Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, June 17, 2025

Date: Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 4h 15m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzzCW2t-k-g
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 2026-10-29. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:16] - No comment. - Okay, so the June 17, 2025 work session is called to order at 12:16 p.m. Mr. Frisch has submitted a written request to attend this morning's meeting virtually due to a medical conflict. Mr. Frisch is located at his home in the Providence District.

[00:00:33] Mr. Frisch, please check your audio and visual. Well, I wouldn't be on screen if I were down. Mr. Frisch, I don't think he can hear us.

[00:00:48] - Mr. McElveen, we need just a minute to accepting some issues. - Okay. - While we're doing that, board members,

[00:00:54] YOU WERE SENT THE SCRIPT, SO PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT LOOK AT YOUR EMAIL.

[00:01:40] MR. FRISH, CAN YOU HEAR US?

[00:02:11] MR. FRISH, CAN YOU HEAR US?

[00:02:36] SHOULD WE COME BACK TO THE ADMISSION? IF YOU WANT TO GO AHEAD AND VOTE IN ALL THREE, SO THAT WAY THEY'RE JUST ON THE RECORD VOTED IN. OKAY.

[00:02:51] OKAY. SO MR. DUNN HAS ALSO SUBMITTED A WRITTEN REQUEST TO ATTEND THIS MORNING MEETING VIRTUALLY DUE TO A MEDICAL CONFLICT. MR. DUNN IS LOCATED IN MOUNT VERNON, VIRGINIA. MS. submitted a written request to attend this morning's meeting virtually due to medical reasons. Miss Dixit is located in Centerville, Virginia. Mr. Frisch, if you're there, can you test your mic? Okay. In order to comply with section 2.2.

[00:03:16] Sorry, Mr. McElveen, we actually need a vote on Miss Dixit. Oh yes, please. Mr. Dunn. Yes. All those in favor of having our three colleagues join virtually, Dr. Anderson, McIlveen, St. John Cunning, Rachna, Marin, McDaniel, it's well, Lady and Moon. Thank you. None opposed. So moving on to closed meetings compliance certification. In order to comply with section 2.2

[00:03:55] 3712 D of the code of Virginia is necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a closed meeting on June 17th, 2025, to the best of each member's knowledge, ONLY PUBLIC BUSINESS MATTERS LAWFULLY EXEMPTED FROM OPEN MEETING REQUIREMENTS AND ONLY SUCH PUBLIC BUSINESS MATTERS AS WERE IDENTIFIED IN THE MOTION CONVENING THE CLOSED MEETING WERE HEARD DISCUSSED OR CONSIDERED BY THE BOARD DURING THE CLOSED MEETING DO I HAVE A MOTION MOON SECOND LADY ALL THOSE IN FAVOR UNANIMOUS THANKS UM OKAY SO CLOSE MOTION NUMBER ONE I CALL ON MR MCDANIEL FOR A MOTION

[00:04:31] CAN SOMEONE SHARE IT WITH HIM IT'S NOT ON THE SHEETS IT'S ON THE CRIPT I MOVE THAT THE CHAIR of the school board be authorized to execute on behalf of the board the contract for assistant superintendent region 1 is there a second I second all

[00:05:04] those in favor that is unanimous madam clerk please announce the vote vote unanimous and carries motion number 2 I call miss Marin for a motion I move that the chair of the school board be authorized to execute on behalf of the board the contract for the chief of facilities services and capital programs

[00:05:41] Is there a second? Second. Okay. All those in favor? That is unanimous as well. Madam Clerk, please announce the vote. The vote is 9-0 and is unanimous and carries.

[00:06:00] Wonderful. Thank you all. So moving on to our OAG annual report and risk assessment and audit topics. I now call on Auditor General Esther Koh for presentation on the FY24 OAG annual report and FY26 risk assessment and audit topics.

[00:06:15] Thank you, Mr. McLevin. So good afternoon, everyone. Thank you again for the opportunity to present today. And before we start, I would like to introduce my team member. Today we have Luke, who is one of our senior auditor, and we also have Mukter, who is one of our hourly auditor within the office.

[00:06:36] So today we have two items to cover, and the first one is about fiscal year 24, Office of Auditor General, the OAG Annual Report, and we also have our next year audit plan.

[00:06:52] It's interesting to use the term next year, it's actually next year, fiscal year is only 13 days away. So we will go through kind of what the audit committee and my office proposed with the whole school board about the topics.

[00:07:08] And it is also our first time to combine these two presentations together. And I believe that it will provide the board with more of the necessary look back about what our office has accomplished and also looking forward about what are the necessary audits to cover.

[00:07:28] And you may have a question for me. So how about the current year, fiscal year 25? So with that, the audit committee has been working tirelessly throughout the fiscal year to oversee the work of my office. And I would like to especially thank Mr. McLevin as a chair and also the audit committee members who we meet almost every single month to go through a lot of the audit topics.

[00:07:52] So really appreciate for your time. So before we dive into the topics today, I would like to say a little bit about the current fiscal year 25. And we are proud to say that we have completed all the audit work approved by the board.

[00:08:10] With the only exception is the Local School Activity Fund audit as of year-end. And we cannot really complete that audit until after the year-end. So that is the only one thing that is open.

[00:08:25] And I would also like to take this opportunity, and I know Dr. Reed just walked away, but I really appreciate for her leadership throughout the year to collaborate with my office so So that it allow an objective evaluation of the system processes, but at the same time allow for a collaborative approach to work together to improve.

[00:08:47] So with that, we are going to start to talk about the last year OAG annual report for fiscal year 24. That's what I meant. Before I kind of go through the details, I would like to kind of remind, especially those who are watching today's work sessions, that the Office of Auditor General, OAG, reports directly to the school board.

[00:09:10] And also per our Audit Charter Policy 1105, that my office has unrestricted access to all school division information, which is relevant to the areas under review. And I would like to start with that because it is very important in order for an effective and efficient audit function to work.

[00:09:30] So I really appreciate the school board to allow that to happen so that there is a direct line of reporting from my office to you all. And within this independent structures and access, it allows the office to carry out the mission effectively. So what is our mission?

[00:09:47] Our mission is to determine whether the ongoing processes at FCPS, Fairfax County Public Schools, are adequately designed, functioned effectively and efficiently, and be fully accountable to our citizens and then we achieve this mission via the four pillars of work the first one is risk assessment second is internal audit the third piece is fraud waste and abuse inquiries and the fourth piece is outreach and education and i'm sorry clerk that i have been jumping back and forth it may be difficult to follow on the report but with that then we can now go to page four

[00:10:25] which start with the OAG value and I believe that this is the core of why we are here today so it's the so what component right so what is OAG offer to FCPS and when you started looking at you know how we capture our value-added services this table demonstrated to you all that that our office operate more efficiently compared to a lot of the other school district internal audit shops and at the time when we prepare this report we the latest data data set

[00:11:02] that we have is per the council of gray city schools the data was back in like based upon 22 we literally just received some new newer data and then we can reflect upon that for our new kind of like upcoming annual report but as you can see oag has been working more effectively than other school district internal audit shops in terms of number of auditors per budget, number of auditors per students enrolled, and then also the percentage of the audit

[00:11:35] plan completed and also the percentage of recommendations accepted by management. And then moving on to page five, it included some other measurements of OAG value and which include that some of the surveys that we conducted on our stakeholders, which is on page five of the report.

[00:11:59] And we love to hear back from our internal stakeholders, right, whether the audits provide them with a overall value, like increase, like they learn something new from the audits, whether the proposed audit recommendations are feasible to implement or not, throughout the process do we communicate with them about specifically about the findings and recommendations do we have entrance and exit meetings so that they know what is the expectation for the audit and what is the kind of like the key audit

[00:12:35] outcome so we got a hundred percent from the eight audit surveys that we were able to collect and then at the same time we also if we can scroll down a a little bit more down that we were able to complete all the audits on time as well.

[00:12:51] And then for the fraud, waste and abuse inquiries, we have received almost 80 situations during fiscal year 24. And we have conducted preliminary reviews on all of them. And what preliminary reviews mean is that we have reviewed every situation that come to our attention and then we reviewed each one of them according to policy 1107, which is the policy about fraud, waste and abuse, as well as the regulation 1410, which govern how we conduct the review.

[00:13:28] And then I know that we have discussed with the school board a little bit about the returns on investments. And I believe that what we saw on the screen is the qualitative analysis about the return on investment about our office.

[00:13:43] And we do understand that, especially nowadays, with the budget is a little bit tighter, then it is more important to look also at the financial aspect about how much maybe we could potentially save or avoid it because of our office or the audit.

[00:14:01] So we are constantly looking into that. And then I would like to talk a little bit more about that in the second part of the presentation about the fiscal year '26 audit plan. So with that, moving on to page six, that is started with our first pillar of work, which is risk assessment.

[00:14:21] And because we are going to talk about the upcoming year risk assessment, I would like to save most of the discussion when it takes place in the next session. But then we do try to collect many different feedback, right?

[00:14:37] From, of course, from the school board, from the audit committee, and also as well as from the leadership team and also from our employees within the system. During FY24, we have collected 100, I believe 100 employees feedback.

[00:14:53] And then we will talk more about the FY26 process in a little bit. And then going on for the fiscal year 25, I talked about that already so that we can, I think we can go over to page eight, which is the third pillar of work, which is the fraud, waste and abuse.

[00:15:12] And Luke will help us to talk a little bit more about the internal audit work in a little bit. For fraud, waste and abuse, like I said before, we have received 79 cases in last year. And then we also include a breakdown of the cases here as well so that you can see the dynamics about the types of concerns that we received, including documentation, use of SS, residency, et cetera.

[00:15:43] And then page nine and 10 of the report cover our last pillar of work, which is the outreach and education. If we can go down a little bit more on the report. So for outreach and education, which is listed on page nine and 10.

[00:16:02] So, and again, I cannot help but say this, that the audibus, and thank you to you all to help us to promote, this is our periodical, and we have reached almost 5,000 subscriptions back in November of '24. And thank you so very much for collaborating with us to share it with your constituents so people know about this kind of like regular updates that we make to, you know, public and also to our staff and to our employees.

[00:16:31] And then we also keep on updating our OAG website. So if we can go a little bit down more on this report. And we also continue to provide a lot of training and education. So during last year, you know, we provided training.

[00:16:50] Since we are certified by the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, we provide training about like FERPA and FOIA working very closely together with the Division Council. And then we also provide a training about see something, say something.

[00:17:07] So to encourage people to report concerns. And I also want to thank leadership again. They allowed us to present at last year leadership kickoff so that we can talk about the Paris Olympic. And it seems that it happened a long time ago, but we were able to use the PARIS to link it back to audit.

[00:17:31] So as you can see, that we talked about the key findings from school audits and they are P, purchasing processes, A, activities, they are related to the athletics and also the collection of cash, right? And the R is reconciliations, I is irregularities in timekeeping and S is sufficient documentation.

[00:17:53] With doing that, we are hoping that we can continuously talk to the school-based administrators to bring it like at the front of them because I know that they are bombarded with a lot of different priorities so that they know that making sure we are a good steward of financial transactions are equally important.

[00:18:17] And then we also hosted a DMV auditor group by OAG that we have about 20 auditors that we meet in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area that we can exchange and benchmark and exchange ideas about audit.

[00:18:34] So with that, I would like to transition to Luke to talk a little bit more about the internal audit and the audits that we conducted last year with the key result. And then we are moving on to page 11. - Thank you.

[00:18:49] So the, like Esther mentioned, we completed our FY24 audit plan in October of 2024. We're now currently on the FY25 plan, but for 24? - Yes. - Okay, so for FY24, the performance audits that we completed were food and nutrition services, where we identified two moderate risk findings and one low risk finding.

