thank and acknowledge the weeks of work done by a team of volunteers who were instrumental in helping to expose what this school board School leadership and staff thought you wouldn't notice in this process though we have urged the the school board to keep Family Life Education Topics in fle protect and keep parental optout in act remove all gender
063identity from grades 7 through 10 to align with Virginia health and fle standards of learning and to provide parents with easily available optout information the night of the gender identity vote I explained to uh superintendent Garza that parents were upset about the process to my surprise she responded turly and claimed the process had included parents and parents had been cut out parents do you feel you've been involved in the [Applause] process once again I am here to express concern about the process to the parents and taxpayers in the room watching you need to understand over the last few days there has been major drama within the ranks of the school board the employees and the school leadership they don't want you to know what's going on to the Fairfax schools over the course of this
064week your story and your website have Chang had more changes than a seventh grader deciding what to wear in the morning clearly there is confusion in your Camp apparently your staff has been tracking my media appearances um in the fle fact sheet that you slipped up on the website in the last couple of days there's a mention of Bill Clinton the reason I used that was because I had to get around FCC violation and couldn't say exactly what he did because that's what you're teaching children here in Fairfax County parents do you want your children in kindergarten to hear about same-sex marriage under the guise of families no parents do you want your children in fifth grade to hear about Gara and syphilis no we want opt outs and we want to keep them safe
065do you want kids do you want uh gender identity to be in introduced to seventh grade no we want opt outs to remain we know your employes and the people on the Fe um the the recommendation committee said we want to remove the opt outs we have proof of that so we are very concerned that you have not aligned with State Standards um and parents are being left out of the process um finally you have not done your due diligence with Cas in point the drama Rama that's gone on whether to support this or not you don't know what's in it we do because we have fulfilled the place of your staff these volunteers have worked hard to do this you guys couldn't produce it you need to go back to the drawing board oppose
066this tonight thank [Applause] you Rodney Vinson thank you ladies and gentlemen for allowing me to speak on the subject of family life educationals and annual curriculum there are times in a Leader's tenure that they must make a choice the leaders are remembered the leaders who are remembered are the ones willing to make the right choice I believe that one of those times is now you are a faced with opposing views one side of one side represents a view based on a belief that morality can be defined by humanity and taught by the government the other view is based on The View that morality is dictated by faith and should be taught by parents as adults we can have conversations and debates on both sides on who is right and who is wrong children on the
067other hand are shaped by what they are being taught when parents are saying one thing and teachers are saying another it leads to confusion and anxiety the task of teaching our children is so important that when Jesus was teaching about stumbling blocks he said and whoever receives one such child in my name receives me but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble it would be better for him to have a heavy Millstone hung around his neck and be drowned in the depth of the sea parents parents have been entrusted with the task of teaching our children by our creator when the founding fathers protected our freedom of religion they were protecting the right to worship freely they were also protecting the right to instill a faith as a legacy
068to our children and to their children if you adopt this curriculum you will be putting parents at odds with teachers and teachers at odds with students we've been told for years that schools need parents to partner with them in the education of our students accepting this curriculum will send a message to the parents that Fairfax County schools are no longer interested in parents input this will have a devastating effect on funding participation and parent involvement this curriculum attempts to redefine sexuality so that all types of sexual behavior is acceptable and should be embraced this attitude is in direct conflict with the teachings of all religions and can be classified as discrimination of our students based on their religion I strongly advise that the board does not embark on this curriculum of discrimination the discrimination against
069parents and students who exercise their faith the debate should go on but it should go on outside the classroom vote no on this curriculum and let Fairfax County's Public Schools focuses time and financial resources on providing raises for our teachers and enhancing our students opportunities otherwise those limited resources will be wasted on on lawsuits and public debate thank you thank you for the opportunity to speak to this board next we will have several videos the video testimony is submitted by Drake Wilkinson Adam hayatt James zenat David Miller and Robert rby hi um I'm Drake Wilkinson I'm 15 years old and I'm a Boy Scout and I was at the meeting on Thursday and I want to share my opinions on the Family Life Education in school and I don't want to force my opinions on
070anybody and I don't want anyone to try to force their opinions on me so I don't want to be taught about homosexuality in transgender in school I don't want to be taught any of that if I have to learn it I want to be taught about it from my parents because I trust them and I trust what they say every time I walk into school I remember things that I have learned in school and things that worry me and things that I'm scared about when I walk into school I don't want to think every time about homosexuality and transgenderism I I don't want my mind to be anywhere near that in school I wanted to be on actual fact I don't want to be taught about popular opinions and all these things that everyone's talking
071about cuz they scare me I don't want to be taught about this this makes me nervous if I have to learn about it I really just would much rather learn about it from my parents who I trust and love and if School hadn't T hadn't already told me about transgenderism and homosexuality I never would have thought of anything near the subject school isn't educating us about it well they are educating us about it but it's not doing anything about this it's it's just spreading it more people are thinking about it and acting on those thoughts they're getting because of their hormones as they go through puberty and it's just spreading every these the hormones that I have are kind of confusing as I go through puberty I have some strange thoughts that I would rather
072not Ponder on but as as I keep thinking about them because they worry me and make me nervous and scared I continue to think about them and if Society just continually tells me it's okay I'm likely to accept a accept thoughts like that as part of who I am and I just don't want to do that as a Boy Scout I have high moral standards I I believe in the Scout Law and I believe in the Scout Oath and the Scout Oath says On My Honor I will do my best to do my duty to God in my country to obey the Scout Law to help other people at all times to keep myself physically strong mentally awake and morally straight our schools are doing nothing to keep our morality straight or keep us anywhere
073near that so I just wanted to share my opinion and thank you very much for your time I wear red today as the board has Abridged our free speech in three prior board meetings is this tolerance and respect the US Supreme Court ruled just last week that government officials cannot ban signs because they disagree with their religious content these actions are reflective of a larger issue the sincerely held sexual beliefs are conflicting with sincerely held religious beliefs what evidence have you that there is no such thing as gender you have none save your word only but I have all things as a witness that there are such things as gender male and female nature biology olog religion science reason and logic mankind cannot change sex chromosomes if 50 to 60% of transgender believing people are
074at risk for suicide why would you want to teach such a dangerous belief to children no your children are not safe the November of 2014 colloquium on marriage and family at the Vatican representing religious views from 14 different faiths including Christian Jewish Muslims from even Iran all agree completely with each other on one another's beliefs on the sanctity of marriage and family and the these priorities cut across political economic and religious differences the so-called fleak curriculum changes as well as the new additions to the health curriculum goes against the teachings and Faith of most of the major world religions the fleak recommendations mentions the word spiritual six times moral three times and values 14 times make no mistake fleak is substituting religious values for their own the humanist movement would put man's reasoning above that
075of our divine Creator these ideas are nothing new it is as old as Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament Leviticus 18 calls it an Abomination and confusion we see gender confusion here today and warns of the destruction of such Nations that practice it these ideas are an attack on everything most people hold dear and sacred our freedoms Our God our religion and our children Virginia state law reads a parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing Education and Care of a parent child the 1786 Virginia act for Religious Freedom written by Thomas Jefferson third US president author of the Declaration of Independence who knew something of freedom and tyranny said this the ACT calls such ideas forcing the fallible and uninspired opinions of man on others a false religion and calls
076it sinful and tyrannical and speaks of the deprivation of both Liberty and an infringement of natural rights today's version of the Nazi Germany description would be something like this first they came for traditional marriage and I did not speak out because I wanted to be tolerant then they came for California and I did not speak out because I wasn't in California then the wedding cake baker the florist the county clerk the school teacher what about the employees rights and I did not speak out because I was neither then they came for the children in our schools and I did not speak out because I did not have children then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me it is time for people of faith and freedom loving people of
077no particular Faith to come out and stand up for our freedoms before we lose them thank you ladies and gentlemen of the board thank you for the opportunity to address you on the proposed changes to the family life life education curriculum constitutional guarantees in Virginia law establish parents fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing Education and Care of their children you are the last line of defense for children and parents and your distinguished record of tireless service on our behalf has shown that you take this Duty very seriously my wife and I who are the parents of four FCPS students have submitted a petition that was signed by 116 Fairfax County residents in just 3 days the petition almost certainly represents the views of thousands of County parents and residents ready to take further
078action to ensure the fair consideration of our Common Sense concerns it calls for you to prevent the transfer of family centered lessons from fle which requires parent oversight and optout to health education which does not eight of the lessons the fleak committee proposed to transfer deal with how families are defined structured and function these are lesson objectives K1 K2 1.1 1.2 and under the rubric of emotional and social health 5.2 7.3 8.7 and 9.1 despite flex's assertions the topics covered in these eight objectives are not found anywhere in recently revised Virginia health standards of learning so either fleak proposals are wrong or they are overreaching without any demonstrable basis for taking away parents opt out rights for these eight objectives doing so would be purely arbitrary and against the law it is difficult to Fathom
079why anyone would want to change something so important for our children on such weak grounds or how they could justify doing so given the unwise precedent it would establish it would also almost certainly lead to costly and protracted legal challenges that no one wants and that would drain taxpayer resources as we all know should instead go directly toward our kids education you can solve this problem with without grieving anyone by m simply by maintaining the opt out for parents on the eight family centered lesson objectives I just mentioned additionally our petition shows substantial countywide support for efforts to teach students respect for all people without involving LGBT topics whose effects on impressionable young minds and hearts would be fraught with great uncertainty for information going beyond the comprehensive curriculum on sexual identity and behavior already
080in place teachers should encourage students to speak with parents or other trusted adults I am confident that you will weigh these considerations judiciously and take action on the proposed changes as your conscience dictates so many count on you to do so thank you my name is Denise shik I am an author and the founder and director of ministry called help for families when I was 9 years old my father had shared with me a secret and that secret was that he wanted to become a woman I didn't realize at that moment what that would entail in my own life and how his struggle would soon impact me by the time I started to mature as a young woman he had sexually molested me and I became even further confused by the age of 13 I
081started to seek out other relationships I needed the affirmation of having a man love me which of course led me into the wrong half many times by the time I was in seventh grade I recall having 13 boyfriends I was so in need of being fulfilled as somebody recognizing me as a girl and loving me everything that I did not get from my own father the struggles continued to intensify at home as my father has also had a peak hole in our bathroom it became very uncomfortable to say I am a girl and this is who I am to be comfortable in that skin the eness and the jealousy that existed in the home became very intense with my dad and I he had started to wear my clothing as I started to grow older
082I was so empty inside and seeking uh the love and the attention of a father and I couldn't find that right about that time where I thought is like worth going on for you know is there possibly a better life if if my life was to end and I could end this pain when I was uh 15 years old I started a young man named Mark who's now my husband and when I first met Mark he seemed so different uh he respected me it wasn't like he was out for sex uh he wasn't out to just use me he wanted to get to know who I was as a person inside during this time Mark had finally said to me I want to know why you're so distant with your father and I thought how
083can I tell him he's going to leave me and Mark had finally come to the point where he said I need to know and I need to know now and that was the toughest thing as we sat in the school parking lot and as I'm telling him you know my father had told me when I was 9 years old but this is what he struggled with and this is what he does he just looked at me and gave me a hug he didn't get out of that Jeep or say I'm taking you home I'm I don't want to see you anymore Mark continued to teach me by coming back into our home and evening my name is Robert rcky Jr I'm a Latin teacher at West patomic High School and sponsor of the full spectrum
084Gater Alliance at westbow I have been teaching in FCPS for more than 15 years I have a few things today first I have tried to frame that some people have tried to frame the debate on the Family Life curriculum as being one between different social and ideological agendas it is not the differences are between scientific fact and non-fact all of the mainstream medical mental health administrative and teaching organizations which work with youth have established in statements and studies that LGBT people including youth are part of the healthy spectrum of human development doctors pediat nans psychiatrists psychologists school counselors School administrators and teachers all say this as spelled out in the links I send in my comments science and expertise are on the side of the Fleek act report a growing body of Research indicates that
085the individual LGBT youth who hear about themselves in Health and Family Life curricula do better on a whole set of indicators better attendance better grades better post secondary outcomes improved mental health indicators the next step is to include this population in the general education curriculum not simply Family Life LGBT kids need to see that people like them have had an impact in all areas of achievement that of course is a task for another day it may have been said that seventh grade is too young to bring this up anyone who has taught or work with children knows these issues come up for the kids during puberty in other words 7eventh grade listen to the testimony of parents and students and you will hear that they began to struggle within themselves on questions of sexuality or
086gender identity in seventh grade or earlier certainly students have misconceptions and use anti-gay slurs in the seventh grade the current proposals are the least we can do the statements of the Professional Organization support this thank you for removing the word fluid from the recommended objectives I think that was a good change a notion to consider for next year is discussing the concept of gender expression and gender non-conforming students this is in line with the best practices recommended by the office of civil rights of the Department of Education as of course you know parents may still opt their kids out of any lesson discussing sexual orientation or gender identity thank you for listening thank you everyone for coming out tonight or for submitting your videos we are next moving on to our action items and the
087first action item 4.1 Family Life Education annual curriculum recommendations and lesson objectives and I call on my sens for a motion thank you madam chair I move that the school board approve recommended lesson objectives as detailed in the agenda item and as reviewed and recommended by the Family Life education curriculum advisory committee is there second second second by Miss Smith Miss Evans would you like to speak to your motion uh just very briefly um I um was happy to make this motion tonight I think the changes that have been proposed are both um reasonable and move our family life education curriculum forward um while we'll have more time to have a conversation I am going to be brief I think um there there are a few items that we will discuss moving back from um
088uh into fle from the health curriculum uh which I believe can certainly be easily done if that's what uh this board would would choose to do um parents can still opt out of fle I want to make that point very clear um if they choose to uh just as they always have uh so there does continue to be parental discretion over areas where any parent feels that it is not appropriate for their child I urge my colleagues to support this motion Miss Smith I don't think I can add anything Miss Evans did a great job thank you all right I have a a motion and I will call on Miss Reed thank you madam chair I move to postpone board action on the Family Life education curriculum advisory committee recommended lesson objectives to the July
