Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Date: Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 3h 50m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR4QfDIA_aE
Official School Board page (FCPS): https://www.fcps.edu/about-fcps/leadership/school-board

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-30. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:01] i'm going to hand things over to our board chair for a motion i believe in order to comply with section 2.2-3712d of the code of virginia it is necessary for the board to certify that since the fairfax county school board convened a closed meeting on april 8th 2025 to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting all those in favor or do i have a motion miss anderson do i have a second miss st john cunning all those in

[00:00:39] favor of the motion miss sizemore heiser miss anderson miss st john cunning mr mcdaniel mr moon miss dixit and myself that is unanimous for board members present at the table and i will now turn it back over to our meeting managers thank you this will be the second work session that we've held on the annual update of student rights and responsibilities document so as we go through this presentation and we hear from staff please keep in mind this is the second iteration there have been some updates since our first work session on this and with that i'll hand

[00:01:14] things over to superintendent thank you mr mcdaniel so this afternoon or this morning it just feels like afternoon but this morning we have staff returning they have made requisite adjustments based on the prior work session that the board engaged with as well as they've gone back to meet with members of the staff and so this morning i know they've done a tremendous amount of work so it's my pleasure to welcome dr king and her team to present where we are currently with the student rights and responsibilities. So Dr. King. Thank you Dr. Reed and good morning school board

[00:01:53] members, division leadership, colleagues, community members. Welcome to the second SR&R work session for the 2025-2026 school year. Today we are building on discussions from our March 12th session. Our work continues to focus on ensuring that SR&R regulation is aligned with state guidance, community feedback, and the division's commitment to providing safe, supportive and empowered learning environments for every student in alignment with goal two of our strategic plan at this time i'd like to introduce members of the chief equity office who have been

[00:02:27] instrumental in leading this work kathleen waltz executive director of equity and student relations tiana shin senior manager two for equity student conduct lisa forest administrative hearings officer we have several members of our team in the audience as well who will be here to answer any questions that might need to be answered now i'm going to invite kathleen waltz to begin our presentation and guide us through the foundational elements of today's discussion good morning our desired outcomes today are to review the final proposed discipline recommendations and the final proposed cell phone policy and storage recommendations for the srnr based on the

[00:03:05] guidance provided today the red line version of regulation 2601 will be posted as new business for the april 25th 24th 2025 regular school board meeting today's session is divided into three key areas first we will explore the final proposed discipline related changes to the srnr second we will review the final proposed changes to our cell phone policy and storage all of the final proposed changes are in response to school board and or principal feedback collected during

[00:03:43] the march 11th work session or in further discussion with principals after reviewing these changes our team will open the floor for collaborative discussion and questions from the school board to solidify the final red line changes i will now turn our presentation over to diana shin who will review the final proposed discipline changes our first focused area is the final proposed discipline changes these recommendations are based on feedback gathered during the march 11th work session as part of the srnr revisions focusing on clarity and

[00:04:21] enforcement we initially proposed changes that state for possession or use of statutory weapons possession or use of switchblades machetes and certain other knives and use of other weapon weapons administrators would be required to issue a suspension for up to 10 days unless the referring administrator determined that mitigating factors such as the student's age background intent previous infractions disability status and or other circumstances should not warrant a suspension the original proposal also required a referral to the school-based risk prevention team for further assessment and intervention in accordance with regulation 2111 during the march 11th work session school board

[00:04:59] members provided feedback expressing concern that the allowance for administrative discretion and suspension decisions for weapon related violations could still result in inconsistent discipline outcomes across schools members emphasize that even with guidance such discretion might continue to undermine the division's efforts to reduce disproportionality particularly for students of disabilities black students hispanic students multilingual learners economically disadvantaged students and male students in response to this feedback the final proposed change now mandates that for any violations involving possession or use of statutory weapons possession or use of

[00:05:36] switchblades machetes and certain other knives and use of other weapon the following two actions shall be required without exception a suspension for up to 10 days and a referral to the school based risk prevention team to determine appropriateness for further risk assessment in accordance with Regulation 2111 and any other appropriate intervention as designated by the referring administrator.

[00:06:01] The final proposed change removes administrative discretion regarding the imposition of suspension for these offenses. This ensures that a consistent non-discretionary consequence is applied across the Division, thereby reinforcing a uniform equitable application of the SRNR. By requiring both suspension and risk prevention team referral for these weapon-related incidents, the updated regulation balances student and school safety with a structured intervention framework, ensuring both immediate and long-term supports are put in place for students involved.

[00:06:31] As part of the SRNR revisions, we initially proposed adding a monitoring requirement to Regulation 2601 to provide oversight specifically to two critical areas. First, the application of administrative discretion related to suspension decisions for weapons violations and second the consistent use of required interventions for weapons assault and assault and battery violations the original proposed change recommended creating a new section in the introductory portion of regulation 2601 titled monitoring and enforcement the language originally proposed stated the chief equity office in collaboration with the office of the chief of schools shall conduct a semester review of all discipline cases involving weapons

[00:07:10] assault and assault and battery to determine the use of required intervention and factors considered prior to issuing a suspension for the related violations. The intent of this proposal was to enhance oversight by ensuring that administrators both applied required interventions and thoughtfully considered student-specific factors before suspending a student for serious violations. During the March 11th work session, school board members provided feedback that discretion and suspension decisions, even if monitored, could still lead to inconsistent discipline outcomes and undermine efforts to reduce disproportionality. Board members expressed

[00:07:46] concern that allowing administrators to consider factors prior to suspension could continue to result in unequal application of discipline practices across schools. In response to this feedback, and because the final discipline proposal removes the administrative discretion provision for suspension decisions related to weapons violations, staff determined there's no longer a need for a separate formal monitoring process of discretionary factors. With discretion eliminated it is sufficient to monitor the use of required interventions for weapons assault and assault and battery and compliance with suspension practices related to these infractions can be addressed through standard discipline audit and reporting processes already in place across

[00:08:25] the division as a result of this feedback and internal review the final proposed change simplifies the monitoring provision the new proposed section of the regulation will state the chief equity office in collaboration with the chief of schools shall conduct a semester review of all discipline cases involving weapons assault and assault and battery to determine use of required intervention this adjustment ensures a streamlined consistent approach to oversight while reinforcing the division's commitment to clear equitable and uniform enforcement of the

[00:08:56] srnr since the march 11th work session the governor signed senate bill 908 sorry 980 which amends policies and procedures related to the prevention of and response to cyber bullying in schools specifically 980 requires that all local school boards establish policies that address cyber bullying in alignment with model policies to be developed by the virginia department of education these model policies provide regulatory guidance on preventing and responding to incidents of cyber bullying including incidents that occur off school property but have an impact on the

[00:09:31] school environment under sb 908 sorry 980 correction the new policies must also provide protections to ensure that any student who was a victim or witness of cyberbullying is not deterred from reporting incidents or seeking support. In addition, the policies must include a list of available support services and resources for students impacted by cyberbullying. At this time, we are awaiting the Virginia Department of Education's issuance of the required model policies. Once the VDOE model policies are finalized and released, the SRNR will be revised accordingly to incorporate the mandated procedures and protections related to cyber bullying we will

[00:10:10] continue to monitor the development of the model policies closely and ensure that any necessary updates to regulation 2601 are brought forward in a timely manner to maintain compliance with state law and to enhance protections for all students to enhance clarity and enforcement within the srnr several proposed changes to the discipline matrix were brought forward during the march 11th work session the proposed changes include the inclusion of a k-6 icon within the discipline matrix the addition of matrix instructions to guide users through the appropriate disciplinary process the addition of a corresponding narrative column in the matrix to reference where additional

[00:10:48] information can be found a matrix key footnote directing users to the page containing the matrix key and a matrix footnote clarifying that s bar code bsc 27 related to weapons includes blades less than three inches and pneumatic weapons following the march 11th work session no feedback was received from the school board regarding these proposed changes as such unless new feedback is provided during today's session we plan to move forward with redlining these revisions into the srnr to further strengthen clarity and enforcement within the srnr several proposed changes related to drugs and assault violations were presented during the last work session the proposed changes

[00:11:27] include a revision to BES06, which would require administrators to use the signs and symptoms of substance use within the FCPS overdose protocols before determining that a student is under the influence. The definition of assault is proposed to be updated to reflect the VDOE definition, clarifying that assault occurs without physical injury. Additionally, the proposed changes would require interventions for all assault violations. It is also proposed that a new narrative section for assault and battery be added using the video definition which distinguishes assault and battery as occurring with physical injury to further enhance clarity the proposed changes would

[00:12:05] create a new s bar code beso1b for group assault and battery violations finally the narrative provisions related to hazing would be separated into their own distinct narrative section recognizing that hazing is a unique violation with its own s bar code following the work session no feedback was received from the school board regarding these proposed changes as such unless While listening feedback is provided during today's session, we plan to move forward with redlining these revisions into the SRNR.

[00:12:33] Several proposed changes related to data entry, parent notification, administrator training, and directed support were presented during the last work session. The proposed changes include requiring discipline data entry into SIS for all discipline violations, parent notification within 24 hours of a disciplinary incident, required intervention for any SRNR violation, and annual integrated discipline training for all school-based administrators.

[00:12:59] Integrated discipline training would include training on updates to the SRNR, scenario-based discipline processing, Title IX, bullying and harassment, bias and discrimination, discipline data entry, and requirements for turnkey training with school-based staff. Finally, the proposed changes would remove the school counselor as a required school team member for receiving discipline concerns and directing this responsibility to the school-based administrative team. Following the work session, no feedback was received from the school board regarding these proposed changes. As such, unless new feedback is provided during today's session, we plan to move forward with redlining these revisions into the SRNR. Proposed changes to enhance clarity around

[00:13:38] specific terms and definitions within the SRNR were presented during the last work session. The proposed changes include revising the definition of hate speech to include religion as a protected class and symbols, changing the term stealing to theft for consistency, insist and removing the term stakeholder and replacing it with community partner or community organization following the work session no feedback was received from the school board regarding these proposed changes as such unless new feedback is provided during today's session we plan to move forward with redlining these revisions into the srnr and finally proposed changes related to the following general terms and definitions within the srnr regulation were

[00:14:16] presented during the previous session the proposed changes include adding definitions for the following terms listed here following the work session no feedback was received from the school board regarding these proposed changes as such unless new feedback is provided during today's session we plan to move forward with redlining these revisions with the discipline revisions concluded we will now shift our focus to the second major topic of today's session the cell phone policy and storage recommendations which will be presented by kathleen waltz to initiate our conversation we will begin by reviewing data collected from the cell phone

[00:14:51] pilot program focus groups community forums and surveys conducted in response to school board follow-on motions issued in may 2024. extensive data related to these findings was previously provided to the board cell phone violation data was evaluated at the schools participating in the storage unit pilot between the first day of school august 19th 2024 and september 30th 2024 there were 428 cell phone violations at the control or comparison middle schools, compared to 164 cell phone violations at the storage middle schools.

[00:15:30] During the same time period, there were 1,587 cell phone violations at the control or comparison high schools, compared to 1,170 violations at the storage high schools. between october 1st 2024 and january 31st 2025 there were 809 cell phone violations at the control or comparison middle schools compared to 433 cell phone violations at the storage middle schools during this same period there were 2107 cell phone violations at the control or comparison

[00:16:04] high schools compared to 1936 violations at the storage high schools these findings indicate that the pilot schools implementing storage units had slightly fewer cell phone policy violations inputted into cysts during both time periods captured however the difference was only slight the possible positive impact of the storage units appears to be more pronounced at the beginning of the school year from august 19 through september 30th than when compared to the period from october 1st through january 31st participants of the focus groups were asked about their perceptions of the

[00:16:41] storage units piloted at the 30 pilot schools. For pouch storage which was piloted at the middle schools, participants identified the following benefits: an enhanced learning environment, forced consistency, reduced behavioral issues, and a reduction in teacher burden. The drawbacks or considerations associated with pouch storage included students circumventing the rules, the impact on teaching practices, and inconvenience and loss of instructional time.

[00:17:11] For door storage and tote storage options which were piloted at the high schools, participants identified encouraging student accountability and the formation of routines as the primary benefits. The drawbacks or considerations identified for these options included a lack of consistent enforcement and student resistance. Deanna? While the findings collected from the Fall 1 data points including the pilot, focus groups, community forum, and survey are critical to informing next steps, the signing of senate bill 738 directly impacts any preceding cell phone policy in revising the

[00:17:50] cell phone policy recommendations findings from multiple data sources including the requirements outlined in sb 738 were consulted and directly informed the proposed revisions in addition to the earlier data points presented new data sources were reviewed and considered these include the cell phone violation data a letter from the high school principals association and convenings with high school principals to gather additional recommendations and feedback these additional sources of information including the signing of sb 738 arose after the march 11th work session and have played an important role in shaping the final proposed policy revisions being presented

[00:18:30] today based on the passage of senate bill 738 the following changes to the srnr regarding cell phone use in schools are proposed to go into effect on july 1st 2025. the srnr will be amended to ban student possession and use of cell phones personal tablets cell phone accessories and smart devices on school property bell to bell bell to bell is defined as the period beginning when the first bell rings at the start of the school day to initiate instructional time and ending when the dismissal bell rings at the conclusion of the school day the bell to bell period includes lunch

[00:19:09] and the time between classes under the proposed changes student cell phones personal tablets cell phone accessories and smart devices may no longer be used as instructional tools during the school day schools must ensure that the implementation and enforcement of this policy is the responsibility of the school administration and that enforcement minimizes to the extent possible any conflict with the instructional responsibilities of teachers or any disturbance to instructional time appropriate accommodations must be provided for students with ieps 504 plans or medical conditions in accordance with applicable laws and regulations students may not be suspended

[00:19:46] or expelled solely as a consequence of violating the cell phone policy however any violation of this policy that involves coincides with or results in an instance of disruptive behavior that is not solely related to a cell phone violation shall be addressed in accordance with the srnr in regards to storage following the passage of senate bill 738 several new implications and factors must be considered regarding cell phone storage practices within FCPS. There was a cost associated with implementing storage pouches or units at all FCPS schools.

[00:20:20] While the pilot program showed success both anecdotally and through quantitative data with fewer cell phone violations evident at storage schools compared to non-storage schools, it is important to note that these data points were based on implementation under the current FCPS cell phone policy, which will be significantly different beginning July 1 under the new state law. Additionally, principals have expressed that any decision regarding cell phone storage must be approached with consistency and equity across schools to support fair and successful implementation. The language of SB 738 related to enforcement responsibilities will place pressure on administrators to ensure compliance with the policy. Storage units are seen as a mitigating

[00:21:00] factor that can assist administrators by working in tandem with other resources to help students adapt to the new requirements under the law. Given these factors, the superintendent recommends that all students be required to personally store their cell phones, personal tablets, cell phone accessories, and smart devices, keeping them off and away from the arrival bell to the dismissal bell each day.

[00:21:24] In the next three slides, you will see the proposed discipline matrix that governs violations of the cell phone policy. After receiving feedback and convening with administrators, the proposed matrix changes focused specifically on required interventions at each level of violation and the loss of privilege upon a fourth violation. Interventions are required for every violation level, which aligns with the VDOE model policy, and with the proposed SR&R revision requiring interventions for every SR&R violation. However, administrators are not required to complete all interventions within the cell phone discipline matrix. This is reflected by the addition of the word OR between intervention

[00:22:02] options the use of or clarifies that administrators may select one intervention from the list rather than completing every listed intervention for each violation lastly for a fourth violation the loss of privilege is restored back to 20 days instead of the originally proposed 5 to 10 days this change was made at the request of school administrators included in the pilot program as a result of the final proposed cell phone policy we recommend the inclusion of two additional terms and definitions to further enhance clarity within the srnr the terms bell

[00:22:37] to bell and smart device are proposed for addition the definitions for these terms directly reflect the language and definitions established in senate bill 738 including these terms will ensure consistency between state law and division policy and provide students families and staff with clear and shared understanding of key expectations under the new requirements today marks the conclusion of our final work session before we move forward with the redlining of the 2526 students rights and responsibility regulation a tremendous amount of thoughtful work has gone into this process

[00:23:15] our team has greatly engaged with feedback from students families staff administrators and community partners we have closely monitored evolving state guidance to ensure our policies align with the law while staying true to the needs and values of the fairfax county community throughout this process we have remained focused on achieving the goals outlined in our strategic plan and advancing division priorities around equitable discipline practices further our proposed changes reflect a deliberate effort to address discipline disproportionality by revising policies towards consistent enforcement and evidence-based strategy in the reg in the reduction of discipline

[00:23:52] disparities proposed changes where we present today reflect a collective commitment one rooted in clarity consistency and a care for every student we serve we thank you for your collaboration your feedback and your shared dedication to making fcps a place where all students can learn and grow and thrive at this time we welcome your questions and final reflections um thank you i'd like to thank staff for the presentation and we'll go to our first question um ms seismor thank you and i

[00:24:29] appreciate the the hard work and taking the feedback from the work session although i'll I'll save this question for a little bit later on the feedback from the work session. The first question I have is, I looked at the, I appreciate you sharing also the amended law itself so we could take a look at the language.

[00:24:45] So I'm a little curious, and Dr. Reed, I'm gonna ask you this question. Why are, I see on slide, I can see the numbers on here, the slide that recommends the proposed changes based on the new law, that we're recommending a ban to ban, a bell to bell ban.

[00:25:01] However, the law only recommends a restriction and a restriction and a ban are not the same thing. So I'm wondering why, and in fact, the law says that age-appropriate, developmentally appropriate restrictions, but we are seeming to be going beyond that by recommending a ban without recommending anything on age-appropriate, developmentally appropriate.

[00:25:23] So I'm wondering why we're going beyond the law, what the thinking was around that. - So thank you, Ms. Sizemoreheiser. I think that, and it's a great question. We've wrestled with this for some time. I think that the current version of the governor's bill has been characterized as essentially banning cell phone use bell to bell, and as you know, our prior regulation has required that it be out of class use, and we've had storage, but we allowed cell phone use between

[00:25:58] classes and at lunch for high school students. So I think the characterization of the ban bell to bell is what led to the recommendation but upon closer scrutiny the bill actually or the law actually to your point does talk about developmentally appropriate restrictions.

[00:26:20] So that would leave the door open to have a dialogue amongst the board about the developmentally appropriate allowance of cell phones perhaps during the lunch hour um or between classes so it's certainly i think a conversation to be had at this point the recommendation is um you know a bell to bell uh keep the phones out of sight so if i'm understanding you the recommendation for the ban was based on the perception that the law banned it but i'm not hearing any other reasons for going beyond the law other than that was a perception and i'm really a little hesitant

[00:26:59] on making a more restriction with only the only reason for it being because we think that's what the law says which is what i'm hearing yes ma'am and that's and i mean the law is right here it's only a page it's not that long to read and that's not what the law says so and the reason i bring this up and the reason i think this is important is one we're putting in our slides based on the law we recommend a ban we need to be careful we read it second of all i really think it's important because when we put the cell phone restrictions in i think now three years ago we wrestled with what to do at high school and we banned cell phone usage in classrooms outside of teachers needing

[00:27:38] it for instructional purposes and it was bell to bell for elementary middle school but for high school we talked about the fact that there are some like i firmly believe that we need to think about all of our students right not just the ones with the loudest voices but all of our students and when i talk to students and their families i think about the students who are parents themselves and have children they may need to reach i think about the students who may be working to help support their families which may be more now given what's happening with the economy and the federal government given the fact that we have a high percentage of people who are newly immigrants or a high percentage living under the poverty level and qualified for free and reduced meals,

[00:28:18] a lot of those students are working shift work. If you're working shift work and your boss texts you saying, can you pick up the shift, and you don't answer within that whole day, you might lose that income. Those are the students that I think about. So I'm wondering why we are not recommending an age-appropriate, developmentally appropriate restriction that allows checking cell phones during lunchtime.