[00:19:14] These findings highlighted internal control weaknesses, a lack of benchmarking, and identified key performance indicators, and needed updates to regulations. We also completed the facilities maintenance audit, where we identified one high risk finding and four moderate risk findings.

[00:19:30] These highlighted internal control deficiencies, deferred completion of preventive maintenance work orders, a lack of benchmarking and key performance indicators, and inefficient information systems, and a lack of oversight over compliance.

[00:19:48] For the grants performance audit, we identified one moderate risk finding that highlighted noncompliance with FCPS grant requirements, specifically for grants totaling $26,000 were not fully compliant with FCPS grant requirements. For the IT systems access audit, this audit was exempt from disclosure due to per Virginia code because it touched on information systems, technical information that could leave us vulnerable.

[00:20:15] And lastly, the local school activity funds for the year ending June 30th, 2024. We did not identify any findings, though we did note the existence of risks related to current cash receipt processes. information on these audits the scopes objectives and the results are pages 11 through 14 and these reports are also publicly available on board docs as well we also completed continuous monitoring procedures for non appropriated and appropriated transactions at schools where we analyzed data extracted from various financial systems and reviewed supporting documentation for those on a quarterly basis and we also reviewed time and attendance data extracted from

[00:20:54] my time which is the timekeeping system for FCPS and as well as local and non local travel expenses that were captured in the online travel application with no notable items of concern identified from any of the continuous monitoring procedures for business process audits those allow us to conduct additional detailed testing at schools with issues identified through continuous monitoring as well as recent turnover in positions like principal or finance tech or administrative assistance or at the request of region leadership, school principals, or financial services. The majority of those findings were low risk.

[00:21:32] We did have two schools that had a moderate risk finding related to the completion of the financial management report reconciliations and we had one school with a moderate risk finding where payment was made to FCPS personnel that should have gone through the proper payroll process. So when completing these performance audits we make recommendations for management to consider and we follow up on a quarterly basis to determine if the corrective actions that they have stated have been put in place to address the identified issues within the findings some audits with outstanding recommendations are

[00:22:08] detailed on page 16 and with that that's a summary of our FY 24 audit plan results so let Esther wrap up sure so I think with that we can you know turn to the other presentation and then and then we can discuss both presentations together but last but not list on the annual report that our audit clients will of course see us during the audit but they will also see us afterwards too because we follow up upon all the recommendations throughout the process

[00:22:44] and this year we have been you know working very closely with dr. Reed team and also Marty Smith has been helping us you know to making sure that recommendations can be obtained so thank you for that so with that we can switch to the second presentation and while the clerk is bringing that up and I maybe I can start talking so that we can be more efficient use of our time so I would actually like to start on slide four of this presentation because we already talks about the mission, kind of like objective already.

[00:23:22] So I do a little bit of lead in about risk assessment in the first presentation. So on this slide, you can see how we did risk assessment in the upcoming year. So we identify audit topics, and this year we have short list, identify 47 audit topics.

[00:23:44] And in a team of seven auditors, it's just impossible, as you can imagine, for us to do all the 47. So we prioritize the audit topics through step two here. First of all, we examined benchmarking data, and we have collected 21 internal audit departments all across the nations to see what they are looking at.

[00:24:07] And then we also solicit feedback from you all and also the audit committee members. And I am so glad to say that we collect feedback from all of you, 14 out of 14, meaning 12 school board members plus the two audit committee city -- community members.

[00:24:22] So I'm really thankful for that. And then we also get feedback, collect -- collective feedback from our employees, do interviews and survey. And then after we collect all these data points, we analyze them via the financial, reputational, central risk, and then to really come up with what we proposed.

[00:24:43] So with that, on slide five, it shows kind of our result. So maybe we can pause for a second here. Here is the result that we collected from the next slide, slide five. Oh, thank you, thank you.

[00:25:02] So here you can see the school board and audit committee members' results, and listed by kind of what is our call to be the primary, primary meaning that they will be the topics that we will be looking at during fiscal year 26.

[00:25:19] And then secondary will be in the next two to three years, long term is after maybe like in a four to five years time. So as you can see that the yellow highlights are those that with majority of interest by the school board and audit committee members.

[00:25:37] And then the slide afterwards is the key outcomes. So the key engagements that we propose to look at are four of them, which include healthcare claims management, hourly employee structure and stipends together as one human resources related topic.

[00:25:57] And number three is school and office safety. And number four are contracts related audits. And we will be talking a little bit more about the what within each topic in a little bit. And then we do have one carry over engagement like I explained before, we cannot really audit something before the year end happened.

[00:26:18] So that would be the local school activity funds audit. And then we will continue in an annual basis to look at the business process audits, continuous monitoring, and also the upcoming year local school activity funds audit.

[00:26:33] So with that, we can go on to talk about the key metrics of each topic, which is on the following page. So here is a kind of like a report card, right? To summarize kind of the key considerations that we use when we come up with this primary topics.

[00:26:53] It include the internal stakeholders, it included whether those topics will identify through benchmarking or not, as well as the financial indicators or other information, and then also the support or the the recommendation from the school board and also the recommendations from employees and then the slide afterwards is um kind of some verbalized outcome right as you can see that stipends originally was listed as a separate audit topic but because of the um

[00:27:28] lack of a better popularity or the support from the school board and from the employees we combine the stipends into the hourly employee structure topic and become one topic. And then there may be some wonderings, hey, why some of the topics get a high count and Office of Auditor General is not looking into them next year is because of the following reason listed on the slide. And I would like to highlight that for the career and technical

[00:27:59] education programs we will continue to include the components of you know catch collections or the process of how we handle for example the the auto auto technology programs as part of our business process audit and continuous monitoring so we will continue looking at the cte program and then it will be combined as part of the school audits.

[00:28:29] And then the next slide we'll share with you all about the timing of when each of these audits will take place. And then the focus going on on slide 10 through the end will be talking about the what within each topic.

[00:28:48] So we can go to slide 10. And I think a lot of you are the expert already with the local school activity funds audit because I feel like that I talk about this audit every single year. It is our requirements by the Code of Virginia that we looked at it annually.

[00:29:07] So why don't we go to the second one, which also is kind of our regular audits because we are a K-12 business education. So I do really believe that schools are always priority number one.

[00:29:23] So the business process audits will allow us to kind of go into the school to look at the, to evaluate their financial processes, to see whether the transactions are reasonable and likely there is no fraud ways and abuse.

[00:29:39] And then like I mentioned before, the CTE career technical and education transactions will be part of the scope. And moving on to item number three, which is the healthcare claims management.

[00:29:54] As FCPS is a self-insured, has self-insured employee health insurance plans, we do think that it is very important for us to monitor how well our Office of Benefit Services is managing the expenditures that we incurred.

[00:30:11] So this is one of the audit that will be focusing on that. And at the same time, we will also look at the contracts that we have to see whether we are in compliance with the terms and conditions as well, to the extent possible that our office can do. And for this audit, we will not go to, like let's say Cigna, we will not go to Aetna to conduct claims audit because that's not our expertise, but we will be looking at how the Office of Benefit Services is managing those expenditures incurred.

[00:30:45] So with that, we will move on to slide number 13, which is the hourly employee structures and stipends. As you can see, the objective for this audit we will include to look at whether those two functions, hourly and stipends, are properly authorized and utilized across FCPS.

[00:31:09] And then for hourly, we will include the temporary assignments for exam and non-exam employees. And then stipends will also include athletic and academic supplements, stipend for temporary assignments, et cetera.

[00:31:25] So moving on, five is local school activity fund. Since we go over the scope already, we can skip over that. and then we can move on to the school and office safety, which is six. For this audit, our scope will be focusing on reviewing the FCPS safety and security requirements, including ongoing risk assessment, monitoring, communication, and training.

[00:31:49] We will also do site visit as well. We will go over to the schools to check if those security protocols are working out effectively. We will also select sample contracts and review their compliance and accountability.

[00:32:05] And in the interest of time, I will just go through a little bit faster so that we can save time for discussion. And then slide seven is specific contracts. And we do know that contract monitoring is really important. And I know that the school board see this as equally important as well.

[00:32:22] And for this audit, we would like to focus on two particular departments. One is the Department of Special Services. The other one is the Department of Instructional Services Department, who has spent, you know, a lot of money on, you know, purchasing instruction materials, et cetera, and so we want to focus on those contracts that are managed by these two departments to ensure that they are following the contract's terms and conditions.

[00:32:52] And the number eight is continuous monitoring. We will continue to do that, which is meaning that we will look at the entirety of transactions incurred, particularly for schools, in a quarterly basis. So with the hope that we can find anything that which may not go right earlier, detect situations, detect irregularities earlier, so that to prevent, you know, challenges from happening.

[00:33:22] And then maybe this may be the one of the last thing I would like to highlight is on slide 18. Every three years, our office need to be audited by someone else too. So we will continue to do external peer review that where we are working with the association of local government auditors, that they will send a team in to audit how OAG is doing our audit.

[00:33:51] And then of course that the audit committee and the school board will be the first to hear the result. And per our review from last time, we got the highest possible rating. It's equivalent to an A, I believe, that we got passed with no management letter comments from them.

[00:34:10] And we don't need a retake, fortunately. Okay, so with that, I think we can go to the next step, which is on slide 20, which we have the discussion here today, and then we would have the school board approval on July 10th.

[00:34:26] And last but not least, I just want to thank you, each one of you to be with the journey with OAG, and I know that here we use a lot of acrylymph, so when I prepare for the presentation today, I'm thinking about OAG can also stand for one amazing group.

[00:34:42] So thank you for working with us in this one amazing group. Together we are all in the group together, and super thankful for the school board continuous support so that together we can be fully accountable to our Fairfax citizens, so thank you.

[00:34:58] - Thank you, General Koh, and thank you, Luke, and Mukhtar for being here as well. I also wanna thank our audit community members this year, Mr. Moon, Ms. Lady, and Ms. St. John Cunning for a very productive and expeditious year. So we will move forward with questions.

[00:35:14] We're gonna take about 20 minutes. So Dr. Anderson. - Thank you to the one amazing group. I like that very much. And thank you as well, Esther. The work that you do has been so tremendous over the last five years that some of us have been on the board, it's always been very stellar.

[00:35:35] So I appreciate that. A couple of quick questions. The previous presentation where you talked about the surveys, I guess, that you did, you received eight responses. How is it selected as to who participates in those post-audit surveys?

[00:35:53] May I respond? Okay. So thank you for the question, Dr. Anderson. So we sent a post survey to all audits, groups that we audited, and then we will follow up with them two times, and sometimes, of course, we don't get a response from them.