08923rd 2015 school board meeting in order to optimize transparency and informed board decision making thank you second seconded by Miss Schultz Miss Reed would you like to speak yes ma'am thank you I've had concerns and questions since this issue first came to the board at the May 11th work session frankly I assume that staff and the fle advisory committee had done due diligence as they developed recommendations for changes to the fle curriculum for this coming school year my concerns were heightened when members of the community started to roll up their sleeves and do their own analyses members of the community who are paying attention are feeling misled and I'm upset about being put into a position that frankly could have been avoided Central to my concerns are the following one staff indicated that FCPS must
090move some items out of fle into the health curriculum to be consistent with new state standards this assertion has turned out to be false as I Now understand it about 85% of the FCPS F curriculum mirrors the state fle curriculum not the health Curriculum by moving too by moving fle material into the health curriculum parents would lose rights to opt out of lessons Virginia law states that parents are critical to Family Life Education and education in general many parents take seriously the responsibility to educate their children on certain matters as they see fit we must not remove that inherent responsibility from the hands of our parents rushing rushing is not good public policy and does not do justice to genuine genuine Community participation posting late materials or offering amendments at the board table that the
091public has not yet even seen does a disservice to the community this board teachers and the students themselves why are we bending our standard operating procedures in this case sadly staff did not show their work once community members and some board members started asking questions staff attempted to respond with a flurry of matrices frequently asked questions and information I was receiving information as late as today I received materials Tuesday on over 500 Community comments received through the June 19th cutof that all being said ultimately I propose that we move the fle material from health back to the fle and its opt out Provisions remain intact and and in the interest of transparency and to respect all the input received I propose that these changes get posted prior to a vote on July 23rd therefore I
092urge my colleagues to approve this postponement to allow emotions to be quelled and a common understanding achieved I also urge my colleagues to join me in improving an fle curriculum that preserves parents' rights and respects the significant public comments we have received thank you M Schulz would you like to speak to your second so on May 11th um which was 4 days after the board's May 7th vote [Music] um we all sitting up at the dis uh were in a room across the street um when the flea recommendation this is the time of year when our committees present reports to us and they presented the report and I have to tell you at the time I was stunned um and I was stunned primarily and and demonstrated that that perspective with all of you because
093fleak um in the presentation of their report said they had been working on these recommendations for quote unquote over a year knowing that just 4 days prior um we had had a controversial vote I was taken aback by the fact that the breadth of the fleak recommendations had from what I could tell a single purpose which was to move large sections of Family Life Education under a health curriculum which would no longer allow for parent opt out so my question at the time was who directed fleak who wrote the charge and just tonight when I ask who the liaison is which one of us is the liaison to the fleak committee and I am confirmed that none of us serve as a curriculum committee liaison I am still stunned when I am looking at vooe
094regulations which require that a community involvement team Health Advisory Board shall be identified and shall include individuals such as a person from the central office an elementary school principal a middle school principal a high school principal teachers a school board member parents one or more members of the clergy a member of the medical profession a mental health practitioner and other members of the community none of us served on fat that we are getting matrices from staff within days of this vote trying to explain why fleak said that these curriculum movements are necessary to quote unquote comply with the Virginia Department of education's Health curriculum simply isn't [Music] true so I'm faced with what is is our role what is our role what is our job up here tonight and we are supposed to be policy
095makers and in order to make policy and to do it well not in political ideology not in on on the fly as some are trying to do just right at this very moment but to do it and to do it thoughtfully to do it comprehensively to take into account all viewpoints and to make sure that we are in fact doing what we say we are doing which is complying with Federal Regulations state regulations somebody's Viewpoint I don't know what it is at this point because I have spent countless hours since May 11th trying to research through staff through the public through state legislators what the answers are behind the notion that fleak worked on this for over a year but the State Health curriculum only came out in January so there's a disconnect at the
096very outset that fleak took this under its uh charge and worked on it for a year supposedly to comport with a health curriculum that had not even yet been published by the state and would not be published until January of this year so at the end of the day if we do not if we do not at least defer until July 23rd and I don't even think that that that's enough time and in fact I've written a substitute Amendment a substitute Amendment and we're waiting for guidance from staff that we go ahead and adopt the State Health curriculum because we know what's in it it's published we know what's in it we've all read it and that the fleak recommendations go back to the drawing board with staff and that they continue to work over
097the course of this year and align those accurately between Virginia Department of education's Health curriculum and Virginia Department of education's Family Life curriculum and that we get the right alignment and do our due diligence then bring that back for next school year not this one we don't know [Applause] enough Miss sence thank you um thank you I just I wanted to thank Mrs Reed for putting forward the motion the idea of um delaying and as Mrs Reed knows as early as earlier today I was I was ready to do the same thing um I agree with Mrs Reed that we need and I that we need to bring um the some of the items that have been put into to health back into fle because I think they were inappropriately put there and we do
098need to do that I have gotten to the point I mean I do appreciate you putting forward the motion to delay but I have gotten to the point where or I feel comfortable that we can do that tonight and move on but thank you very much so I won't be supporting the delay thank [Applause] you all right any other comments All right so there is um Miss Reed's motion and it it states I moveed to postpone board action on the Family Life education curriculum advisory committee recommended lesson objective to July 23rd 2015 school board meeting in order to optimize transparency and en for board decision making all those in favor Miss Reed and Miss Schultz opposed all all those opposed Moon mine pin Smith darnette kofax velov mcglaughlin St Strauss and Evans the motion [Music]
099fails again I asked you please be respectful of our business meeting at hand thank you I now call on Miss Hines for an amendment thank you I do have an amendment I move to amend the main motion to direct the superintendent to retain in Family Life Education any objectives that are not required by the 2015 vdoe Health standards of learning second seconded by Miss Evans all right Miss Hines you may speak on your Amendment okay um I it is true a lot of what we've heard tonight is true um I think that the the uh most of the recommendations made by fleak and I really I want to thank fleak members very much for all their work but I think we did make a mistake and the mistake is that we in the recommendations the
100mistake was that fleak re has recommended that we move some uh family life items from fle to health and when you look at the website it's a little bit complicated I think I understand how they went the wrong way but we have thanks to the community and I do want to thank the community for the efforts that they took that is work absolutely that we should have done and we appreciate the efforts that the community made we appreciate them letting us know that we had certain items that we had moved to um to health that we were we apparently believed had to be done but it turns out that they did not and so what happens when you do that as everyone has said tonight very eloquently when we move items from fle into Health
101parents lose the opt out option and that is a right that parents do have it's something we do not want to mess with so my hope is that this amendment will move those items anything that does that does not should not move from fle into the health curriculum does not have to go into the vdoe standards will stay in fle so the parents can continue to opt their children out of whatever they do not want their children to learn we do owe that to parents and I think I I want us to make sure that we Rectify that mistake tonight before we vote on this Miss Evans yes I want to thank uh Miss Hines for her comments I think she said this very well and I think um uh I think most of us
102can agree if not all of us can agree that there are some things that simply need to go back into Family Life Education and make them um to an opt out for parents and now some of these things I did go through the crosswalk and and thank you to the community thank you for all of you coming out tonight both for your comments and for um uh for your statements for your many emails on on both sides all sides of this issue but um I I've looked through the crosswalk some of these things I I think most parents would be happy to have their children learn about things like resolving conflicts um things like um you know appreciating family and discussing family um so I I believe that while most parents are fine with this
103if parents are uncomfortable with this they should have the right to opt their children out so I am uh supporting Miss hein's Amendment and uh I do hope that all of my colleagues can can support this thank you m Schultz um uh Madam chair I have a substitute motion to offer I'm waiting for the technology to catch up with us I move to direct the superintendent to continue staff review and revision of the recommendations of the family life education curriculum advisory committee fleak as appear in the detailed agenda as necessary to align with vdoe Health and Family Life education standards and defer consideration of the fleak recommendations in time for implementation for the 2016 17 school [Applause] year all right seconded my missread Miss Schultz so um I'm GNA I'm G to help my colleagues
104remember something that we often say which is the the work that we do quick the work that we do um on the Fly the work that we do where we don't collaborate ahead with each other is the worst work that we do and trying to identify right here at the table which items and I appreciate Miss Hines your acknowledgement of the fact that we need to respect parents rights I appreciate the fact that you that you are indicating that parents are the primary educators of their children and they have to have the right to opt out and that we need to meet them where they are but peeling apart a uh report that is I don't even know how many pages long um and all of the objectives times all of the grades by all
105of the bullets by all of the health and uh flea um uh curriculum standards that exist at the state level is not possible to do and do well here so let's honor let's honor the work of uh the fleat committee um but acknowledge the fact that they missed the mark let's honor the role of this board to do our work and do our due diligence upfront and not do it haphazardly at the table and let's say we're going to go ahead and adopt the State Health curriculum which we know um uh exists and exists in a form that everybody's had the opportunity to review and not try to peel apart individual bullets here at the table and say what is or is not going to happen on the Fly I think that we need to
106give staff the time and the public the time to absorb that and for us to have our questions answered well ahead of time and not be receiving them at the board table um or in the hours just before coming to the board table and do our work uh in a timely and respectful manner that is collaborative one with one another instead of what appears to be going on right [Applause] now miss Reed would you like to speak toar second I very much appreciate Mrs Schultz putting this forward I think that this is the best solution that one uh moves us forward resp respects the work that has been done by the staff the committee as well as dedicated members of the public who I I know have been spending hours literally overnight uh trying to
107disseminate and understand all the material and last but not least also then um recognizes the fact that this board does need to move on to the work of the board we have a lot of other things to do so um I think this is a perfect solution and I think it it's pretty much a win-win so thank you very much I'm happy to support it Miss mclin as everyone understands with the way our school system um is structured uh this school board passes policy and then our superintendent uh carries out the operations of the school system and I think um given uh the amount of conversation happening here at the board table alone uh and the uh amendments that um have now both been put in front of us um both um Miss Hines and
108Miss Schultz uh Dr gar I would ask you as this board member uh what is your understanding about um what Miss Schultz is asking and how does that differ from what Miss hin motion is because what's before this board is now a substitute motion and as the superintendent it's going to be your Administration that's going to take either one of these and um and operationalize it and I was wondering if you could speak to um what would be the different outcome when you're looking at these two motions right now before the board I think I think at least m interpretation of what Miss Schultz is trying to accomplish and certainly correct me Miss Schultz if I'm wrong but this would go this is really more than just aligning taking some of the health um that
109some of the fleak uh committee recommended the moving some of the objectives to health it's also uh work to align our current Family Life education curriculum to the state's Family Life education curriculum which is not what's been the case in Fairfax County Public Schools for I think a long time um so I just wanted is that correct Miss Schultz we've had a different fle curriculum in Fairfax County Public Schools than what the state's fle curriculum require because you have the authority to do that and so I think this goes beyond in some of what was discussed earlier am I correct Miss Schultz um mostly you're mostly correct the the the intent because if I was going to say adopt the State Health uh state Family Life education curriculum I would have just said that but
110I mean have have a more careful opportunity to review the items which have appeared through the fleak recommendation and have a better understanding rather than what has developed literally sometimes within hours um in terms of a question and a response that the right objectives have been identified with the right uh curriculum at the state level whether it should be in health or whether it should be in fle and that we have the appropriate grade levels within within so it's not just adopt the state um fle curriculum otherwise I would have just said that but but you're suggesting that we better align it we better align it yes because there's this back and forth of which bullet item or which objective belongs in which part of the curriculum is it a 8.1 reference or an 8.13
111reference or a 7.5 um meaning grade levels you know which which one does it align appropriately to and frankly are we trying to force feed some of these curriculum items from fle over into Health by saying it somewhat closely appears to align when in fact there's identical language somewhere within the Family Life uh education curriculum at the state level and it's a very easy crosswalk to place it and keep it in um fle so the second half of my question was if if Miss Schultz's um motion on the table is to defer all of it for a year because she she wants to do a a total and complete analysis between FCPS is fle and Virginia's fle but miss Hines is the the motion that she has put forward that's now got a substitute motion
112to it how do you interpret what happens with the main motion we had versus what Miss Hines now is proposing okay now you're asking me to interpret board members motions but I'll try I'll try not interpret but the bottom line is you'll have to operation me it sounds like Mrs schulz's motion essentially would be like a new committee charge for fleak it sounds like and do it do for a year and study that this may be this may be disappointing to some people in the audience but I the intent is not to redo the entire work of fleak the intent is to go back maybe with fleak and maybe with staff but this is the operationalizing we say go do it and then you figure out how to do it but say listen these are
113the fle cack recommendations we have tried members of the community members of the board members of your staff everybody has tried to figure out where all of those different recommendations shoehorn do they shoehorn into some place along the the uh the Continuum of Education under the health curriculum or do they fit more naturally under F and if they fit under fle where is it appropriate that they fit under L fle by what grade I don't think you need a wholesale redoing of the work but there does need to be some you know scrubbing of in which curriculum these actually belong and in which grade they actually belong any other comments Miss Miss mclin yeah I I appreciate Miss Schultz giving additional clarification but I'm my goal was to understand from superintendent Garza how she sees
114the subtitute motion differing from the current Motion in front of us that Miss Hines gave us it's it's my understanding Miss Hines that your motion would have the board would adopt essentially what the um the flex report is with regard to the Family Life education curriculum with with essentially one major exception and that is would fold all of the um standards that they were going to move to they suggest to be moved to health that are not aligned with the state health be moved back into the family life educ ation curriculum so that parents can continue to opt out and it would be the eight that were referenced by the gentleman in my interpretation there' be about 12 that would need to be moved back so in essence by the motion from Miss Hines everything
115that the Virginia Board of educa or State uh Virginia dep Department of Education is saying is part of this is needs to be in your health curriculum that's going to be in there if it it's not part of the health curriculum then it it does remain with Fel and parents to opt out that that would be correct that's my interpretation uh of that and that is within your perview the fleak recommendations to you obviously that you can you can modify in any way you wish so essentially be moving those 12 back so then I guess um to my my follow-up question to to miss Reed and Miss Schultz is if that is in fact what the um in what the result will be from Miss hein's motion where what we've heard from the concerns tonight
116from the community is are you taking things out of fle putting into Health removing our right to um decide for our children if they're going to have those lessons based on Miss finds um emotion in front of you where we take that anything that's not related to State guidance in health does that then address the concerns and if not why it I really do appreciate that we've um got two board members who are helping us really understand the collective concerns within the community and that's why I wanted to ask both of you how how does Miss Hines MO not address those concerns well I thank my colleague from uh bradic um because I think that's a good a good question um it doesn't resolve the concerns because first of all I'm watching colleagues as we