[00:28:38] I think about the students who desperately want to be included in the lunchroom with their friends but may not have a 504 IEP and need some sensory reduction, may not qualify for a 504 IEP because maybe that sensory need doesn't actually impact them in their educational environment because the classroom's not that noisy, but may in the lunchroom. So I'm wondering why those students weren't taking into account when the law seems to allow an age-appropriate development to appropriate restriction. Thank you, Rachana, for those questions. When we took our recommendation to the superintendent for consideration.

[00:29:16] We looked at number one, where it said, except as provided in subdivision four, number one under B in the law. Line 24. Oh, line what? Oh, line 24, I'm sorry.

[00:29:33] Except as provided in subdivision four, restrict cell phone and smart device possession and use on school property from bell to bell. So our interpretation of restrict means not allow use. You could be restricted to your restriction ban are not the same word.

[00:29:52] I'm just putting that out there and I kind of want to understand why we're conflating the word restrict and the word ban. So I'm going to take that one on. I think that we could read it more conservatively or more liberally in the sense of our imposition of the regulation. And at this I THINK THE RECOMMENDATION FROM STAFF IS TO TAKE THAT MORE CONSERVATIVE APPROACH.

[00:30:20] I DO THINK YOU RAISED SOME GOOD POINTS AND WE CERTAINLY COULD ADJUST THAT TO PROVIDE -- I THINK YOU COULD STILL KEEP WITHIN THE LAW, TO YOUR QUESTION. YOU COULD KEEP WITHIN THE LAW AND RESTRICT AS DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE. IT'S USED DURING INSTRUCTIONAL TIME IN BETWEEN CLASSES BUT ALLOW A PHONE CHECK IN AT LUNCHTIME AND STILL BE WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE LAW AS LONG AS WE HAVE identified it as a developmentally appropriate use of the of the phone so I think we could certainly interpret it that way and still be within the law of the commonwealth at this time thank you

[00:30:59] chairman fish thanks so much assuming let's say we're taking the conservative approach what steps can the school division take to ensure you know one of the things that came up in our initial discussion several years ago it seems like far longer than three years ago at this point but but I think it has been three years.

[00:31:23] We talked a lot about the stigmatization of students being able to be identified as having a 504 or an IEP based on them having a phone. If that's the only reason that they have it, then everybody knows automatically. What steps can be taken as a school division to mitigate the outing of students based on their IEP and 504 status, based on their access to those devices?

[00:31:51] So I think that I think as we work to create a culture that's inclusive of students in all manners in which they best learn clearly that would be first and foremost right respect the needs of one another and come from a space that is welcoming regardless right you and I happen to be wearing glasses today not everybody is I'm okay with it you're okay with it but BUT AS A YOUNG CHILD SOMETIMES THE FIRST TIME YOU FUT GLASSES ON, YOU'RE NOT OKAY WITH IT.

[00:32:29] SO WE NEED TO CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT AND A CULTURE WITHIN OUR SCHOOLS THAT REGARDLESS OF THE TOOLS WE NEED, THAT THAT'S OKAY, RIGHT? SO I WOULD ALSO SAY THOUGH THAT ALLOWING OR TO MISS SIZEMORE HEISER'S POINT ABOUT ALLOWING A DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE USAGE OF PHONES AT LUNCH WOULD CALL LESS ATTENTION TO A STUDENT WHO REQUIRED THAT.

[00:32:52] On the other hand, I know that from parents and staff and students just having that distraction not present in front of them is also very important, right? This is not a simple solution. It has complex impact and we have to remember developmentally we also have high school students that are 18 times 19 and are heading off to school, work, life and just how do we also talk about the responsible use and practice that in high school so all of those i think are part

[00:33:25] of this conversation so i appreciate having it this morning what steps can we take as a division to put more of the onus on parents to police the proper use of these devices and in two ways i'm thinking one ensuring that they know that times are changing and that direct contact with their student via the device is not going to be as easy as it once was and that they should be going through the main office and secondarily um arming them with the tools they need to properly police the device itself on their end through user settings i think those are great questions i mean at the

[00:34:03] end of the day parents are providing for most not all but for many of our students it's parents that are providing and paying the data fees right so i think that that's a conversation our parents should have with our students about what is the appropriate use of a cell phone and it's not the phone itself the tool right it's the access to so much damaging and negative social media content and the algorithmic obviously pull of the phone i would say though that you know letting parents

[00:34:38] know that we certainly have in division ways to monitor laptop use but a lot of the chatter we had hoped to eliminate or limit has moved to different types of devices right so i know our school staff and leaders are wrestling with just sometimes our students appear to be a step ahead of us regardless of our rules we implement but i do think having that conversation with parents is very important my time has been going for like a minute and a half can you restore it back to two minutes please i also have to recognize that as we sit here the students in our schools have never

[00:35:16] not had cell phones so they've grown up in a very different environment around these tools than we did so i think there are lots of ways we could work with parents um and i think uh we'll explore those um so the the proposal seems to indicate that school principals would have the discretion of choosing how to enforce the policy whether it's away in your backpack or your bag or what have you or in a storage device would those be implemented implemented at the school level or on

[00:35:51] the classroom level so would a principal who decides to use a storage receptacle of some kind would that be implemented throughout the entire school or based on the classroom it would be a school by school decision not a classroom by classroom decision great which leads me to my next question which is obviously there's always going to be room for refinement on these policies So because it is school by school, we could reflect the superintendent could reflect on data gathered based on changes in the policy and how the schools implement the policy to see what the most efficacious implementation has been over a period of time. Yes, sir, we could do that.

[00:36:30] Well, I'll be interested to see, you know, based on Miss Sizemore Heiser's line of questioning where we end up on this subject. I do think that there are two things that could be read out of this legislation. One, exactly how Ms. Seissmerheiser has interpreted what does the word restrict mean. At the same time, line 24 and subsection 4 would indicate that the only restriction allowable beyond bell to bell is for an IEP or a 504, which I have a general problem with because of, you know, it potentially outing students, etc. But I'll be interested to

[00:37:08] see how that progresses. I will be bringing a follow-on motion for the SRNR to evolve the way that our board engages on the SRNR to align it with our EL process so that we're not taking up such a significant amount of board time every single year when it could be part of our standard evaluation process. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Fish. Ms. Anderson. So our chair was in my brain. He asked most of my questions so I'm not going to repeat everything. I did want to reiterate that that I am also concerned about protecting the rights

[00:37:45] of our kiddos with IEPs and 504s. The other aspect that I found very interesting when I was listening to what Ms. Sizemore-Heiser said is that when you go back, we can't actually eliminate student possession of a cell phone.

[00:38:00] It's still technically they're going to be possessing it 'cause it's still on their person, which actually gets me to my next point. I have, well, and then I'll go back to one of Mr. Frisch's questions. Is there a possibility, as a parent, I sign the SRNR every year to say that I understand what's in it and that my children will abide by it.

[00:38:20] Is there a way that we could put something in the SRNR that actually acknowledged the fact that the cell phone is a private device that's being brought into our schools? So it's a personal device that you are making a decision to bring in, which also would help, I think, with some of this idea about possession.

[00:38:37] it would acknowledge the restriction. I just think that in the before time when we didn't have a device for each student, if a student brought a device in, they were required to act, their parent was required to sign a personal device notice.

[00:38:52] So I think that that is an appropriate thing for us to do here to acknowledge that these are devices that parents are allowing their students to bring to school. And so if that's the case, then I think that it would make sense for us to protect ourselves just a little bit that way. - Ms. Anderson, are you saying that just like the parents have to sign off on the SRNR, there would be another signature sheet.

[00:39:12] Are you asking for another signature sheet? - No, I'm actually asking it to be part of the SRNR itself. So that way when they're signing off, they understand that if they're sending a device with their student, that it's their responsibility to monitor that device. - Okay, thank you. - So that's one thing.

[00:39:28] The second thing is we have as a school system kind of moved away. I went to school when it was absolutely the main office that were the sub school or whatever that was collecting information to get to students related to all the different things. And our email devices or our email program quite appropriately doesn't allow parents to email their students at school, which I absolutely agree with.

[00:39:52] Do we have the staff required to meet the new communication expectations of parents during the day? Because I think that we're going to have to come up with a system that we actually talk to schools about related to the fact that how we're going to make sure parent communication because we're we're in a much different time than when I was growing up where just the sheer volume of communication that goes on between parents and students I don't think we're prepared for that as a division so I think that that would definitely be something that we would need to look toward and the final thing I want to say is that looking from the

[00:40:28] findings of the pilots what we were doing was working it's not perfect it's never going to be perfect I particularly look at the amount that the minimal amount of impact that the pilot had on the high school level, which indicates to me that if we don't figure out some less restrictive way to manage this, it's going to continue to be a battle with high school students that I don't particularly want our staff to be engaged with. I think that it's a waste of our time. Miss Dixon. Thank you for the presentation. I believe that word restrict

[00:41:07] also doesn't mean ban. It means reduced, you know, I guess, access to the phones. I believe students also have rights and and also taking it away fully from them during the entire day. I think we're doing some disservice to our high school students who may be working after school or have other classes or commitments and taking care of their siblings. So there could be 100 other reasons why they could need a phone during recess.

[00:41:39] So I'm I don't like this band and a bell to bell band just because I want them to give them a little bit of time in between to just take their check their phone messages. Also in time of emergency. And I got for a bit at have it happens and there is a school is under attack or shoot shooting.

[00:41:59] I do I do want parents to be able to communicate with their students and some some possible ways so um i wanted to ask you in case uh you know the equity office that what he what is your understanding and and the term of students who may need phone during lunch breaks what is the problem with that before the law was passed we had a different recommendation to allow what you are asking our interpretation of the law was that we were supposed to restrict

[00:42:33] use from bell to bell, and that's why we brought the recommendation forward. Okay, so again, the law, we can talk more about the law's interpretation, and my interpretation is same as Ms. Saiz Mohaiza said, that it is to be restricted in some capacity, but not -- it's like you restrict, you know, doing something doesn't actually mean you don't do it.

[00:43:01] Like, I could be wrong, but this is my understanding. wanted to know about the implementation. I mean, all rules are great and policies are great, but it comes to implementation. Some schools have better success with school cell phone than the others, and consistency is the key. And I just feel like if you put out teachers in the middle of grabbing the phones from the students, I think it just puts a lot of pressure on them too. I think They don't like doing it.

[00:43:32] So the devices, it's good. Should be an automatic thing when student is signing us are an art and they're they are supposed to do that. It should be kind of inbuilt into them. So I think the more the consistency is across the district with every school, I think the students are going to be like, OK, this is what I'm supposed to do and take giving them some respect.

[00:43:53] Also, this is, you know, you know, giving them some respect of them being able to use their phone at some time. I think we can gain their respect back. So I think it's a mutual respect we have to do at this time. So I'll stop there. Thank you.

[00:44:08] Thank you, Miss Dixit. Miss Marin. Yeah, I was so ready to be like, yes, let's just do it. You're presenting us with the present with the recommendation. But there's still questions and I'm trying to figure out a few things.

[00:44:26] So before the board, it seems like we have some consensus to figure out are we going to do bell to bell completely or allowing for lunch at high school? okay so that would be if the staff is going to propose what they're proposing that means that we either need to ask for amendment now or we amend it when we vote on it the implementation the how are they going to be pouches are going to be hangers the front office calls that's a great idea our family's now going to be flooding the front office with with things relatedly the funds needed to implement do we have to buy things and then the communications to families but there's just i feel like there's an overall philosophy too like just this week my daughter said hey can

[00:45:06] i have instagram because my soccer team is posting updates and i don't know what's happening i see the updates so like we've got to be consistent if we're going to not have them on devices if it's to limit them from the social media that they're not useful for well then there's all these social media accounts by all these clubs that principals are posting to so you know what do we do about that because they're still going to need to see those things unless it's totally duplicative content just delivered but this particular piece of content was not duplicative i like the idea

[00:45:41] miss anderson suggested about the sign off i recall this past year when the sr and r sign off my parents was digitized great but like i somehow hit something and it was gone and i was done and i had agreed and i hadn't scrolled through anything so i think and i remember we talked with mr sethe at the time but like really being sure that that is a meaningful process i know sometimes like you can't scroll through you can't just click yes until you've actually scrolled through which is like a minimum but you know i've thought and we've talked for a while how do we really get parents and families to read it to you know so i'm all for like an extra you know like when you go to the doctor they're like do you agree to this do you agree to this you know

[00:46:18] really have them go through these prompts um you know i also received this week attendance updates for each of my children and so i'm wondering is there something which is great and whether they're chronically absent or not um they're not but i just um want to say could there be some kind of a report like that like your child has had this many violations of the cell phone or this maybe it's something like i don't know i'm not trying to make more work but you know what's the least worst decision because we have to decide and we can also know that laws can be changed and we

[00:46:54] could reinterpret the law students will really really dislike this and i really don't feel good about doing that so i love if we could get to some kind of consensus are we feeling that we would want to do the bell to bell or you know interpret restrict to be what we have now which is allowed during lunch implementation the funds needed and the communications so i'm eager to hear your thoughts thanks yes ma'am so we number one there are no funds uh planning on expending on this

[00:47:34] particular recommendation because the high school was planned i believe to keep the cell phones if they have them on their person not to be seen correct so they're not taking them out every period and putting them somewhere since they're not supposed to have them so i believe that's where the high school principals landed so there's no uh there are no funds expended in the high school side currently with the recommendation the middle school those middle schools who had the pouches and want to keep them were saying fine and other middle schools felt like they got good results with simply enforcing and not purchasing that so that's a choice they're going to be making

[00:48:12] so no funds secondly i think the question really is the enforcement right regardless of which way we end up. I do believe that that expectation has been made clear both by Dr. King's office and Dr.

[00:48:28] Ponce's office as well as our region staff that we have to be consistent in our accountability across the division regardless of where we land. So I think that's been improved this year just with that heightened sense of awareness about enforcing expectations with cell phones.

[00:48:47] Dr. Anderson? Thank you. I want to build a little bit of more understanding regarding the bill.

[00:49:04] I think I read it the way that Mr. Frisch read it. There is an exception in subdivision four that speaks to a small cluster of students. Dr. Wee, can you point it to me, the area that gives us flexibility in terms of interpretation, just the line?

[00:49:21] I don't have the line in front of me, but I can phone a friend. I think Ms. Sizemore-Hyser has the name of the line, but I believe in the reading of it there's a developmentally appropriate restriction characterization that is not explicitly closing the door on the possible use, in particular by developmentally aged individuals.

[00:49:48] So let me, it would be line 16 and 17, 21, 22, yeah, 21, 22 and 24, I believe. Okay.

[00:50:05] I do agree it could be clearer and I think that's where you can sort of read it for, it's a little bit like statistics, right? I guess we can use them to tell the story we wish, but I think you can read it either way.

[00:50:21] I do think you could make the argument though that developmentally appropriate restrictions might look different for a 12 year old than an 18 year old. Okay, I'll circle back to that in just a little bit. Thank you for finding that for me. And I think what I'm hearing a little bit is started in the conversation, the existing materials for schools that have yonder pouches and the hanging things and the receptacles. So if they want to keep using them, they can. And if they do not, what will happen? I would hate for that financial investment to be for naught.

[00:50:57] So in speaking to the seven schools that have purchased pouches, they want to continue to use those pouches. Our recommendation is to allow middle schools or high schools that desire to use their own school funding to help enforce it. We gave them that latitude in our recommendation.

[00:51:14] But the seven that did had made it very clear to us in our meeting since March 11th that they want to be able to use their pouches. And additionally, there's about four or five other middle schools that would like to purchase pouches as well. we made it clear that the division would not be spending any funding but if they want to utilize their own school budgets to do that the recommendation allows for them to do that thank you and if i remember from our last discussion there was a concern regarding using classroom you know pouches because of the in and out of students taking out their backpack to include it in a pouch and putting it back in seven times throughout the day can you speak to that a

[00:51:54] a little please yes our recommendation does not allow for those types of storage units to be used right we said because of the bell the bell that we interpreted in the law that we did not want students engaging in their phone every 90 minutes by taking it out and putting in something so the high schools in meeting with the high school principals they agreed as well and came to consensus around the language that we recommended which was if you're going to use storage the storage must be bell to bell at that point and high school said that they wanted to use the personal use or if if schools have lockers and the kids can use the lockers but it is not they're

[00:52:31] not going to purchase pouches unless a principal decides that they want to use that money to do so thank you um is mr foster here no ma'am he is not okay so i cannot ask him that question um one of One of the things that I talked to you all when I met during my two by two is exactly having some more acknowledgement of the different components of the SRNR, particularly the pieces that are changing significantly around weapons, assault, etc.

[00:53:04] I think it will be a great thing, and we talked about this just on that cover sheet, whether it be electronic or physical, where each section gets its own line for an initialing. I understand, you know, assault weapons, da-da-da-da, this will happen.

[00:53:19] And I understand, you know, X will happen for this other section because it brings the attention to it because that one full signature, it's pretty much arbitrary. And we do find, not arbitrary, that's not the word, perfunctory. When we find that parents are digging into the SRNR, it's because there's a reason to because their kid is in process.

[00:53:38] We want them to know it ahead of time, similarly to what I raised for students. The student education piece and the parent education piece regarding what they can do to help mitigate student use. I mean, I've put it in my newsletter. I've shared it with all of my principals.

[00:53:55] Like, these are the steps to go in your kid's iPhone and to limit what they can have access to throughout the day. It doesn't hurt. How many people are doing it? I don't know. But the Anderson children are not happy because it's happening for them. So I'm just going to say that.

[00:54:10] But I do, and unless, I'd like to hear from Mr. Foster. I know he's not here, but I don't think I am seeing the language being interpreted in the way that our colleagues are seeing it. I do see it as bell to bell.

[00:54:26] And I do wonder, and again, this is not clean. This is not black or white. This is a lot of gray. There are a lot of different circumstances. But I also wonder about how will it impact what principals and school staff need to do?