[00:36:10] So this year we got eight responses, and then the questions that we ask is more like yes or no, because sometimes it can be challenging for an audit, like being audited, right? we want to make sure that that hey have we done you know the the entrance meeting so that you know the the expectation and so on and so forth so we did reach out to all the audits process like departments or schools that we audited during that year so that would include all of the schools for whom local activity funds were audited that is not is only for business process artists I

[00:36:49] apologize and it's a good catch. I was just trying to get a gauge of the robustness of the response rate. If you sent out, I don't know how many, you receive eight back. Oh, I see. I see. Thank you. Thank you for the question. So I think that we can actually do a quick math. If we looked at the audits that we completed, I think we listed it on page 11. One, two, three. So we have done about like 20 like a little bit less than short of 20 audits um so then we got eight okay no that

[00:37:28] is actually not bad at all thank you um one of the audits that you talked about with the second presentation is the healthcare claim management you said your focus would be um on how the benefits office manages it manages the claims i i think and please correct me if i'm wrong anyone there were a lot of external concerns perhaps with the vendor itself but that won't be what you cover so my wondering is if you find that the benefits office has been appropriate with its processes

[00:38:02] how do we satisfy some of the external concerns that have come around this topic so um i would say yes and no and if i may elaborate a little bit is that when we say that we will we will audit how the office of benefit services managing the contract right with Cigna and also with Aetna who has our dental plan so we will check whether like do they meet with them regularly do they study the trends of the expenditure the medical expenditures incurred so we will see

[00:38:38] whether there is adequate due diligence that internally we do and and and not just you know approving the invoices that we receive from them there are you know qualitative understanding continuous discussion with the vendors but in terms of the services that the level like the quality of services that the vendors are providing to our beneficiaries that would not be part of the scope so that wouldn't necessarily be able to speak to the concerns that have been raised to many of us over the last couple of years over this switch because it's just going to evaluate

[00:39:15] processes not necessarily um satisfaction yes okay um and so we'll need to have another space to do that um thank you you also started to speak about you also started to speak about um the follow-up that you do and i appreciate that does the follow-up um is it applicable to findings or just risk ratings or I'm sorry to just findings or risk ratings as well yes thank you for the question so it will be applied to all findings all findings with the only exception

[00:39:52] so for all the findings about our performance audit meaning like the the process audits so we follow up on every single findings for food and nutrition services for example and then the only exception is with the school business process audits or generally business process audits we follow up only on the high and moderate risk and we do not follow up on the low risk and there's a rationale behind is because we already do them throughout the continuous monitoring and local school activity fund audit already so we don't want to have too much burdens on school so we

[00:40:31] focus mainly on the moderate and high risk for business process audits but But that's a great question, so I would like to distinguish that. Does it make sense to you? It does. It does. Thank you so much for clarifying. And lastly, a few years ago, this just reminds me probably a year or so ago, you had some findings regarding booster funds, athletic funds.

[00:40:54] There were some findings that there were some recommendations made to the processes. I would love an update. It doesn't have to be right now because I didn't prepare you for that. Seeing some of the information here reminded me of it. I would like to get an update as to What changes or maybe this is more of a dr. Reed question What changes were made regarding the findings that the Auditor General came up with regarding?

[00:41:21] Athletic booster funding at our at our schools. I will have to check with mr. No, absolutely. It's not a now question at all. It's just something that just came to mind as I'm looking at this And the other thing, no I think I'll stop here, thank you.

[00:41:43] - Great, Ms. Marin? - Yes, thank you. I actually was gonna ask a question similar to Dr. Anderson about the healthcare claims. So it seems like it's not exactly what we were going for, but I do also note that I haven't had a lot of input from the community that there are claims that are being not processed as such.

[00:42:06] So perhaps it's been settled, but I'll still look forward to seeing what's happening on our end. the business process audits so um i was actually just reviewing materials that the superintendent had given us for her annual evaluation and you know there's some huge gains in some of the processes in terms of reducing time like onboarding time and um there was another another big few data points so i'm just wondering if you'll be able to capture those kinds of things and even see like over time how efficiencies have increased because those are really important and compelling data.

[00:42:43] And thank you, Ms. Marin. And thank you also, you know, for the innovative ideas too, right, like that we continue to audit the same thing, but it's really good to verbalize it, right, what is the gain to the division. So we haven't really think from that aspect, and that's what I think for the return on investment, right, that can be one component and that we should start capturing in our upcoming report.

[00:43:13] We do have show, you know, trends of kind of findings, what we received in the past and what we have now, to show that there is a downward trend of some of the findings. So, and we can totally, you know, definitely share with the school board and incorporated them as part of the any report going forward.

[00:43:33] - Okay, thank you. Yeah, anything that shows how we're increasing efficiencies will be really helpful. The other thing related to the career tech education transactions, does that mean looking at the online system that is generally hosted by the adult community ed, is it that platform?

[00:43:51] Not quite. It's more so we will focus on the, for now, auto technology piece where we have the career and technical education like helping the students to learn how to do that, you know, that transitional services going forward so during that that the the teachers right for example they have received you know orders or requests from community members or from us who may bring a car over there and and and money is involved right and then also inventories are involved so whenever assets are involved it also

[00:44:28] increased the level of risk so we would like to you know keep that in our radar during the regular school audits got it yes I had wanted to use one of the academies to fix a dent in my car but it was too late in the season so anyway I tried okay thank you so much great miss st. John Cunning so I saw that and when you mentioned the auto for CTE is that the only part of the career and technical education that you're looking at because there are other programs like the vet program that involves money but not that the animal vet I should say um

[00:45:07] So are you looking at all of them? As a start, we started to look into that, Mercier, like this year, fiscal year 25 on auto tech only because they are migrating from one system to another system.

[00:45:25] But we can certainly consider, you know, the other, you know, programs that we have involving monetary money that because they are subject to the same level of risk. So thank you for that recommendation, and we can certainly consider that.

[00:45:40] Yeah, and I mean, we also have the cafes, you know, which, I mean, they're all wonderful. I just, we just want to make sure that they're doing everything in the right way, because that really helps the programming.

[00:45:55] It helps sustain the programming. Definitely. Thank you. Great. Okay. Well, seeing no further questions, thank you so much for the presentation and for the fantastic work this year. to continue to engage in the year to come I appreciate everyone thank you to move on to the annual reports for the foundation for applied technical

[00:46:31] education BATE and pre-k and early headstart parent policy committee annual reports I'm really thrilled and excited to invite BATE and for them to present their annual report and I'm looking forward to go to go see your new property the open house we will be we have a peck meeting we have a peck meeting so we will be there late but we're going to try to do the peck meeting very quickly precisely so we could be there be

[00:47:07] great we'd love to have you all that's fantastic well um i'm pleased to be back again my name is ed johnson i'm the president of fate um i have been on the board for i do this i think a lot of you probably remember me i do this most times i've been on the board for probably 20 years now uh i was in the construction technology program in high school and i went to oakton high school the prodigy fairfax county public schools uh my entire life and um we are back to share all of the great news that we hopefully usually have with you all uh we use we love being here because we you get insight from others that don't live it day-to-day like we do but you guys see everything else from around the county so ways that we can improve questions you guys have

[00:47:46] opportunities for us that we can get more engaged based on what it is that we do we'd love to hear to hear from you guys while we're here. So Craig and I are gonna do a little good cop, bad cop here throughout this. So we'll let him flip through the slides as we go. But what's that? You wanna hop in there?

[00:48:02] - Yeah, real quick. I just want myself as well. I'm Craig Lewis. I'm the Senior Manager for Trade and Industrial Education and the liaison to FATE as well. So I oversee all the industrial classes in the county and then I work with Ed and all the board to make sure all the things FATE does gets to our students.

[00:48:18] - Sorry, I thought you guys knew Craig. - Not yet, not yet. working on it well again thank you guys you want to flip to the first slide here so this is a quick highlight of what we've done or what we're doing right now as probably most of you know we really have two primary programs and then the variety of things that we do outside of that construction technologies and then our student auto sales program beyond that generally speaking we generate funds from those two programs that we use in a variety of different ways whether it be grants to various schools that fall within what is really our mandate in the CTE space, or ultimately we use them for scholarships, entrepreneurship projects,

[00:48:55] so on and so forth. And so those programs were always trying to grow, always looking for new ideas, and we'll talk about that a little bit as we go forward. But from a high-level perspective, last year we sold lot 12 in our current site, which is our second site, even from the 70s, which is great. We sold for 1.25 million dollars. We have five more homes left to complete here beyond the one that we're working on right now.

[00:49:19] You guys hopefully will mostly come and see the finished product of that tomorrow, soon to be on the market. And we'll talk about it at the end of the presentation, but given the fact that we're coming towards, from a real estate perspective, towards the end of our life at this site, given the time we'll need, we'll quickly hit on our needs going forward to move the program to a new site, probably somewhere in the early 2030s.

[00:49:41] And so we've probably got somewhere between five to seven years left on this site before we need to do that. So we'll hit on that at the end. I'm not going to go through every single one of the numbers here except for the fact that I think we've updated student auto sales towards the end of the year. And so we're now at $250,000 in total sales for this year.

[00:49:59] Of that, about that number, $187,000 has gone back to schools with the balance of the funds being used at the FATE level to administer the program and then turn around and take those profits and put them into what else you see here on the screen. So, residential construction.

[00:50:17] Most of you are probably familiar with the site. We provide opportunities for students to learn effectively everything about the home building business on the site from pre-construction when they are doing bidding and contracting for the actual subcontractors that will work side by side with them on the site to ultimately learning on a standalone basis and side by side with various contractors that come and do work with them. Some of which, Supervisor Moon or Board Member Moon, I know you've been here for a long time and have seen the evolution of this program in particular. We, when I was in the program, built a house almost 100% by student run labor only. So it took us three to four years to build

[00:50:56] a home. I came on site when we first started when we were in Tyson's and we were digging the foundation. The day that I left, we had framed the entire house ourselves and they were coming to swing roof trusses. The downside of that is the students just don't get the opportunity to see the full building process. And so about 10 years or 15 years ago or so, we transitioned the process to bring on more subcontractor labor to really solve two problems one is to allow students to see the entire aspect of what the home construction process would be but two ultimately allow the students to understand what it means if they leave this program go into the trades what the

[00:51:31] expectation is how quickly do you need to move what is the expectation for quality and what is the demand in the market today and so many of the subcontractors you see on the screen right now came out and did full module educational support with the students the balance of the subcontractors on top of that and some of these are other opportunities that are outside of the subs that have worked on site clark construction being one of them but for the balance of them they are still working side by side with the students when the electrician is there the students get an education program with them when the mechanical sub is there they get an education program with them and so it has really turned into a partnership with a variety of subcontractors that has helped us be able to do

[00:52:09] that and so going forward that will certainly continue to be a part of a model as we transition to the next site but it has really been beneficial for students and it's allowed them to get a far greater understanding of the business if they so choose to advance into out of school no and as I just mentioned there our partnerships with these vendors has been you know very positive with our students they have done a tremendous amount of work on there and they've gained a lot of understanding of the profession but also built relations with the with the companies to the point where they you know the companies are looking for our students to come work for them which is highly beneficial for us over the past two years Bruce Morrow the instructor

[00:52:48] there myself new to the program both of us knew the program last year has been make sure that the education is there as well so their OSHA 10 training their NCCR which is national consortium of construction education research get some some certifications which are industry industry credentials they go right into the field and and start with a leg up You know, we're only trying to foster and build those relationships with our vendors so that we can provide better opportunities for our students and makes them aware of the entire process of building a house.

[00:53:19] Student auto sales, again, a longstanding program. It is in 13 locations among the auto tech programs. And as we mentioned before, $250,000 in sales, $187,000 back to the program. This program is one that I feel has been very consistent for a long time.

[00:53:39] The ability to grow in this is really only by volume of donations and volume of quality cars that come out. So the school systems or the school programs have been very good. Many of them have been great adopters of this. They found the benefit and the profits that come back into their program.

[00:53:55] So they're not going to administration for funds. They're able to do things inside the classroom that other programs aren't able to do. And a lot of teachers take a lot of pride in that. The students have taken a lot of pride in that as well. It almost becomes kind of a club and with itself for these programs because the students understand that they can take the monetary benefit of what's coming back and improve what they're doing in the classroom.

[00:54:15] And so we really enjoyed doing this. But again, the way to grow this for us is a little bit of luck. You know, we have to get good quality cars. In some years, we get a lot of donations, but a lot of them aren't roadworthy. And so they end up doing 50 brake jobs on them and then they get taken to the scrap. So we do have to do some degree, some consistency in total sales, but how we get there and how we go about it is a little bit different.