117sit here try to guess which you know which of the 8.1 8.2 how do we move these back and forth and frankly what you're proposing um uh through Miss hines's motion is basically an entirely different um fleak recommendation and if we are to have a completely different fleak recommendation which is okay eight or 16 or eight with four sub points I don't even know but I I certainly don't want to make that decision on the fly if we're going to move those back then I think that we need to reopen a public comment period and say okay that's what we originally said this is what we're saying this is what saying now is this sufficient for us to meet the concerns of the public but we haven't ever put what Miss Hines is proposing this
118evening in front of the public so we have no public comment so we do not understand in context what those concerns are it also doesn't address um the movement of some of the curriculum items Beyond you know one or two grades and goes going down into three grades and so if we don't have have that conversation with the public in context then in my opinion we're not complying with VOE um section two paragraph B where it says that we need to have an Engaged uh opportunity with the public because we're really proposing something entirely [Applause] different all right the substitute motion that is on the table is I move to direct the superintendent to adopt the Virginia Department of Education vdoe Health standards of learning for the 201516 Academic Year continued staff review and revision
119of the recommendations of the family life education curriculum advisory committee fleak as appeared in the agenda detailed agenda item and is necessary to align with the vdoe health and family education standards and defer consideration of the fleak recommendations until the 201617 school year all those in favor of that substitute motion Miss Reed and Miss Schultz all opposed Mr Moon Mr mine Miss Hines Miss Smith miss daret kofax Mr velov miss mcglaughlin Mr St Miss Strauss and Miss Evans The Substitute motion fails we are back to miss Hines Amendment um which is I move to amend the main motion to direct the superintendent to retain in Family Life Education any objectives that are not required by 20 5 vdoe Health standards of learning and I understand that Mr valkov has a a mo sub an amendment
120to the amendment thank you madam chair I move to amend the amendment by adding the following phrase uh at the end of the sentence after Health standards of learning including the following objectives k do1 k do2 1.1 1.2 3.1 4.3 4 7 5.2 7.2 7.3 8.2 8.7 8.8 9.1 and 10.9 that's is there a second Miss Evans all right Mr valkov please speak to that yes I think uh Miss Hines uh for bringing forward uh her Amendment because it does get to a critical issue which is uh it is not the intent of this board to take rights away from [Applause] parents I am a little concerned that the language uh that is brought forward is not clear enough and I wanted to make sure that we are including specific items that have been identified
121to me either by the staff or the community that would that would uh take away opt out rights from parents uh that are not related to uh directly to things that the state has mandated uh these items are uh in the um you can find these in the detailed uh crosswalk which is uh posted online and of which there were 12 and then there are three of these um that were included in the petition from the parents uh that were not included in that crosswalk and so I counted a total of 15 and so I wanted to make sure that at a minimum that we're uh specifically identifying these items to make sure that parents have an opt out on these items Miss Evans just I want to thank uh Mr velov for this clarifying
122amendment I think that it um it it helps um for everyone to follow through you can look in the crosswalk and see what specifically we are making sure gets added back in but it it doesn't mean that it will necessarily be the only things added back in but um it these were things that have already been identified things like you know identifying positive personal characteristics um the need to assume responsibility identifying family members um I think for the most part many of these are as I said before uh unobjectionable but I'm I'm happy to send them back into the Family Life Education to uh give people more comfort that they have more control over what their children learn so thank you for your clarifying amendment I support it M I wish I could put together
123a YouTube video of all of the times when we've attempted to do something at the table and um I have been admonished by my colleagues that uh that it was last minute it was too late it was unclear uh they hadn't H they didn't have time to think about it they couldn't think on the Fly they didn't have time to collaborate or talk with one another they didn't understand the impact there's unintended consequences and so on um and that I don't even know what that says right there I I had an amendment that had words that was very clear that is more numbers than it is words um and I am very concerned that we're watching um a a legacy of an environment that is setting this board at odds with parents and and and
124and earlier this evening we proudly hailed through wear asses and now be therefore it resolved a parent who had dedic ated time years of sacrifice of family time to a school so much so that we actually named part of the school after her because we respected the fact that she gave us time and we're not doing the same in respecting and giving our parents time we are we are not we are not Physicians um and and we don't take an oath to do no harm but certainly policymaking done uh on the fly without consideration of the people on whom the policy has the greatest level of impact and to do so without a great degree of care and to make sure that we are in fact representing the people who have elected us to be
125here can only yield can only yield bad policy what difference does it make at this [Applause] point to Grant to Grant parents and staff and ourselves the time to do this in context and take our time and be good policy makers instead of fast policy makers to hurry up and get something done that's bad policy Miss Reed I appreciate Mr velov and Miss Hines and Mrs Schultz all trying to work to a compromise um it's ugly and it's uncomfortable um but it's important I think that we all try to work together here so uh that being said uh where we are right now makes me extremely uncomfortable with what has been proposed as an alternative to consider for example um I know that many more than 8 10 or 12 objectives were slated to be
126moved over so what's the number that should be moved back I have no earthly idea I mean there's been so much information flying around and frankly I have lost complete confidence myself in this whole process so another thing too as a parent and my kids didn't graduate but a few years ago you know there are no lesson plans right now for parents to even access on blackboard right so you know the words the words are one thing but I think um PE some people might like to see more information and I know we promised that that would be on blackboard but I don't believe it's there yet um so I don't really understand the rush to proceed I'd rather do it well and take our time this is important this affects 186,000 students and at
127the end at the end of the day I really still have not heard uh what is broken that needs to be fixed so [Applause] quickly I I wish that we could have just tabled this whole thing and just said we weren't ready that would have been a smarter thing to do Dr Garza thank you I I just want to I just want to clarify for the board if you remember at the work session it was noted that typically the board when they have adopted uh fle curriculum the materials are not developed after the board board adopts the curriculum because why would they develop it takes a lot of time effort and energy on the part of the staff to develop materials and if they're not adopted it's it's a feudal task so this this is
128the typical procedure it was noted at the work session that should these be adopted they would not go into effect until September of 2016 so that they had the year to develop the materials so I just wanted to point that out so that uh the board um is reminded of that information also want to point out yes we were sending information out to the board over these last 48 hours and I want to be I wanted to be really clear we do that prior to every board meeting in response to questions that we received from board members we were receiving quite a number of questions over these last couple of days and it was the staff uh attempting to respond to those answers and so I want I want that to be clear we'll continue
129to do that because that's what we're were charged to do is provide you with the information that you needed so thank you madam chair all right Mr vela's Amendment to the Amendment states that I move to amend the amendment by adding the following phrase at the end of the sentence after Health standards of learning including at a minimum the following objectives and the objectives are listed behind me so all of those in favor of that Amendment to the amendment raise your hands please that would be Mr Moon Mr mine Miss Hines Miss Smith miss daret kofax Mr velov Miss McLaughlin Miss stor Miss Strauss Miss Evans opposed Miss Reed and Miss Schultz the amendment passes we are now back to miss hine's amend Amendment as amended and I will give the staff a moment to
130pull that up the the amend the amendment now reads I move to amend the main motion to direct the superintendent and to retain in Family Life Education any objectives that are not required by the 2015 Virginia Department of Health standards of learning including at a minimum the following objectives K1 K2 11112 7273 82 8788 91 and 10.9 Madam chair Madam chair just a point of order I believe at a minimum was not includ it was in Mr vel's Amendment corre okay all right let's let's look at it up there so excuse me this is Mr vovs as written behind me and no what do you all right including the following at a minimum is removed that's what I read you have add a minimum removed I removed that Miss at a minimum was removed okay
131yes all right all right Miss McLaughlin uh Dr gar I was hoping you might help provide Clarity um because I think uh it's it's an important uh part of the clarity which is uh the Virginia Department of Education does require the school system um to give our students um the health so every year so the language in front of this board is simply saying that because the Virginia part of Education made some changes to their standards of learning and what we're going to be testing our children where we're going to need to make sure that that material is taught so the students are prepared to take the Virginia health so that that that is where that will be taught anything that is not going to be anything that is currently within fle and not part
132of the Virginia health standards of learning remains within the fle so the goal is that we're going to help prepare and educate our children when they take the State Health standards of learning is that correct Dr Garza there there is not a a state test with regard to the health so just to clarify there however we are required to teach the adopted curriculum and the curriculum standards which are the standards of learning uh with regard to the health that is correct a correct statement yes ma'am thank you all right I'm ready to call for the vote for the amendment that's up there behind us as written and I don't think I need to read it again I think I've read it read it several times so all those in favor of Miss Hines Amendment please
133raise your hands all those in favor Mr Moon Mr mline Miss Hines Miss Smith miss darnette kofax Mr velov Miss McLaughlin Mr St Miss Strauss Miss sens opposed Miss Reed and Miss Schultz the mo the amendment [Applause] passes now we are back to the main motion as amended um Madam chair I'd like to make a motion to table the main motion which is not debatable it's not debatable you need a second I'm happy to second that all right all right there's been a motion to table the main motion all those in favor Reed and Schultz all those opposed Moon mine Hines Smith Daren kofx velov mlin St Strauss Evans the motion to table fails we are now back to the main motion as amended [Applause] all [Music] right the main motion now reads I move
134that the school board approve recommended lesson objectives as detailed in the agenda item as reviewed and recommended by the Family Life education curriculum advisory Council and is amended to direct the superintendent to retain the Family Life Education in Family Life Education any objectives that are not required by the 2015 vdoe Health standards of learning including the following objectives K K1 K2 1.1 1.2 3.1 4.3 4.7 5.2 7.2 7.3 8.2 8.7 8.8 9.1 and 10.0 all those in favor Moon mine Hines Smith darnette kofax Mr valkov miss mcglaughlin Mr St Miss Strauss Miss Evans opposed Miss Schultz and Miss Reed the motion passes I now call on Miss Strauss for a follow on motion thank you madam chair chairman I move to direct the superintendent to ensure that a fle opt out forms are included in
135all student started school packets next fall B all parents are provided the link and parent view through which parents May view the fle lessons and C each school will acknowledge to individual parents the receipt of opt out forms so parents can be certain that their students will not be present for the F lessons second do I have a second second seconded by Miss Hines miss m El would you like to speak on your follow it is very important that those parents who wish their children not to be part of the F Li fle lessons are not there we it is important that we keep that promise therefore I offer this uh this motion I know that opt out forms are available but I have heard that some parents are concerned that they may not be
136able to readily find them and also are not concerned that they are uh may not that the school may not understands they want to opt their children art so I want to make sure that parents have the right to opt out that is e easy to opt out and that they will be given a receipt to make sure that their children will not be present and that it will be easier through parent view for parents to view the fle lessons thank you Miss Hines would you like to speak to your second yeah no I just want to thank Miss truss for bringing this forward some of the comments that I also got in emails from constituents that they were concerned that sometimes they're not sure that the opt out form is available and knowled that
137everyone knows about it so I think this is a little extra effort we can take this time and thank you Dr Garza for making sure that um parents all parents know that they have the option of opting out thank you Miss schz so so first of all I want to I want to acknowledge what Dr Garza said earlier about staff being responsive to our questions um because they were very responsive and and I do thank them because they were actually lightning responsive and that was very helpful in getting us information the problem was that there were two too many questions that we still needed answers to and so there were an unusual number of requests to seek answers at a late date with regard to this um as soon as I heard from uh my
138good colleague from the drainville district um that this was going to be offered as an amendment um I was surprised and shared with her um my surprise because uh I have worked as the um liaison to the um Committee of students with disabilities and Dr Jane lip who is also incredibly responsive on staff and mentioned to Dr Garza um after trying for the last two years in a row to affect a return of opt out forms to parents in their fall packets and no one on this board um uh agreed with me for the last two years in a row so the fact so the fact that it's being made now after Dr lip and Dr Garza had already agreed to do this not the last part of the confirmation of opt out forms which
139um I take very seriously as a parent because my own opt out has been violated by the school system in the past um so I appreciate that last part but this I I find it that it rings Hollow that something staff had already said that they would do is now on motion and appears as if we're you know and this is a an analogy I've used before um it's my rocking horse analogy just because you moving doesn't mean you're going [Music] anywhere and to make a motion at this late date that appears to respect parents rights after we just didn't leaves far too much ground to be made up so so since staff was already going to do it um it may seem counterintuitive I'm not going to support Hollow motions that make this board
140appear as if we're doing the work that we're supposed to be doing when we're not doing the work we should be doing [Applause] all right I see no other comments so the follow on motion is I move to direct the superintendent to ensure that a and fle optout form fle optout forms are included in all student start of school packets next fall and B all parents are provided the link in parent view through which parents May view the fle lessons and see each school will acknowledge to individual parents the receipt of opt out forms so parents can be certain that their students will not be present for the fle lessons all those in favor of that motion Moon Reed mline hin Smith darnette kofax velov mlin stor Strauss Evans opposed Miss Schulz the followon motion
141[Applause] passes and we now move on to agenda item 4.0 two process for the approved budget agenda and I call on Miss Evans thank you madam chair um I move that the I move that the school board approve the I move that the school board approve the process to the approved budget main motion is detailed in the agenda item and update the Strategic governance manual accordingly take second second seconded by Miss Smith Miss Hines all right Miss Evans you may speak to your motion yes thank you um [Music] this you want me to go ahead okay uh the motion clarifies and codifies the approach that the school board has agreed upon for uh creating a main budget motion this is something that was originally sent to the governance committee and uh we had a conversation
142about brought it to a work session and we had a consensus that uh from now on what we would do we would have the budget chair and vice chair craft a new om Omnibus motion after presentation of the superintendent's recommendation uh we would hold a work session receive a majority support for uh details of the Omnibus motion and that would be presented as the main budget Motion in May um so we have spent a significant amount of time on this just to make sure that every year we we have consistency and um I this will change uh language in the Strategic governance manual as well so I urge uh my colleagues to support this Miss Hines you may speak to your second nothing to add thank you Mr velov uh first of all I just
143want to thank Miss Evans for your service as governance chair for the past year you've shephered through many things including this one and I'm particularly grateful about this uh particular action because as you know this was an item of considerable concern to the board that I had a particular interest in and of course you and I served um together on the budget committee uh chair and vice chair and I'm glad that we finally gotten this straightened out so thank you very much and thank you for your work on it Mr valov any other no all right oh sorry Miss Reed I just want to also echo my thanks uh this will really clarify things and uh make our process uh institutionalized which I think will be very very helpful as we Face a very challenging
144budget this coming fiscal year we don't want to be worrying about uh you know process types of things so thank you very much M Evans all right so the main the motion um for the process for approving the budget is I move that the school board approve the process for the approved budget main motion as detailed in the agenda item and update the Strategic governance manual accordingly all those in favor that vote is unanimous with Miss Schultz away from the table the first one and the last one and the last one okay this is the portion of the meeting where the board will confirm any action regarding issues that were discussed in the closed meeting these issues may include action taken regarding student disciplinary matters board members have discussed each individual case and at this