[00:54:41] one of my biggest concerns is this becoming kind of a teacher heavy enforcement issue taking away time from instruction i'll take it thank you um mr moon uh thank you uh comment or two or question or two and and then perhaps a request a this sort of last minute a legislation from general assembly is really helping us but at the same time you know causing some confusion on our part

[00:55:23] some of my colleagues already stated that restrict to be interpreted other than banning. I mean, I can certainly agree with that. That can be certainly interpreted that. So this is a sort of question and request. A lot of times when you are unable to ascertain what the legislation or legislator truly meant to say in the legislation you look at legislative history and if that if they can be found if they can be found and i was looking at this particular legislation

[00:56:02] and all that i see is it began from september of 2024 and started with uh started in senate and then there was house version and then there were a lot of discussion between senate and house and at one point they not could not reach a compromise and then ended up senate ended up acceding to a house bill and then came to this if we can somehow find the discussions they had

[00:56:37] to come to this point they might give us some clues as to what they meant to say by restriction as opposed to any other languages that's one if that can be done because i'm not able to find there right away whether they have any any any minutes from those committee meetings and etc and look through those that's a request a question that i have is reflecting on this house bill 1961

[00:57:08] and your proposal 1961 seems to asking each school district to develop a policy that implementation and enforcement of which should be the responsibility of administration, school administration, and minimizing minimizing loss of instructional times or minimizing responsibilities or duties put upon classroom teachers. But use of use of cell phones or

[00:57:44] other smart devices, if they occur in classrooms, we don't see school administrators in every classroom all the time how will we be able to enforce at the same time minimize loss of instructional time or duties upon classroom instructors to be able to enforce this mr moon during our pilot process we had these conversations with our principals and what they did as part of the pilot was a teacher would school set it up separately some of them have a

[00:58:20] google doc where the teacher goes into the google doc and says the student violated and the administrator handles it some call the front office and have an administrator come and deal with it but at this year teachers were not to handle the cell phones it was upon the administrator to handle the cell phone and the discipline of the cell phone so i i'm gonna have to ask for go back at this time i would ask for members that don't want to go back to put down their placards because i know some of you guys left them up thank you and i think i captured everybody that did put them

[00:59:00] back up. We'll go back in the order of our first round. Ms. Sizemore, hi sir. Thank you. A couple things I want to just go back to. I appreciate the comment about looking at the legislative history, however, that's the second step I believe. The first step is look at the plain language meaning of the word. So when you just google the dictionary definition of restrict, it refers to the act of setting boundaries, limits, or conditions on something. Indicates an act of imposing rules or conditions how something can be used or distributed it does not say ban or stop usage of

[00:59:38] or prevent it's it's clearly limits not banned so i don't think we even need to go look at the intent because the plain language meaning of the word is limit so i think that gives us leeway in what we want to do and i'd be curious what the high school principals would say if you asked them that this was an option and i don't know if you did or not but like it seems like if the if the law was interpreted as banned then it'd be curious what they said but um beyond that i also wanted to kind of get back to i appreciate my colleague bringing up the stigma of ieps 504s i don't see

[01:00:14] anything in these plans to really address that when i talk to families of iep 504 students the number one reason they do not want their kid included is because of bullying i i appreciate the glasses analogy but glasses are not necessarily a coveted item cell phones are a coveted item i know yours are beautiful i do like them but you know they're not necessarily coveted item the way cell phones are and you give students a coveted access to a coveted item because they need it for an accommodation when other students don't you are setting them up to be the targets of bullying and what are we doing around that i have asked this question for two years since we did the first

[01:00:51] ban and i have yet to hear what we're actually doing to make sure and this is the reason why AND THEN I HEAR FROM STAFF THAT WE CAN'T INCLUDE KIDS BECAUSE THE PARENTS DON'T WANT IT. IT'S THIS LIKE VICIOUS CYCLE. SO I DO WANT AN ANSWER TO THAT, THAT IF WE'RE GOING TO DO THIS, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO TO MAKE SURE THE KIDS WHO NEED ACCESS FOR MEDICAL, DISABILITY, ENGLISH LANGUAGE REASONS ARE PROTECTED? I WOULD NEED TO GO BACK TO MY OTHER POINT.

[01:01:16] IF I COULD GET AN ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION, THAT WOULD BE GREAT. YES, MA'AM. DR. KING? Yes, Ms. Sosmerheiser, I agree with you, and you know, it's the expectation that our teachers do what we expect them to do, and if our students are allowed to use these devices as part of an IEP or a 504, it is upon the teachers who service that student to ensure, you know, a case manager would know and alert the other teachers that serve that student that they know that. That's not the, with all due respect, that's a different question. Okay, I'm sorry. The question, that's the question of whether the teachers are going to punish the student for using the cell

[01:01:51] phone okay i'm asking what are we doing to prevent other students from bullying the student or pressuring them to let them use their cell phone because they don't have access and the student does i mean we have bullying expectations right and i expect that if a student is bullying a student with access to a tool that they're addressed through the srnr like any other student who violates our roles with all due respect dr reed i appreciate that statement but when we're setting kids up in this way we need to do more than just saying well these are rules i know my

[01:02:19] time is up yes ma'am i will uh convene staff and work on some additional strategies chairman frisch thank you um so this would not be the first time that the general assembly has passed imprecise legislation impacting our schools um so i anticipate that if um you know the legislation doesn't define the word restriction had it defined the word restriction we wouldn't be having this kind of extended conversation about it it doesn't mean

[01:02:58] that they won't address this discrepancy in future revisions to this section of the code as well and so my my general issue is you know I read when I read the legislation I was reading it from the perception of me defining what the word restriction means right and so when I had decided myself that it meant a complete ban because of the conversation out in the public I was able to find I think was line 24 in section 4 read in tandem would be that the only exception

[01:03:34] would be for us 504s and IEPs but because nowhere in legislation does it define what the word restriction is you know a restriction can be from the lightest rebuke to the most strenuous denial, because it's not defined. It leaves it open to interpretation, I think. And I would struggle to see how any school division in Virginia's current plan could not fit into this legislation, including the recommendations that the board

[01:04:08] received in its previous SR&R conversation about, I guess, two a month ago at the work session. So So perhaps at some point the General Assembly will button up their approach to the legislation.

[01:04:25] And I can say from my time working in Congress on the Rules Committee that if Congress passed laws that were not clear and specific, the courts rely on the plain language.

[01:04:42] And only when that plain language does not ferret out clarity do they go back and try to interpret what the intent behind the legislation was, which is not always clear based on the conversation. Thank you, Herman Frisch.

[01:05:02] Vice Chair Anderson. Not to further elaborate on this point, the only other thing that I want to say is being someone who went to a secondary school, I'm not only worried about the kids, I'm not only worried about the teachers. I'm worried about every teacher that someone passes in the hallway that yells at you for being on your cell phone.

[01:05:19] So it's not just and it's othering in the hallways, it's all the things. So we have significant members of our staff, we have members of our staff that don't need to know what every student's IEP is. And that's private information that needs to be kept with the people who need to know it.

[01:05:35] So I just worry about how we're going to mitigate some of those things as we move forward so that we don't create environments that are unsafe for our kids. The other thing that I wanted to quickly mention is actually a procedural question that I have for some of my colleagues, is that the things that were recommended in the last work session related to SRNR were not actually codified in any consensus vote or consensus taking on our next steps document related to the changes, and I know a precocious third grader that unintentionally created a knife out of a piece of silverware in order to cut his

[01:06:10] food at lunch and i wonder whether or not that would have been dealt with the same way as someone who's actually bringing a machete to school and so i'm a little concerned about not having any variation i understand that we don't want the disparity in it in discipline however my concern is is that the way we're actually going to get there is that things are just not going to be recorded which is what we're trying to get away from and so i am concerned that if we don't have some mitigating language then it means that we're just not going to be recording what's going on so then we don't really know when we have a problem because it's going to be further in the disparity

[01:06:49] that we're actually trying to move away from so i am not actually it wouldn't have been something that i would have supported to take that out and so i am wondering whether or not it was the it was your office's decision to take it out based on our conversation because i don't think that it was necessarily an agreed on board direction so i just wanted to to bring that up miss anderson you're correct um miss marin yeah i appreciate the question miss anderson because i was i'm okay with everything the staff has proposed about the sr in our language so far barring the cell phone

[01:07:27] piece but i had wondered um dr king you know when we're saying we made it not not your teammate it so that it wasn't up to discretion for the suspension of the 10 days and the factors prior to suspension well what are the criteria then are those already in the srnr to determine if a child gets suspended for one to ten days there's slide five and six but the board asked to not have it up to discretion of the staff member to assign the suspension time of one

[01:08:02] to ten days so that's been removed but what now are the criteria how is it determined whether suspension is one day or ten days like we've removed the subjectivity of the person but like is it even more subjected now because there's actually no guidance so thank you for that question so currently right now the proposed change is that it is a 10-day suspension for that particular violation and it is not within the discretion to have less than that particular 10 days i'm sorry it's up to 10 days so they can have anywhere from one to right so who's deciding

[01:08:41] whether it's one or ten it's at the discretion of the administrator that is correct that was removed from the document so the administrator can determine the duration of suspension but not other factors in determining whether to suspend but what factors will the administrator use to determine the duration yes um those are factors that are typically determined in in suspension so we're right back where we started aren't we that now instead of explicitly stating they're going to take all those factors in consideration now we're saying don't consider that but they're clearly going to consider something so without explicitly i'd rather

[01:09:18] have it in there saying considering their past experience or age than have nothing at all and then it's more open to bias or subjectivity so that's on that and i'm feeling pressured because i want to share about cell phones yeah it's a sloppy it's sloppy work by the general assembly and the governor and um we're supposed to have local control and the fact that the governor is trying is dictating what is happening in our classrooms is why it's sloppy and unclear it's i came into this meeting before the legislation of a few months as mr moon pointed out thinking okay i'm good to go with the have them out at lunch because we talked about that

[01:09:57] so this board wanted so i would love if we could you know raise hands or say in our turns who is for what the staff is their interpretation and who's in and for the other interpretation that allows for us to restrict it in the way we see fit and that would mean allowing it during lunch i think if we can get to that it will really help us thanks is that allowed during the work session

[01:10:24] would okay by a show of hands would the board like to take a vote to show consensus on oh okay before we take that vote may i ask mr foster some questions first sure um okay thanks so actually dr anderson it's your turn so okay mr fossa just came in the conversation at the table is regarding

[01:11:03] the um the language and the cell phone policy whether it is a i guess i'm following you okay whether it is a restriction or a ban and is that applicable to student groups outside of those identified on line 33 i'll give you some time to take a look because i do have other questions that are unrelated to cell phones in one of the pages and please number these just to make it for easier reference but in one of the pages talked about the removal of the school counselor from

[01:11:39] a team can you give a little bit of background there please so originally there were several portions throughout the srnr that stated that counselors are the ones that could be fielding potential concerns around disciplinary decisions and so we wanted to redirect those concerns around disciplinary decisions to administrative teams instead of to counselors it doesn't preclude a parent from discussing the concern around the outcome of a disciplination or how to be able to support a student but the concern itself and how to address it according to the srnr should be

[01:12:15] directed to the administrative team so what you're saying is that counselors were making disciplinary decisions no but potentially with the language in the srnr it permitted a parent to go to a counselor to discuss a very specific disciplinary concern around an outcome versus taking that to the administrator so now parents would be prevented from having conversations with counselors about outcomes of discipline matters i'm sorry i'm not getting it so what we believe please stop my time please stop my time she's talking we did not parents can talk to their students counselors

[01:12:52] about anything that they wish the counselor does not have the authority to change the outcome of discipline infraction and that's the way it was interpreted so we removed the counselor and put it back on the administrator who makes the decisions if a parent is upset about it there's an appeal process and it's with the administrator not the counselor so that was the interpretation was in actuality were counselors making these changes no counselors were not making the changes no we just wanted to provide more clarity thank you for that and the other question is regarding the timeline of sb980 i know one of the things that's always been talked about with the srnr

[01:13:29] we have a drop dead date for printing and all of the things how does that work with your timetable if you don't have a final language until late potentially so the srnr and i'd have to find the precise language for you but the srnr does permit us to to change the regulation as needed based upon regulatory guidance or things that come up so it does allow us to change it and provide guidance to schools if it's if it happens two three months from now all righty thank you mr foster more time

[01:14:06] so uh good afternoon um i want to make sure i understand the question uh before it's on it's on it's is that is that better yeah i want to make sure that i understand the question before i answer it so um as i understand the question it is under house bill number 1961 is this a ban on cell phones or does the language of that code section give the ability of a local school division to restrict or regulate but not have an outright ban is that the question essentially and it's saying

[01:14:45] what needs to be happening from bell to bell is it nothing or is it flexibility therein so outside of those student groups that are laid that are named i do i do think that the language of the code section as it currently exists does give local school divisions the flexibility um i don't read it to require an outright ban because it talks about restrict at line 24 and restrict is is not a ban you can restrict something and not ban it um and and then again at line 27 it talks about

[01:15:23] regulating um please keep going so i i think those two um points that i just uh referred to um i do think local school divisions including this one do have the authority under the current language um to regulate but not ban so then we don't have to so essentially our regulation could end up being usage all throughout the day i don't know if that would be a regulation but i i do

[01:16:00] think that it gives board flexibility or school systems flexibility so we would have flexibility for again all throughout the day I think that you would have flexibility yes so what's the difference between what we have currently how what is what's the teeth of this legislation then if it's saying you can do whatever you wish throughout the day yeah I don't read it to be saying you can do whatever you wish throughout the day but I do read it to say that school divisions they don't have to impose an outright ban that they We can have something that is a restriction, but less than that.

[01:16:36] And it could have a restriction or must have a restriction. Dr. Anderson, I just asked Mr. Foster to take a look at it a few moments ago. I do want to say that it's -- I believe that they're talking about developmentally appropriate restrictions.

[01:16:55] So I don't believe that the intent was to allow anything to go. believe there was an intent to provide some level of monitoring a restriction that was developmentally appropriate thank you and I think what I'm trying to get to if we were to decide that at the high school level it is developmentally appropriate to not have restrictions on the cell phones would that meet the tenor of what we would like if we were to say we'll just restrict it let's say it's at lunch and not throughout the rest of the day would that meet the law

[01:17:33] the law standards so yeah I think my immediate reaction is no I think that what the code section and envisions is restriction on use but I as we talked about I do think that given that each local school division in this Commonwealth has local control over its school system that there is some flexibility and how that restriction is implemented thank you I don't think I'm any clearer but I I APPRECIATE THAT.

[01:18:04] IT WAS COMPLETELY LAST MINUTE. OKAY. THANK YOU. SO LET'S GO BACK TO TAKING THE CONSENSUS AFTER DR.

[01:18:21] ANDERSON'S QUESTIONS. SO I'M GOING TO TAKE AN INFORMAL CONSENSUS OF THE BOARD TO HELP INFORM STAFF IN ADVANCE OF THE MAY 8 BOARD VOTE. THANK JOHN.

[01:18:48] IF I COULD SAY. MAY I? BEFORE YOU DO. I'M SORRY. BUT I APPRECIATE DATA. I APPRECIATE SURVEY DATA. I APPRECIATE INFORMATION. But without them knowing what the question was asked on this, without them knowing what the interpretation of the law is, I feel a little uncomfortable having sort of, I hate to say this, hearsay, right?

[01:19:11] Because if, so I would just rather, based on the information you've provided so far, unless they're here that we can ask them questions, that would be fine. If you had a panel like you've had before in work sessions of, you know, principals from the principal associations that we could then ask more questions. I think it's a consensus of the board. It's not a formal vote. I don't know why we need all that information here.

[01:19:32] Okay, can we, Dr. King, go ahead and speak, please. Okay, I just wanted to say that prior to the bill being passed, our recommendation was to allow high school students to use their phones during lunch and between classes. Because the high school principal said that if we restrict in between classes, it's going to be very difficult for them to enforce.

[01:19:52] And so I wanted, before you took the consensus, I wanted to provide that additional information because the principals did say that. Thank you. So I'm going to, just in the interest of time, I know there's two more go-backs here, but just in the interest of time, let's move forward with this.

[01:20:11] And it's not a binding vote, it's a consensus. And this law did just come down, and obviously there's a lot of questions. SO ALL THOSE WHO PREFER THE STAFF'S PREVIOUS RECOMMENDATION THAT WOULD CONTINUE TO ALLOW HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS TO USE CELL PHONES DURING LUNCH AND PASSING PERIODS, BY SHOW OF HANDS, IS THERE A CONSENSUS FOR LUNCH AND PASSING PERIODS?

[01:20:44] OKAY. MS. MARIN, YES. MS. DIXIT, YES. MR. MOON, YES. MR. CARL, YES. mr um mcdaniel yes miss anderson yes um myself yes is uh all those opposed oh oh oh i go to the second option now okay i'm sorry this is okay so there is a consensus uh all those who prefer the updated staff recommendations for bell to bell bands at all levels including high school

[01:21:20] so we have a show of hands in terms of a consensus um and then i'm going to go back to the next go backs the process here okay so miss size where he is oh oh mr oh mr moon i'm sorry i'm sorry mr moon your second yeah i i didn't get to i didn't get to ask my follow-up questions because ran out of time on how to enforce this is so what is your expectations once we adopt new srnr new cell phone

[01:21:59] policy of teachers in the classroom when teachers see violations so it's our expectation that each principal determine how they're going to enforce the rules at their school right people are doing different things a principal showed me a cart that they have set up that their security is going around from class to class when a teacher notifies the main office the main office notifies security the security goes and confiscate a phone if they need to so there is so each school is going to have uh its own way of handling enforcement by starting from teachers is that if

[01:22:36] if it happens in the classroom it has to start with teachers right there's minimal right i think that the law is asking us not to have teachers intervene back and forth with students and principals know that and in the pilot program they prove that they could do that and you don't have any intention to give certain uh let's say a strategy guideline is how to handle it by all teachers rather than each school developing its own and look different from one school to another?

[01:23:07] I think the expectation our school leaders are to enforce all infractions of the SRNR in their schools and we're expecting our principals to be able to do so. We will often offer office hours with our with Deanna's team to support principals when they're having issues of enforcing any rules of SRNR and we're going to expect the same thing with cell phones.

[01:23:31] because since i still got some time i i you know one thing that i am trying to avoid is this teacher a just letting go of a violations versus teacher b reporting everything you know dutifully and school a's culture being this versus school b's culture being different that's what i'm trying to avoid yeah mr moon i i understand and respect what you're saying and the expectation is for our principals to uphold all rules in the srnr you know when there's violations of dress code some

[01:24:08] teachers see it some teachers don't but the expectation is that they all do right and we will continue to work with our principals who might have challenges in enforcing any rule of srnr like we've done thank you miss sizemore heiser thank you um just two quick points first i want to pick up my colleague miss anderson talking about the next steps versus board recommendations and dr reed i just wanted to get clear because this is a slippery slope if we start making

[01:24:42] changes based on conversation at the table the versus next steps is that going to be going forward for all work sessions and all topics you can stop my time thank you so are you referring to the consensus vote no in the in the in the presentation there are certain changes that were recommended based on board conversation at the last sr and r meeting and those weren't embedded in the and voted on in the next steps or consensus wasn't given on the next steps process so is that going to be a new change that from now on at work sessions we may make changes based on staff recommendations based on board conversations versus next steps and if so we should get rid

[01:25:20] of next steps no ma'am that was a that was an error we're not gonna that won't continue thank you and i and i appreciate the willingness to be collaborative and take our feet i totally appreciate that so please don't i just want to be clear what our process is yes ma'am um the other thing i wanted to mention is the findings from the pilot i was a little confused because i appreciate the finding it clearly shows there's a bigger impact of the the pouches at middle school than high school but the pilot was only august 19th to september 30th and then there's a statement later on that said that there was that the in the next slide that there was um less or somewhere

[01:25:56] they said there was um less enforcement like it was less um beneficial later on but i don't see see any data about later on it said the pouches and implementation studies were more effective early we became less effective later but we only seem to have data for a month and a bit I'm curious why we don't have data for longer yes ma'am dr. King does the team have some data Deanna yes certainly so we provided findings from the pilot in terms of the data just for a certain time period that coincided with the reporting that went out however the pilot of course extended for the entire year and if we are interested in cell phone data after this

[01:26:35] January 31 deadline we're happy to provide that I appreciate that I think what this goes to what tells me is that especially at the high school level it's a matter of really consistent implementation which is what we said from when we passed these rules three years ago that if we can support our teachers and principals and ensuring that consistent and have expectations of consistent implementation I think storage clearly shows that it helps right and I think it's important to a lot of the schools to use storage methods if they need to or want to absolutely and i and i fully believe in not having cell phones in classes all the data and research i've read points to the impact negative impact of cell phones in the

[01:27:13] classroom so i'm fully in support of that but i just think we need to continue to work on that consistent enforcement with protections for students who need them yes ma'am thank you and i believe that's everybody so we're going to unless there's any other comments last call so okay just one last comment just as an fyi because we know one of the authors of this bill

[01:27:48] is senator pokarski and i've just been texting with her just to say is this a restriction or is this a band just trying to get some other some understanding and she said can you just share this i actually texted her i said no just email it to us but since you asked last comment here it is please tell dr reed you spoke with me and the intention is the same as the executive order and 140 and the legislator many top lawyers undertook what that meant we don't want to see cell phones during the school day anymore and there's some more stuff but it's not as germane

[01:28:24] okay words matter anyway with that thank you staff and we'll be back after lunch and we want to squeeze out every last minute possible for us to digest all of this good information so dr reed do you have an introduction for goal five dr reed do you have an introduction we are starting my apologies dr anderson so it's my pleasure this afternoon as we explore goal five

[01:28:59] of our strategic plan to introduce members of our senior leadership team who will be presenting our goal five report i want to be uh clear that the goal five report in particular really involves uh the four offices that are in front of you our equity office our academic office and our school's office as well as our strategy office work on these goals i think one of the reasons you see the data that you see is because we're working across departments and that's a

[01:29:37] critical uh strategy in terms of moving the dial on the data that we're moving the dial on so i'll I'll turn it over to Ms. Neal at this point to have folks introduce themselves and then make the presentation. So thank you, Dr. Anderson.