[00:54:38] So I'm happy to answer any questions later about that, but this is one where we kind of are on a bit of cruise control with that program. Program enhancement grants. This is something we started as a board, I asked myself, maybe 15 years ago, and it was really as a result of the success we had early on with entrepreneurship.

[00:55:02] I realized that our mission was not just supporting the couple of programs that we've had a partnership with Fairfax County to run over the last several years, but to support CTE as a whole. If we go back to the beginning of fate, it was really put together to be able to train the trades and bring more people into the trades as a whole.

[00:55:25] What the trades mean has certainly changed over the last 50 plus years, but ultimately the grant program has allowed us to take what is kind of new age CTE and support those programs in a way that we wouldn't otherwise have the ability to have and our inability to really participate in their programs beyond a monetary reason.

[00:55:48] And so we have done a great job, I think, of expanding that program. i would say thanks to all the staff that works for us we've gone from having a couple applications a year to this year i think we had 30 30 and so the word has finally gotten out that we are here and willing and able to help obviously we don't have unlimited funds but those programs that we can support we try to do every year if we can't support a program there's a reason why we provide feedback and hope that they come back and apply again for example several of the programs that that applied this year we're asking for funds from a program standpoint that weren't actually able to be spent this year if they were successful in receiving those funds so we're trying to stack

[00:56:26] people up as much as we can to be successful and get those dollars to them when they can use them but we've been incredibly proud of this program and hope to continue to grow as well and some of the highlights of that are shown on here but if you're familiar with Aaron King over at Edison Academy he just recently had a highlight of his arcade that he produced for the county he was able to pitch us and pitch fate for some funding and we were able to provide him some funding so he could create that enrichment endeavor for his students and it was very it was highlighted throughout the county and local and outlets and everything like that which is pretty amazing our

[00:56:59] newly built welding lab you know they had a large request for some funding to you know develop supplies and materials for that class which is highly they consume a high amount of materials for that so we were able to provide what fate was able to provide that for them and then they were were able to get, I think it was about three or four students brand new to the program, brand new welding, to get AWS, American Welding Society credentials at the end of it, in their first year of it.

[00:57:27] And then some others, the hospitality courses, they were able to go take some tours of some places in Old Town, I think it was Indigo Hotel, El Porto Restaurant, and from that, two of the three, two out of, two students were given summer apprenticeships with those organizations.

[00:57:46] So these supports that we're giving students are directly impacting them, and you can see the outcome right away with what the students are getting, what they're producing. So it's really beneficial. - Entrepreneurship falls into a similar bucket. We have for a long time supported market days for those primarily good in New York, put together a business model, generate a wear, and then also when you come back and sell that wear in the classroom.

[00:58:12] This, outside of that, the entrepreneurship participation with FATE has ebbed and flowed over the years. We were just chatting about it beforehand. This is one of the areas where we'd love to have new ideas from the schools. Today, I would say pretty consistently, we support market days each year, which is probably 100% of that number that's shown right now.

[00:58:31] Every year, they meet or exceed their number and all the money comes back to fate, so it's a very easy program to support. But in past years, we've supported a variety of student-run programs or businesses where it's become an investment, not just a grant. So that entrepreneurship aspect that I know has grown significantly from a school system perspective, we'd love to participate in more.

[00:58:54] So more outreach from our perspective certainly is warranted and any ideas that come from your guys' perspective down would be very welcome. Scholarships. This has been around the entire time we've done this.

[00:59:14] I did not know the number on the screen, but we've given out over $350,000 in scholarships over our industry. Each year, we find that the applications, least in the last 10 years in quality and number have continued to grow and grow which is much like some of our other programs that we just chatted about we have to balance financially how much money we can provide every single year among those various this year we provided seven scholarships of thirteen thousand dollars we have various support coming in to some degree for some of those scholarships so some are directly applied from funds that we receive that are restricted for

[00:59:51] that purpose and some come from general funds from FATE but it's something we're surely most proud of every year as part of the program. It's directly applied students are going to college they get academic scholarships apprenticeship scholarships to help them with their getting right into the industry and coming on their way to become a journeyman and then tool scholarships giving them a leg up so they have a whole set of tools as they enter their apprenticeship or go right into the workforce is super valuable to them because these tools are expensive these programs are expensive so giving them any sort of support is what we want to do and we're always looking for i'll put a plug we're always looking for um support from outside vendors or anyone who

[01:00:30] want to solicit i just had a meeting with the milwaukee tools uh and trying to see how they could support our programs and provide even more funding for scholarships and then always looking for that then in closing phase three our usual plug so last couple of years i mentioned it up front we are in search of more property we we know the rules have changed a lot since we received property from you all before i think what we have today was a fractured school site when fairfax county parkway came through that property and so we are as i said probably five to six seven years

[01:01:06] away from needing a new site for us and i'm sure it's not completely foreign to you all from a zoning perspective things take time and so identifying a site having control of a site rezoning the site receiving a site plan and then getting to a point of infrastructure so that we are ready to actually build a home when those students are ready to transition is about the right timeline so we have started some meaningful outreach to the board of supervisors and we are starting to advance some of those conversations i would i'd be willing to bet in the coming months we hope some of that from their perspective flows down to you guys we'd love to meet with you all individually if you have any ideas to date because of where we understand

[01:01:44] a lot of the land has been dedicated it seems to be more controlled by the board of supervisors it is by the school board at this point but we are open to any and all ideas we know fairfax county has changed a lot since the early 2000s when we last identified a site there's certainly less land the sites that are available are smaller and the sites that are available are more complicated so we have a fantastic board that has expertise in every arena of real estate and so we're able to digest those and pretty quickly out if we can or can't do something for the program on those sites

[01:02:13] partnership and support you guys that is all we have for today um mr moon thank you for the the presentation I always enjoy presentation by fate with a set on slide number eight I see preferred characteristics including townhouses have we have you we ever built townhouses from a fate perspective yes

[01:02:49] we have never we have never we have had two sites over 50 years and it's all been saying all these single homes because when you know it's a good to see our inner students learning from a ground up and building houses with a value exceeding one million dollars may not go much in Fairfax County still that's a lot of money for high school kids to see but at the same time I also want to have would love to see high school students a working on a houses with a little more moderate prices range rather than all multimillion dollar projects.

[01:03:29] I think we're going to end up in that position. I think with the size of sites and our need to not move sites every one to two years logistically is almost impossible for us. So we have spent a fair bit of time talking about what are the different types of housing we can and can't do.

[01:03:44] I mean, we have to be just as honest with ourselves about the things we can't do. Townhomes is certainly something that we believe we can get our hands around from logistics perspective the sites get tighter how we build homes is different than a home builder but there's certainly opportunities to do that and I think we're gonna have to bend ourselves to the reality of Fairfax County today not just to the price point perspective which we certainly think is an advantage not just for the students but also for the community as a whole we know that the next time we go through a rezoning it's not gonna be as easy as it was 25 years ago so we're gonna have to think about these aspects as we go through it but we certainly appreciate the point because it's something we're focused on. Okay so I'm gonna go one step further

[01:04:20] even uh from learning perspective that that you know builders do not always build from ground up. They may purchase existing homes and then do major repairs or minor repairs and turn it around and sell them. Is that something is there something that our students can also learn from then but those models as well? That'd be a very challenging business model for us because to date and i think continuing into the future we're unable to buy a site at market we can't continue the program on a sustainability basis by purchasing land or purchasing a home and then

[01:04:58] trying to create a profit and so this renovations alone are is a challenging business just to start with moving a site from year to year is a challenging business for us but if we had to purchase a home renovate it and try to sell it the sustainability of the program would be very what about one last question what about working with private developers and ask them to provide our students and learning opportunities at their sites they are already working on or what purpose for that for the entirety of the program or for entire program or a part of the program yes so the challenge is a

[01:05:35] lot of these home builders they build very very quickly they build a very tight margins and so even if we were able to do that we'd be on a job site for 12 to 24 months and they'd have to dedicate some meaningful resources that's certainly an opportunity there i think those are many of those things along with a whole list of others we've said if we get to a point and there will be a point in the future if it's not this site and maybe the next or the next we're going to run out of land in fairfax county and so at some point what do we do and we've talked about how do we take funds potentially at some point in the future and expand carpentry programs in various academies and ultimately start to build modular housing or other things of that nature there's plenty of challenges associated with that industry right now

[01:06:14] but we've talked about a lot of these things that we are going to have to live with some reality at some point that we won't continue that land to be able to do this so for the time being we're trying to figure out if we can solve the problem somewhere in the realm of how we've been doing things to date but if we're forcing that position we're going to have to find other ways to your point to be okay thank you mr mcdaniel followed by miss marron the question speaking of like property what type of property are you looking for well ideally land sure so raw land not not buying existing assets or anything of the nature from a rezoning perspective as long as we have

[01:06:54] comprehensive plan or supervisors i don't think that's really the challenge i mean most land in fairfax county is not zoned for its ultimate use anymore and so it's it's really about finding a piece of property that is buildable and is within this within where we can access from a school perspective but that is almost our only limitation is there a certain density that you're looking for i mean we're no it just has to be enough that we don't have to move the program from time to time so for example if we were in an area of the county where we could only build two units an acre having a one acre site doesn't do a lot but if we were in an area of the county that allowed 12 to 16

[01:07:31] units an acre for town homes on a two acre site that does something so it's really about what kind of density we can achieve and how long we can keep the program there and in place gotcha and do you guys I assume it's probably safe to say you only focus on the construction part the actual building of okay so you don't demolish things we we demolish things all the time so if there is a piece of property you have where we need to demolish oh there is that doesn't bother me at all so yes okay as long as we're not buying a piece of property where we have to deal with tenancy and the like

[01:08:10] if there's if there's vacant property where we need to demolish that's the least of my concerns from we'll talk after that's all thank you it feels like we're leading towards an idea here but I'm happy maybe maybe miss Marin yeah thanks I've been a fan of this program since I visited it the first year I I really encourage the group to think of new ways of doing things because the constant asking for more like seeking more land like there's not but what

[01:08:46] there is a ton of is commercial buildings so what I don't get is the allegiance to soup-to-nuts construction when that's just not available and I yet am to have a kid from Madison or South Lakes Marshall any of those kids cross the entire county to get there and I haven't seen anything change so I'd really encourage you to look at so what can a kid do in commercial electrical plumbing drywall construction carpentry what is it is it just that they're not digging are

[01:09:21] they not bringing it to market like there's got to be an evolution because and i don't see anywhere in in the numbers here how many students it was 25 the last time i knew is that still where it's at yeah that is really good you speak to that i'll answer your first question yeah we're bound by the state regulations what we can have in a residential class we have one residential construction program which is uh 20 students that we can have yeah so the cost per pupil of that is got to be enormous and i you know realize the generous funding that fate brings but

[01:09:57] we have a lot of people that want to work in construction and it's booming in reston and there's also a ton of commercial real estate sitting i drive by it every single day so and then if you want to do even if you want to look for land but certainly for commercial real estate I mean it's the Board of Supervisors all day long get get their buy-in and then let us know because we have no authority over the space the zoning the planning the timeline and I guess you know my frustration is just that it's a great program and I've seen it expand zero so from an expansion standpoint given the current side that we have in the limitations we have not

[01:10:36] just from a regulatory perspective but also from a teacher and staffing perspective we just wouldn't be able to do more programs without that and I think to your earlier comment really what you're talking about is training less a business and so if we get to a point of training it will be through partnerships with other groups fate will never be in a position as a non-profit board to purchase a commercial property have the students renovated and sell that commercial property as we just talked about a little bit with the homes it's very very challenging

[01:11:12] from an economic perspective to make that work but if we can partner with folks in the industry that can provide those opportunities for high school students on their job sites which we already are starting to do to some degree particularly with summer programs and the like we can do more of that and educate more students in that manner it just won't be a self-sustaining program because there won't be dollars generated out of the back end so to some degree we kind of push pull between those two right no thank you for explaining it and it's not that the residential has to go away But I'd love to know how many students have gone through the program are working in real estate and have a career or working in construction.