145time we'll make several motions to confirm the recommended action I call on Miss Smith oh I M1 okay I moved to expel a student who assaulted a teacher at school I second the motion seconded by Miss Strauss all those in favor Moon Reed mine Hines Smith daret kofax velkoff stor Strauss Evans um with Miss mlin and Miss Schultz away from the table I now call on Miss Strauss for a motion thank you I move to ad to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who possessed and was under the influence of an illegal drug at school can also possess drug paraphernalia at school and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent I second seconded by Miss Reed all those in favor Moon Reed mine Hines Smith darnette kofax velov stor Strauss Evans
146with Miss McLaughlin and miss Schultz away from the table going to M3 I call on Miss Hines for a motion I move to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who assaulted another student at school and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent second seconded by Miss Smith all those in favor Moon Reed mlan Hines Smith darnette kofax velov stor Strauss Evans with Miss mlin and Miss Schultz away from the table M4 I call on Miss Strauss I move that the teacher identified and closed meeting be dismissed from employment effective immediately second seconded by Mr Moon all those in favor Moon Mr Moon Miss Reed Mr mine Hines Miss Hines Miss Smith miss darnette kofax Mr velov M Mr St Miss Strauss Miss Evans with Miss McLaughlin and Miss scholz away from
147the table um for M5 I call on Miss Smith I move that the chairman of the school board be authorized to execute on behalf of the board contracts for members of the leadership team as discussed and close meeting SEC second seconded by Miss Evans all those in favor Moon Reed movine Hines Smith darnette kofax velov St Strauss Evans with Miss glin and Miss Schultz away from the table we will now move on to our consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure Roberts rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by single motion many items listed have gone through Board review and documentation has been provided to the board members and the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board
148member prior to the meeting 5.01 approve the minutes of the June 11th 2015 school board meeting 5.02 confirm the separations for the period beginning May 1st 2015 and ending May 31st 2015 as detailed in the agenda item 5.03 appoint individuals to serve for one year for a one-year term ending June 30th 2016 on the adult and Community Education Advanced academic programs Career and Technical education human relations minority student achievement oversight school health and students with disability advisories committee as a listed in the agenda item 5.04 approve the reappointment of Susan Quinn and Kristen Michael to the erfc board of trusties for a one-year term beginning July 1st 2015 and ending June 30th 201 2016 5.05 approve the appointment of Michael Burke to the erfc Board of Trustees for a one-year term beginning July 1st 5.06
149authorize the division superintendent or the assistant superintendent Department of facilities and transportation services either of whom may act without the other in consultation with legal counsel and the school division to take all actions necessary and appropriate to negotiate execute deliver and administer an agreement and any Rel at documents with vot or such terms as they deem advisable in in settlement of the petition in condemnation filed by VDOT in the Circuit Court of Fairfax County 5.07 award the contract for the Hazardous Materials removal services to the lowest responsive and responsible biders go Services Inc and Waco Inc and authorized the division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services to execute and administer the contract on behalf of the school board is there any objection to approving the consent agenda hearing and seeing no
150objection the consent agenda is approved we now move on to our portion of the agenda new business the following are new business agenda items there will not be a vote tonight and these items on these items but action is scheduled at a future move meeting 6.01 approve the Strategic plan as detailed in the agenda item and I call on Dr Garza thank you madam chair members of the board um this is an exciting night uh this is a culmination of a lot of work a little over a year um after the board um certainly uh had had made the strategic planning a part of uh major priority of this division so I'm pleased tonight to present to you ignite this FCPS strategic plan plan 2015 through 2020 which was developed with input from more than
15130,000 stakeholders over the past year and a half it's four goals Student Success caring culture Premier Workforce and resource stewardship is built around the foundation of a very proud piece of work our FCP as portrait of a graduate uh I'm very thankful uh for the time that this board has dedicated to this work and certainly all the other time and energy and hard work devoted to development of the plan and with that uh the person who's really really put lots of uh Blood Sweat and Tears into this work uh along with so many of the other Champions I I think they he'll recognize shortly uh but I'd like to turn over um the program to Marty Smith who will give provide a brief summary of a document you all uh know intimately now so Mr
152Smith thank you Dr Garza so about a year ago Dr Garza app pointed me to this position and said that look at him a year from now you'll see if he has a few more gray hairs uh if he's been Whitted down I haven't been Whitted down but I have a few more gray hairs I have noticed those uh in the mirror but it certainly wasn't due to working with you all on the board and working with staff about this plan because I think that we we really did take the time to get it right and as Dr Garza often does because she's so elegant when she speaks she's taken much of my thunder tonight uh in her opening comments uh but tonight I bring you our strategic plan uh the plan ignite in Fairfax
153County Public Schools our whole business is about making a difference in the lives of our Fairfax families employees in the community we serve this plan was created to ignite the hearts and minds of the community to ensure that our students receive the best possible education preparing them for their best possible Futures oops we'll come back there we go so the plan was established to uh set a direction for fairfx sunny public schools and we hope that the plan will also provide a FR a framework for decision- making that builds upon a common Mission Vision and guiding principles held by the school board and the community and we all know how we got here but it's important for us to explain to the public how we got here as well so as Dr Garza shared earlier
154input was gathered during the past year and a half for more than 30,000 stakeholders uh including interviews with Schoolboard members and our superintendent and leadership team uh we actually had more than those 37 focus groups with key stakeholders we surveyed parents employees community members and students and uh we had seven full Schoolboard work sessions devoted to the plan I see Mrs Smith smiling there we had three School Board Retreats uh devoted to the plan and then as staff we had four separate leadership team uh Retreats devoted to the plan so you can see that we have devoted a lot of time to ensuring that we get this process right I also want to share that uh we just held our our latest uh focus groups just two weeks ago and we were able to review
155the information from those focus groups and add that information to our plan uh as of last week so we really do have the latest information from our community we know that portrait of a graduate is at the heart of our plan uh we know that if we follow all of the actions outlining in the plan that our students at the end of the day will be uh true communicators collaborators ethical and Global Citizens creative and critical thinkers goal directed and resilient individuals and so here we are these are the four goals we have Student Success caring culture Premier Workforce and resource stewardship and I do want to take a moment to uh recognize the champions for each of these goal areas Student Success is Dr Steve Lockard uh he worked very closely with the Departments
156of instructional services and Department of special services to to create the desired outcomes and actions for that particular area I want to highlight the work of doctors Kim Dockery and Jane lip in Champion championing caring culture uh and of course working very closely with uh their departments I was the champion of Premier Workforce as well as the champion for the entire plan that's it's a interesting job to have and uh lastly I need to highlight the work of Susan Quinn who was the champion for resource stewardship and again this was uh an effort by staff uh that included many more meetings and much more time than those four uh Retreats that I shared with you earlier so here's how we're structured you the plan is structured into four distinct areas we have overarching strategies we
157have desired outcomes we have actions and we have metrics and these structures will assist us in Ling our work so that we're continuously improving in the years to come as well as providing accountability to the school board and to our Fairfax County community so here we are with the first goal Student Success you know because you've uh seen these goals and and worked with these goals very closely that there are many more outcomes than I've noted here in the PowerPoint presentation uh so I'm just going to give you a few example a few examples of our outcomes in each of our areas but I want to draw everyone's attention to the tagline which is really a commitment it's it's our commitment as staff to ensuring that we uh fulfill uh the work within these goals
158and so the tagline for Student Success is that we commit to reach Challenge and prepare every student for success in life in school one of the examples I've noted today tonight is the that achievement gaps will be eliminated and in our last work session uh we had great feedback from the board and we're actually able to place uh the a summary of our closing the achievement Gap plan on page 37 uh so hopefully you've noted that and you can see how all the work uh aligns with the plan uh we also took the opportunity to take that that separate plan and change the language so that it aligned uh much more tightly with our strategic plan we also have an example that all qualifying future FCPS students will have access to highquality Early Child childhood
159programs and again these are just a small sample of all of the actions outlined in the plan for caring culture we commit to foster a responsive caring and inclusive culture where all feel valued supported and hopeful actually we've corrected that because the plan actually says we're all are valued supported and hopeful and that was some input that we received uh from those last rounds of uh focus groups with our teachers and our administrators and this goal will have an emphasis on improved communication with our stakeholders ensuring that the also ensuring that there are opportunities for staff and students uh to lead healthier lives for Premier Workforce yeah I'll read the tagline but I also have another tagline that you may remember from one of our uh Retreats together so the tagline for this is we
160commit to invest in our employees encourage Innovation and celebrate success but the tagline that we we uh sh sh at one of those first meetings was hire the best and invest in their success do you remember that and I think that if we F if we actually do all of the actions that are outlined uh within Premier Workforce we will truly be hiring the best and investing in their success and some of the uh examples of our outcomes here we're already engaged in uh an audit of our competitive compensation packages uh so we we know that employees will benefit from those packages and we also will know that FCPS will Embrace and value innovation in the future and lastly we have resource stewardship and with resource stewardship we commit to Champion the needs of our
161school communities and be responsible stewards of the Public's investment and I think a clear example of the that stewardship can be seen in our current budget task force uh we are uh we've pulled together uh many members of the community so that they can provide input to Dr Garza for the fy17 budget and as we look at some of the outcomes uh for resource stewardship number one being a budget decision-making framework based on financial management principles and standards will be regularly and systematically utilized I know that we're just starting the work of identifying what some of those Frameworks might look like and are using some of these strategies with the budget task force so as that work grows we'll be able to apply that to the work of the entire board and secondly we FCPS
162will regularly and systematically advocate for fiscal resources at the county state and federal levels and again these are just samples of the many actions that we've outlined within the plan so here we are we've also taken time with the board to ensure that we have the right metrics in place and each one of our goal areas has uh a variety of metrics and measures that you the board identified as those key pieces of information that you felt were necessary to make the best decisions for students staff and families in Fairfax County and we've actually created an a a schedule where we will be bringing those uh reports to you you can see there we'll begin in July with uh information around resource stewardship moving then into September October with Goal Area 3 Premier Workforce December
163January goal area 1 Student Success March April being that of caring culture and then in June giving the board an opportunity to assess the overall progress of the plan and make any necessary changes because again it's important to note that uh our plan is fluid so as with any Dynamic organization the Strategic plan is an evolving document that is not set in stone and so adjustments will be made uh as needed and so as this brings me to the end of the presentation I know that we've uh applauded the work of several members of the room today but I really have to applaud your work in this process uh I applaud your work in the process because I've been with you in all the Retreats uh I know that you didn't take this lightly that
164we had discussion after discussion uh in small groups we brought Hank in from ekra to work us through and we had questions I've had individual conversations with board members and so it's important to know that that uh you all see this as a new bright direction for Fairfax County Public Schools uh that you've taken it so seriously and that we've all I think been able to create a document uh that will help us move in the right direction for Fairfax County for our families and most importantly for our students I might want to add one thing again I just to reiterate the thank yous um I do think this is really great work um very Innovative very forward thinking I think it's the right direction for our school system I do appreciate the seriousness um
165for which you all have approached this work um and I can say the same for our leadership team uh who've worked very hard um I know we've provided you beautiful copies of the book um but I just wanted to let you know that we will not be producing these in Mass we did it for you tonight and we've provided it to you in written form like this I think at a couple of work sessions because it's hard to to work through it um in this detailed manner without having a copy in front of you but we will be providing uh a print uh ready version on the website it's posted on the website today for bardocks and I've actually had a business partner who was very impressed with the plan say that at any point
166we need a lot of copies of this that they would fund it for us so um if if we ever wish to have a you know some pretty copies like this we have a business partner who will help us do that so we're very grateful Miss Smith you know it's very interesting when you start a process and you're not sure where it's going to end up in the end um and and you know there's Faith along the way are we going to get there and I think one of the things that I like about the plan is we are looking to the Future we're looking at how we teach reading and there there's parts of this plan that will get us to a better place educating kids so I'm very excited about it thank you
167Mr Mr vov Dr gar is very interesting that you made a mention of the business community and their reaction to this um there's an aphorism which I I really don't know where it came from from the business world I think it's true somebody said H good people Point them in the right direction and get out of the way and I feel like we have hired our good people that's all of you we're pointed in the right direction and now it's time for us to get out of the way M Strauss thank you Dr Garza thank you Mr Smith and all the people that have worked with and all of us this has been a lot of very heavy lifting it's taken us two years and I'm very pleased with the product it is innovative this
168is um uh I like the fact that it is meant to be an evolving document which I think is absolutely appropriate um that we have our our goal area is we have the metrics we have even separated out uh and acknowledged that some of the metrics are for the school board for our decision- making process there are many many metrics and things that are are the purview of the superintendent and Educators because there's a tremendous amount of that you all have to manage on a daily basis we are looking at the the policy level and I think this very much leads us to that um I particularly like the plutar um uh quote the mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be ignited I really like that and I know
169that our teachers I think will be delighted because part of what they are looking for is the passion and the joy of teaching and learning that's why they became teachers in the first place we are about learning and um I do think this sets us in that direction very clearly it recognizes uh I think issues uh that are very important to us right now um we know that closing the achievement Gap uh Healthy Life Choices certainly all the academic uh um goals and the fact that portrait of a graduate I still really think that that set us in absolutely the right direction we are looking to educate the whole child um and that means uh uh all of our subject areas uh the Arts steam stem world languages um problem solving skills uh 21st century
170learning so and I think that that we have packaged it in in an in an understandable document too which my goodness how did we do that it really is Meaningful you can read it you can understand it and it evolves but I think we'll set us in the right direction so I am very very pleased with this product so thank you all and I do have to say something about the packaging uh Pam Martin in multimedia and design Pam was wonderful has done some wonderful work along with Julie prer and helping us take this work and making it uh palatable to the community yes it's important that the document is obviously understood and believed in by all of us but that it also is a document a living document that is understood and accessed by
171the community and certainly by putting this online it will be that so thank you it's wonderful thank you Miss Evans yes I mainly just wanted to thank you for your excellent work and for um everyone's excellent work on this I think this is uh both comprehensive and it's very forward-looking uh this is going to set the path for us for years to come and in a very concrete way with measurable goals which I think is critical to the future of our school system of course I'm particularly glad that the document recognizes the importance of the school environment and student health which is of critical importance to our parents and our students and our entire community so I'm I'm very pleased that that it recognizes that um that particular goal area so Dr Garza excellent job