[01:29:53] - Well, I am joined by Dr. King, Dr. Presidio, Ms. Hunstead and Dr. Ponce. And I'm gonna have Ms. Hunstead kick us off this afternoon. - Good afternoon, members of the board. Today is our final goal report for this school year.

[01:30:10] Our objectives for today are seen on the screen. We look forward to talking about our progress around goal five and the actions we are taking to meet our 2030 goals. today's presentation is our leading for tomorrow's innovation goal there are eight measures in goal five and today will be focused on measures c through g this presentation will be looking at graduation equity as part of our initial priority areas we are defining graduation equity as all students graduating from fcps with a plan and a way to demonstrate their qualifications for

[01:30:49] post-secondary success to understand graduation equity we looked at several factors including rates of on-time graduation and student dropout, the diplomas our graduates are earning, our students plan for additional education or work after graduation, and college enrollment.

[01:31:07] We also share student performance in ninth grade as an indicator of whether students are on track to graduate. Starting with the big picture first, overall about 95 percent of our students graduated on time last year, which is the sum of the teal, yellow, and dark blue bars. Our rates of on-time graduation are slightly higher than the state average and nearly identical to other districts in Northern Virginia. Approximately 62 percent of our students in the class of 2024 graduated with an Advanced Studies diploma, the teal bar.

[01:31:45] An additional 31 percent graduated with a standard diploma, the yellow bar. And less than 2 percent earned the Applied Studies diploma, the dark blue bar. Our students earned the Advanced Studies diploma at higher rates when compared to the state overall and other Northern Virginia divisions. Compared to baseline, we saw increases in on-time graduation and improvements in dropout rates, with the greatest improvements in these areas where the gaps were the largest. We met our overall targets this year and are on track for our overall 2030 goals.

[01:32:23] However, we will need to provide additional support to ensure all student groups meet the 2030 goal. To achieve our 2030 goals, we are pursuing a number of strategies, which we will discuss in detail following review of the data.

[01:32:40] Before we dive into the data of this presentation, I wanted to take a few moments to talk about why graduation equity is a key priority for our division and what factors have been shown to affect success in other districts.

[01:32:55] Graduation equity is the culmination of many of our earlier efforts, including supporting continuous growth of students and their learning in earlier grades, ensuring students are engaged school and attending regularly, and facilitating student access to and success in advanced courses.

[01:33:13] Successful completion of high school is required for approximately 94 percent of jobs and necessary for admission into most colleges, universities, trade schools, and apprenticeship programs. Researchers have identified several factors across school districts that affect graduation, including those at a division school and family level first we're going to look at our on-time graduation data on-time graduation rates are calculated based on the percent of students in

[01:33:47] a graduating class who have earned a standard advanced study or applied studies diploma for most students this means graduating within four years of entering ninth grade students with disabilities and our multilingual learners are able to extend time to graduation and are moved moved into their intended graduating class for the purpose of calculating this data.

[01:34:12] On this slide, you can see that our rate of on-time graduation was slightly higher than the state average and in line with other districts in Northern Virginia. Our class of 2024 achieved a higher rate of on-time graduation than the two prior classes, which was a similar trend in other divisions.

[01:34:35] Overall, our on-time graduation increased about half a percentage point from baseline we met our overall target for the year. Multilingual learners and Hispanic students have lower on-time graduation rates. However, both groups saw the most growth from baseline, which suggests we are also closing the gap in graduation rates across our student groups.

[01:34:58] As a reminder, our annual targets are based on the growth that we need to achieve each year to remain on course for our 2030 goals. The growth rate for all of our students is shown by the dark blue line. Rates of on-time graduation increased by 10 percentage points for students classified as ELP levels 1 and 2. These groups now have rates much closer to the division average, and we anticipate that a sustained focus will continue to improve their rates.

[01:35:33] Students who were classified as ELP level 4 had a rate of on-time graduation that was similar to the overall division rates, and formal multilingual learners have a rate of on-time graduation that exceeded the division average at over 97%.

[01:35:54] Students with disabilities categorized as level 2 had an on-time graduation rate that was slightly below the rates for students with disabilities overall and about 7 percentage points below students with disabilities categorized as level 1.

[01:36:14] And the data points we have used to ensure students are on track for graduation is students earning five or more credits by the end of ninth grade. Based on national research and our own analysis of this data, this indicator is a reliable predictor for on-time graduation, but is less reliable for some student groups, in particular for our multilingual learners.

[01:36:38] We plan to refine our model for future reports to account for these differences when examining early risk factors for on-time graduation. While not part of our strategic plan metrics, we are also monitoring changes to the state accountability system, including how graduation will be measured and reported within this system. We want to spend a few minutes looking at the four-year and six-year Federal Graduation Indicator, or FGI, which is part of our new state school performance and support framework. The four-year FGI looks at the percent of

[01:37:15] students who earned a standard or advanced studies diploma within four years of entering high school. It does not adjust for students who move to a different graduating class to accommodate extended time to graduate. It also does not include students who graduate with the applied studies diploma. Beginning with this school year, the four-year FGI will be used by Virginia as part of calculating a school's accountability score. It will account for 15% of a high school's final score and 10% of a secondary school's.

[01:37:51] The state will also report on the six-year FGI. This measure looks at the percent of students who earn any of the three diplomas within six years of entering high school. This six-year FGI does not move students into different graduating classes to accommodate extended time to graduate.

[01:38:11] This measure will count for 5% of a high school's or secondary school's score in the accountability framework. On this slide, you can see the impact of using four-year FGI rate compared to an on-time graduation rate. The rate is three to four percentage points lower when using the FGI compared to the on-time graduation rate for FCPS, Virginia, and other districts in Northern Virginia.

[01:38:40] The six-year FGI is closer to our on-time graduation rate. While we do not yet have the six-year rate for 2324 and 2122 the most recent year for which we have complete data our six-year fgi was 93 compared to our on-time graduation rate of 94 this change in reporting will be most visible at schools and divisions where more students who take in extended time to graduate

[01:39:12] or earned an applied studies diploma i will now turn the presentation over to miss neil as a part As part of graduation equity we are also going to look at students who dropped out and generally this includes our students who withdrew from a school without transferring to another school or students who had an unconfirmed status at the end of the cohort year.

[01:39:39] So unlike the previous data where we were looking for the lines to go up in this, we're looking for reduction in the rates declines to show improvement. Overall, there was a decline in student dropout rates at the state level for FCPS and for other divisions in Northern Virginia which mirrors our changes that we saw in those on-time graduation rates. And our student dropout rates are similar to other divisions in Northern Virginia and slightly better than the state. Last year we saw improvements in dropout rates across multiple student groups with the largest improvements observed for student groups who had the higher

[01:40:15] rates of dropouts. So similar to on-time graduation rates we're starting to see that gap close. Again, this slide shows our intended trajectory in order to hit our 2030 goals. And similar to what we saw in the on-time graduation rates, as we see the ELP levels increase, we see fewer dropouts. So we can see some very large improvements for our students who were classified as ELP1 level last year. And in spite of these large improvements, over half of the students with this categorization did drop out last year. Whereas when we look at students classified as ELP level four, they had a dropout rate that was similar to the

[01:40:53] overall division average and our former multilingual learners had a rate of dropout that was lower than the division average. This slide provides some additional context around the 567 students who dropped out from the class of 2024. Approximately three-fourths of the students who dropped out were categorized as current multilingual learners and about two-thirds were 18 or older at the time of withdrawal.

[01:41:18] And this data really indicates a need to continue to focus on transition and support of our high school multilingual learners, especially those students who are classified as ELP Level 1 at age 18 and beyond. So in our next section, we're going to take a look at the diploma types that our graduates are earning.

[01:41:39] So overall, roughly two thirds of our graduates earn a standard diploma and about a third earn the excuse me, two thirds earn the advanced studies diploma and about a third earn the standard diploma. Fewer than 2% of our students are in the applied studies diploma, and this represents about 13% of our students with disabilities in the graduating cohort.

[01:41:59] And this pattern of distribution is pretty consistent with the baseline as well. We don't see these big shifts in this data. When we look a little deeper, we do see differences in diploma outcomes when we look by student group. And this was very similar to the baseline, and that data is also in the full report.

[01:42:17] you may recall in last year's work session we did not set targets on diploma types as we wanted to ensure students were pursuing the diploma that most closely aligned with their interest and their post-secondary goals for some of our students that is the advanced studies diploma for other students that may be a standard diploma or an applied studies diploma it is important to note that we have many students who make an intentional choice to pursue the standard diploma over an advanced studies diploma when there is alignment with those post-secondary goals and that the advanced studies diploma is not a requirement for college admissions.

[01:42:55] We did set a target as a part of our goal four measure around academically intense course taking to allow us to track whether students are prepared for post-secondary education independent of the specific diploma that they earn. If there was an interest, however, in setting targets on diploma types, one option that we've explored is to measure the extent to which our students who plan to attend a four-year college are earning the Advanced Studies Diploma. So you can see on this slide last year 85% of our seniors who plan to go to a four-year college also earn the Advanced Studies Diploma and we do see differences

[01:43:32] between student groups when we look at this data. There are some benefits and limitations to setting a target on this. One potential benefit to a target on this is we'd be able to identify and address potential gaps between students' plans and their preparation.

[01:43:49] Adopting this measure, a potential drawback, could unintentionally signal to our students and families that the advanced studies diploma is an expectation for a four-year college. If we do add this measure and set targets, we would expect that our students who are planning to attend a four-year college would be earning an advanced studies diploma.

[01:44:07] And an alternative to setting a target here would be to continue to focus on the targets that we set as a part of our goal four which would be ensuring that all of our students have that academic rigor that makes them ready for post-secondary education regardless of the specific diploma type and so this is something we look forward to getting some feedback from the board on today.

[01:44:28] Finally we're going to take a look at the outcomes of our students after they leave FCPS. So we know for our students to be successful after graduation they benefit from having a clear idea and a plan of what they want to do immediately after graduation and among our students who completed the senior survey last year 99% had a post-secondary plan which was a rate that was similar across all of our student groups. The majority of our seniors responding to the senior survey indicated their plan was to enroll in college and our students self-reported plans remain relatively unchanged when we look year-over-year compared to the baseline as well but we

[01:45:07] did see a slight uptick in the percent of students who plan to pursue education and outside of that traditional two or four year pathway, such as training or apprenticeship programs. In addition to monitoring the plan, students are self-reporting.

[01:45:23] We also have access to data on college enrollment through the National Student Clearinghouse. And the Clearinghouse provides us data on college enrollment for the vast majority of students who are enrolled in two and four year programs. It does not track, it doesn't have the ability to track military enlistment, work or apprenticeship programs or other educational outcomes.

[01:45:43] On this slide, you can see state reported clearinghouse data that provides information on enrollment in college within 16 months of earning a federally recognized diploma. This is data the state tracks year over year. As you can see on the slide, 79% of our students who graduated from the class of 2023, and that's the most recent set of data because it's a 16 month lookout, meant that criteria.

[01:46:09] When we compare ourselves to the state and other divisions in Northern Virginia, our overall college-going rates were higher, and we had especially higher rates of college-going amongst multiracial students, black students, and boys relative to these other divisions.

[01:46:25] We also recognize that the college-going rates vary across student groups, with our Hispanic and multilingual learners having lower rates of college enrollment. So finally, we're going to take a look at the work we're doing focused on our strategic efforts to improve graduation equity for all of our students.

[01:46:43] Last year, we saw significant improvements and we attribute these to a couple of things. First of all, having consistent structures and systems in place in our schools that use data to identify students who are at risk and to provide personalized support to ensure that students are successful.

[01:46:59] Second, having division-wide structures and systems in place that provide additional oversight and support to our schools where we see higher levels of need. Third, we had our division-wide efforts that we focused on with student attendance last year that resulted in large improvements in our rates of chronic absenteeism.

[01:47:18] And if you'll remember our Goal 2 report, in particular, we saw those improvements for our seniors. And then fourth, our growth for our multilingual learners, again, where we saw those double digit gains that we reported as a part of our Goal 1 report this year.

[01:47:34] So we've tried something new with these slides. tried to separate out calling out our strategies that are new and some of our continued actions and we certainly continue to modify efforts based on the areas of need that we see in this data and other data we examine and I'm going to highlight a few of the actions within these strategies and there's more details in the full report. So our first strategy is focused on schools using tools and dashboards to identify and track risk which is allows us to respond with interventions based on the individual student needs. So one example, our schools use our on time graduation dashboard to look at those students who are at risk of not graduating. They

[01:48:12] then work with students and families to develop personalized graduation plans to help get them back on track. So one option that's available to help students get back on track is our credit recovery programs, which may be offered during non school hours, like in the evenings online or in the summer. Our second strategy, again, is focusing on continuing to provide additional targeted supports at schools where we've identified greater need.

[01:48:36] So one example of this is our on-time graduation resource teachers that we have placed at nine high schools throughout FCPS, and they support students who are at risk or have dropped out of school to make sure that those students re-engage either with that school or enroll in another school. And the data over time, which is on page 31 of the full report, does show the impact of placing these resources in schools with higher need.

[01:49:02] Third, over the past few years, we've had an intentional focus on strategies to keep students engaged with school and focused on what they want to do after they graduate. So in goal two, for example, we highlighted the importance of developing individualized plans in collaboration with families to ensure consistent attendance and to address any barriers to students coming to school.

[01:49:25] Another action that sits under this strategy is the collective efforts to expose and prepare students to the full range of post-secondary opportunities available. And some of these strategies are in place for all of our students, such as our work with ABLE, where we're gonna be looking at identifying opportunities to expand academic readiness, post-secondary readiness, while others are more targeted, such as our work with our career and transition services that supports our students with IEPs in their transition to post-secondary.

[01:49:57] Our fourth strategy focuses on the appropriate use of credit accommodations for our students with IEPs or 504 plans, including the increased awareness and access to these credit accommodations. These accommodations provide greater access to the standard and advanced studies diploma.

[01:50:14] And this year we saw this school year, we saw an increase in submissions for these accommodations as a result of the outreach efforts that were done in the fall with school teams. Our fifth strategy is focused on scheduling and academic advisement practices And as a part of the broader work to strengthen academic advisement practices, we are making sure that the process for conducting and using course audits is consistent across schools.

[01:50:39] And these course audits ensure students are enrolling in the appropriate courses each year, which may be particularly impactful for our students who are at risk of not graduating on time. And then finally, we've identified a number of opportunities to improve outcomes that our goal innovation teams will further explore, including refining predictive data sets So that we make sure that we're flagging early which students might be at risk.

[01:51:05] Increasing the use of graduation plans, as we know this is a strategy that's working. Strengthening our transition supports for students who are new to FCPS and those who are transitioning to some of our non-traditional school programs. Ensuring that we have alignment of our resources and further investigating and removing any non-academic barriers to graduating on time.

[01:51:26] And then as we conclude our final goal report to the board this year. I think it's important to note the interconnectedness of the five goals in our strategic plan. Graduation equity in many ways relies on success of our other goals, including students having a strong start no matter when they begin their journey with us and FCPS.

[01:51:46] Our students having a sense of belonging in their schools that leads to that positive school engagement, that foundation of early learning that supports subsequent academic success and the ability to access a broad range of opportunities that support pre-K to 12 success and prepare our students for the rapidly changing future.

[01:52:06] So this concludes our goal five report and I will turn it over to our meeting managers. - Thank you very much. We see one placard up, but I know you are all digesting the information. And so we will start with Mr. Frisch. - Thank you. Go to slides 19 and 20.

[01:52:24] One of the concerns that I think many on this board had since the new state accountability and accreditation standards have come forward is the idea that students who exercise their rights multilingual learners special education students who exercise their rights under federal law to have more time before graduation would be penalized their schools would be penalized for respecting those rights this seems to imply the language found on slide 19 seems to imply that students who are getting an applied studies diploma or taking uh longer than four years would not count in in

[01:53:00] the state's counting of this are they excluded permanently from that or when let's say that they complete their advanced or standard diploma at a point later are they then added into uh this the school's calculation i'm i'm gonna well i'm gonna defer to betris otherwise so i'll start and then Bettris can help out here a little bit because Bettris is our resident expert of all things accountability and VDOE.

[01:53:30] But I think what the main thing I think is what you've already summarized, which is we're no longer going to have that same flexibility in our graduation calculations for those students that we know have a legal right to take longer to graduate, and they've got an educational need to do so.

[01:53:47] And they're not going to count in the four-year rate. potentially would count in the six-year rate. But that's only for a readiness component. Correct. Correct. So, Betris, did you want to add anything to that? No, you you captured the main points loan that, you know, Mr. Prish just said, it is the readiness component. Only 5% of the points are in that six-year rate. The on-time graduation rate that we looked at as well, that does include applied studies, will continue to be reported as a transparency measure across the state to allow comparisons, but again, won't be part of accountability. So, there's a bit mixed message um that we're seeing so at least we'll know how many families are being screwed

[01:54:24] over by the state we just won't be able to count their success as as our school's success so just to be clear one more time federal law guarantees as a right for multilingual learners and certain special education students to take longer to complete high school take longer in high school and the new state standard is only counting standard and advanced studies diplomas within four years.

[01:54:52] So even students who do complete that work in the time they are allowed by federal law, they will never count towards the benefit of the school division accomplishing its task of helping those students achieve that accomplishment. - That's correct.