[01:11:48] What are those numbers? Because if there's one student out of 20 or 40 or 60 every three years, I bet we could train a lot more students in carpentry and get them going. And I guess the other -- so those are the data points.

[01:12:05] And again, the funding is -- I mean, you're absolutely right to bring up the funding, but does the real estate need to be the most important component when we know that we have needs for all these other skills i totally agree the the challenge if we were part of the school system relied on funding from the school system to grow it and we had that capacity available we could based on our balance sheet and the funding we have available it will drive quickly if it's only a one-way street if dollars are not coming back into the no i get it but we still have auto and i mean i guess i just haven't seen any evolution of what's the plan and given that the

[01:12:40] land is not plentiful that's where i keep coming back to if land was plentiful i'd be like okay keep going but that's why we're here six years out if we find that three years out we're unable to have a solution that provides more land and allows us to be self-sustainable we're gonna have to match that reality at some point and it may not maybe it's this round and maybe the next round it may be the next one but your point is a good one uh we're gonna have to deal with that at some point and as we've talked about what we've been trying to figure out is even at a broader scale right if we were go into the academies and be able to do modular housing and the like and we can help take some of our dollars not just to build the homes but improve the school logistics to be able

[01:13:19] to do it for example very few schools in the county have the height limitations and the door limitations to get a product like that in and out of the academy so like we talked about a lot of these things and so i think right now what we're trying to figure out is where the dollar is best suited are we at an inflection point where we need to make that transition because once we do it's very hard to come back I mean one when I first heard this about this program I was trying to figure out if home builders in Vienna could set up a site a staging site and have students come in that you know and then you've got OSHA okay fine but like what are some of those creative solutions then to make it work you know

[01:13:57] and and your value of being a partner in the community could be going to Clark construction or to you know those other can going to HITT that's right in rest in and saying hey can we partner and then you know that could be super valuable and expanding this program partnership yeah I think we've been trying to develop those partnerships and figure out where our inroads are with them and trying to make them aware of our program and what our limitations are and what we need moving forward so that we can actually progress that I think we're in that beginning stages of it me and it's me being new to the role is a year and a half ago and new teacher working with the board and understanding the scope of what we can do with the board that is something that we have

[01:14:36] been thinking about because if we don't find land in the next two to three years then what we have to come up with that solution right away so we are starting that on the on the small scale right now but that might get ramped up if needed but to your point on the periphery we can certainly be doing both so if there's an ability to leverage the partnerships that we have today which we have certainly started to do to create opportunities for even students outside of our programs all together so I'll take a turn following along those lines I know that the Board

[01:15:12] of Supervisors has projects I know that you know you know affordable housing projects that are coming up I mean is that is is there some way we can work with them for some of those profit projects and whoever is bidding on those projects make that part of their profits that they they cooperate and partner with us so that our students can do that is I don't know enough about the industry to know that's a possibility yes and no so similar answer to the question before which is we certainly aren't in a capacity to do affordable housing projects or the like many affordable

[01:15:51] housing developers i don't want to get too far into the weeds but they are economically driven still mostly not non-profits and so they still need to particularly for most of these projects that are working off of litec credits they ultimately need to buy develop and deliver in in a very short amount of time to be able to receive those credits.

[01:16:11] So there are some limitations logistically there. But I think what you're talking about is a similar thing to the prior comment, which is, can we take industry partners and provide opportunities for students through those industry partners, even if it doesn't mean it's the core business of FATE? The answer to that is absolutely.

[01:16:27] So if there are other students that aren't participating in a FATE construction program, but want to get interested in construction, who are in carpentry today, who are in mechanical engineering today, who are in electrical today if they'd like to get out on a job site and participate in programs clark construction is doing that right now with us and we certainly can engage others from our relationship perspective to do so okay and then my other question that i was going to ask in terms of your donations for cars and you say that you know that kind of ebbs and flows depending how do you go about advertising for those donations um to be honest with you a lot of

[01:17:06] if it's word of mouth. It's been such an established program. Lyman Rose, who is our dealer at Marshall High School, he's constantly getting barraged with people who are on the program. I can see on a weekly basis we probably get seven to ten donated cars coming in through people who just hadn't heard about the program.

[01:17:28] We do advertising at the schools. We have banners up at some of the football stadiums. We have two-wrapped cars that go from school to school, get sit out in the front lot sometimes so that people can see you know that this as a program we have some social media that goes out but we haven't had any lack of donations coming into our program um the number i just talked to uh lyman today i think we had over i'll write it here i don't know where i wrote it here um 215 donations coming this year which is a pretty

[01:18:06] pretty high amount and he he accepts anything um um you know the kids have an opportunity to work on it and do something to it he accepts it um whether it then gets scrapped afterwards or not but um donations are applicable and we just um made connections with uh mwa metropolitan washington airport authority um and they want to donate cars to us as well um and we did in the past got some from them um we've had other dealership abandoning cars that are in their lots that people flee the country and never go back for their cars the ones that they want to donate might be their actual service trucks so we might actually get some better quality so the donations are plentiful

[01:18:44] and through whatever advertising we're doing now we're just trying and we're going to try to make sure that increases as we move forward i think what i was identifying earlier is the quality of those cars ebb and flow so we get a lot of cars that come in but ultimately how many of those cars are able to be repaired and put back on the road and can go through sales versus how many get 50 brake jobs and get scratched is really what we see um i if we had 500 cars come in a year we may be able to get more quality cars but lyman would be so inundated he'd just be sending 300 cars a year to the scrap yard and they'd never see the school right and i think the point that i was

[01:19:19] getting to was the quality cars that you could then get you know a good return for for the work that was done and obviously the experience of doing this a brake job on a car you're going to scrap is is as valuable but if you could get the higher quality cars to get get some more return i agree i definitely agree with you there um you know some of the cars that come in have 200 000 miles on it some of them come in 250 000 some of them have an engine an engine that blew up and we have to try and figure out is it's worth it um and there are some limitations uh we have talked to some dealerships who you know potentially want to donate cars but there are some limitations which i don't know the whole end and out of but i've talked to lineman about how we can then resell

[01:19:59] them if we're able to resell them potentially but the dealership has a lot of restrictions on what you can and can't do we have to follow those Virginia dealership restrictions on that but we're always looking for the quality cars out there and he does a we now one thing that we have in Institute this year is Carfax as well so we're able to pull the Carfax and understand what that car has gone through and we've actually identified at least ten cars that have been permits but they're not able we're not able to resell them because they are total thank you they've been totaled I should have known that but yeah so then these people want to donate them we're like we can't donate them so then we

[01:20:36] scrap them and we have a we have a working relationship with a scrapper Willow Springs who comes and gets the cars for free and then and then and take them and he gets provides us some of the scrap money for that so we even get some money from the scraps that we get and then another question that I have is cars are becoming much more electronic like little spaceships now how does that impact your programming and and are the kids being trained for that or do we have training are we moving towards that though we are moving towards that slowly the state puts out the requirements in which we have to

[01:21:14] follow through the CT resource of video we have the requirements and EV vehicles are becoming more prominent in there and EV training I'm sending a couple teachers over the summer to do some EV training to make sure that they understand the what you know how to how to repair those and what they need to look for the other part of that is the safety factor for the kids right the kids have to be make sure they're safe and they don't do things that are because there's another danger factor to be associated with that so once our teachers are getting trained Nova's reached out about some trainings as well that they want to get our teachers involved in and then as the competencies

[01:21:48] and the curriculum changes we're changing our our focus as well but it is a slow process Because while we see more EV vehicles out in the market now, and that's the trend, we're still dealing with more traditional vehicles at this point.

[01:22:04] And the things that are donated are traditional vehicles that have been 1998 and 2015. We're not getting the 2025 Teslas coming in at this point, maybe eventually. I don't see any more placards, but I would like – I'm sorry.

[01:22:23] It's okay. You're behind my water bottle, so. I get it. Just a really quick question. I appreciate everything you do, and I love especially the hands-on training for the students in both the auto and the home building.

[01:22:40] I'm just wondering, as I was sitting here listening on the home side of things, with some of the newer ordinances around accessible dwelling units and ADUs, is there a space for partnering with people who want to build some of those in their backyards to bring in some students to help with that or partner with the builders that are building that?

[01:22:59] I just feel like there's a thing here with a public-private partnership to provide some of these opportunities for the students. - We've chatted through that as a result of what I was just mentioning earlier on modular and mobile housing. - Yeah. - A lot of the success in that space, setting aside zoning, zoning's become, in every jurisdiction, even though they've introduced the concept, it's become very challenging to kind of figure out the right way to accomplish it.

[01:23:24] And so there's different rules from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But a lot of the success in that space has been around modularized housing and off-site and deliver it. And so we have certainly chatted about that. It's certainly gonna be, I think, a growing industry as zoning gets a little bit more flexible and figures out how to not just allow it, but encourage it.

[01:23:44] But it is something that we certainly can do if we were to do one of the programs chatting about where we start to expand within the schools that we can do that. That is certainly something we've chatted about. - Thank you, I appreciate it.

[01:24:01] - So now, seeing no more placards, I do wanna give you the opportunity explain a little bit about the open house or anything else you'd like to inform us before we end the session sure so tomorrow afternoon uh we have an open house for uh the fairfax community when i say fairfax i mean local school fairfax community so school board supervisors uh staff you're all more than welcome to come out to our site at 7430 foundation way in springfield the open house is running from one to four tomorrow it is a there is no set program it is it true kind of come in take a look at what the kids and have done and see

[01:24:39] the beautiful home that is the students will be coming and going as well summer schedules it was hard to track down all of them come but we lost some students there there might be some local media presence there as well some border supervisors have responded to be at the site some board obviously board members from fate will be there as well as our instructor of the program and other Fairfax personnel. So yes, one to four tomorrow. I was just there this morning. The stager has it all set up, is getting it all set up right now. It's beautiful. We had it all cleaned, so come on out. I'll have some refreshments for you all. So, you know, if you want some Wegmans, come on out

[01:25:18] and see the house and enjoy yourself and get to hear from some of the students and we can talk about the program. Our next site is currently under works right now, so we have the hole and he'll appear is going in we can discuss that while you're there so you can see what we're doing moving forward with the program - so wonderful tomorrow will be our open house well thank you for the presentation and thank you for being here appreciate it we head start parent policy committee for the presentation of their annual report thank you for being here and we're eager to hear about the

[01:25:55] little ones thank you all so much for having us my name is Ari Rua and I am the chair of the Parent Policy Committee for the Pre-K and Early Head Start programs. I'm lucky enough to be joined by Cynthia Colby Rojas, our Vice Chair, Katie Mahaney, our Secretary, and we're also joined in the audience by Jonathan Colby, our Parliamentarian over there. We are also joined by our Pre-K and Early Head Start Senior Manager, January Takash, up here with us, and Katie Spalding, who

[01:26:27] is sitting in the audience. Good afternoon, everyone. A little bit about our parent policy committee. This year we met quarterly for in-person meetings. The agenda included information about the program budget and updates from staff.