172Mr Smith Dr lockart and and everyone on the leadership team because I and and members of the community as well um many people weighed in on this many many people far too many to thank tonight so um excellent job and uh thank you I look forward to to approving this in two weeks thank you Miss SS um yeah thank you um again thanks everyone for all the work that's gone into this it's really terrific I don't think I could have envisioned this when we started so clearly it was a group process and was not relying solely on me which is a good thing um but uh I I also want to thank everyone for um putting the um closing the achievement Gap plan right in the document because that was one of my concerns you
173know we made this great bold statement about we will close the achievement gap which is wonderful we should make that statement that should be our goal but I think having the achievement Gap plan in here closing the Gap plan in here um lets us see that we have particular drivers and targets and we have goals so we have some goal statements within that that are right in the Strategic plan and we can say you know how are we doing at achieving these goals that we've already set for ourselves so thank you I'm I'm excited I really I'm going to make sure to send this out to the community I think this is something that everybody should take some time and look at um just to see where we're headed thanks Miss Reed thank you uh
174I echo my colleague's praise I think this is an excellent document and thank everyone who was so involved members of the community the uh teachers teacher groups staff everybody um and even board members um for putting their two cents in I do have a few questions and some of these really are coming from the community in terms of what this document is and what it isn't so I'm hopeful um either uh you Mr Smith or Dr Garza could answer um and so the first question is is there any sense of prioritization within this document yes the prioritization is reflected um if you'll see it's reflected largely with um the scale or the implementation the phasing of the work um and so if you'll see um if the uh public has the document in front of
175you you'll see that it's a reflected in the um the dots and the way we're phasing that work in so in fact there's some items that are reflecting this plan that we already have underway um and then you'll see over time there is a contemplation of what will happen in the future and so I think it does represent um a sort of prioritization although every year as as was pointed out this is an evolving uh document needs change conditions change I think we always have to you know in June when it's scheduled we'll have to sit back and say what's changed what might we need to to reconsider um I also want to point out for a lot of these items there are actual work plans that will need to be developed we've actually started
176on a few of those such as our goal um to really ramp up the way in which we're using instructional technology such as a contemplation of a onetoone uh device and so we're looking at and already been developing um some strategies and action plans work plans uh assuming that this is adopted by the board so a lot of these this shows the direction keeps us focused as a system but just know behind each of these actions there would be much more detailed work um that would have to have to be contemplated in terms of planning and and many of these things would come to you separately um in board action okay well I I guess I'm sorry I I still uh I still have a concern myself about um the priorities and maybe when we
177get into our budget discussions that's when it'll become more apparent when we start to really get into if we can only fund one of these things which will it be and so um this will provide the framework or the guidance but doesn't necessarily provide the answers I guess that's what I'm kind of getting at and and that's just understanding again what this is and what it isn't and that's fine and then secondly another perception out there is um I don't know if it's true or false but if an activity or a program is not in this document it's not a priority and shouldn't be done in other words or the flip side saying well we're going to continue everything we're doing and then we're going to do all this in addition so I want to
178provide you the opportunity to try to bust that myth in terms of how um particularly employees should be perceiving some of these things am I making that point clear this this was never meant to be a reflection of every every bit of work that's going on in our system this as I recall in all the many conversations we have is really about setting and establishing the direction for the future um and granted you know that we will always have to consider what has to come off the table as a result of doing some of this work um however this is saying this is the direction we're going it is not a reflection of everything that we're doing in the system it does help us though be disciplined as we cont plate new things to do
179um as we make decisions around budget as we make decisions around policy we can always challenge ourselves in terms of the leadership discipline that will be needed to say okay is that reflected in our strategic plan because this quite frankly is what the board has said I think are the priorities of this division at any point in time if you all say well that's no longer a priority or because of changing conditions we don't think we can fund it then those things would have to be adjusted on an annual basis go ahead I can also share that in our last focus groups in both our teacher and administrator focus groups they recognize that a lot of this work we're already doing it and as we Implement and share uh information around the plan so so
180once you vote on the plan that's one thing we then have to communicate the plan we have to implement the plan and so one piece that both our teachers and administrators wanted us to create was to show a crosswalk between the work that that we're already doing with the work that's in the plan so that people wouldn't be overwhelmed by you know looking at all this information and saying oh this is just more work uh so we will be doing that you just made me Twitch you said crosswalk at least you didn't say Matrix no just trying to add a little levity that's all that's all I'm doing here but no thank you very much that's actually very very helpful and I hope that uh people listening heard that because again we still have a
181bit of perception out there that up it's the initiative dour there's another new thing they're going to put on the plate and not take anything off and it sounds like you're you're actually addressing that in a very proactive way so I'm pleased to hear that and at least in my view and I think a lot of people um appreciate this is at least now in writing we're saying what we're going to be doing or what we think we need to be doing into the future we don't have that anywhere so as a result of that it it seems like you know without established and written priorities everything is equally important and I think this does at least you know kind of put the stake in the ground and say these are the things we think
182are important for the system and we're going to be disciplined and not keep adding all these other things because we like to keep any good idea right um and so I think this will help us be more focused and I think it will provide for the field for all of our employees and our FCPS family I think it it will provide a feeling that we're more focused and we're not just doing every random thing that comes along I think it will help us in that way good job thank you anyone else well I I want to speak um I do thank you and Dr Garza I thank this board I think we all um when we came on four years ago when we were learning about all the many things that the school system needs
183to do what what and how we need to prioritize I think we realized there was a small group of us that says we really need to more strategic focus and I know Mr Reed was you're smiling you're one of them there there were several several of us and and at first we weren't certain which way to go and and how to move forward but I think what We've Come Away with today is something we should all be very proud of uh because it does concentrate our our strategic goal areas are where we need to be focused and I think there was a time I I remember M um and what Dr Garza had said um it has it puts it in writing because we have some of our other priorities like we have our legislative
184objectives and priorities in writing but as a system as a whole we haven't had that we've had a great strategic governance manual as to how we should govern as a board we didn't have this so This has taken a long time I appreciate um all the Champions and all of your work on that I I do have a question Mr Smith will you be the primary manager gate keeper to make certain all of these things at this point yes okay all right we just we just we just need to know who to call on so maybe I'll have a few more gray hairs by this time next we you're just going to keep shaving so we don't see those that's right I keep it cut low so all right thank you so much thank you
185next we go on to 6.0 2 accept the passages monitoring report and I call on Dr Garza again yes um I think every year we always look forward to this report and I will say that um I know that this report has long resonated with the school board and the leadership team and we hope that in the future we're able to develop a more comprehensive view of our schools using this report as a model I think we've all continued to say there's more that we can do with this being a great model um for the future and certainly a way to annually assess the progress of our students using critical passages in their educational experience as key markers so we're really excited tonight to bring to you the passage report so I'll turn over to
186Dr Sloan Presidio all right thank you very much and good evening and I am very excited to be here with you this evening to present this report and unlike Marty I'm not too worried about gray hairs I'm just glad that I still have some hairs after some of the things that we've been working working on um but I know it's very hard to uh to receive a long report at the end of the an evening like this so I'm going to try to strike a balance between brevity and uh and substance here for you because as Dr Garza said this is a very very important report um and we only issue it annually and it gives us that big picture look kind of holistic look at how we're doing so I am joined by some
187colleagues this evening that will help address any questions that you might have about the report um with me this evening is Mr Craig Herring director of our office of curriculum and instruction Dr Irene Meer uh office of uh special services the director of uh instruction and the office of special services and then uh Dr Kathy Oliver who's the director of our office of student testing and Mr Richard polio who is the director of esol services so we begin um this evening if I can get this to work um just with kind of a reminder that we've been issuing this report since 2008 and again it's that highlevel look at how we're doing um and provides summary information at the division level of how we're doing at some critical passage points in students academic careers in
188FCPS we look at how they're doing as they enter the system in kindergarten and then those key passage years of third grade sixth grade 8th grade uh 12th grade and on into the College Years and the main goal really of the report is to provide that highlevel look but one thing that I want to um mention is that it really kind of synthesizes a lot of work that we do with our student achievement goal reports and it is briefer um the Nar narrative if you've had a chance to read The Narrative is only 32 pages long as opposed to about 100 pages long with our sag goal report so um this is a a a a more concise report and also just as a reminder the information that we look at is a historical look
189we look back and then we look over a 5-year period of time and the reason we look back one year is because of the delay that we have receiving our validated and approved data from vdoe so the the data that we're looking at here as our last Passage Point is going to all be primarily from the 20134 school year so as we get into the report um I I do think that this is a unique time uh for passages reporting um with all of the work that we're doing on the Strategic plan as we just discussed and the continuing development work around portrait of a graduate not only do we have an opportunity now to really reflect on student performance but think about what we want um student performance and student performance measures and indicators
190of success to look like in future years and just give you a little bit of context to to view the report and we have provided a few guiding questions for your consideration um in viewing this report in terms of thinking about how we can use the information to inform the Strategic plan and our ongoing work on portrait of a graduate so with uh that in mind um we are going to provide information on the traditional passage points like uh standard of learning uh assessment performance but we also provide a look at some new measures of Student Success like the oecd test for school tools and then in the narrative we provide a fairly comprehensive report on some of the really I think Innovative and impactful work that the division has done this year on performance-based
191assessment so our first Passage Point is kindergarten and we had about 14,000 kindergarten students uh the class of 2026 start with us in the year of 201314 and of course those students come to us from lots of different uh places around the county with lots of different Early Learning experiences and obviously these uh differences in their background can impact their Early Learning performance so on this slide you can see that uh over 50% of the students in 20134 came to us in kindergarten from homes where an English uh a language other than English was spoken in the home and about one-third of our kindergarten class qualifies for free and reduced lunch and of course these two groups are some of our neediest students um and need as many supports as we can provide to make
192sure that they get off to a strong start to their educational career and here on this slide um you can start to see some of the early measures that we look at in terms of student performance we actually informally assess students uh at kindergarten registration even before they start with us but the first formal assessment that we give to students is in the fall of the kindergarten year and it's the developmental reading assessment and we look at a variety of um factors we look at students abilities to um process phonics letter sound relation relationships basic word recognition um and and we look at um alphabet knowledge as well in in the fall uh of 201314 you can see from this chart that we had 15% of our students in FCPS that qualified for intervention services
193meaning that they needed some additional instructional time and that they were behind when they came into our school system and we've been um tracking this data of course for a number of years and that percentage has stayed pretty constant it's only fluctuated about one or two% over this 5-year period of time but of course um we do know student Readiness is going to vary then across different places in the county so this slide shows um the percent of students that need literacy intervention services in kindergarten by the schools that they attend so if you look at that first green bar you see that there are 62 schools where they have between 0 and 10% of their students needing reader reading interventions and of course if you follow over to the next green bar and total
194that up we would have 99 of our schools elementary schools where they would have between Z and 20% of their students needing some additional intervention time additional instructional time um in early literacy in kindergarten now what's in and that's pretty standard because the reading research would tell us on average that we could expect to have about 20% of our students students needing additional instructional time but where we want to focus is more towards the middle and the right of this graph those 27 schools those eight schools and those four schools that have between 21 or above 40% of their students needing additional supports and services and it's no surprise that the schools um represented in those bars all have significantly higher concentrations of English language Learners and students receiving free and reduced price meals so
195obviously these are the schools that we need to focus our support for our technical assistance to and the resources to really make sure that we can support those students getting off to a strong start so our next Passage Point is grade three and as we look at this next series of charts I I just like to point out that what we're looking at is composite performance on multiple SOS in this case it's reading and math and it's important to note that many of our students pass one or the other of these assessments at a higher rate than they pass the composite um meaning both assessments so for example in 1314 um the third grade reading pass rate was 74% and the math pass rate was 70% but the composite the rate of students passing both
196reading and math was only 60% but I think from this chart the probably the one uh most concerning Trend that we would notice is the decrease in that composite rate over the uh 5-year period of time represented here and certainly there's not a single factor that would that would explain that Trend um but I think there's a few things that are worth noting and spending a little bit of time kind of unpacking this slide um first this trend does mirror the state Trend and we do continue to outperform the state average in both reading and math um second though I think this trend really obviously does coincide with the increases to the level of rigor of the new s sols so you can see that the level of rigor of the math test was introduced
197in 20112 and you see our dip and performance there and then a more rigorous reading assessment was introduced in 1213 and you see the corresponding dip in student performance there as well and we see this trend the same Trend as the state has increased their standards and difficulty on the test at the other grade levels but it's the most profound and most pronounced at grade three and I think there's a couple factors worth considering about um how we might think about why that is and the first is that grade three is the first high stakes test that students take um it's their first experience with this kind of testing environment and I have a rising third grader um in my household and when I'm home in the evening and we are able to have dinner
198together we always talk about you know what did you learn in school today not what did you do but what did you learn about in school today and whenever there is a test that he's telling me about that he's taken he always tells me that he's so proud that he was one of the first ones done well we don't want our kids to be the first ones done it's not a race we we want them to be thoughtful and to take their time and to do their best but students that age they they don't process and they don't think that same way and this year um as you know this was the first year where we had the ability to do retakes in certain subject areas and grade levels beyond the high school and at
199third grade we had the highest percentage of students being successful on their retakes higher than any of the other grade levels we had approximately 70% of our students who were successful on their retake and I think that just speaks of the fact that a lot of this is you know familiarity with the testing environment and becoming comfortable with it so that's that's one factor I think that's worth noting additionally I think it's worth noting um that we have a lot of esol students that are represented in this data set and many of those students have not had time to fully develop their English language proficiency and if you look at the percentage of Esau students at third grade we have 30% of our third graders in this data sample 1314 that were receiving Esau services