[01:55:12] And can somebody maybe speak to how that penalizes a school system for the work it does on behalf of those students to A, never be able to present the breadth of its work?

[01:55:32] - Well, I think what we're gonna continue to do is make sure that every student and family that falls into that category, that would have that right to stay with us longer, and it's through the year that they turn 22, understands what rights they have and the benefits that they have to be able to do that.

[01:55:49] So we're gonna communicate that very vigorously and continue to work and support those families. But what it does is it gives an unfair public perception of the work that we're doing, right? So the public is never going to see the benefits and the successes that our school system has provided to those students and families.

[01:56:08] The only thing that, well, I don't know about the only thing, but, you know, we can continue to do our own internal calculations and share that information publicly. We can continue to advocate at the state and federal level as part of our legislative package that that's something that we think needs to be changed in terms of the graduation rate.

[01:56:28] But other than that, we're really on our own in terms of carrying the message forward about the work that we're doing. We're not going to get support from the state with that. When I would advocate that when we do these reports going forward, that we are informing the public about where we actually stand as it relates to all of our students.

[01:56:44] And to be clear, are the schools penalized then for the percentage of students they have in a school that do not complete graduation in four years with those diplomas? Well, they're going to be penalized in the sense that their graduation rates are not going to be as high, and that's going to be part of the school performance.

[01:57:04] So they're still part of the N. Right, right. So all around, we're being disadvantaged. Correct. And the only benefit for accreditation standards is in helping these students achieve this applied studies and then eventual standard or advanced diploma in their sixth year or, you know, until they're up to 22 would be that we get it on the back end and the readiness component, which is only a third as large as the graduation component.

[01:57:41] That's right. All right. So that's probably pretty complicated for a lot of people to digest. I hope that as we present this at the board meeting in the future that we can contextualize this specific thing, because it's a big deal, and it's going to impact different schools in different ways.

[01:57:59] And in our school system, I think we've gone, thanks to the advocacy by some board members, we've gone to great lengths to explain the differences in the types of diplomas that are being achieved and what the benefits and disadvantages are there and how we can continue to grow those students. And we need to tell the public that we're being penalized as a result by the state.

[01:58:19] Thank you, Mr. Frisch. Ms. Anderson? I want to flip over, although I definitely want us to unpack that conversation a little bit. I wanted to flip over to slide 36, if we could. I had a conversation with Miss Lady before she went out of town and I definitely had had a similar question so within my professional world we talk about placement quite a quite a significant amount for the graduates from the program that I work with and so I understand first of all the problems with getting the information related to placement but the other question I have

[01:58:57] is is this a look at 16 months to see whether or not students are still enrolled or is this is a look to see within 16 months that they've been enrolled in school at any time i believe it is the within but i will double check on that dr presidio we'll triple check on it but my understanding is for sure that this is the look at 16 months that that initial enrollment but we also have the continuation of enrollment and how many students actually graduate so there's more information in the national student clearinghouse we were just looking at the enrollment in post-secondary education in this particular slide.

[01:59:33] Because my question really is whether or not this is a snapshot view at 16 months because as a former college instructor I can tell you you lose a lot of kids in that first year and the colleges aim to do that to weed out certain students that aren't prepared or maybe come back at a later date to go to school.

[01:59:50] There are lots of reasons why even to be at 79 percent within the 16 months is still very high for FCPS students, and I want us to actually talk about that a little bit more. So you're raising some really good points. I would say, and we could get the additional data in terms of graduation on time, we're a little bit above national averages.

[02:00:09] We're not significantly above national averages for graduating within four to six years. One of the biggest factors in addition to the ones that you mentioned, though, for students to graduate on time is financial burden, right? A lot of families, a lot of students aren't able to complete for financial reasons.

[02:00:24] So that's difficult, and that's another reason to track that data. And this is, I assume, polling students at community colleges and outside of the state? Yeah, public and private. Perfect. Thank you. It's not 100% of all two- and four-year colleges across the country.

[02:00:39] I think it's 98%. So there's some that are missing because they don't participate in the National Student Clearinghouse, but it's like 98% of two- and four-year colleges, public and private, that are participating in this data set. Okay, so then my second question is, are we doing anything as division, other than utilizing data that we're receiving?

[02:01:00] Are we doing anything as a division to track our students after they leave us? We have, let me ask Jen if you could help me with that. I don't know that we have any other follow-up surveys after the senior survey in the senior year, do we? We have the required indicators from VDOE, but other than that, we do not have additional ways to track our students after graduation.

[02:01:26] Okay, thank you. Thank you. And I have a lot to unpack here. I appreciate all your time and effort on this report. I'm probably need like six go back, so just put me down for those.

[02:01:42] The first thing I wanted to start was kind of a big picture comment on the report. And I have to say, I love I love this theory of graduation equity. I think this is phenomenal. But I look at slide six because it's something I think I and others on the board have been talking about. It's not just getting kids out the door, making sure they're actually set up for success when they leave.

[02:02:01] And so that's what this graduation equity seems to go to. They have a plan and a way to demonstrate qualifications for post-secondary success. I love this. However, I don't see this report actually giving me sufficient data or most data on this topic because the report and I understand that the data may not be there, we may have to gather it, and that would be fine, except I don't see that narrative in here.

[02:02:32] We recognize these are the pieces we still need to report on. Here's how we're getting there. Right. but one thing i've talked about for a long time is i understand the importance of on-time graduation state requirement federal requirement however it doesn't really show us if our students are ready for post-secondary success and when you look at the data of how many students start colleges and leave college it kind of shows that maybe some some is financial some aren't so i would love to see dr reed a little more intentionality around students graduating with a plan i know we do the student success survey and one of the questions i have on the slide on

[02:03:08] the success survey which is somewhere between 36 and 38 it talks about asking the students but it doesn't give a percentage of how many students responded because that percentage is a percentage of the students who responded to the survey not a percentage of all seniors because we have to take out the ones that didn't respond so i i would be curious to know and maybe it's not much maybe a lot of them responded but i'd be curious to know what the actual percentage of plans are of those who responded as opposed to thinking those are all seniors right like it just like percentage of seniors reporting post-secondary plans but how many percentage of seniors did the

[02:03:45] report and then out of those that did the report how many reported post-secondary plans so thank you for that question it i think what we tried to the team tried to do is put the n uh for example a baseline and then for the 2324 because that's the most recent data we have 99 of seniors reported having a plan that would be 13 577 out of 13 695 so that's the number who did um that's my question those the number of graduating seniors or the numbers who reported i think it's both well that's

[02:04:22] my question i'm just not clear right which one is it okay so miss neil yep we had about 460 students who did not complete the senior survey to your question about 14 000 yeah okay well that's helpful to know and that's what was one of my first questions but i still i think goes to this point of i don't see a lot of indicators here knowing our students are ready to be successful when they leave like on-time graduation isn't necessarily an indication of success when you especially when you put in the applied studies diploma and all these state requirements so i would just love to see we've talked about executive functioning concerns we've talked about like i I would just love to see some of those things infused into this report.

[02:05:01] So we're really looking more holistically at what is it that we're measuring to see that our students are ready to be successful. I think these are really important data points, but I feel like we're constantly talking about absenteeism and on-time graduation important, but we need to get to the next piece of it, which is the data around ready to be successful.

[02:05:21] And I'll take a go back for all my other points, but just so I wanna put that out there something to think about. - Thank you. Ms. St. John Cunning. - Thank you, thank you. I kind of wanted to piggyback on this when we talk about the definition of what post-secondary plans are.

[02:05:44] And do we have or track post-secondary plans that do not include going to college, but maybe some of our students that are in our CTE programs that are in internships or are being employed?

[02:06:01] Because I didn't see any of that data here. Yeah, we do. On page 24 of the full report, it gives a little bit more of a breakdown of what the specific plans are that students had. And so the categories we have are intent to go to college, plan to work or enlist, plan to pursue other education. And the full survey, we can break it down further to say, was it two-year college, was it four-year college?

[02:06:30] I just want to shed light on our great career and technical education programs, where a lot of our kids are going into internships or getting jobs straight out of high school where they're earning $80,000 a year. And this is really important for some of our students and families that come from, you know, financially disadvantaged homes where they may need that job in that position. And then from what I understand, in a lot of these programs, eventually the employer will pay for higher education do we have any of that data i just think we're shortchanging the

[02:07:07] work that we actually do with some of our students that don't immediately pursue a university or college degree and i know that some of these kids are doing amazing work because of the amazing work that they're getting from the career and technical education programs that we have in our schools and i really think we need to highlight that and focus that on that and show that success as well i don't know that we currently have data that we could report on that but it sounds like understanding for our students who are going straight into the workforce who's going in there with a credential

[02:07:44] right some of the things that you're raising up that have come through our cte programs i think what i would offer to that is you know we could always amend the questions that we ask on the senior survey right because we're dependent on the students telling us what they actually did after they leave us other than the national student clearinghouse with that two and four year data we're really relying on student self-reporting so if there were other data points that we wanted to collect we could write additional questions so we'll definitely take that feedback into consideration and perhaps write some additional questions so we'd have other or more robust sets

[02:08:19] of data that we could provide in future reports thank you because i think we're missing a really important and valuable story i appreciate your advocacy for that thank you mr moon let's see see whether I can find this slide about ELP-1 data.

[02:08:54] It's slide 15. About graduation data. I think it's slide 15. I'm sorry. I didn't make that clear.

[02:09:13] I apologize. Yeah. What really caught my attention is such a low rate of graduation for ELP-1. Is that because, I mean, these are, they're in ELP-1 as a senior, is that?

[02:09:29] That's correct. Yeah, we, you know, again, it's a troubling data point, but it's not surprising given the fact that those students do have pretty limited academic English skills. So what are the strategies do you have to support them to continue pursuing high school diploma as opposed to dropping out?

[02:09:55] So again, a great question. So the things that we do now include, you know, a lot of individual case management at the schools that have larger numbers of students that would be at the lower levels of English proficiency. So a couple of years ago, we did staff an additional counselor at 10 of our, it's either nine or 10 of our high schools that have larger percentages of students at the lower levels of English proficiency because they typically are enrolling students that are maybe newer to the country definitely newer to our school system. So they do provide a lot of individual case management and support and work with the students to understand that they

[02:10:33] do have more time so they can stay with us again until the year that they turn 22. They can also look at other alternative educational options that we have so they can look at enrollment in the non-traditional schools or alternative schools. Oftentimes students, well I mean one of the big reasons that students drop out is because they have other responsibilities so we looked at the slide in here that showed the dropout rates by age and the older the student is the more likely they are to drop out because they've got additional responsibilities either to their immediate family or to their extended family so enrollment and non-traditional programs are the adult

[02:11:11] high school so that they might be able to have more flexible scheduling and attend part-time we work on credit acceleration opportunities for them so trying to make technology available so that students can complete credits and try to accelerate their credit accumulation towards graduation through independent study so you know those are the things that we've typically done i i do think the biggest advantage for students that we really try to encourage them to take advantage of is not giving up and staying with us even if it's on a part-time basis for as long as they can because these are students that do make pretty

[02:11:50] rapid growth when they you know when they continue to stay enrolled in school so trying to figure out you know how to help them balance the flexibility towards financial and other personal responsibilities and their educational needs so when they are identified as elp1 as a senior do i assume that the reason that they're placed a senior is they have other high school credits whether from somewhere in the U.S., where they came from, enough to be placed in senior grade

[02:12:28] level, or is that perhaps based upon their age? Yeah, we're really talking about based on a student's age here, not grade level, because you might come into the system at age 18, right, and enroll at one of our base high schools and have no credits, because you're coming from another country, or you've had interrupted, significant interruptions to your educational experience.

[02:12:51] and be an ELP level one student. So those are students that we provide a lot of support to them and their families to really understand their options and try to build an educational program that's going to work best for them, because that is a student who's going to need to put in for a minimum of four years of time, probably right, to be able to complete all of their graduation.

[02:13:11] I guess my question is then why are they put in as a senior? Why are they identified as a senior if they do not have enough credits to be senior? so i don't think that's happening i think when i was trying to explain this we're looking at the students that would be of age in that cohort i could be wrong about that maybe this data set is actually and i'm going to ask rich or betris yeah the students that are elp level one that are in grade 12 in in this data set many of them have been with us for a number of years and they

[02:13:50] are still a level one student so these are not students who enter as 12th graders as a level one so they're this is a for these for these students most students like the majority of our students make progress throughout but this this group of students may be with us for two years or three years and they're still they still level one so we have work to do on the english language development side with this particular group of students.

[02:14:20] One thing just to add to that too, as Rich and I were talking about this slide earlier, when we look at that ELP1, that 22%, we don't have the exact number right now, but a lot of those students most likely are duly identified students, and they're also students with disabilities, and are probably graduating with an applied studies diploma where they have more credit accommodation flexibility.

[02:14:46] Is it possible for us to get more detailed data? - We can break it down more, yeah. - Breakdown? Okay, with that in mind, I wanted to share with my colleagues and superintendent and staff something that I learned from one school district when I attended a conference in Atlanta, Georgia just a few days ago.

[02:15:06] Obviously, they did one heck of a job, that is why they are the presenter, and to the rest of us who are attending there. Granted that they may have different requirements, it's a different state and different demographic.

[02:15:25] However, this particular high school in California, California, 76.3% Hispanic, 88% poverty, 30% of parents not a high school graduate.

[02:15:46] They have 97.4% graduation rate, 91% going to college, 4.5% military and work after graduation. Those are statistics really surprised me how they were able to achieve that.

[02:16:08] I'll send your name of that high school. Thank you. - Thank you. - I appreciate that, Mr. Moon. And I think Dr. Ponce has done some really seminal work in this area with our multilingual learners and can maybe comment about some of the changes we're making here to better meet the needs of our multilingual learners?

[02:16:32] - Right, thank you. If you can see Mr. Moon and everybody else, we are on the right track. Like Dr. Sloan was saying, we had to be a little bit more think out of the box.

[02:16:51] And we do have some students that are multilingual, they have been in the system. and because in the past in name of that we will like them and we keep them in the same old teaching them something that maybe was not what they supposed to be.

[02:17:16] So right now we are being, we have been evaluating every single one and we are going to be a little bit more aggressive and open more opportunities for these multilingual students. Something that Sloan was saying that is, reality is flexibility.

[02:17:34] We have some students that they are older than 18 and they have to start working or somehow start helping families. So rather than have a standard schools from eight, let's say 7:30 to three or eight to four, we're going to make sure that we are going to be able that they will have no time to finalize their diploma and we're gonna be a little bit more flexible.

[02:18:09] We have been actually evaluating the system that we have right now, and we will be very soon doing some changes that will benefit our students. And especially those that are LP1, there are some credit that they can take on their own language.

[02:18:29] And this is the one that we have been thinking. you don't have to be taken in English to get some credit. And also, we had to be looking some other opportunities. Some students, when they come, they bring some credit, but because they are in Spanish, maybe, or any other language, then I wouldn't say that they are not taken, but it's very difficult for them to translate.

[02:18:55] So we wanted to be more intentional how we evaluate those, if they are bringing any kind of credit, and where are we going to be placing them and which language we are going to be working with. 'Cause there are some systems that can provide us multi, many, many different ways to provide them with the right credit.

[02:19:16] So those numbers, I know that very soon we're gonna be talking the same thing that you were talking about California on Fairfax. - Thank you.

[02:19:34] - Ms. Marin. - Yes, so the National Student Clearinghouse, that something that the federal Department of Education had run? That's a great question. I don't think so. I'm going to ask Janet to see if she knows off the top of her head. I think that's independent from the U.S. Department of Ed, but I'm not positive. Okay, I was just asking to wonder about the interruption of that data. Just getting back to the stipulation about four years of graduation, two things. One, it was on slide 21, and maybe I'm just getting a little too tired here but the on-time graduation rate versus the four-year graduation rate so the on-time

[02:20:11] graduation rate is fcps's and the four-year grad rate is the federal graduation indicator why is there a delta why is there a point difference there so the the on-time graduation rate is what videoe currently reports and then we'll be shifting to that use of the four-year fgi for accountability and the difference you're seeing is on-time graduation rate is allowing that flexibility for students who are students with disabilities and multilingual learners to have the extended time and it's accounting for the applied studies diploma which the four-year fgi rate is not accounting for either of those things so that's the delta got it thank you and

[02:20:49] similarly and i appreciate mr frisch's comments but is it the case that if a student knew that they were going to need five years if they declare that up front does that alter how their data is measured or tracked okay thank you um i'd love to hear well i don't know i let me wait for that i'm wondering if this gets back to the comments i made during goal three which um you're all familiar with which is about communicating the pathways to get folks to get the kids and the families to get students to graduation and this relates to the coursework pathway and the work

[02:21:27] with able and this also goes to mr moon's question about the strategies like what what strategies is this board funding or should we fund more of that will get more students to graduate meaningfully and it's not just to get that number to get them out of our building it's to get them out of our building successfully so for instance uh the course uh navigating work high impact tutoring edu futuro's work dual enrollment and online courses counselors required lessons so i I also want to say though, like, so now we're a year into this, right?

[02:22:03] We had the baseline like this is exciting because last year when we did this, we're like, oh my gosh, you know, we want to see the data. Well, here it is. Like, this is really great. And now we're making us think about other things. But from a board perspective, you know, I'm wondering what do we fund and what skills do the staff need in order to make this stuff happen?

[02:22:20] And again, with the communications, I'm even wondering things like, do we offer some kind of AI tool so that if a student says, how do I enroll in a dual enrollment class? You know, like when you like go online and you order and it's like, talk to an expert and it's, could there not be some things like that? I mean, I think a person is the is really great in having that consistent person every year, really from the start of middle school onward.

[02:22:42] But, you know, again, like me trying to help my daughter sign up for driver's ed and summer health, no idea. And anytime, you know, I can't figure it out, I really wonder about other people who, you know, don't live and breathe this. So I guess I'd like to know more about the strategies And maybe that's not for this, you know, but when we think about developing the budget in the future, how does this translate into us ensuring that we're spending our money in the things that make our students successful when they graduate to go to that thing?

[02:23:11] Not just to get them over the finish line, but actually have that plan so that when they leave, they're successful. I would say, Ms. Marin, that probably one of the key strategies is retaining excellent educators. And we know that the single most important influence on a student's success is the quality of the instruction they receive.

[02:23:32] So I think that you are, by putting a stake in the ground in the budget that you recently passed, saying that we want to adequately compensate our educators, our teachers in the classroom, our IAs, our principals, our support staff, so that we're able to continue to do this work well.

[02:23:52] So I think that's in every body of research. So I really appreciate the question and the opportunity to answer.

[02:24:08] You good? Okay. All right. I'll go next. In the strategy slide 39, it mentions targeted follow-ups and for the students for on-time graduation.

[02:24:24] How does this targeted follow-ups work and how does it impact the outcome? Well, I can start and then if any of my colleagues want to jump in. Again, I just want to stress, as Dr. Reid said at the beginning, I mean, this is a cross-departmental effort to really try to provide the supports to our schools and students that they need.

[02:24:47] I think the first thing that we did in school year 23-24 that you're seeing some results in the data is from that data tracking that we've done as a school system, looking at whether or not every individual student is on track to graduate on time or not, being able to identify the percentages of students that may be on track or off track at a particular school, following up with that school, And then having that school have the data down to the individual student.

[02:25:13] One of the things that we put in place in 23-24 was a requirement for schools to develop individualized graduation plans for students that might be off track. So the first thing with creating that plan is to have the counselor or whomever is the lead person working with that student providing that case management support.