[01:26:45] At each meeting we had networking opportunities with other parents and team-building activities. Our children were also able to network and participate with their friends to build social skills. They received a bilingual storybook at each meeting and that went along with the activities. We were also joined by our community partners who shared information and resources for our families. At our final meeting of the year we were fortunate enough to be served dinner by our food and nutrition services and families gave feedback on the new menu items that will be served to our students next year. This year we

[01:27:22] added a new parent conversation portion to each PPC meeting. We discussed important topics to help give feedback to improve communication and family engagement within the pre-k and EHS program. This feedback is being used to make updates to the website and to parent resources for next school year. The best part of this experience was getting to meet the program staff and get to know the people who are working behind the scenes on improving the program, hearing what feedback they needed from us, and how we can work together in a

[01:27:58] partnership. I'm so appreciative that all the students in the pre-k and EHS program are in good hands it truly takes a village to support all of our children it was reassuring that the program staff was there to hear us even if a family shared critical feedback it was empowering for our parents to be heard from this experience we have built confidence to advocate for our children this led me to recently reach out to my principal after kindergarten orientation to work with her on enhancing the experience for our pre-k families next year throughout the school

[01:28:37] year the all pre-k and early head start parents had the pleasure and opportunity to serve on the parent policy committee by being elected as an executive board member serving as a regional representative serving as a policy council representative with your effects county or attending ppc meetings or school-based parent center meetings in addition to the parents who participated on the committee we had three community representatives who shared information and resources for our families.

[01:29:08] We were lucky enough to also have members from the Health Department, Anthem Health Keepers, and the Northern Virginia Family Services be part of our program. Five of our parents also attended the Policy Council meetings with Fairfax County Government, where we received budget training and overviews of grant financials, as well as approved the hiring of new staff.

[01:29:33] Here, you can see this is our chart with our executive board and the policy council representatives. You've already met those of us that are up here with you today. Unfortunately, Alexandra Pitts, our PPC treasurer and policy council representative and the secretary could not attend today.

[01:29:51] We also have our three additional policy council representatives, Nicole Tapia, who also serves as a policy council treasurer, Xochital Garcia and Karla Orellana, though it doesn't include every PPC regional representative and parents who contributed to our committee.

[01:30:10] This year, every parent who attended contributed to our effort, and we thank them greatly for all their work. - Our children were some of the many children who were served by the FCPS Pre-K and Early Head Start program, which provides high quality preschool education and comprehensive services for students who are identified as having economic and educational risk factors.

[01:30:35] The purpose is to provide a strong start and develop kindergarten readiness skills, including academic and social emotional skills. During the school year, 2024-2025, the pre-K program had 132 classrooms, serving up to 2,246 students.

[01:30:51] The number of pre-K slots is 134 more than the previous school year, with an additional 175 slots being planned for the next school year. Adding more slots personally impacted our family. I'm a military wife who recently relocated to Fairfax County with my family, And we applied a year ago this spring and were put on a wait list for the program for several months.

[01:31:12] Finally, in July, we were told that a spot had opened after being very worried we wouldn't get one. We are in a nearby school and now my daughter is over-prepared for kindergarten. She knows all her numbers and letters and she even has an ELSA storybook that she reads to us every night.

[01:31:29] We found this program very beneficial that we would like to recommend to continue to expand the program for more families to help prepare students for school. The pre-K and EHS program serves a diverse population of students, including students who are found eligible based on income and other risk factors.

[01:31:52] The top chart shows the family income for students attending the program this year. The bottom two charts show information about the percentages of multilingual learners and students with disabilities. 68% of students in the program have a family income of less than 130% of the federal poverty level with another 19 below 200%, which shows the majority of our students come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

[01:32:20] 18% of our students have been identified as having developmental delays or disabilities. The percentage includes the students who already had IEPs prior to entering the program, as well as those identified during the program year. 82% of our pre-K and early Head Start students come from a multilingual home.

[01:32:39] This school year, students have 49 home languages other than English. Spanish is the most common language, with Arabic and Amharic, Dari and Urdu also having large populations. For our students, Pre-K offers a language-rich environment that provides experience to develop and practice English prior to the kindergarten year.

[01:32:59] So, as part of the Federal Head Start and Virginia Preschool Initiatives grants require that the Pre-K and Early Head Start program provides comprehensive services to children and their families. Some of these services include eligibility, enrollment, and attendance support, family services and connecting to resources in the community, health and nutrition, including mental health, education and assessment support, and support for students' disabilities and developmental delays.

[01:33:32] I was one of the few of the families that didn't know that this program existed at all. I was also, unfortunately, one of the first group of parents that went through a layoff in corporate America when I was expecting my son at seven, eight months of gestation.

[01:33:49] So we actually had to, we had our daughter that was in an academic learning center that was bilingual and we provided an education for her that was of high caliber for us. And so one of the things that had to go once we, once I got laid off was we had to make financial cuts and that meant removing our daughter from the academic learning center.

[01:34:08] And we moved specifically to Fairfax County. I'm from Arlington County. And we specifically moved to Fairfax County to give her the best education possible. So to have to remove her from an area that she is accustomed to, that is structured, that she thrives in and not have a space for her, not be able to afford a space for her to be in and continue as she's in this cusp of four and five to go to kindergarten, we really had to wait for a miracle.

[01:34:35] And that's exactly what happened with Child Find. So through Child Find services, we were able to find this program and apply very smoothly and we were approved pretty quickly to be able to have her attend Bonnie Bray in Burke. So we've not only has this been a blessing, but we've noticed that the transition from the academic learning center that was bilingual going into Fairfax County Public Schools pre-K program was very smooth for her.

[01:35:01] And it was something that she continued to thrive at. And not only was she doing the same work, if not better, than the academic learning center that we had her in, but we also noticed that she had a lot of social and emotional skills that she had picked up over a small time period within the first couple of weeks in school.

[01:35:20] She had the language to be able to express herself and to say how she's feeling and discuss big feelings. And we're very, very proud of her for that.

[01:35:35] Here are some of the highlights of the comprehensive services for the school year 2024, 2025. Transportation, starting in 24, 25, there is now a feeder site identified for every base school in FCPS to get bus transportation. All of the students now have access to the bus, which is wonderful.

[01:35:53] Education, completion of all Virginia quality birth to five VQB five requirements, updating curriculum for new standards, comprehensive training for teachers on new literacy curriculum, including letters and Hagerty training. Increase supporting for children with disabilities was supported by increasing and inclusion classrooms and practices.

[01:36:13] And we supported 180 enrolled students through the child find referral process. The mental health was expanded through, excuse me, expanding early childhood mental health consultation model to build adult capacity to support our students so the teachers are able to support their students properly with mental health, which is wonderful, again.

[01:36:33] Family engagement, we supported school readiness and transitioned to kindergarten through family center meetings, virtual information sessions, and ReadyRosie. The pre-K and EHS program makes an impact on kindergarten readiness, including academic skills and social-emotional skills.

[01:36:51] You can see from this preliminary data, this year's Virginia Kindergarten Readiness Program, EMAS and VALS, that pre-K students have made growth in math concepts and beginning literacy skills, such as letter identification and beginning sounds. My daughter's proof in the pudding.

[01:37:08] In the spring, students are expected to do more and harder tasks for each developmental band, but in all areas, more students were on target in the growing and strong bands for kindergarten skills. The exposure to a strong curriculum in the pre-K and EHS program impacts students and families.

[01:37:24] Myself, with my older child, who's 16 now, I had to get other resources to help him prepare for kindergarten because they didn't emphasize literacy in his daycare preschool he attended. I see a huge difference in my daughter now, who's more than ready to begin kindergarten and enjoys learning immensely.

[01:37:49] - The pre-K and EHS program is required to maintain a wait list of eligible students. to be able to fill slots if a student leaves, and also to measure unmet need. You can see from the chart that even though the number of pre-K slots has grown, so has the number of students on the wait list.

[01:38:08] The pre-K program prioritizes four-year-olds to receive a pre-K experience before kindergarten, so not all three-year-old applications are even processed. This past year, approximately 1,300 three-year-old applications were held to be processed for the following upcoming school year.

[01:38:27] Last year, my daughter was on the wait list as a three-year-old, but because we applied and she was on the wait list, we were able to get a spot for her as a four-year-old the following year. - So the map in front of you is the percentage of students who enter kindergarten without a pre-K experience at all in each of the high school pyramids.

[01:38:53] The dark green shows areas where over 30% of the students have not had the opportunity to go to preschool before kindergarten. The medium green colors are 20 to 29% of students who did not have a pre-K experience at all. And the program staff use this data to recommend where the program can continue to expand their classrooms.

[01:39:19] - Each year, the parent policy committee puts forward recommendations to the school board on how to best support the pre-K and early Head Start program into the future. Here are the recommendations for this year. Our first recommendation is prioritize maintaining pre-k and early head start program classes and services regardless of federal and state funding cuts. It is important for parents to have peace of mind that their pre-k program will continue to be available to students in Fairfax County into the future. We have seen how important it is for

[01:39:57] children as the as the foundation for their education and development. Our second recommendation is include pre-k students in the staffing formula for school-based staff including time to teach and school-based mental health. I have been fortunate to have a principal at our daughter school who has included the pre-k program as much as possible in school community events.

[01:40:25] Though not all students who attend each pre-k classroom are base school students, they are all FCPS students and will go on to kindergarten at our schools. Currently, pre-K students are not in the staffing formula for art, music, and PE, or in their numbers for mental health support.

[01:40:47] So even at a great school like ours, where they try to include our youngest learners, our daughter only had specials on a monthly basis. At least they got some introduction, but pre-K is their first opportunity to go to school, and it is important to have these enrichment opportunities early, even for our preschoolers at every school. For our third and final recommendation, we ask you to continue to fund the expansion for the pre-k program to allow access to our families, increase inclusion opportunities,

[01:41:23] and improve kindergarten readiness. The pre-k program sets students up for success in kindergarten, paving the success in school and life. All students should have access across fairfax county there should be no wait list every student should have an opportunity at pre-k we greatly appreciate the opportunity to present these recommendations before you today our parent policy committee strongly feels that they really will make all the difference in making this

[01:41:58] program and the students more successful this year and beyond so we're very grateful for you all thank you so much for your time thank you so much for your presentation um at this time i now invite board members to ask any clarifying questions or to provide comments and we'll start with uh dr ricardi anderson followed by miss marron thank you um miss um thank you all so much for being here and for your very good report it is much appreciated i i was just hoping for a little bit more clarification on the wait list and you did a good job of already parsing out for me the three-year-olds and the

[01:42:37] four-year-olds um so this number this 474 this only um reflects four-year-olds that are on the wait list so the wait list is vastly underrepresented here by another 2600 kids roughly to include the third graders is that accurate so the three third graders no we don't want third graders in preschool no thank you i think they do best in third grade three-year-olds so at some schools we do process three-year-olds it really depends on the number of applications per school and the number of slots available at that school at some schools

[01:43:14] we know that we have more than enough four-year-old applications to be able to fill all the slots with the wait list of 20 to 30 students that we may have on the wait list already at that school in those schools we choose or we do not process the three-year-old applications just due to we know they get a letter that says that they will be processed for next year or if space becomes available to save resources thank you but overall that wait list number is vastly underrepresented there's typically 13 to 1400 over the past few years three-year-olds who have applied to the program whose applications were not processed due to space limitations at those schools the majority of those

[01:43:53] are four-year-olds on that on the wait list on okay thank you the other piece that I was curious about I'm not necessarily clear if this is a question for you or for Dr. Presidio and Dr. Reed you know from serving on skip with Marcia it makes me wonder what is the collaboration or what are the possibilities for potential collaboration with the county because I know they're working on some specific programs to expand pre-k but we also have that continuing discussion on what does how do we define pre-k so I'm

[01:44:27] wondering what collaborations have you had do you have any input I just want to know more about that with the county staff and I don't know if this is a dr. presidio question either I don't know where oh he's over there well let me see if I can offer a few comments and then if anybody on the committee has anything to add it certainly welcome that so for folks that don't know the skip the successful child and youth policy team dr. Anderson and I miss st. John Cunning serve on that with me and one of the areas of emphasis is around early childhood education and the county is currently in the process of developing

[01:45:05] equitable early childhood strategic plan and one of the things that we advocated really strongly for was inclusion of expansion of pre-k as part of that plan because the county as many of you know administer child care services and other early childhood services but we largely in fcps run the preschool program so we were fortunate enough to have the county agree as one of the strategic GOALS TO INCLUDE EXPANSION OF ACCESS TO PRESCHOOL AS WELL AS TO OTHER EARLY CHILDHOOD OPTIONS.