200but when we get to the sixth grade slide you'll see that only 12% of those students were receiving Esau services so again as students start with us early in their career and develop their English proficiency their scores obviously increase and go up but at third grade many of those students have not had the requisite amount of time to develop their English language proficiency the other thing that I want to note here is that the testing data when we unpack this really does show the impact the disproportionate impct impact of the changes to Theos on esol students so in 20091 the esol pass rate on the composite tests here at third grade was 66% in 201314 it was only 43% so again that change to the level of rigor of the test is disproportionately impacting our
201Esau students so while this trend is concerning um I do think that we're seeing increased student performance as teachers have more time to work with students and students have more time to develop their skills and we see that when we look at sixth grade so here at the sixth grade Passage Point um you see that student performance is significantly better than it was at grade three again our teachers have had that time to work with our students and develop their skills our Esau students have had time to develop their English language proficiency but again we do see that same Trend that I mentioned um with the impact of the change of the rigor of the S so's so we'll move to e8th grade and at 8th grade um again the performance on Theos we see
202that same impact in terms of the introduction of the new standards and again I'd like to point out that the single subject performance is is a lot better than the composite performance so the pass rate for math in 1314 was actually 86% and for reading it was 81% and again I think it's worth noting here at 8th grade that disproportionate impact on esol students so in 20091 for 8th grade the the composite pass rate was 63% but again it fell to 36% in 201314 so we'll move ahead to grade 12 our last major Passage Point and we still are using a composite index uh for Student Success here but at grade 12 the composite includes more subjects as you can see uh listed on this slide and it's important to note here that the sols
203used um in this Composite index in Fairfax represent the highest uh level subject areas tested by the state and go beyond the State graduation requirements so really I think when we look at this indicator um we're looking more at a measure of college readiness probably than High School competency here so how are kids doing at grade 12 um here you see that um by the end of grade 12 the percent of students who took and passed these five specific SOS was 71% and again at grade 12 though the single subject rates now we're looking at five not just two tests but those single subject rates were much higher so for both the reading and the writing s sols the pass rate was 95% or above also when we look at this composite it it's important
204to point out that the accelerated course taking patterns of some of our students actually work to a disadvantage here because those student test scores are not included in these state so performance results so you can think about students who took Algebra 2 in 8th grade and we have a fair number of students that do that in Fairfax County those scores are not represented here and I I also want to mention yet again the the impact of the new standards on esol students so in 20091 the esol pass rate here was 78% on this composite indicator but in 1314 it was only 44% and that's critically important again because many of these tests are those exit exams that are required for graduation now s sols are not the only indicator that we use to look at
205student performance and student Readiness um industry certifications is another and I'm happy to report here that you can see we've made quite a bit of progress and I I think this um speaks very well for our students in terms of their abilities their interests um and their skills and employability when they leave our system and I would again applaud the board for all of your advocacy to support expansion of our work in CTE programs and Industry certifications I think it represented around 177,000 something like that 7 right 177,000 um industry certifications our students received if I'm if I'm correct I think that's pretty that's amazing so we move now to a new indicator that we have the ability to look at which is the oecd test for schools and again that's the organization for for
206economic cooperation and development and we started uh working in 2014 in a pilot sample that all of our high schools participated in we actually had done a pilot previous to that with a very small sample of students but in 2014 all of our high schools participated in this test it's a test for 15year olds it's a school-based test that allows us to compare ourselves internationally in terms of student performance and it's different than Theos because it's really not a subject matter recall test it's really measuring students problem solving skills critical thinking skills creative thinking skills within the context of subject area discipline so what does it mean to really think and act like a mathematician or a scientist so it's quite different and these next series of slides uh illustrate our performance in terms of
207our International comparison and you can see we've highlighted a few of the rows here that I think are worth pointing out so you can see that on the test um we significantly outperformed the United States the oecd average in the Global Learning Network average and that's the group of schools that participated in this pilot in uh 2014 and in fact we had so many schools that participated in this pilot you could almost argue that we pulled that Global Learning average score up you see the same pattern um I think I skipped one there didn't I I'm sorry I apologize I had skipped the reading so you see the same pattern on reading as you do on math we outperform all of those um comparison groups there are some small countries though when you look at
208the math um sample again I think it's interesting to note like um lonstein has uh less than 40,000 residents um so very small samples on some of these some very homogeneous samples on some of these countries as well but I also wanted to point out the scales because again the information that we get back is so different and I won't go into a lot of detail here but when you're looking at these scales it's important to note that really the oecd considers anything above a level one to be proficient and it's levels four five and six that they consider to be Advanced and when you look at our reading performance here in comparison to the US and the oeca averages you can see that our distribution is really kind of skewed to the right meaning
209we've got more of our students scoring at a higher uh rate than our comparison uh countries and again it's worth pointing out that about 15% of our students scored at that level five level six rate which the oecd would consider to be worldclass performance and comparison math again um same idea with the scale and if you just look at the top and the bottom you can see there's there's large variations and differences in the student performance obviously at a level one it's talking about basic operations students be being able to take actions that are obvious and by the time you get to level six we're talking about being able to concept conceptualize generalize um and model complex problems so a much higher level of performance and you see again in math our performance again is
210skewed uh to the right in terms of those two comparison samples and we've got an even greater percentage in math of our students performing at level five and level six but that's not the only type of data that the oecd provides us is also gives us student uh perception data and we're able to get this information through a series of uh student questionnaires that are completed for each of the subject areas that are assessed and one of those areas that we look at is student teacher relationships which is really critical that's one of the areas that we focus on and are closing the Gap plan and we know how critical that is to students success and this gives us very actionable information about how students are viewing their relationships with their teachers and there's some
211uh a lot of very good news in here for example uh 85% of our students report experiencing a high level of support and fairness from their teachers Additionally the questionnaire talks about student self-efficacy so what did they believe about their abilities in these various subject areas so this particular slide looks at self-efficacy in relationship to math and Fairfax is represented here by the yellow bars and you can see that in almost all of these different uh indicator areas Fairfax students believe that they can perform very well um with difficult math tests and that's really important because because when students believe that they can be successful that's a precursor to them exerting the effort that it's going to take to be successful and that self-efficacy really comes from the support and the encouragement of their teachers
212so we turn now to graduation and when we look at our graduation rate it's remained uh very steady over the 5year period of time in the passages report we look at our college enrollment rate and again um it's fluctuated uh very slightly over a 5year period of time and I think one thing to point out when you look at this slide is that there are two data indicators that we look at here uh the first is the national Clearing House data and there's about 95% of the colleges and universities in the United States that participate in the National Clearing House that allow us to collect the data about student enrollment um in persistence but obviously some schools are missing um only one in the state of Virginia but perhaps this uh information might be uh
213a little under reported and and this uh might be a little bit underinflated in terms of our College uh enrollment rates here and then the second bars uh in the green column represents student self-reporting information and of course sometimes students um change their minds about what they actually are going to do and so this information might be a little bit overinflated so we look at both of these indicators because we think they're both important to help us really kind of figure out exactly where our students enrollment rates are at and then we look at College persistent rates and here you'll see that um from college uh from the freshman year to the sophomore year has been uh very consistent and you see that we're at a 93% persistence rate but I think what's really important
214to note here is that our rate in Fairfax is significantly higher than the state average which is 78% and the national persistence rate at 77% so our students are doing quite well once we're able to actually make sure that we get them into the colleges and universities and then our college degree completion rate um again we're looking at historical data here so the last two years that we would have available would be 20072 2008 and again that's very uh stable over time so I will leave you in closing with the two guiding questions that we began with and I will join my colleagues to address uh any questions that you might have about the report thank you for very much for your attention come on over all right I'm in charge here miss Strauss and
215then uh Miss Evans thank you very much for the report this is always really very interesting it it's a complex report I always I'm always a little concerned as whether or not the community understands what we're doing with this first I have um couple of questions I know that when we originally designed this students who are um taking part in more accelerated work it's not captured in the composite and I'll I that does concern me and I wonder I really think we need to we need to include that because um we have a tremendous number of kids who are involved in a lot of accelerated work and that's going to continue particularly in mathematics and I think we need to find a way to be able to capture that somehow in the passages report um
216particularly I think in the 8th and 12th grade reports so um I don't know how we do that but I think we need to do that because I think we're short changing ourselves we're short changing um our student achievement we're sure changing what our students and our teachers actually accomplish because there's a tremendous amount of that so that is a question I have no answer I will look to you all for answers at some point and I think that would probably require a redesign uh with some of this and we'll obviously then skew um our ability to compare from one year to the other but I would recommend that we figure out a way to do that are we able to Kathy I know you may want to weigh in on that uh capture where
217students are taking an off-grade level test because of their acceleration and is there a way to pull that data back into the grade level for which they are um their age appropriate peer group I think that's kind kind of the essence of the of the question that's right uh actually what we do is um we look at the um the students in the 12th grade cohort and we look at whatever time in their career they took Algebra 2 or they took chemistry so those students who took Algebra 2 early are actually included in that data I guess the question is in eth grade because we know there's a tremendous amount of mathematics acceleration by the time yeah I think it's middle school and Algebra 1 is that still the case we we do have some
218um students in Middle School taking Algebra 1 or um geometry but we look at any time in the students career we go back many years to see if they took in past Algebra 2 and so they are they are included in those percentages um I think the important thing is there that they took the course I mean some of them aren't included there because they never took the uh they never took the course I mean they're those percentages are lower than if you look at just what the Pass rates are for the actual um students who took the course but the the chemistry and Algebra 2 students are included right because I get my question my concern is that we do we have students taking algebra and geometry at at at at younger ages we
219have to be careful that it's appropriate but we have an awful lot of kids that are doing very well with that um I'm very pleased to see obviously the the industry certifications that's that's excellent and I again have to thank Mr stor who's continued to press us on that um the uh the other the other question that I have on the the Pisa and the oacd because that is that is very helpful and very interesting data that we've been able to collect are we going to be continue to be able to participate in that Pisa is benchmarked every 3 years two or three years three years I believe it is so we've been looking at uh it may not be a test that we want to administer every year but we may want to have
220it on a cycle so we've been contemplating you know every two years participating uh because it is a more expensive assessment Although our High School principles now that they've experienced it really see a lot of value and in fact um Teresa Johnson at shantell high school has kind of been one of our uh leaders uh in this and she has a lot of in-depth knowledge about the benefit that it's had for their school and so I will tell you our principles would like to do it um you know have that kind of assessment but we're looking at it probably would not be necessarily something we would need to do every year someone else may want to comment on that we didn't participate this year but we plan to participate um next year but it um
221the last time we participated it was $8,000 per high school and so um you know $200,000 okay so that that's not exorbitant no but I I would recommend that we do this on a cycle because it does it gives us another perspective that I think is very important I agree and I think it's um an assessment that's much more aligned with what the board has talked about quite a bit because it's much more uh problem solving it's it's interdisciplinary yes fits with their strategic plan more than anything else so absolutely great okay thank you very much I do appreciate the report and it is is very instructive thank you Miss Evans yes I want to thank you also for an excellent report there's just so much information in here that um we could delve into
222it for for many hours which I know we won't do but I I also this is a a great segue because I wanted to highlight the Pisa uh result um you know we we're often um told you know Finland is doing so well you know and what about you know our American students but you know we're right there with Finland and in the math we're above them uh so I mean there are other other um countries we can compare ourselves with as well but I think that's very telling and uh one of the things I particularly appreciate in the Pisa report is um the the part in the in the in the school reports where they do take into account socioeconomics and where one uh where a school would expect to be compared with where
223they actually are and I think that's one thing that a lot of our tests just don't you know our our test don't take into account so um whether we probably don't want to do it every year but I think if we are on a rotation that that's it's it's got a lot of valuable information in there so um I appreciate that and I think uh people should be be very proud of um of of those test scores um I did want to in the narrative on on page six I I I couldn't help but notice the description of how kindergarten has changed so much in the last 10 to 20 years and with more and more of first grade going down into kindergarten and I I just take note of that because I think we
224had to be cognizant of it and and wonder when we've gone too far on that um there was something in the paper not too long ago about um a kindergarten teacher feeling that um her you know she was really more teaching first grade and I don't know if you have any comment on that if uh where where do we stop have we um are we at the point where we need to stop pushing things down if you don't have a comment that's fine I I just think we need to to be aware of that Trend yes in fact you may have uh heard me mention a report that was I think published about a year ago um uh and it was entitled kindergarten is the new I mean kindergarten is the new first grade um
225in the second semester of kindergarten largely students are expected to be reading um and that was highly unusual not too many years ago right um that was largely a function uh that we expected in first grade and I think we but that's a national Trend I just want to point out it's not just for FCPS it's really something that's you know been noted Across the Nation uh and I think it's something you know to watch definitely and I think that's also one of the things we have to be uh you know with caring culture you know we're adopting a strategic plan about car and culture and we don't want to forget about play for young children you know so just make that comment um on the um the report about the schools where the students
226need more intervention um I of course would be particularly interested in knowing um a little bit more about the 12 schools and um not tonight but you know if if we could get which which are the 12 schools where so really I think it's um 30% or more need the intervention in kindergarten uh uh you mentioned that that's where we need to put more resources and attention and I think it would be be worth noting where where those are um and I had one question one more question which was on the uh this is wonderful information and and and great news about the industry certifications does that include financial literacy it does include financial literacy so at some point will that get to 100 100% just because of financial literacy I mean we aren't we
227we have a requirement now correct and again if you if you'd like to so I Al speak to that it it could I mean um that would be provided and our students are passing it at a very high rate so I think you're going to see that so we might want parse that measure out in the future so we're showing the other certifications they're getting I think that would be very valuable because it is kind of a different animal a little bit you know so I think I I think that would be valuable to see uh the other industry certifications and just you know I note the 60% of students who complete um a college degree in six years and so I think you know we we need to be aware that we do have