[02:25:30] Meet with the student, meet with the family, do a credit accrual determination, find out where they might be deficient in credits, what some of their obstacles and barriers might be. If it's an attendance barrier, getting to school on time, finding a way to solve that problem. If it's a health issue or a mental health issue, finding a way to address that situation and that challenge that that student is facing. And that has produced really good results. That's super time intensive work, but that's really what you have to do is that personalized approach, that case management student by student approach to get them what they need and to address the root causes of the challenges that they're having.

[02:26:09] Then finding additional ways to accelerate credits for them. One of the things that Dr. Reed supported us with when she came in was the development of our twilight program and creating some flexible opportunities for students to work outside of the traditional school hours to make up credit.

[02:26:26] So we were able to provide resources to a number of our high schools to implement after school hours credit recovery twilight programs and also purchase some additional technology to help students accrue credit more quickly than they would if they had those seat time requirements of taking the course during the school day those are the types of things that I think are making a really big difference for our students and we just need to continue those efforts and accelerate them as much as possible yeah that's excellent points and because we're talking about graduation equity here, I wanted to just check in. How is the equity office

[02:27:04] working in this targeted follow-ups? How are you involved? We have a team of equity specialists that work directly with our regions. Our regions are able to monitor the work that's happening in our schools and with our principals as they do their SIP goals and have those SIP meetings. So my team is engaged all year with schools and the regions to help support this work. My next question is about which schools are doing better.

[02:27:31] Is there any area or I should say pyramid which is showing a better results and maybe we can see what they're doing better than other pyramids can, you know, learn from and and also it is also equitable, right?

[02:27:47] So when somebody is doing something good, then we all can benefit out of that. So any comments on that? I'm going to get us started and then have Dr. And I think, and we'll provide some additional data to the board as well, but I think when we've looked and seen growth for the schools where we've seen those efforts really paying off is having deeply embedded systems, as Dr. Presidio was talking about, practices where those schools are really focused in on using that data, identifying the students who need the, you know, who have a need for additional support, and having systems and structures in place to provide that support for students.

[02:28:26] I think what we also see is, and this shows up in the research as well, is a strong culture of collaboration. So teacher teams who have strong culture of collaboration because we're looking at the success in the classroom is leading to the success on graduation as well.

[02:28:43] So some of those are the types of systems we're seeing in place when schools are doing well with moving the needle on this. And I know Dr. Ponce wanted to add as well. - Yes, and thank you. Like as Long was saying, we have a graduation tracker and our OTG team is a very tedious work but we have been working constantly.

[02:29:11] However, I know that, and I don't want to penalize and say this region is better than this or this school is better because we have to see the whole picture. And something that I wanted to check right now, For example, when I just look at my map right now, when we talk about some pyramid like a justice, justice is 51% of multilinguals and at the same time economically disadvantaged,

[02:29:48] you see it's a 53.5. So we are talking about really high numbers and so on. can talk about some of the most difficult uh but i would say that are more um is the highest need uh full church uh justice and annandale with the high numbers of uh multilinguals and uh equal as well then you have a uh mount vernon lewis uh west potomac and edison uh and then followed by uh

[02:30:26] hurdon and wetsfield and then fairfax centerville then you have schools that are doing very well however you have to understand that the number of students coming for example multilingual and i'm not labeling the multilinguals but sometimes you have some students who are newcomers which are totally different story like uh islam was saying they might come when i are already 18 with you credit and that graduation for them is gonna take a longer and we graduate

[02:31:05] them but sometimes it will not count toward the school when they graduate because they take a longer time especially now with all these changes so it will take a little bit longer but I believe that we are in a good track but But I don't want to say names, I know you asked for schools, because I don't want to call names now, but I would just say with those schools that have risk factors, I call risk factors, are higher than others.

[02:31:41] And we have to consider when we talk about that, about students. I think what I was not asking was that which is not doing well, I was saying which is doing well so others can take that success story and use that as a benchmark and implement in other schools that was what i was going with it so um and and yes i i did understand however what i wanted to say is that we're talking about totally different population with the different

[02:32:16] risk factors so i cannot say this school is doing well because i'm saying then the other school is not doing well they remember those risk factors and i just wanted to say this okay that's understood is there any peer mentoring uh in play here again with the because students kind of sometime when they talk to somebody their age group and uh and somebody like them and giving them the mentoring advice uh they're more receptive to that so is that as a part of the uh the the follow-ups and

[02:32:53] and targeted approach. - So, I don't know, I saw Dr. Axler move over there. I don't know if you wanted to add anything on this. Everything that I've really mentioned so far is adults working with students, but I don't know if there's anybody on the team that wants to mention anything about peer mentoring.

[02:33:13] - Sure, so as part of our mentor works programming, we do have some peer mentoring. We call it student mentoring because it's not always a direct peer. It could be a high schooler for an elementary schooler. But, so in the 23, 24 school year, we had over 4,000 FCPS students participate in our MentorWorks program.

[02:33:29] A subset of those students had student mentors. The majority of them had adult mentors. We actually expanded this programming in the spring of last year and up through this year with something called the Belonging Project, which is an expansion of our MentorWorks program, specifically targeting students with higher rates of chronic absenteeism so that we can use that as a way to provide connections to the school and increase regular attendance and connections in that school building.

[02:33:56] - That's amazing to hear actually. I'm gonna go for a go back and have Dr. Anderson next. - Yes, thank you. And I'm gonna try to focus my first set of questions around slide 11.

[02:34:11] So if we could put that up, please. No, no, I'm sorry, 31, 31. I apologize, 31, the one that speaks about diploma types. And looking at this chart, I guess my first wondering, I'm trying for the life of me to find last year's chart and I cannot find it, but I have a good sense of what the data is because we talked about it last time at meeting managers.

[02:34:38] But in looking at this slide, I'm just wondering when staff reviews it, what shows up? What's the response? What resonates, Dr. Reed? - Yeah, thank you, Dr. Anderson. Neal?

[02:34:58] - I mean, I think in this slide, we obviously see some differences between student outcomes in terms of who's earning our advanced studies diploma versus the standard diploma. I think this is something that we looked at in our goal four report when we were looking at the continuum of rigor.

[02:35:13] One of the ways that Abel talked about in their presentation that students increase rigor is not only taking the AP or IB or advanced coursework, but also persisting through a fourth year of math, a fourth year of science.

[02:35:30] So I think that's where you're seeing of those differences show up obviously if students are not taking advantage of those additional years of math and science as part of the able work and social studies thank you sloan give the shout out and world languages we'll put them all in there uh that are also there's some alignment with the advanced studies diploma yes i appreciate all of that and i also appreciate that last year's data this slide looked pretty similar and what raises concern for me is that we don't have any targets in this area at all and this is not to communicate that having an advanced diploma is what every

[02:36:05] child should have but this disproportionality is stunning and even when we were talking about meeting managers like do we not want to do anything about this and not seeing that be part of the presentation frankly concerns me so i want to say that secondly i would love to hear if we could just go back to the slide i would like to get a sense of is this presentation consistent across our schools i'm not asking for the schools that are the lowest performance

[02:36:42] i am asking if we were to pull this data 25 times what does it look like is it consistent or all over the place i would say it's similar i mean there's a range you're obviously saying but it's similar across school to school so then that means it's a division problem not a school problem it's It's like in a classroom, if all of the kids fail the test, the teacher has work to do.

[02:37:05] If one of two kids, then they have work to do. If it's similar across the entire division, then we have work to do. And I would like to get a sense of what is that work? We did hear from Dr. Bell a month or so ago regarding the course taking patterns.

[02:37:22] I'd like to know what is this now going to look like given that new information? what can I tell my parents that we are going to do that is going to impact this data? Sure. So I'm going to do two things. I want to come back to this because this was something that we wanted to talk about as a fellow to meeting managers. I think we can explore this two ways. If you look at goal four, what this is saying is there is a continuum of rigor and students can continue to move along that continuum of rigor regardless of where they are in terms of

[02:37:58] their diploma types so we have kids who are earning the advanced studies diploma who could who may not take math their senior year right because they finish all four of their math credits by the time they're a junior they can continue to move and accelerate their rigor by taking a math their senior year so that's independent of a diploma type you have students who are earning a standard diploma who are also earning a score of 10 or higher on that able that can continue to deepen additional courses in math or science without necessarily earning the advanced studies diploma. So I think we have that goal that's going to really focus on those individual conversations

[02:38:35] with students to make sure they are taking coursework that is preparing them for post-secondary. What we tried to do in this slide is to honor that students are making some decisions about the coursework they're taking that aligns with their post-secondary goals. So we looked only at are students who said they want to go on to a four-year college and see differences in this data between the percentages of students who are saying they want to go on to a four-year college and those students who are earning an advanced studies diploma so our recommendation is if the

[02:39:10] board wants to set a target on this to focus in here because that's honoring trying to align students intended plans with coursework that would be most aligned with that post-secondary readiness Thank you. Even with that subset of students that we're looking at, the disparity is still stunning. We have, what, the lowest is 48%, the highest is 92%. I don't think this is the representation that we want to have for our division. The other question that I have is regarding the intersectionality. When we have, I imagine you, by we, I mean you, when you have

[02:39:46] looked at this data, because it's not part of this, it wasn't the baseline. We had more intersectionality data but i don't see it as present in this year's reports what what what are the findings since i don't know i'd like to ask with regard to diploma type i think the group that we tend to that we tend to see the outcomes be most different from overall and not specific to this slide but just in general are students who are duly identified as students with an iep and students who are multilingual learners right and we also have our black students

[02:40:22] who are not doing well and not all of them have the language issues and so those tend to be less so when you have that intersectionality i'm just going to focus on that group for right now because it's the one that i can take out some other variables what does it look like when we have i have to put myself on the go back what does it look like for those students on on this specific data or on data set let's just take let's just take that so i don't think we've explored it for this specific data set because we put this data together relatively quickly to have a board conversation. I'm sorry, the slide before. The slide before. I need to look and see if we have

[02:41:00] that information in the report, Dr. Anderson. I'm sure we pulled it. I'm just not sure if we put it in the full report. Dr. Anderson, would you like to go back? Yes, I would. Dr. Anderson, could I just add a little bit to that discussion? And I know this isn't perfect and we're only in our second year of required implementation but through the advisory program we are working to require every student to have a four-year academic and career plan and that plan has annual goals and activities for the advisors to work with the students in their advisory to have these kinds of conversations to really

[02:41:38] you know push students to achieve their best and I think when we look at some of these data sets for me one of the things I worry about is different expectations for different groups of students. One of the things I worry about is counselors that have caseloads of 450 students being able to provide that personalized support and attention, the lack of the ability to maybe have as much time with students as they would like to have.

[02:42:04] That advisory section, I think, plays a really important role because now you've got one teacher who's working with 20 kids who can have those individual conversations, have those connections get the information home that maybe hasn't been coming home when we've tried to do some of these things in different ways before so I do think that's a strategy that we're really trying to lean into it's not perfect yet teachers are still trying to figure out how to do that in addition to all of their other instructional responsibilities but I do think it's something that's gonna make a difference I'm at a disadvantage because I can't respond because my time is up but I'll make a note can I also share I'd like to

[02:42:41] share i think that the the most exciting thing to me about our able work is that it pulls the curtains out and gives schools direct data about their students but i also think that in in also with what sloan was saying about people talking to our students that we need to take it back to the middle schools to start having those conversations about what are your hopes and dreams for our students right so that they can start when they have less pressure around guiding our students right when they get to high school there's a lot of things happening but the middle school counselors can help in this process by starting to have those conversations about what

[02:43:17] does it look like to go to college i remember when i left fairfax for a couple of years and joined another system i had a conversation with a student about college and she was in 11th grade and she told me that this is the first time somebody ever talked to her about going to college when she was in the 11th grade and sometimes our students just don't know what they don't know right and we have assumptions about our parents um that are not true um and i think that it's upon us as the educators right when we have the students six seven hours a day that as early as we can start introducing the concept of college for for all of our students the concept it doesn't mean they're all going to go but to talk to them about it the greater chance we have of changing

[02:43:57] these numbers thank you uh miss um sutlow we will continue with three minutes being that it is just a little bit after too mr frisch thank you i was one of those kids by the way people would have assumed that my parents talked to me about college all the time they didn't they didn't go to college their parents didn't go to college it wasn't part of the dialogue in my family they wanted the best for me for sure they wanted me to do well in life but that wasn't part of the conversation in my family and i do want to talk a little bit about one of the points that was raised on slide 36

[02:44:32] about how access to resources impacts completion of college in four to six years and tie it back to my previous round of questions about outside sabotage running counter purposes with the school division's efforts right now in washington not far from here the department of education's work is being sabotaged and i'm particularly worried about the work in the fafsa office and not just in the ability for

[02:45:04] applications to be submitted in a clear and consistent way but also the cutting of staff for people who need assistance in navigating this complicated process especially for families where this is a new experience i'm also worried about the repayment programs that are being cut or changed or changed in such a way to disqualify swaths of students before they've even gotten in into school particularly income-based repayment programs in public service loan forgiveness as a piece of context in the previous administration of this president

[02:45:40] more than 97 percent of educators who applied for public service loan forgiveness one of the very specific occupations that the program was designed for were rejected from public service loan forgiveness um thankfully that was righted in the following administration i worry that we will be retreading in that in in that ground um and so when sally may is estimating that 30 of students who don't complete college after enrolling do so because of financial reasons other estimates as high as 25 i begin to worry about the undermining that's happening um you know transitioning all of

[02:46:16] that work all of that complicated work and the oversight of that important work so that people are not being ripped off by student loan processors now being transferred to a department that has never i think the small business administration which has never worked in this space ever at all ever is highly concerning so i wonder if there's anything we can begin doing with our 11th and 12th graders to prepare them for this new reality um you know as miss maron likes to say we're not responsible for every problem out there but i worry that we will be telling a story in three

[02:46:52] years from now when these numbers start going down because it's all the more difficult to and this doesn't even get into by the way the fact that universities are going to have to skyrocket their their fees because of program cuts from the federal government you already have people having their acceptances for grad school and postdoctoral programs being pulled back in the sciences so So there is a compounding problem here with the financing of college.

[02:47:16] I'm wondering what we can do about it as a division to ensure that these numbers don't begin to bottom out. - Thank you, Mr. Frisch. Dr. Reed, did you want to respond to a lot of that? That was a bit a lot. Yes, and you have 30 seconds.

[02:47:31] - Thank you, Dr. Anderson. I think that's the context we're living in right now. And I think we're going to have to be thoughtful about we are addressing the challenges in front of us today we're going to have to be better at anticipating the challenges down the road because i have a concern that solving today's challenges may create bigger problems for us down the road which i think is what you're pointing to finally as i've mentioned before i think fairfax county we need to be very clear about how we

[02:48:04] define success for our students and our system because the narrative that we're able to tell is most important on behalf of our educators, our students and families. And it's incumbent on us not to give that narrative up to other people to tell.

[02:48:22] Thank you. Ms. Seizmoheiser. Dr. Anderson. Oh, I apologize. I wasn't looking in that direction. Just because I think we do have a number of resources that I would want families to be aware of in Fairfax County that we're going to continue to support and we probably even need to do a better job advertising those. So just real Real briefly, I would mention, first of all, we do have our College Success Program in Fairfax County, which has a number of different components.

[02:48:49] So there's the Early Identification Program, for example, that supports students that are first-generation college students in all of our high schools. We partner with our local universities, two- and four-year universities, to support and provide opportunities for students there. We've got a direct admissions program that we just started two years ago with George mason university that if a student has a certain gpa and it's like a 3.0 gpa they don't have to take the sat they help them with financial aid they give them mentorship and coaching but they're automatically admitted to george mason and when they get admitted through that program they get ongoing support we have our partnership with college access fairfax that

[02:49:26] supports students free of charge and you know applying for federal financial aid and other scholarships and that's outside of what we do with our college and career centers that exist at every high school so we have a lot of things that i think we should be really proud of and i definitely want our families in fairfax county to know that because given all the uncertainty at the state and federal level it's going to be left to us at the local level to provide that support to every one of our families so i just wanted to mention we do have some assets to continue to build on thank you very much mrs osmo heiser thank you and um i think i wanted to start by building on that comment i think that you made about needing to tell our own story here and

[02:50:05] and I think this is going to be more important than ever. So to pick up on what my colleague had talked about with the slides 19 and 20 on the four-year graduation indicator versus six-year versus our on-time graduation indicator, I just want to confirm for the four-year federal graduation indication, which the state is now going to also use as part of its assessment or accountability system, for multilingual students and students with disabilities who are federally legally allowed to stay for eight years after 12th grade, whether to earn a standard advanced diploma or just to get post-secondary skills, life skills training,

[02:50:44] those students, when it says on the slide, do not count, you're saying they do not count towards graduation, but they do count in the denominator. I just wanna make that clear. Yeah, because it's not clear from the slide, right? Because if they do not count and they're allowed to have the extra time without it hurting us, that's a very different story, then they still count in the number of students in that cohort, but the fact that they are they're federal they're exercising their federally um the rights protected rights under federal law multiple federal laws is going to hurt the schools i think that is part of that story we need to tell and i just wanted to really get that clarity out

[02:51:18] there um and i think that's important to say that the state you know and i've heard you know states leaders say they really support our special education and multilingual students are actually putting in indicators that directly make it much harder for schools to support those students in accessing their federal rights and i think that's a really important point that we need to make but i think um the other thing i wanted to say is in just to pick up my point from before in terms of those indicators about graduation equity you do have some in the report right if you if you know as you kind of skim through some of the pages of the report you talk about on page 40 41

[02:51:57] 34 but especially 41 the pog poll numbers right on page 41 in the report and i wanted to point this out because in when we had the graduation the grading policy debate in governance we talked about measuring portrait of a graduate skills right and i was kind of surprised to see the low percentages of students who've accessed a pog poll which is a portrait of graduate presentation of learning and and i just want to help understand the numbers i'm seeing two percent three percent three percent you know the baseline denominator is 78 000 you know seven one hundred

[02:52:34] sorry seven and seventy eight thousand zero ninety one but the numerator is four thousand five hundred fifty seven so are we saying only four thousand and five hundred fifty seven of all of our students have done a pog poll so that's three percent of all of our students which i think this goes to show why this was important i mean i know that's not the only place we have portrait graduate skills but if that's when i scrolled back up to um you know slide 40 i mean sorry page 40 in the report it's similar numbers for attainment of portrait of graduate competencies in digital financial literacy i would love to see this broken out more what do you what are you using to measure

[02:53:13] and how is it being measured and who's having access to this because these numbers we might as well not which is what i said in grading we might as well not have portrait graduate if it's two percent and one percent and i'm not i'm a full believer in it but we've got to figure out how to measure it better and that's part of this graduation equity i know my time's up i'll take another go back if but doctor if you want to comment on that i'd appreciate or dr presidio so i think that um it's clearly a data point that we were asked to measure um dr ponce do you want to comment on pog poll and um the number of students or priority placed on that because two

[02:53:51] 2% less than, you know, a single percent is certainly low. Dr. Ponce, please. - Yeah, I will ask Sloan, he has been working with them and then I will add. - Okay. - Yeah, no, Ms. Sizemore-Haiser, I think it's an excellent question and point that you raise.