[01:45:40] SO WE'RE REALLY HAPPY, WE'RE REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THAT, AND WE LOOK FORWARD TO CONTINUING TO PARTNER WITH THEM TO LOOK FOR ANY AVAILABLE FUNDING STREAM TO INCREASE THE NUMBER OF SLOTS THAT WE WOULD BE ABLE TO SERVE IN TERMS OF STUDENTS AND FAMILIES IN FAIRFACS COUNTY.

[01:45:59] IF I CAN ADD, WE ALSO WORK CLOSELY WITH OUR PARTNERS IN ECPS WITH BOTH THE VIRGINIA preschool initiative grant and the head start and early head start grants so we collaborate and we share wait lists we collaborate to make sure that we meet the state requirement that head start spots are filled first before we fill our virginia preschool initiative spots so there's a strong collaboration between the county and ourselves and making sure that all students have access to a pre-k experience before they enter kindergarten

[01:46:34] okay thank you I'll have a comment on that but I see you have very little time left and I want to ask my next question which is regarding the integration of preschool students into the k-5 program dr. Reed what is the expectation currently that else that you have for our schools on that so thank you dr.

[01:46:55] Anderson I know we're working on inclusion for pre-k actually pre-k through k-12 so dr. Presidio I know has been working with the early childhood team on that and perhaps you could share how many new inclusive classrooms we've opened and the trajectory of that work yeah I mean I think first I would say I just want to thank the board and dr. Reed for the last two budgets that have been passed to actually allow us to expand the number of preschool classrooms in the county we've expanded by over 20 classrooms in the last two which is great and all of the classrooms that we're opening now we're trying our

[01:47:31] very best to open those in an inclusion model where all students regardless of IEP status or disability can learn together in the same classroom and in fact this school year the team the early childhood team did a great job of converting some of our legacy classrooms into inclusion classrooms and I think we added like 42 inclusion preschool classrooms this school year alone and was really a lot of work by the early childhood office in partnership with our schools or principals to really remodel and really re-envision what those learning experiences could look like so it's our goal as dr. Reed said in the

[01:48:06] next several years to really move to a full inclusion model K through 12 I appreciate that but I don't think I was clear about my question that's great information but not quite landing it's really speaking to the discussion regarding having access to music and PE the specials do we have an expectation around that for the pre-k classes because they tend to be kind of standalone programs I don't believe we do have an expectation right now we're really trying to pull together monies from any possible locations simply to

[01:48:44] add preschool classes and I don't know that we have at this time the resources to connect to those services unless they're available on site if a you know if the staffing that a particular school has enables that I think it's certainly it would be desirable but I I don't believe that's the expectation based on our current budget situation well I'm sorry I would just add because that's a hundred percent correct but I do want to acknowledge the work that our preschool teachers do to embed art and music as part of the program so we work with them to provide materials and resources and I mean there's some of our

[01:49:21] most dedicated and creative teachers that we have in the school system so they work hard to do that thank you and just the last piece if we were to follow up on this recommendation any ballpark on what the cost could be to have this recommendation come to life well since each school had to reduce staff based on the divisor right on the current budget and the department the central program support said to be reduced by three percent I I would have to we could calculate that number right by the number of classes times schools and so

[01:49:59] forth we can certainly calculate that number I don't currently though and Miss Burden's not here I don't oh Miss Burden just arrived Miss Burden is here I don't especially with Miss Burden being here as I think about how much budget to put there and we could calculate it I just don't know I just want to get a sense of what is the ask here because I see that as the number two recommendation and the number one recommendation it seems to be like the perfect storm of challenge because of our budget climate so you know I agree with dr. Presidio that a

[01:50:39] lot of our preschool teachers I mean it's hard to do preschool that music and art right that's kind of a cornerstone we sing and draw and learn together right at that those young ages so and when I think about adding those two recommendations I we certainly could cost those out budget wise Miss Marin followed by mr. McDaniel hi there it's a shame that our k-12 system doesn't actually have early childhood aligned because this is like the best part to me

[01:51:15] and that's where I started my career so thank you so much and I want to put a plug-in because I hope you can consider this as a trial run because where we can really use your help as advocates is in the fall when we start to advocate to the General Assembly and then in January when they're in session because there's a whole report that we are trying to elevate and share the data on that's showing that we're chronically underfunded and you are all advocates and experts in this and we really could use your your help so I've already made a note to make sure we reach out to you but know that like your stories and your

[01:51:51] experience matters but we got to take it to the state and certainly we try with the county but you know it actually I was furiously looking up like is Montgomery County Maryland's any better and I don't think it is and I was thought for sure like some other places I mean it's just such a sad state of affairs but this this is called the J Lark report from the state and it shows where we can increase funding especially title one so there's a roadmap there so just hope that you'll stay engaged and I thank you and we we support you we just

[01:52:21] got to get funded so thank you so much mr. McDaniel I just want to add one more thing I think preschools like some of the most important work we do in this country like it just is and that's why this board has been so committed to setting aside money even when money's been tight and I just want to remind our community that the recent research on this is that if we took 1% of our military budget nationally we could fund universal pre-k for every child in this country and I think we need to really be thinking about that not just as a

[01:52:58] Fairfax school division but as an entire Commonwealth and country because if our children can arrive at school better ready to learn it makes all of our achievement gaps just I think much more it just erases many of them so and I guess I might just say one more thing I forgot to credit dr. Reed at like eking in classroom by classroom like dozens of kids bite like that's the and it's ludicrous that this is how we have to do it but it's not unique but you know I'm literally looking at the data to get to that hundred what is it the just had

[01:53:35] 132 classes like so we're trying but it's we got to get more money mr. McDaniel followed by miss Sizemore heiser thank you think I'm probably the only one that's currently paying right I don't know Ryan what your kids situation but yeah so we are okay so yeah I would love to have universal pre-k I will write whatever tax check I need to to make that happen because I'm already paying for it for my two kids oh yeah yeah yeah we yeah so I got my

[01:54:14] question is on the map on slide slide the map is on second to last third to if you were to take the full wait list and break it out in this kind of heat map type shaded format that you've done would it be distributed about the same as what we're seeing right there with the lack of experience no the wait list and this map don't coincide there are pockets where we have a large number of wait lists and then surprisingly there'll be areas where like along the route one

[01:54:51] corridor for example sometimes we will have schools where we're seeing a higher percentage of students who aren't accessing a pre-k experience but we may not have as high of a wait list in that area and there's a variety of parent needs in different communities a variety of other factors that may pay into that we do look at our wait list every year to try to give the very best recommendations but we do know there are pockets on this map where our schools are very compacted and we you will continue to recommend additional places to to meet the needs at those schools where we have the consistently large

[01:55:31] waitlist and this year with the additional funding that was provided we were able to greatly reduce some of those impacted areas but we're still we'll still keep recommending gotcha so I guess my question when I enrolled my my daughter I was asked to provide the preschool information for those I mean we see here that there are clearly pockets where there are a lot of people that don't have their kids and experience as you phrased it do we survey them and ask them why we have not on that FCPS form that's standard in the registration in the past I know that there was a team working on getting

[01:56:11] additional information I don't have an update on exactly what that information is so we can provide that information because i mean if if it's not you know it could be money right it could be money it could be social factors it could be lack of access to a you know a private or public facility i know the private facilities sometimes have wait lists um it could be our own brick and mortar capacity issues so just i think as we're talking this has just been a problem it seems like as long as long as i've been observing these things this has been a chronic issue and it

[01:56:48] just seems like, you know, we talk about it, but really getting at the heart of what that data is showing in terms of what the driving force, and do we, I mean, if we were to even do universal pre-K, let's say we just had the magic pot of money, do we even, do we know if we even have the brick-and-mortar capacity to do it in our buildings? I wouldn't think so. Maybe, I don't know. Well, okay, it's a maybe.

[01:57:18] Well, I do think we have more capacity. We, part of, how do I say this? There are sort of non-traditional areas of capacity, but I do think that there are some shared spaces as well with the county that we have contemplated.

[01:57:36] But we do have some brick and mortar, but they would have to be updated. Probably there would need to be resources. It just seems like some creative problem solving that probably needs to break the traditional model of maybe K-12 delivery of, you know, you come to the public school and, you know, that's where you go and it is what it is.

[01:57:58] Because we do, I mean, there are some private institutions that have wait lists. There are some that are, they don't have wait lists. And if you could find those pockets where you have that capacity and figure out some type of funding model for those who maybe be on the edge for being able to affordability with a sliding scale type fee structure, you know, not suggesting, I hesitate, not suggesting the voucher word but some type of model where those who need a little bit of financial help to be able to afford it can get it which would then free up the total access to the free program from a capacity perspective I don't that's been looked at or not but just want to throw it out there because like I said this

[01:58:36] seems like we've been talking about this for a very long time just add very quickly as well we have seen the waitlist continued to grow even though you all have done a great job of continuing to support the expansion more students are now eligible for the pre-k program through the Virginia preschool initiative as well and as communities are seeing that they are eligible people want to take participate so that is some of the increase we have as we've increased capacity do you think that's because there are more kids in Fairfax

[01:59:15] County because I think that sort of our cohort birth rate predictions aren't necessarily increasing or is it just more families becoming aware of it or like when you think because you've done the research this year more we are seeing more students who are now eligible who would not have been found eligible before due to about two years ago the Virginia preschool initiative has categorically made eligible any student who has an IEP there's not more children more of the children are qualified and currently we see far more

[01:59:52] students who have IEPs in Fairfax County Public Schools and they're all eligible for VPI at this point. I see you have strategically placed your sign in between our water bottles so Miss Sizemore Heiser you're next. Trying my friend trying thank you very much and thank you for this report I think I appreciate you know every year kind of hearing and lifting up the importance of preschool and the data around it as well you know it is just the data is so clear on the benefit of early childhood education for long-term outcomes and it It actually saves money in the long term in terms of interventions.

[02:00:32] So there are so many good reasons for it. It's one of the reasons it was its own goal, you know, strong start pre-K in the strategic plan that we did a couple years ago. So I really appreciate this, and it's always a frustration, I think, for the funding of pre-K and the funding models for it.

[02:00:49] So I think the first thing I just want to say as I'm hearing the conversations, you know, and Dr. Reed, the point you made about 1% of the military budget, but as we're getting into the legislative package and as we're working with our um you know our partners right and our advocates around these if we can come up with one pagers that have some of those things targeted federal targeted at state targeted localities you know to help our advocates also understand and also with the data that shows when you have strong pre-k here's cost savings down the road right and here's better outcomes and all of them i think if we can do that it's really helpful for all of us to make that case for people because that's a very powerful data point, right?

[02:01:29] But there's a lot of those, I think, you know, if you spend this much. And so that's the first thing I want to put out there that as we're building into the legislative and we're talking to our partners, similar to how we've had, you know, conversation about our facilities funding realities, I think we need to have a conversation around pre-K funding because I hear from the community a lot the importance of pre-K, but I don't know if they fully understand all the nuances and realities and challenges of how to expand it.