228a large number of students who can definitely benefit from leaving High School with an industry certification you know that's just another I we know it but I think that's just another indication that that's that's of Great Value so congratulations on a great report um I'll be continuing to read more of the more of the links and the links and the links so Mr Moon thank you mad chairman uh I want to join my colleagues and thanking you know all of you for the great presentation uh I do have a couple of questions on slide number 19 which has to do with the reading literacy test scores on pizza and if someone could explain to me uh or answer me on the question regarding whether on the reading test any uh esur students or second language
229learner students are included um the testing service um samples we send all of we send them all of the the students I mean the information on all of the students who fit into the certain age group and then and that includes our ESO and our special ed students and so we do not exclude ESO students from this no one who can take a paper and pencil test I mean it we don't have it in in Braille for example so if a student would need a braille test they wouldn't be included but other than that all our special ed and esol students are potentially included in the sample so when you talk about reading literacy reading real literacy is does not necessarily mean should not necessarily mean English literacy correct in in this case it the
230test but in this case that's what this means but for what I'm trying to point out is this MH for some second language Learners 15y Old Second Language Learners MH they might do better in their first language than English which is second language correct so had they taken the test in their first language score on this might have gone even higher than how they were test it in English language that's certainly a possibility yes so that score of 523 might be a might not be a true picture of a literacy level of this particular group of students true thank you just to add a little bit to Mr Moon's comment I think that's a very important consideration when you're comparing our performance against some of the other International Benchmark performance where you don't have um
231countries that have so many different languages spoken in those particular countries so miss mclin um I again everybody's very pleased with the work you've done and want to appreciate the time you put into it um the the thought that went through my mind as we were looking at you know some of the dip in performance and uh you know looking at the fact that yes in fact the state had done some changes to the so and and that does affect it um as a parent with children still in our public schools and and having watched the impact it's had on my children's education over the last uh 15 years I'm really growing so frustrated and and concerned for our students because when the state keeps changing these exams then all that does is cause distress
232among our teachers and our students to then have to okay figure out how we're going to na now um have the students perform to the new material and uh you know they make it a little bit harder so then the kids start to you know dip in performance which raises the anxiety for teachers students and even School administration and we get into this vicious cycle of just teaching and you know drilling to the test and uh I just wondered if when you look at these numbers um does that thought come to mind in terms of is is it as I've described that we're kind of getting stuck here with um these SOS and does the general assembly Andor the Virginia Department of Education understand that while No Child Left Behind and everything is very admirable
233in with intent the execution I think is going contrary to what the Pisa exam is and what we're really hoping a 21st education looks like yeah I I think that's a a really good question and I would say just a couple things to think about one I think we're starting to see a little bit of the pendulum swing a little bit in the other way in terms of policy so you think about the things that the state did this year with this uh so Innovation committee um allowing local school divisions flexibility to not administer the SOS in certain grade levels and develop your own assessments and for the the vast majority um in FCPS we administered performance-based Assessments in lie of those previously required State s sols and that allows us to start to put
234in place a little bit of the rhetoric that we've been talking about for the last few years which is we want to look at s Sol's as one measure of performance in a more holistic balanced framework of assessment and for the first time this year we were able to start to put some other assessment practices in place at scale not just something that you know um a really exceptional third grade teacher is doing in her classroom or a great team or a great school's doing we were able to start to do that more at scale we're nowhere where we would like to be but it's a step in the right direction and the other thing that I would raise and and I would caution a little bit um about my comment before I even make
235it because I don't want it to sound like an excuse um because we all work very hard and we want to produce results because it's the students that um you know are behind the numbers that we really care obviously about their learning needs but I do think when you look at the dip and the changes that occurred in the state standards you have to put it in the context of that was during the Great Recession as well when Fairfax and other school systems were raising class size um eliminating professional development supports delaying implementation of curriculum materials so while you see and you will see that dip in performance when standards are raised and test formats are changed I think it the the impact is perhaps even a little bit more pronounced um when you look
236at 1112 and um and beyond great thank you um the other question I had was I noticed uh we had the data on um the mathematics student teacher relations but I didn't see reading is that something Pisa doesn't provide us or well we have that data we just didn't provide it just in terms of the amount of information there're so overwhelming but that's the type of information we could provide you with um in more detail I just think uh that would have been one important slide to have included just for again having that comparison of you look at math in a in totality and being able to understand not just achievement but also the student teacher relationship if we've got that slide on reading I I think it's important to to see that data because
237it might be very interesting to see if there's a difference because they are two very different subject subjects and you know do students perceive a relationship differently when you're teaching something like a Humanities and reading is post to math uh but I did want to um comment to Dr garz and our colleagues that I think it's encouraging when you look at how our our students responded uh we were very much in alignment with the nation and also um you know with the international population and that's good because we are a high- performing school district and and uh you know we we know that our teachers have had a tremendous amount of um workload concerns and challenges and so I I think it's a good sign that in you know we're we're seeing our students feel
238overall a very similar positive relationship with our teachers and that's to me was um it's good to know we're in there I I know obviously for all of us we want to see that that um bar go up higher it'd be great to see above 80% in in all of those questions that they asked but I to me that was uh really important because I think again what we hear from our students and our families is uh students will feel more positive about their learning experience if they feel that they've got caring Educators and so I think it's a good sign for us and I wanted to Spotlight that this evening um and then the other thing that somebody brought up and it was again on slide seven when um Miss Evans was talking about
239the number of schools by percentage of students identified for intervention so when you look at those where 30% or more are being identified needing PR intervention you know I was doing the math and it showed 138 schools so 12 out of 138 is about 9% I mean that's a really good encouraging statistic in the sense that if you look at um how we know through research and data that um with poverty greater challenges for being kindergarten ready and so the fact that we know we've got kindergarteners coming in at 34% or more being registered as free and reduced lunch and yet really you're only seeing about 9% of your schools um you you would see a if if we were looking at uh that a uh direct relationship there we would have had far more
240of our elementary schools am am I interpreting that slide correctly is encouraging do you see that I do think it's I do think it's encouraging and um again we can provide you even more information on this but you know I think you can look at a number of different factors there the expansion of Early Childhood um going to full day kindergarten programming I mean there's a lot of things I think that we can look at there as as indicators of good work that the board's been doing um project momentum again is another initiative where we're trying to support those schools um as as much as possible so I think there's a lot of good work that's happening on the part of the school system there well again thank you for creating a report that I
241think is um very you know readable and uh accessible uh and uh it's efficient in its delivery of information so thank you all right next is uh Miss Schultz I just uh just something very quick um Miss Evans had commented about the financial literacy component and whether we'll get to 100% and I I have to Envision that that can't ever happen because we have students who who effectively CLP out by other courses right I mean you know so they're they're they're they're taking financial literacy through the acquisition of knowledge through some of our higher level courses correct yeah that that's absolutely correct I would say um I think Miss Evans brings up a really good point though that we need to start to kind of agregate um that data set so we can show which
242students are meeting that by a CTE course a financial literacy course and some different areas so but you're you're 100% correct right and but would you also disaggregate the kids that are able to meet that requirment through another curriculum option we certainly could do that yeah that's that's it y okay um Miss Hines thank you um yeah I have always liked passages I think just the structure of it is so good and I'm really glad that we're sticking with it um and I see uh you know improvements in the data that we have in here too which is really exciting to me too you know it's it's good to have a good structure but if the data isn't all that meaningful then you know we're it's it's not worthwhile and you know when we look
243at the oecd data the pza data I think it just it shows how the so-called increased rigor of the so tests is just not not really what they claim that it is right because the Pisa test actually does increase the rigor and ask the kind of questions that we want to ask it measures the things we want to teach right and these new so tests just simply don't and and I think we see that in the different measures um so I'm very glad that we're continuing to do the pza data um that we put in high school graduation and Beyond I think is great as well that's you know that's a data point that people in the community want to watch um and I just you know one of the things and I know this
244is not uh you were trying to keep this really brief for us and I get that um at some in some way I think we should always consider disaggregating some of this by our socioeconomic groups you know so um just a thought for the future um and then I also I did read The Narrative on uh performance-based assessments and that's exciting um and that to me is you know the state is beginning to allow us to replace the test with that good stuff and So eventually I guess the idea is we can have this in passages as well but since it just reading the narrative I guess we're kind of on the cusp of um making that something that's across the system we don't really have any data to even begin showing on that I
245suppose is that right I I think the closest we have is the global awareness technology project um that is systematic um and some of the things we were doing with the Fine Arts assessment um we doing some things with languages you know our Pals assessments really does that performance part of speaking so we have some things in place but if you're starting to talk about the core subjects we're we're just starting there just to add a little bit to what Craig said um when you think about global technology awareness project or the Fine Arts we've standardized the task so then you can use it and compare performance we didn't standardize and require tasks we created a task that could be used but we didn't require that the same task be used at grade three for
246example um we created more opportunities for professional judgment professional autonomy in the schools while giving support and training and and examples well I know and so good assessment doesn't happen overnight you know it takes it takes a while we know that well we've had to provide quite a bit of training this year because as you know being an educator it it really takes a different kind of um skill uh and we really have to invest in in that development so they know how to develop them uh those different kinds of performance tasks so there's been quite a bit of training uh that's been done this year and that's continuing great well thank you so much this report just makes me feel like we're on the right track and we're getting there thank you Mr movan
247thank you madam chair um and it's getting quite late and unfortunately this was overshadowed tonight because I do believe this is the most important thing we do each year um and I would say oh my goodness what what an improvement over the presentation last year and I do want to thank you for um really making it fact-based um this is how it should be presented just the facts and and let them speak for themselves um no need to pretty it up um and uh just with regard to the um the piece about Pisa um and our our um location um next to Finland in the um ranking um as we know Finland is receiving more and more immigrants um their population is slowly becoming less homogeneous um I don't think they will look like us
248uh but if they do um I am most certain that we will come out higher than them on the list Mr stor thank you madam chair I'm sorry I forget the high school ontime graduation rate that does does or does not include folks who graduate in in summer school as well as um folks who are graduate in the next semester in other words it's a four-year deal so when is that four-year time frame and I know it's a it's a forun Department of Education definition but I just don't remember what it is and I'm and I I'm just curious what it includes and whe it includes I don't think it includes geds um as well so the Virginia on time graduation rate includes anything that Virginia um recognizes um so it does um have some
249uh credit for G EDS and um and it does include summer graduates and it um will become available after you know in the fall after the the summer um graduates data is available so this this criteria includes GED as long as you do it within four years of of your traditional education as well as includes folks who graduate in summer there are lots of things about the Virginia on time graduation rate that are different than the feder graduation indicator and one of the things that is different is that if you're an eel student or a student with disabilities who has a plan to graduate with extended time they move you from one cohort to another so uh it's not so four years can mean five years or six years five or six if you're an
250esol or specialed student who has you know plans in place and you're moving forward with those plans so it's a more liberal definition of graduation definitely then the Federal which only looks at standard and advanced diplomas I I think it's I think it's a positive I'd rather see what I mean I don't expect that all students will graduate in four years and and I think the objective is that they graduate within in the case of Virginia before they turn 22 because that's when they lose the right to free education so I'm I'm pleased I use that and on the college side the the terminal the um numbers here that you have um College en Rome within two years after high school these are for um all FCPS students or these are just those folks who
251and I'm going to ask this on this slide as well as the next slide this those folks who who were not going to go into the military or going to the workforce or or something else going to meaning enlisting going in and starting to serve right away not at College I'm trying to get a sense of what this number means I guess is what I'm asking we send uh to the um national student Clearing House information on all our graduates and they collect information from most colleges not not all which is why we'd say that this number is uh is a is an underestimate I mean um because both schools and individual students students can opt out but anyone who graduated in the graduating class um is you know included in the information so I
252graduate from high school sccps high school and I don't go into a two-year college so I would not be registered at all as part of that two-year number so I would not this I would not be included in this persistency rate because I never went to College to begin with for the persistence rate that's true yes but if I do go to college then and even if it's just the first semester I'm counted in some way or other and if I don't stay then I'm obviously one of the 7% or 6% or whatever the number is for that particular year that's that's not maintained or not follow through or not persisted for two or four years yes okay and then the last one because I I have a I talk about this in the community
253often times and I I want to make sure that I'm I'm stating it AC accurately and I guess I'm concerned that maybe I'm not um it says here on slide uh it's on slide 31 that college degree completion rate is uh 60% for FCPS average in 2007 and basically 60% in 2008 and that 60% of the whole of all our graduates for that particular cohort of graduates or that's just I help Define it for me I guess maybe I'm I should ask the question and let you tell me what I'm what I should understand from it I would have to look to be able to Define it with um with certainty I would have to check I believe it's um of the students who enrolled in a two or fouryear College what percent um completed
254their college degree within six years but I would like to um I'd like to take a look at that and um if they completed their two-year degree at a junior college they would be counted as having um completed a degree oh well then because what I say generally when I'm talking to the public particularly talking to parents in FCPS is I say more than half the kids in FCPS alone will not graduate from a four-year college so it appear that that's accurate obviously it's even less so in other other school districts but since we have one of the higher graduation rates Even in our school system less than half people so that's part of my argument with parents at least about why their kids should be taking Career Technical education classes and getting certifications because
255it gives them something to that they can call on and get a frankly a better paying job than what a minimum wage job would be which which all goes to my my Lex my really my other comment point which and and thank you Janie for your comment but something I do deeply appreciate is is our focus and our development of career Technic education students and their I guess frankly their industry certifications uh I think we ought to be doing more of that and and looking for ways to encourage that more but the numbers that I've gotten from them say that that's more than 14,000 students total um more than 17,000 certifications more than 14,000 students uh have benefited from this in a particular year so it's more than just the number of kids are around