[02:54:10] And the reason that N size is so small is because we haven't required the completion of presentations of learning, right? So we require the incorporation of POG skills into our curriculum and into our instruction.

[02:54:25] But POGPOL itself is meant to be a culminating project, if you will, almost an exhibition of learning that students complete to demonstrate the evidence of completion of those attributes, the development of those attributes. But as a school system, because when we brought this on, it's only been a couple of years, we've been involved in so much change and so many things that are new, a new strategic plan coming out of COVID, new sets of expectations.

[02:54:53] We have not required PogPol to be completed for all of our students. So that's why that end size is really small. And that is something that I think if we were to require it, obviously, we'd see very different data there. But that's the reason that's so small right now.

[02:55:10] - And slide 40 or page 40. - I just want to add, yeah. So I know on page, I think it's 41 that you were reading. - Yeah, we are right now, actually, we have been working with high school principals and the RACs to make sure that it will not be a requirement for graduation, but it's something that's gonna be implemented.

[02:55:39] So everybody will have the portrait of a graduate. Very soon, you're gonna see those numbers changing. - My time's up, so I'll take a go back to, 'cause I have further comment on it.

[02:55:54] - Ms. Anderson? - I just wanted to put one more plug in. I've been saying this since I heard about the accountability and accreditation stuff, we have to make sure that we're telling the story of what's actually happening in our schools. And we need to do it early and often because our parents are gonna start seeing numbers come out that show that our schools are failing at a particularly delicate moment.

[02:56:15] The other thing that I wanna say is, well, of course, as a former college instructor, I absolutely want our kids to go to college. And I also know that not every kid needs or should go to college.

[02:56:30] And so I want, as we're having those discussions with our kids younger and younger, I want them to understand the breadth of opportunity that there is out there because the return on investment for college right now is diminishing, unfortunately, because of lots of reasons, including increased prices and all the things.

[02:56:46] And so I just wanna make sure that we're opening up the full opportunity. We've all seen the slides that have been shared related to that a high school diploma just doesn't do it anymore. We got to have more training, more something after. And so I think having kids fully understand what the after could look like, it helps them understand what they're working towards.

[02:57:06] And so I want to make sure that that is part of the story as we are talking to kids younger and younger about what, and it actually helps them understand why this school is so important. So I think that that's what I'm hearing personally quite a bit lately is that they don't see the point. And so I would very much like us to encourage that conversation more and more so that we can help kids see and keep that curiosity for a little bit longer.

[02:57:38] - Okay, now it's Ms. St. John's gunning. - So I'm going back to the slide, the six year slide, which I failed to mention when I talked about, when I was talking about our CTE program, also huge proponent of our special education program, particularly for our young adults that are in our centers where they're staying beyond, you know, staying for those extra years.

[02:58:08] And again, we've got to control the narrative and show the narrative where these kids are being trained to be active and productive in our communities and are getting jobs right after they exit, even if it's six years that it took for them to graduate. So I think that that story has to be told.

[02:58:27] And I think that's a piece that I just, I know that I've worked a lot with Pulley Center throughout my career for different reasons and have seen the amazing work that goes on there and seeing the pride of our students and seeing how happy they are to learn certain skills that they then take to the community.

[02:58:47] And so I think, again, we need to be telling those stories and we do need to have the alternative data, which I think throughout some of the things that we've come across this year is like, this is the data that's needed, but let's tell the real story, and this is the alternative data, and we need to present that.

[02:59:06] And so I want to just echo what Dr. King said. We need to start at elementary school, talking to kids about what they need. And I know that when I worked as a family liaison, and my kids were in the Spanish immersion program, and I started talking about it then as a parent liaison, I would tell our multilingual learner families, keep them in that language, because by the time they graduate from high school, they're going to have the equivalent of language credits in high school.

[02:59:34] And this is something that parents didn't understand. They already have a skill, and we're just going to hone it. And so speaking from elementary, and just to give an excellent example, which I'm very proud of, although this student did not end up graduating from a Fairfax County public school because they moved, but worked with this family since they were in preschool.

[02:59:55] That young lady has gotten a Posse scholarship, now going to uva full ride with additional scholarships because that story was told from elementary school and she started here she didn't end here but i know that that message and that story was there since elementary school and we're partly responsible for that success again going back to controlling that narrative um is critical so i would like to see that and i not to and look it's easy for us after you do all this amazing work that you bring to us and then it's easy for us to say but where's this where's this and i really want to give you kudos for all the work

[03:00:32] that you've done because i do know and recognize it's a lot of work just real briefly and i'm going to ask jen if she wants to contribute anything to this or not just so families are aware we are doing academic and career planning earlier than high school i was focusing my comments because we were talking about graduation at high school and building that four-year plan once you walk in the door at ninth grade but we're doing similar activities in middle school even down into the elementary grade level so jen i don't know if you want to comment just briefly on that well one other point that i wanted to make is that we have an upcoming academic matters plan

[03:01:11] to talk to you about our avid expansion and i think you'll be really excited to hear about what's happening in our elementary schools with those schools that have taken on avid especially our title one programs that are expanding so i really appreciate all the emphasis on let's start early and that's another example that we'll get to celebrate with you soon mr moon uh i know that a you know former director of student services where my kids attended high school is in the

[03:01:50] audience and i don't want to embarrass him because he was a good director about uh with that with that said with that said i with such a large caseload that each of our guidance counselors has you know how well do they really get to know all students you know constantly on my mind especially when i heard you know dr king mentioning about her own experience in another another

[03:02:25] school district where a student confided to her that nobody mentioned about me going to college until high school junior year. I'm glad to hear that we are starting that kind of conversation much earlier than junior year.

[03:02:41] And, but at the same time, I still wonder, given the large workload, caseload, how much individual attention we can give to each and every student, especially those who may need more help than others.

[03:02:58] When our students fill out their four-year plan Do we set aside time for them to do it in school versus outside the school? We do it in school. - Yeah, so I think, again, you're raising a really good point.

[03:03:14] I mean, our counselors work so hard to support students and families in so many different ways. Oftentimes the academic piece, they don't have as much time to spend on that as they would like, right? Because they're working on so many other things. That's why we feel that the advisory program that we've required middle schools and high schools to have for the last two years with a really intentional curriculum is so important because that's a teacher working now with a group of about 20 students or an administrator, 'cause administrators have sections of advisory as well, focused on a couple different things.

[03:03:47] One is academic support, one social emotional learning, but the big bucket that we're really focused on is academic and career planning. So that's somebody who can spend a lot more time, individual time and attention, build relationships with students, understand their career goals, maybe understand some of the challenges that they might face in realizing those goals and help them understand the resources and assets that they have to be able to accomplish their goals and overcome challenges.

[03:04:12] So it's still new. I know some of our teachers have struggled a little bit with the new expectations, and I appreciate that, but it's so important that we provide that one personalized trusted adult in the building who is gonna be able to give that focused attention to our students, because counselors cannot do it on their own.

[03:04:31] - You know, Dr. Presidio, mentioned about one trust in individual adult in the building importance of that you know one of the things that again going back to presentation some of the presentations i attend include a presentation about finding out whether a student feels that he or she has a trusted adult in the building i think dr king did you want to say something no okay uh since i still we got about a minute left i know we're not you know today is not the time to discuss about

[03:05:06] particular strategies dealing with multilingual learners but another thing that i you know picked up from this conference was about use of ai in helping in assisting multilingual learners because you know in as much as we do want to provide individualized one-to-one help on every single and that's not possible given the budget constraint, you know, how AI can be very instrumental and beneficial to that.

[03:05:39] And I would love to have that offline conversation with Superintendent and also Mr. Paul Liu and Dr. Posidio regarding that. - Thank you, Mr. Moon. I'll go ahead and take my turn. Still going back to the slide that I had earlier, which is slide 31.

[03:05:57] And what I believe that I heard, Ms. Neal, is that one of the root causes that staff developed rather concluded, was that the cost taking contributed to this. So that's where the work is going to be happening.

[03:06:14] And similarly, we heard the same conversation with Dr. Bell that has existed in research for the past 25 years, which is the expectations of those around those students really determine what they have access to. So that brings me to the equity work, because you can have the expectations, but then without true tolerance and understanding it will just be minimally complied with which will still leave a lot of kids in the gap i would love to hear what is the work happening in the equity office to try to instill in staff that all of our students have gifts that a parent doesn't have because i've

[03:06:49] heard of this too where parents of students of color have to fight in order to access advanced courses that their children are way more capable of handling but yet is still being denied by those who are the gatekeepers? What are the strategies in the equity world to bring staff along to help impact the course taking which I've been told will be the primary impact to this data set?

[03:07:15] Dr. Anderson, just like I shared earlier, having embedded equity specialists in the region, right, they're at the table where the discussion is happening. We have a great tool that allows us to monitor graduation rates and and how students are enrolling particularly i'll give an example of our goal of getting all students to take algebra one by the eighth grade right when we monitor it and we see it not happening then we can go back and have those conversations a lot of it is still the mindset work that we have with our staff and you know my team is responsible for making sure

[03:07:49] that we have culturally appropriate training for our teachers and school-based administrators and counselors to ensure that implicit bias doesn't show up when we have expectations for all of our students so when you say specific strategies you know we have been training around equity for a very long time in this district through our modules and it's ongoing expectations and refreshers around what that looks like and the data tells us our story and compels us as the equity voices at the table whether it's me at senior leadership or my team members at the areas that they lead to continue to have those conversations right that the data

[03:08:28] always compels me and my colleagues can assure you and dr. Reed that that we speak up when we see something and and everybody in this room who works for Fairfax County is trained in this work and they understand that we have to even check our own biases when we're putting in strategies or even talking about strategies that impact data that looks like this thank you you know picture this Sicily 1965 nobody understands what that is

[03:08:54] Yeah. But picture this. You have a parent who wants these things for their child and their child may not be receiving it and they don't know what to or even a parent who doesn't even know what it's available. And I want to connect this to the conversation that Dr. Presidio had regarding the four year career plan, how we have brought this down to the lower level. And I tend not to be a school board member who thinks that my experience is the experience, but I have yet to see this happening at the middle school level communicated to me. So I wonder if there's an opportunity the same way that we're

[03:09:31] sending out these attendance reports now so you get your attendance report card. I would love as a parent to be receiving some of these career plans like this is what's available. Minimally will compel two things. It will either give me information in terms of what's going on like oh yes my kid is on track. I don't have to have this conversation at home or it might compel oh I know this is available for my child that's a conversation because i too have spoken with parents who are parents of juniors even seniors who have had zero conversations regarding post

[03:10:06] secondary plans and that does not align with the conversations we've had here right and i've tried to tried to give a as accurate of a picture as i can with some of those challenges we're still new and in the requirements we're in year two of requiring the academic and career plan through advisory in this fashion so i know it's not happening consistently from classroom to classroom like we envision it happening right we haven't gotten to full implementation yet it is the expectation right in the places where it's not happening i really would encourage families to

[03:10:45] reach out and share that information with us share that information with the principal in the school We're working to get to full implementation. And we do, to your point, need more proactive communication from the school to the home about what's actually happening.

[03:11:00] So that is something we're working on to try to figure out if there's better technology solutions to that so that we can reduce the workload of advisors in the advisory programming, having to provide that information. So we're continuing to look at enhancements to our current system.

[03:11:15] We're actually in the process of an RFP for a new system. using Naviance now. Some of us have talked about concerns with Naviance in the past. I don't know what vendor is going to be awarded the new contract, but that's in process right now. And the expectation is whatever tool we use in the future, that we do have better communication and better, you know, family transparency so that families can really see what's happening.

[03:11:37] And, you know, as a parent myself in the system, I'm sometimes wondering what's happening too, right? So I have to go- Yeah, the head teacher in charge. Well, if you think about it, those of us who are in the system and have kids, we're inundated with information too, right?

[03:11:53] I don't always do my best job of reading everything that comes from the school to me for the details about when the parent information night is going to be, and I'm sure that I miss things that I shouldn't miss. We've got to streamline our communication. It's got to be more strategic and it's got to better meet parents' needs because I feel like right now a lot of things are getting lost, if you will, and I don't think it's for lack of effort to try to communicate it's just it's not as effective as it needs to be thank you and the reason i spent two of my rounds just speaking about this slide it's because we know what is not monitored what is not measured doesn't get it doesn't change it doesn't get the

[03:12:32] attention so i would love to see those monitoring points i know right now they're identified as tbd but we have to otherwise next year we'll be sitting right here having the same conversation and me giving you the same feedback, because this was my feedback last year. Dr. Anderson, if I may, I wanted to just kind of follow up on a point that Dr. King was talking about when you were asking the question about, you know, seeing these inequities play out.

[03:12:57] I think one of the exciting next phases of our ABLE work is the ability to use data to identify students who we've missed in the academic advisement process, who have that success potential to go in and be successful in these courses. part of that able work is flagging with objective data here is a list of students who you should be talking to about going into these advanced coursework opportunities and that's one of the strategies we just used to really focus in on algebra one enrollment for next year using that objective data identifying lists with schools having them go back and have intentional conversations with students and families to say you're ready for algebra one you you know you will be successful

[03:13:37] And sometimes that's a little bit more of a conversation with the family to say, you know, we believe in your child and they're ready and we're going to provide the support that they need. So, to your question, I think that that intentional use of objective data to help support scheduling is one of the strategies in the path forward here.

[03:13:53] Dr. Anderson, when we talk about our equity, right, I want to say that, you know, I've been in this district for almost 30 years, I've had two children that went through this. I was one of those parents that had to fight to get my kids in algebra many years ago. I can tell you now that we are more focused than we've ever been around letting data drive our decisions to move the numbers.

[03:14:14] I guarantee you, and I might not be here, but I guarantee you, because Dr. Reed might kill me for saying this, but that those numbers are not going to look like that next year. Those numbers are not going to look like that next year. We are more focused. We are more focused. Well, I guarantee you I will be looking at these numbers next year.

[03:14:30] All right. So it's going to be me and you sitting across this table. Dr. Reed, I got you. That was an interesting conversation. Interesting, interesting.

[03:14:45] Yeah, so I wanted to ask about the students who have -- do we have data? Marcy may probably -- you can tell me about this. How many of our graduate students are coming out with credits for, like, associate degree?

[03:15:04] because we talked about the college expenses and how we can support those students. We're going to have to go back on that one, Ms. Dixit, to see if we can collect that information as a follow-up. Yeah, because if 66% of our students are coming out with advanced diploma, it should definitely have a lot of college credits.

[03:15:28] And I won't say this is for every student, but you know my son graduated from FCPS last year he almost had one and a half years of college credits with him so which reduces the burden financial burden on the families for paying for college and and either obviously dual enrollment course is a great option for that and I feel like the students who are the dropout levels will look very different if the students know that they don't have to pay for so many years of college,

[03:16:04] and also they know that there are other pathways for them. - I know that is one data point that we're looking at, as Dr. Reed has talked about communicating our message, being able to talk about the percentage of our graduates who are leaving here with college credits and how many college credits our students are leaving here with.

[03:16:21] So that is something we're in the process of pulling. - I want to add that one. We have been actually working with Sloan Department, I know, Jen, we have been meeting and looking forward to start giving that.

[03:16:41] We have a lot of schools where probably one class or just kind of name it a little bit different, and the students will be earning an associate degree, which means money for the parent. And it's something that I think that I have been discussing.

[03:16:59] This is my second year and we are very close to make sure that we bring that to the children. I know we were talking about as a parent, I'm a parent of two and they earn an associate degree.

[03:17:16] Sofie is 20 and she's a full-time teacher. And this is exactly what I was looking at right now is our students starting with those who like to be teachers. and then looking for grants and they finish their associate degree in teaching early childhood and then going and work with some universities, two more years, there are some grant and then they finish their bachelor in teaching and then we have teachers.

[03:17:48] So we had to be thinking on that. We have been working. I'm very excited. What are the next steps? And I want to say thank you to Sloan team. This is Jan Glaser. We started that working and there have been some hiccups, but I know that they are about to be removed.

[03:18:10] And so I'm very excited that there's gonna be an option for our children. - Thank you, that is really good to hear. I'm going to go back to our meetings, managers meeting. And Arnados, I remember you said something which struck with me.

[03:18:26] You said students are in school for seven hours a day or eight hours a day. it's absolutely our job to make sure we meet their needs and we are making them ready for their graduation or their future.

[03:18:41] So I just felt a little frustration in your, that day that you said maybe we're missing a mark somewhere and maybe you meant for this particular data sheet right behind us. Could you speak to that a bit? Because I think our board will benefit from that.

[03:19:00] - So I think what I was referring to is know that there's outside noise in all that we do but while we have responsibility for the students that we serve we can't depend on outside noises or outside voices to share with our students what their opportunities are as students in fairfax county public schools so i deeply believe that we as the educators while we have the students in our service owe them everything that we have right and so sometimes when people say well their parents have to work two jobs where their parents are not engaged none of that should matter because we have our students

[03:19:36] in our care for seven hours it's great when students have that additional support but whether they do or not it's our responsibility as the school system to provide access and opportunities to every student who walks in the door thank you for that um and i i see that a lot of this number the slide where it shows how much and i'm not i'm just going to say as an indian parent uh how much we start talking to our kids from elementary and i think it's a lot of an asial culture too that in elementary grade you start talking about post-secondary education it comes the culture

[03:20:13] is nothing you know wrong but not that's how it is my my only point was that that those students come with a very preset mindset it's not before even the teachers talk to them or even before they they get guided by the guidance counselor they know what they want to do in the life because the parents are putting those seeds in their mind how do we take take that out of the picture how can we level the field in this type of situation i think if you remember that conversation i shared with you that if i had a chance to go back in my career i'd want to be an elementary school principal and meet with every student that walks into my door and talk to the parents about what's

[03:20:53] your hopes and dreams for your child and map that out with them before they even walk into the school so that every parent has an understanding of what access and opportunity means and i think it compels us as a school district to strike down systematic barriers that we've had in place forever right that students who are not privy to the cultural things that you speak of but still have the same access and opportunity whether their parents start to talk to them about that at a very young age that we as a school system communicate that so we have to find ways I remember in another district that I worked for shortly we did put maps together for parents to start what are your hopes and dreams but the map

[03:21:32] also gave several opportunities right whether a child wanted to go to the votech route whether the child wanted to go to a four-year two-year military it was a map that started in kindergarten and it just showed parents ways of which their kids could achieve what their hopes and dreams are until their students develop their own hopes and dreams and i think that we have a responsibility as a school system to communicate that to our parents so here is the i think the final word i would say that instead of talking to kids their parents in high school about college we gotta start talking in elementary school about

[03:22:08] that i wouldn't say first second grade but at least the fourth fifth sixth at least putting that seed in their mind um my time is up oh that was perfect um miss setlow we will do two minutes for the next round except for miss marin who this will be her second so she will get three minutes i i've seen like what can happen when the superintendent puts forth something that's really tangible like benchmark literacy and it's like such a clear plan right everyone knows what they're doing the schedule set and you know there's been many conversations here and certainly myself

[03:22:47] with the superintendent and others about the communications piece to family and when i hear about we're looking at a new system other than naviance i really haven't used it even though i have a freshman but i wonder if it's kind of like schoology where it had not ever been intentionally taught and the teachers had never been intentionally trained on it and i really feel like i'm saying very similar i said last time and we have great things but if you don't know where to find them And I do wonder at times, you know, what decisions the board makes that creates the work that maybe detracts staff.