256a senior class and there can be multiple obviously we have multiple certifications in area so those are I think that to me is one of the most important pieces of data we need to keep in front of parents because it helps them to understand that you know their students need Stepping Stones it's not just a matter of jumping into the col world and somehow you emerge on the other side as an educated able student but that you need the Stepping Stones to a career and and obviously certifications as we're seeing here and seeing that go up can can help students U walk that path and get to something that can be valuable to them long term and ultimately to a college education if that's where that path leads them so so I I think this
257is great to package this together and and I I the passages are truly I think what helps us to see the bigger pict picture of what we're trying to achieve with students and kids and and where they're trying to go I guess so thank you Mr vov thank you madam chair uh I'm going to offer uh initially a perhaps contrarian view about the publication because I really like this one and I was really pleased that of course we're not printing 200,000 of them but a limited number is good and I would not be opposed to having the passages report in a form like this personally and then have it available in limited quantities for instance whenever Dr Garza goes out and meets with business people because I think it tells an extremely valuable story so
258uh I don't want to give up on the value of a a printed version of this um I have a couple of thoughts first of all about Pisa so we we had the Pisa um uh test done as you pointed out Dr prido a couple of years ago or I guess was last year gosh feels like a couple of years ago um is that something that we are going to be engaging on in a periodic format does that does that happen every couple of years or is is it really sort of currently sort of an ad hoc thing and what do we need to do to make that a regular at least periodic feature of uh our assessments so um there's obviously a fiscal cost associated with administering the test and it it's significant additionally
259um the test is kind of rored every several years so currently we've talked about being on a 2-year cycle um but given the fiscal um you know cost associated with administering the test I think that's probably going to be part of the conversation um that the board will want to have in terms of what are some of the assessment measures that you want to see included um in the future but again the schools really value this information um it's very actionable for them not just in terms of the academics but also the relationships that they have with their students and their staff um so there's a lot of value there's a lot of excitement about the test but then again you know there are other considerations like cost C can you give me an order
260magnitude of the cost and when we talking about hundreds of thousands or Millions what what what's the range of cost here well um the last year we participated it was 8,000 per High School which was 200,000 um we got sort of a discounted rate and I believe that even at that time many many school divisions were paying 11,000 uh I don't know what will be this um we hope to participate this coming um year and I'm not sure uh exactly what it will be but I suspect it'll be more like 11 or 12,000 per um High School right so to paraphrase uh Everett dur and 10,000 here 10,000 there pretty soon you're talking real money um another question I have not being an educator is nape um we I assume give the nape test what
261what what do we do actually with nape what is our participation with that right now we participate in Nate but we don't get any division or School level um data back um we're required by the div Virginia dep Department of Education to participate they select schools each year um we just re L got a list of the schools that would participate in nape next year and also those that would um participate in Pearl and I sorry I don't remember what Pearl stands for um but they're um um you know both required but we don't get any school level or division level data is that because of the way the whole thing is done is it completely a national survey where there's no way to look at that data and compare our individual division or even
262schools with what's going on nationally I'm I'm ignorant so please educate me um it's only a sample of our schools that are included they're they're looking for a sample that's representative of Virginia Virginia gets information back um but there's not enough uh information um my understanding is that you can pay to um oversample for uh nape and perhaps have um division level data but the last time we looked at that it was very expensive okay so I'm going to ask and maybe you don't have the answer off the top of your head but uh I would be interested in knowing what is that cost again is it tens of thousands is it Millions whatever but I certainly would be interested in knowing what the cost barrier is to getting more of that kind of information
263um which is sampled and National Etc so thank you for helping me know a few things there here um the last thing I wanted to just emote about I guess is um you know Miss mcglaughlin uh had a very interesting line of questioning about the um uh the the interventions in kindergarten and the number of schools affected um and I guess what strikes me is you know we have so we have 12 schools at 31% or higher and then we have a total of 39 at 21% or higher so that's um by my rough calculation that's 20% of our schools and then 8% so approximately 28% of our schools and I think what that illustrates is of course a feature of a modern American society which is the concentration of poverty right um I I
264bet if we I bet I could predict where most of these schools are um and that's a that's a feature of of our society that we can't be very proud of and uh but it's bigger than the school system too so um anyway like I said I forgive me for just emoting one more time on that topic but um that that sort of jumped out at me thank you anyone else Miss Reed thank you very much I think youve heard from just about everybody now that uh this is our favorite and I I wish that we all could have some caffeine so that we could keep talking about it uh yeah at least one board member is but uh it's it's such not only is a good presentation of information but I think it brings
265things up to a high level for us and and gets us out of the weeds and and it's very helpful um and Illuminating for the public for the business Community I think just to to answer the question and how are we doing so I appreciate that and I guess I'm back to this issue of what it is and what it isn't um and it isn't the the details about achievement gaps and things like that I mean that's not the purpose of this document right it's more it's more the high level um as you say in the passage points right so I think that that's probably just a a point of information that we need to tell people right off the bat you know um that to kind of Market this appropriately cuz I think it
266is very very good uh and my only wish would be that in the um the supplemental material that maybe you would provide a little more information for those of us that might like to have that I think someone else had talked about that you know there's a little bit on disaggregating uh your some of your composits but um anyway that's just for another day but and then the last point back to the Pisa I wonder if we can't um ask the state if we can use that as a a substitute test you know to somehow get you know as get a waiver and say look this is something that measures um the kind of skills that we think are more important than uh perhaps you know some of the other things that we're measuring so
267um do you have an immediate reaction to that is that something that's us you know worth considering and and trying to advocate for uh I I think it's possible again I think that's really kind of the function of that so innovation committee that was formed last year is to look at what you know additional options really exist for alternative assessment pass and I'm looking at substitute tests certainly was something that the committee began to do some have some discussion on looking at student sampling was another topic that they uh have begun some work on so I think it's you know really important for us to focus in terms of where how does that work develop this year um and if there are certain policy um changes that we really want to Advocate strongly for to
268make sure that we're doing that so we've had a seat at the table um in the initial conversations and we'll continue to do so so I do think it's possible well that's terrific that's encouraging I think for a lot of people and then last but not least you had teed up some guiding questions and uh none of us address those uh because everybody had other things they wanted to talk about so I just wanted to provide you an opportunity if you had any initial thoughts you are the staff that um have also been so kind to stay here after 11:00 p.m. at night about how this information might uh shape the Strategic plan or the portrait of graduate work do you have any you know immediate comments or thoughts for the board um since you're
269obviously much closer to this information than we are well I think you know I think the board has done some really good work obviously already thinking about the measures that you want includeed in the Strategic plan um I think the next part of that though is thinking about how do you want that information presented so the passages report has been I think very useful to the board we've continued to get good feedback about it what type of information from passages might you want included in future strategic plan reporting how would you want that information uh presented and included in the future the workaround portrait of a graduate I think um again it's it's kind of trying to prioritize some of the assessment work that we do in the division so you know you're always balancing
270cost and workload versus the information that you get back from the assessment but you know we've started on this path to really trying to do more work around performance-based assessment and we had some questions this evening about could we start to use some of that at more of a division reporting scale um so starting to just continue to have those conversations I think with the board would be really good and um you know our folks are very very excited about the work of the Strategic plan I can tell you both in the schools um and in central office um and the workaround portrait of a graduate um again is is I think really helping us as we think about curriculum Innovation assessment Innovation so just really thinking about how you where you want us to
271focus prioritize um and how you want some of the information presented I think will be would be helpful conversations for us to continue to have thank you all very much anyone else all right thank you very much thank you to refresh everybody we are on new business that was new business item 6.02 remember new business agenda items there will will not be a vote on these items but action is scheduled at a future meeting so 6.03 approve the appointment of Marty K Smith Chief of Staff to the Educational Employees supplementary retiring system of Fairfax County Board of Trustees for a one-year term ending June 30th 2016 and 6.04 resin policy 90003 opportunities for individual assessment we are next going to move on to agenda item number seven and and that is uh Dr Garza superintendent
272matters I have to pass all right thank you um next is our board reports and I will start with the June 15th meeting of the governance committee with Miss Evans okay thank you madam chair uh we did several things that we are going to bring to you with more detail at the July 13th work session one was we we did um do a little bit more work on the retreat schedule and uh one of the things we did was add back in um advocacy on assessment and accountability so we're going to have a short discussion of that so we can get that moving um we also added in there to make sure that we had superintendent and board priorities that's something that that uh we really need to take care of so that's what we
273did on the retreat um we also were tasked with creating an advisory committee revision timeline not the substance of the revision but a timeline for getting the substance so we will bring that to you as well to the work session and um we had been uh the title one advisory committee asked us to make certain changes in the Strategic governance plan so we um have approved what they had asked us for and so we will be bringing that to you as well for language changes in the Strategic governance manual thank you and I now call on Mr moon to give us a report for the June 24th audit committee yes thank you very much just briefly uh yesterday on June 24th audit committee met and discussed first of all a evaluation of the auditor general
274on we hire one and we also discussed the status of the current audit work we further discussed a pous process table audits of five scores and contract management audit we also discuss the selection process for adding community members to the Schoolboard AUD committee and we are SCH we have a schedule for a a a discussion by the entire board on June 29th which is uncoming Monday and the last discussion topics was a FY 2016 a plan that is scheduled for new business on July 9th and we have a full day work session on this on July 13th with action to be taken on July 23rd thank you Mr Moon next uh agenda item is board matters and I will start with Miss Schultz uh I just want to say that we just had a uh
275incredible uh graduation season um some incredibly good some incredibly interesting um and uh I know that Dr Garza and her staff are going to look at uh some of the parts that were um more in the interesting category but um I have a list in my head of my personal favorites um I have favorite chairs favorite uh color guards um favorite uh most enthusiastic uh parent communities um but just overall what a a phenomenal season you know I hope that all of the the FCPS students that are um headed off to work and college and everything this summer um Carry with them a little piece of us uh as they go and have um a very very successful summer and um uh post FCPS plans Miss Evans yes I just want to say that I
276very much enjoyed the graduations that I attended as well they all went beautifully and uh congratulations to all our graduates boards Mr St I do want to congratulate all of our graduates and also my grandchildren who have progressed from kindergarten to first grade and from second grade to third grade and my kindergarteners are all reading very well I'm very proud of them Mr St thank you I I'll share the the congratulations the congratulations on the on the graduations but also I would like to thank staff for putting together a wonderful uh steam night at womman middle school and um Steam for those of you who may not be familiar with is is science technology engineering the Arts and math and we have a new steam curriculum that's being introduced um at in the pyramid and
277really ad mirors the work that has been gone in there for many years with um stem steam grants from the Department of Defense and trying to encourage more students to be involved and get involved and I think it'll make a huge difference in the pyramid there was a great turnout a lot of interested parents and um I think that's the way you build energy build enthusiasm and and and you really make a culture uh different and I think there's a lot of a lot of potential there and I'm I thank Dr Garen staff debie Tyler etc for making that happen Miss mclin I wanted to let all the graduates in uh BR District know that uh very excited for them and their families I hope they had a wonderful celebration um normally I am a
278ble to attend Lake bradock and Robinson but uh due to um my own son The Graduate who had some last minute health issues I missed them this year and uh but I I know Miss Schultz was there and uh certainly able to um and and many of my other colleagues too and and it's wonderful um knowing that our board is so well represented at these graduations every year um I also wanted to share with uh my colleagues that on on Tuesday Tuesday um as you might have seen um from a prior email that came in that the CDC did um give us a debrief on um their EP Aid report on um Fairfax County and um you know our suicide rates in the county um as well as attempted it's um a very um comprehensive
279report uh there was about probably 25 of us uh who had uh worked on um this effort in some fashion and so in the debrief we were talking about uh some of the recommendations that came from the CDC um I will be uh following up with Dr Garen and all of you because uh there is some concern about the approach the CDC took but I think uh the county did what it could um with the decisions that were made um and overall I would say Dr Garza that uh the good news is through the um the youth survey results as well as um the incredible participation of um your staff in in our schools that were selected to participate um as well as other data points I think that there's a lot of good information
280for us to learn about um student uh stress in general and uh how we can um continue really great efforts on the part of this County to reduce um suicide attempts as well as um suicides here in Fairfax so um I feel like we're at least moving in the right direction with that but a a lot of information within that um and I also appreciate um Dr Garza your team's efforts to try and and make this report available um some Juris jurisdictions choose to just keep it um private and uh FCPS is decision to try and and really allow other communities around the country to benefit from this EP Aid um the epidemiological analysis will be I think also helpful um to areas um uh throughout the United States so and uh and just I
281also want to tell my colleagues um thank you for your wishes um about my father um as my colleagues know he passed away last Thursday and um he was a educator for over 20 years and highly influential in my life not only as his daughter but in um really instilling that passion for me for public education and so um well I'll miss him dearly I hope um I will get a chance to continue to honor the great work that uh he did when I was growing up and what he uh taught me mattered most which is uh to help children create a lifelong love of learning and to help our Educators understand how valuable they are uh to create a very strong Society Mr vov uh speaking graduations I I did want to say that
282I was able to attend a dozen and of course that means compared to my colleagues Mr mline and Mr Moon that I'm a sloth um however having said that uh I did want to say that um I I heard many uh many fine speeches but I wanted to single out Edison High School I felt like I hit the trifecta there there were two students and a faculty member who in my opinion gave the three best speeches uh at that school uh that I heard throughout the county Miss Hines I will pass tonight Mr M thanks for tearing me up Mr velkoff um so um moonshine and I did um tie this year at at 24 um you know more than 48 hours sitting over a couple weeks um I definitely have some exercise to do
283and catch up on um but it is an honor to tie with you you know we we went to graduations anywhere from seven to students at the practical nursing graduation to 700 at some of our high schools um it's always incredible to see the vast diversity of the different programs we offer Miss Reed I'll be brief because of the late hour um um wanted to let the folks from Freedom Hill and Vienna elementary know that we'll be posting some materials on their websites as a result of the Community meetings that Miss Hines and staff um held so take a look uh for that and uh also just love the graduations hope people enjoy their Summers I hope they can rest and recharge and uh we'll see everybody back in the fall Mr Man since we've
284been so you know many board members been talking about graduations let me just add that as far as uh graduations are concerned is fear is always good to be able to keep up with a young Schoolboard member such as Ryan M thank you and with that this meeting is aour good night for