[03:23:20] I don't know. Maybe that's a little piece of it. But you know, how do we make the commitment to the communications and the kind of mapping that Dr. King talked about, the way we've made the commitment about literacy? Because I wonder if we didn't spend another dollar on anything extra, could we just change the behaviors so that we can start to do this?

[03:23:41] Like, you know, again, being a high school parent, I get a lot of input. And I've had instances where, you know, students are struggling to manage Schoology or their calendar. And the students being told, well, you're in high school now. We expect you to have more ownership.

[03:23:57] Well, no one ever taught that kid how to do Schoology. I mean, if we acquit it like dyslexia, it's like, why would we expect a dyslexic kid to understand how to learn to read the typical way? like, I think until we really change it, it's not, we can talk about all these great things, college success program, you know, things are not advertised. I have one middle school, they do an amazing job day where they bring in adults to come in, you know, job fair. Should that be standard? Should every school have a job fair or a college fair? Or I think too, that gets at the equity. We have some great things happening, but only in some schools. And

[03:24:35] sometimes it's the PTAs are running it or the star volunteer like can we be more standard about this stuff starting next school year I know we made a little movement with the website and stuff but I still could not tell you how to enroll my kid in a dual enrollment class and she's taking drivers out over the summer and I still don't know if that means she's going to be driving by August I mean I'm not ready for that but but I don't know so I just can we just yeah that's what I want to share so dr. Presidio the communication comes out of your

[03:25:11] department I know Jen glazer I know we've met a couple times what are our plans to address that differently this year well I think I heard a number of different things in Miss Marin's comment I mean what I tried to say about communications earlier is and I shared kind of my own story about that like sometimes I'm missing things because there's so many things that the school is communicating about I do think we need to get more streamlined and more strategic about that and I think that's a division-wide effort to try to figure out how to do that that's why I mentioned the Naviance tool because that is a communications tool on what we're talking about now academic and career

[03:25:48] planning but not everybody knows how to use it right so there's questions about it and challenges with it we are working on tightening up the way that we communicate academic and career planning information division-wide so I think we've shared with the board some initial plans maybe in a Friday letter if I'm not mistaken of some of the things that we did this year to try to standardize things right so common set of information on school websites right so that everybody's getting the same information we're going to be standardizing the content that families receive in those information sessions

[03:26:27] next year Jen's team is going to be working to create the content and schools can add to it but there's going to be a core set of content the key messages the key things that families need to understand about academic and career planning. Again, the academic and career plan itself, figuring out how to get the information back to families in a way that's accessible to them. So that's part of our kind of ongoing project plan that the four of us up here, I guess the five of us up here that you see are working on when we talk about addressing some of these gaps that we see in in our goal report. So there's things in process right now and there's things that I think are going to make a

[03:27:04] a difference. But it is a challenge because I think people are inundated with information right now. I really do. And we've tried to also provide things, Ms. Marin, to the point that you made about something might be happening in one school but not another, as it relates to college and career planning. We've tried to standardize some things by saying, okay, what can we do at the division level for everybody that anybody can take advantage of that you don't have to have at your local school? So the career fair is one of those things that we do. And we bring in colleges from around the country. And families from all of our comprehensive-based high schools can attend those. Instead of saying colleges, or excuse me, instead of saying high schools should do that

[03:27:42] themselves, we do that centrally. On the workforce side, we run an instruction to industry event to help students understand internship opportunities, summer employment opportunities, future career opportunities. We do that centrally so that every high school doesn't have to try to replicate that and some do it better than others. So it's a balance between the things that we try to offer at the division level, for all schools, the things that we try to develop at the division level to provide to schools so that schools and families are getting information in consistent ways and then continuing to refine the ways from the school that we communicate more strategically to the home.

[03:28:20] I do think the advisory, I know I've talked about that a lot today, but I think that advisory is really important because that's one teacher with a small group of kids where I think communication can be it can be a strategy that might work better coming in a smaller setting than when you're communicating something to thousands of families in the school.

[03:28:39] Well, thank you. And you're right about the division wide events. There's some great, you know, things and the additional things you said. And also, I think it was Dr. King just said, we have them during those hours of the day. So when I think of this, like I'm going to be on this panel at Langston Hughes Middle School to talk about my job and it's during the school day.

[03:28:55] Right. So how do we keep capitalizing on we have the students where we have them? and like it's also the delivery method I was just looking at my phone because I've got a text that you know there was a boundary review committee update and a text because my kids in a certain club and they're going to go on a field trip like and I was talking I think Dr. Ponce like our families are using this they're not on laptops right so how is this going to relay and graphics people aren't reading so how do we graphically you know go back well yeah I just um I don't hear and the response, the actual delivery method.

[03:29:32] - So, Dr. Presidio, or Jen, the actual delivery method? - I mean, I think it's a good point. Again, you know, I think that's a division-wide challenge for us, right? We've got to work across departments. The communication office has expertise in communication technologies that maybe my team doesn't have, right?

[03:29:51] So all of us have to work together to enhance those systems. We are doing, to your point, a lot more direct, you know, text messaging. I could just you know give you an example and we're trying to do immunizations and get information to families about immunizations but that that but I know but my point is the reason we were able to do that is because that was the Department of Special Services our health team collaborating with the Communications Office to figure out how to put the messaging and the technology and deliver it in a more strategic way and I think we've got to figure out how to do that on the academic side as well as the operational side.

[03:30:25] all right thank you oops thank you i think we only have three people for go backs so we'll just stick with the three minutes uh miss setlow because it doesn't make sense to have go go go go backs um besides more hyzer and then miss anderson thank you um a couple things i wanted to mention i want to go back to talking about communicating our story introductory one of the questions i have is we're doing these the second year of these new accreditation are we planning on maybe releasing and we have a little bit here the on-time graduation rates versus the four-year

[03:30:58] federal but are we planning on and putting together a communications strategy plan that kind of goes beyond that and packages a little bit in some of the ways that i think we're doing around our budget and sharing our budget story i think it would be important to share that to say here's how the data would look on the old standards here how it looks on the new standards here's the challenges for example we talked about with the students with disabilities and multilingual students i think that would be an important thing to put together because i want transparency for our for a community to understand the different impacts of the changes that we have so i think that's an important piece

[03:31:35] that i'd like to maybe see more of i know it's maybe not related to the goal report but just something going forward the other thing i did have a couple of questions i want to go back to my comments on page 40 and 41 of the report around the portrait of a graduate skills and the reason I bring this up page 40 actually doesn't talk about pog poll which I understand you're saying is a end of culmination and I get that's a culmination project but page 40 just talks about some rubric that's mentioned about portrait of a graduate skills financial literacy skills and digital literacy skills and I bring this back up because these skills are when I talked to when we were at

[03:32:10] the south by southwest conference when I talked to employers what I see in colleges in a world that is dominated by technology in an increasingly ai world the skills people need are those embedded in portrait of a graduate communication creativity you know teamwork critical thinking that's what those skills are financial literacy digital literacy and so when i see numbers at one percent and page 40 the numbers are pretty similar to the pog poll one percent two percent three percent i do think this is a critical area because you know i have lots of information right here in

[03:32:46] my hand the skills our students are going to need in these jobs that you keep saying don't exist yet the ability to analyze apply connect and use and know which information they should use and which they shouldn't use and all of those pieces so i do think figuring though the data points on page 40 and 41 whether those are the measurements others is super important in this era so i keep going back to that um the other thing i wanted to mention really quickly the on page 54 23 24 school year 31 of students with disabilities level 2 got the applied studies diploma seniors 31 percent i know

[03:33:23] it's level 2 students 4 percent of level one i would love to see how many of those 31 were originally on the sol track at some point and then removed and when how many of those students achieved a standard advanced diploma in those additional eight years and how many of those students are we able to give that path to and do we have the right transition programming for them the last thing with the special permission if i just finish my sentence locally awarded verified credit i so appreciate that we're doing more of an effort to educate families on that because that has existed since 2018 and i know because i'm the one who lobbied for it um but we also need to make

[03:34:00] sure families also know that if they utilize that and their student receives a standard diploma on time they cannot access the post-secondary transition program davis pulle and step which is why that middle school six to eight year four to eight year planning is so important i'll leave it at that i know my time is up miss anderson um one thing i want to say is i didn't know that we were doing a career fair count or division wide and if i don't know then it's chances are real good that other people don't know so if you can keep those division level invites coming to us so that we can make sure that we push it out so that we can increase visibility for those events that's

[03:34:39] awesome um the second thing is i was sitting here thinking about like the accreditation system and everything and um are there is there any good news related to like things that are highlighted as things that actually help us show off how awesome we are like what happens if a kiddo graduates early because they technically wouldn't be on time so does that mean that they're the denominator for the year that they would have graduated not counted or how does that work anybody know so betras i don't know if you can help us here and i'm just going to be totally honest i'm not trying to be flippant it's a real question right no i think it's a good question and and betras is a

[03:35:18] lot less cynical about some of this stuff than i am so we'll see if i may be cynical but i'll try to stick to the facts um the way that the calculation works is it's uh the student has graduated at any point within those four years so they might graduate after two years or three years or four they would not count into the denominator until that fourth year their fourth year of high school after entering ninth grade that first time um and then at that fourth year marker again regardless of when at that point they achieved their diploma they would be in the denominator and if the diploma was there in the numerator as well well that's good news at least but i do want

[03:35:56] to make sure also that we're highlighting when we're when we're talking about the things that would craft around our story I do want to make sure that we're talking about how many kids are taking dual enrollment classes how many kids because I do understand that that's a part of the accreditation system is that the more kids that we can get through those dual enrollment particularly if they actually receive an entire associate's degree while they're in school which is a whole set that's not actually our job but I do appreciate the fact that we are making headway in some of those things so I just I want to keep cheerleading for things that should be included in that story that we need to tell and and highlighting those particularly awesome moments

[03:36:34] for us are is really important if i could because i really appreciate that miss miss anderson one thing maybe i shouldn't say this but the dual enrollment like the biggest barrier to the dual enrollment is the requirements that our state has for the certification a teacher needs to have to give those credits that's different from state to state depending on the state's accreditation or accrediting agency and we've had that as part of our legislative package here for a number of years but that is our biggest obstacle is being able to have our teachers offer the classes right

[03:37:09] we know that they can teach them that's not the issue it's the the higher education commission saying that they're not qualified to do so so we've made good growth in terms of expansion of dual enrollment credits we've tried to incentivize teachers to get those additional endorsements when when they can. We've worked tirelessly with not just Northern Virginia Community College but George Mason, other four-year universities like James Madison to get agreements for dual enrollment but that continues to be a real barrier for us and if we could remove that barrier then you would see I think a pretty big expansion and those are the kinds of things when the state imposes a new accountability framework like this that they ought to be

[03:37:47] helping us remove those types of barriers and challenges and they've been completely absent from that conversation so anyway i just share that as a point of frustration so i can definitely tell you that we're not likely anybody who gets the dual enrollment possibility is we're not likely to lose them to higher education because we pay significantly better um than most folks earn at the college level but what i will also say is that this is something that we definitely should be talking to our state partners about about seeing what we can do about legislation because this is the moment that they're thinking about those things so i appreciate that miss st

[03:38:24] John Cunning. So just to tell a good story as we were talking about this and we were talking about elementary level and talking about maybe going across some of our silos I do know that when I was a family liaison we did teach classes for parents where they did talk about hopes and dreams parenting classes and one of the classes that we taught was where the parent created a box and put hopes and dreams in for their kids and would then at the end share it and also ask the kid to share hopes and dreams. And this was supposed to be a living document or a box where the kids

[03:39:00] and the parents could keep adding as they went along. And so we talk about our educators and all the great work that they do. But I also wanted to highlight that our family liaisons are doing great work within our communities, particularly our underserved communities. And these programs can be duplicated and we have to walk, you know, work across silos because catching the kids early is important and having those ideas of hopes and dreams that they can be reached regardless of where you come from is really important and I think not just empowering our kids but empowering our parents is critical so I just wanted to share that positive story and maybe we

[03:39:38] can figure out how we can expand that all right I think I'll take my last turn and then we will probably close this I did have a question that I didn't get a chance to ask. This is on the, I guess, page 12. I don't know if it's slide 12. I know it's page 12.

[03:40:01] When you talk about the targets, it is table three. When I took a look at the baseline targets from last year's, that when we set the baseline, the target for the 23-24 school year was 78 but on this i'm sorry for multilingual students the target was 78 but on in this document it is 76. similarly for our hispanic students the target was 87 but on this one it's 84. who can speak to those changes please and why i'm happy to speak to those changes dr anderson this year

[03:40:38] we created those growth lines that show the line that we need to continue to stay on as a system for each of our data points to be able to meet our 2030 goals in some cases those growth lines are much more steep where we need to make gains well beyond the five percentage points each year in some cases those lines are not as steep and we do not need to make as much as five percentage points each year when we exceed the targets in any given year so when they're in some of these cases when we've exceeded the target it means we're on track to to meet our goal potentially earlier than anticipated if we're not meeting those targets on that growth line it's signaling

[03:41:15] to us as an organization that we need to pay additional attention to bring additional resources adjust our strategies that we are not on track for either overall or a particular student group so we applied that adjustment across all of our metrics so we could see the actual growth that was needed year over year to hit our 2030 targets um i hear you but i i don't understand still or perhaps it's because I don't agree why we needed to reduce the goal just so we can get there because that's the group particularly looking at the ML that's the group that is the farthest behind.

[03:41:47] So I'm not really understanding why we had to reduce the growth in order and reduce the target in order to make the growth over the next six years. But we could just pause there. But I do want to talk about the 24, 25 targets for that same group for our ML students.

[03:42:06] now the results from last year were 76.03 and the next target is 79 so that's a plus three for our hispanic students right now it's 85.84 and the target is 85.98 i'd love to understand that goal a little that target a little bit better it just seems to be so minimal yeah we can go back and double check the number but it should be if you take our growth if you take the time between the baseline and the 2030 goal it's dividing the growth evenly amongst those years

[03:42:43] so i'd love a follow-up because we can go back and doesn't seem to get us there okay it wouldn't be an even because we're still at 85 percent and we still know there's still a good number of disparity across the other groups um one other question that i had regarding the graduation rates and i know that you've kind of loved it together where do we rank amongst the northern Virginia schools are we first are we second are we yeah we're we're pulling some additional analysis so we'll have that for the board on Friday okay thank you my next thing is about career day I know you talked about the district

[03:43:23] career day but I really want to talk about the career days that happen at the schools similarly to things like math Olympiad etc the things that are happening at the school which now we've standardized and making it happen when When kids see a doctor, a lawyer, an FBI agent, all of it in their classrooms talking to them, that just creates an opportunity to dream.

[03:43:44] And so it creates an opportunity to set that course taking pattern to lead to perhaps what is or was in front of them, you know, a week ago, a month ago, a year ago. I'm just wondering, where do we have the space to, in our school day, to make that a better part of the culture that is not necessarily PTA dependent?

[03:44:04] We know those little intangible things really can impact the goal setting factor. Dr. Reed, I'd love to hear from you about that. Sure. I think that would fall under Ms. Glazer, the career fairs, the college and career readiness.

[03:44:21] Do we have a blueprint for making sure those are consistent across all schools? Two microphones. So we offer the central instruction to industry, which is during the school day, and schools may sign up to bring students on a field trip for that and that was well attended this year we did not have a hundred percent of high schools attend however we did have a really positive turnout at that event which continues to grow as far as blueprints for what happens in the high schools during the school day for career events we don't have a set of

[03:45:01] requirements for them but there are a variety of good examples that are happening in the field we do have a more standardized process for the college and career center specialists at the high schools hosting colleges some of them host upwards of 50 60 80 or more college visits every year so it is something that we can take into account and again look to add to our plan for creating more custom or standardized consistent practices across schools and career days do happen at every level it's just not a requirement and there's not a set template that every school is following

[03:45:39] so i do know that i would be remiss if i didn't comment on my sac groups report on the career center and i think a number of you heard that my the superintendent advisory council the kids really want mandatory visits to the college and career center in high school i think starting as early as ninth grade because i think it's a bit inconsistent about how those are used so i really I'm looking forward to a consistent plan on that, but I think elementary, middle and high, I think as we think about the importance of career fairs, we're going to need to have

[03:46:17] maybe a template developed, so it's just opportunity. It's so super low-hanging fruit, and when you have an elementary school kid, just be excited about whomever's in front of them. Again, that could set the course for a long time. I'll just ask my last question or make my last statement and I'll move on. I do know that there's lots that we don't have control over. There is a lot, but there's a lot that we do have control over. And I do think there's a space for us to tell our story and to be mindful to articulate the work that is being done. Having said that, I think there also has to be a balance because when we look at our data, we see that while our school

[03:46:52] division may be great for a lot of kids, it is not great for all of our kids. And so we have to be mindful of making sure we are keeping that perspective because it tends to be the same demographic subgroup over and over and over again. So that probably won't land well with those parts of the community when we're just touting how great we are.

[03:47:10] But we are doing a lot of good things that need to be on record. But I'd like for us to be mindful of who it is that's going to see and hear that narrative and what their experience looks like. Seeing. Oh, Miss Marin, please go ahead.

[03:47:27] Yeah, I'm actually sending forward the example from Langston Hughes. So I think more compelling data would be how many high schools participated, how many students participated. I think it's too subjected to say we had a great turnout until it's 25 high schools.

[03:47:44] And I will also say our alternative schools. I helped Cedar Lane School obtain speakers for their career day, it might've been last year. And do you know what was the biggest aha of who to invite? Our own FCPS recruiters.

[03:48:00] They should be at every career day. Heck, we could just have an FCPS recruiting. I mean, again, this is very tangible to me. I don't get why, and you know, this time of year we're getting so many invites. I have invites in my inbox for events two days from now, and I have ones for six weeks from now.

[03:48:19] I would like, do we need to direct the superintendent to say, you know, the school year must include a middle school career day, a high school career day? Like I just, I've been talking about this for a while, and I've been on the CareerTech Advisory Committee, I was there for two years, and I've not seen much more consistent implementation.

[03:48:40] The quality might be high, but the consistency remains the same. And again, I think we could figure out what do we send text messages to parents for? Is it for academics or is it because a reminder for the 10th time that it's a half-day Monday?

[03:48:55] Is it to say, this is the time to do... I'll send around also the feedback, but this seems very tangible and doable, i really don't want another year to go by and we can't make these little tweaks that will make such they are like no budget it seems or budget neutral so i just i don't know do we need to direct the superintendent to do this or is it part of thursday's executive limitation when we talk about engaging the families and communities maybe that's a way to do it we i think we got to get in a better habit of codifying things because we have such great conversations and sometimes they don't always

[03:49:31] make it to the implementation line. I said John Gunning. So I just want to make one comment and I do love the idea of career days in elementary and in middle schools. I will say that the issue is staffing. I've helped plan those. It's who's going to plan it. If you don't have a robust PTA, it's very difficult. So when talking about equity and who's going to plan those, it takes a lot of time.

[03:50:00] It takes a lot of energy and it may be cost neutral in the sense that we're not paying anyone extra but people are working extra hours so i love the idea of it but i want to also calibrate in terms of the reality of it because i've been involved in planning these and um i know what it takes and i know that it's taken a lot of staff time that was after hours to do it i just want to let you guys know that so as of 3 25 p.m the meeting is adjourned thank you everyone

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