[02:01:50] So that's the first sort of ask I'd have Dr. Reid viewed as we're building out the comms around advocacy. The other ask I would have, as I appreciate you mentioned inclusive preschool, because that also has so much data around then having inclusive educational environments in school, which has a lot of data itself around better social, emotional, and academic outcomes for everybody.

[02:02:15] You know, I have to go back and ask Dr. Reid, we've had a lot of conversations about the actual inclusion models we're using in pre-k and there's still a lot of what i would not consider actual data-driven inclusion models right you know bring it take its child from here and so i just would love to get an update on where we are and actually having true inclusive models and i think maybe you know even getting better understanding what is within fcps the definition of an inclusive classroom versus inclusive opportunities because i think those two things

[02:02:52] are getting conflated right we actually had a you can pause my time please we actually had quite a conversation yesterday morning about this topic about it's not inclusion to come in for morning meeting and then go back to a self-contained classroom that it's about authentically being a part of that classroom and I we did bring several folks through folks who work in the field in particular around inclusion of our children with autism this spring and think our definition is evolving but there's becoming I think a very clear

[02:03:27] understanding that you know it's not just at lunch mealtime snack time say recess or morning meeting but this it's a really an authentic involved connected inclusion in preschool so I know Dr. Presidio we talked yesterday and the team we were talking it in the context of twice exceptional students yesterday morning but I think it fits here as well so I'm gonna take a stab at it yeah I mean I think I guess the technical definition would kind of go back to the video we definition of having students with IEPs in the general education

[02:04:06] setting more than 50% of the day right so that's kind of the baseline that we're operating from it if we're not meeting that standard then it's not an inclusive classroom or it's not an inclusive learning environment for the student with an IEP we have a couple different models that we're using right now now because of this legacy kind of system that we built where we had separate self-contained special education, early childhood, and general education, early childhood or pre-K classrooms.

[02:04:32] And because of that, oftentimes we place classrooms, pre-K classrooms in a school where we didn't have both programs in the same school, so it makes inclusion harder. So what we're doing right now is using a variety of different models to meet that definition and that standard of inclusion.

[02:04:49] The optimal model is the dually certified teacher who has the certification in early childhood special education, which is required to serve those kids' IEP needs if they don't have an additional case manager with them. We don't have a lot of those teachers with that dual certification, but that's really the optimal model.

[02:05:09] The next best model is the itinerant model, where the general education teacher has a mixture of students, typically developing students and students with IEPs, providing the instruction and a special education case manager pushes into support and co-teach and provide services in the general education classroom.

[02:05:26] The next model we have is a paired classroom model where we pair classrooms together and push, it's basically an offshoot of the itinerant model, but we push special education service delivery into those two classrooms. The fourth model that we have is basically a general education teacher that has a smaller number of special education students in the classroom but again serviced by a special education case manager the problem with that model is we don't have enough general education classrooms to get to inclusion for the students in our separate self-contained programs so we're trying to use a variety of

[02:06:05] different models to retrofit if you will this legacy system where we created classrooms in schools that don't have both special education and general education we've also been working with the facilities office to see how we can obviously moving forward make better decisions about how we cite new classrooms but also to see if we can move some programs around so that we've got general education students that can be paired with our special education programs in an inclusive model so that's probably a long-winded answer but it's a variety of different models to try to get to that full inclusion model but at

[02:06:42] 50% of the day but for us we really want students in their full-day services in the general education setting thank you for that that thorough explanation and I and I'd be curious dr. Rihanna we had kind of similar conversation several months ago right so I'd be curious to see what has changed especially since we brought in some of the folks around preschool inclusion you know I understand the challenges of our previous models are and I would maybe say as we're doing our boundary work that access to programming it may take a go back? I don't know if there's anyone else to take on now. So whether that access to programming

[02:07:22] includes pre-K and inclusive pre-K because I know that that factor hasn't been touched yet in terms of program placement and then how are we also going to retrofit and I bring this up as important because I would love in all those and I understand the challenges of how things have been placed in the legacy right but I don't think any of those models unless they fit at minimum the video e-model and if i recall indicator six is actually the preschool inclusion we have not passed that either just like we haven't passed indicator five for like 20 years so i i think i hesitate to continue to try to retrofit old models that have failed the indicators for 20

[02:07:59] years as opposed to really trying to use our boundary work and some of the consultants we brought in to really recreate new models because if we continue with the old models we're never going to get there just with the challenges of where it's at right right i don't think any of the models that dr presidio mentioned if they don't lead to that minimum 50 number should be included in the conversation right we can still retrofit and try to do the best we can but it's not meeting a baseline standard so then it gets confusing i think right as to whether we're actually offering inclusive preschool or not and we can say hey this is our retrofit of what we

[02:08:37] can do but the ones that actually meet our criteria what inclusion should be is this right i think i know that we have a plan under development right now in terms of what that model should look like that nancy was thoughtful i think about and i've got to check in with the team where that is but really you're right i mean there's some things that are better just constructed from the ground up rather than remodeled and particularly in areas where we don't have a lot of classrooms that those models need to come self-contained and not require

[02:09:15] multiple models on the same site because we don't have the space so I I will check back in with the team and provide a Friday letter update to be responsive to your question yeah that would be great and if there are suggestions of moving forward the you know how are retrofitting but how we're moving for that would be really helpful to have in that Friday letter yes ma'am great and thank you Dr. Presidio for that long explanation I know it's a challenge but we've got to rip the band-aid off and do it yeah I don't gotta figure how to do that just to clarify I mean I 100% agree with everything that you said and the models that I described meet that minimum threshold and go well beyond the

[02:09:54] minimum threshold of more than 50% of the day the retrofitting language that I was using is trying to retrofit how our programs have been isolated if you will right and so that's the part that we're trying to reconstruct and redesign but 100% right we haven't been meeting the targets and the new models that we offer obviously have to be able to do that and they have to be something that's scalable across the school division so that we can do this rapidly and not take 10 years to do it thank you I also get I appreciate you saying that those models are sorry that's helpful information I also just one last thing I'll put out is

[02:10:28] that I do worry a little bit about how I'm almost done I do worry a little bit about how we are is it one student going in for 50% is it two students because from the perspective that student you're leaving the class you know into a class you may not know so I think we need to be very careful to make sure it's set up for success so our students don't feel isolated and and sort of put upon so if I could just real briefly I know you're short on time so another excellent point so we're using the natural proportions model kind of working with our consultants that if 15% of the students in the school have IEP is 15% of the

[02:11:07] students in the classroom should have IEPs right so we're trying to use that natural proportions model one or two students it's it's not going to be successful for those students thank you and thank you for the extra time Dr. Anderson for a go back yes thank you I just wanted to offer a comment based on the question that was asked regarding do we have space I know I'm in realizing that the needs differ based on where you are in the county but the results are also very different an example that i've used is way nogal elementary because they've had such a high number of students requiring preschool they've had to move the entire fifth grade outside

[02:11:45] that's not the right answer either so we still need to continue to battle that issue and we have similar challenges at glenn forest and in park lawn where again the needs are great but then the infrastructure is not present to be able to handle it which is why leveraging whatever we can do with the county in a way that meets our standard must be the way to go because they're growing we just need to get to that space where their preschool education and our preschool education a little bit better aligned because right now I think there's a big chasm between the you sit

[02:12:23] in those conversations there's a big chasm between I think expectations and so we're not fully able to take advantage of what potentially could be seats and that's the piece that we need a lot of your advocacies around because our schools are brimming especially the ones where there's greater need um thank you I'll take a turn first of all thank you for the presentation I really appreciate it and this is a big part of where my heart is being in elementary school most of the time and seeing the work that our head start and preschool teachers do is just amazing and every year seeing that little gingerbread man

[02:13:02] come around trying to not be eating this just adorable so and I just want to comment on a couple of the things that you said which is what this program is all about is not just advocating it's not just supporting our kids but supporting our parents where you talks one is one of you said this has given me confidence to advocate for my children and that's exactly what we need and it's not just advocating for your specific children but as some board members have mentioned please help us advocate for the funding so that this can expand. I was

[02:13:38] very pleased to hear that you went from Arlington to FCPS because of Child Find and that you knew this was the best place for your child and also very pleased to hear about not just the academic piece but the social-emotional piece where she's learning to advocate for herself so that was very that was music to I believe everybody's ears sitting here and I think what it really gets down to is universal preschool and making sure that we do it and I know that in New Mexico they made that commitment as a state and that's one of

[02:14:14] the poorest states in our nation and they made that commitment and they're seeing the results where that investment is paying off and so I think you know it would behoove us to look at that model and start looking for that seeing how we could do that I just want to I did just to respond to one of my school board colleagues I think that sometimes access is limited because there are certain families that feel that if they take advantage of this service they might be targeted due to their status and and also for some of our families some of

[02:14:51] the requirements where you need to have two dental appointment for your for your for your child in order to qualify I mean sometimes those are barriers for some of our families not just the affordability but even getting your kid to that I mean a one a year physical is one thing but making sure that you have to have two dental you know appointments within the year can be barriers for our families so just because I've helped a lot of people fill out these forms and know what the issues can sometimes be but I think everybody on this board is very supportive of this program and we really will reach out to you to help us

[02:15:27] advocate for for funding because that's unfortunately that's what it comes down to is money and I do think the boundary work will help us I think that if we could even move some of those sixth graders into middle schools then you've got a whole grade that's out of that building and then we have open classrooms so thank you very much and we will now take a brief no a five minute

[02:15:55] break yet everybody we're now moving to the discussion of the budget portion of process so what I will start we just put a very very brief just as a to frame the conversation this is this budget process this year was was difficult as there were many competing priorities and an uncertain fiscal outlook kind of intersected here so the conditions led to some very tough budget decisions in a

[02:16:33] variety of areas including some tough budget decisions on funding levels for FCPS so clearly we're at a crossroads and I've had many conversations with many of you about that with student needs increasing demands on our workforce continue to intensify and unprecedented fiscal pressures at the same time that we are being asked to do more to prepare our students for a complex future we recognize the Board of Supervisors have their own pressures taxpayer fatigue is real and there's need for investment in many areas from conversations with colleagues what's come to be recognized is that we are really one county one Fairfax and one community and to that there's been conversation about how can

[02:17:12] work best together for the best of fairfax county knowing that our schools are foundational to the county's strengths as centers of learning community and economic and employment engines so after conversations from several of you and conversations have come up i know a lot of us want to kind of make a plan for our budget process for next year to be more collaborative try to work more closely with the board of supervisors more often as allies joining together to best serve the needs and interests of our joint Fairfax County community so with that what I'd like to do is just a very quick review of what our current budget development process

[02:17:49] was this year and thank you to the budget team Lee and Matthew and Alice for putting this together for us just to frame the conversation of what our process was this year and then once we go through the slides as we're going through them I'd like you all just to kind of think about what would you like to happen that's the same or different for the next year regarding the process what do you want to avoid in the process what information do you need to be prepared for next year's upcoming budget development work and how often or how do you think we should be more collaborative with the Board of Supervisors what does that look like to you so just some things to think about you can of course talk to anything you like during your time so with that I just wanted to briefly outline and these are posted on board docs these slides as

[02:18:28] well for people to read but the budget development process is a collaborative process involving many stakeholders it is grounded in our strategic plan which guides the work of FCPS through 2030 with the four pillars being the foundation of our work and providing a framework for how we allocate resources.

[02:18:47] The budget planning process includes seeking guidance from school board members on priorities. The superintendent works closely with the school board, the leadership team, collective bargaining units and the community and the county executive to gather needs and present the needs of the division.

[02:19:03] Next slide please, Janet. Thank you. Virginia's code the superintendent is mandated to prepare a budget with an estimate of the amount of money deemed to be needed to support the school division this is commonly referred to as a needs-based budget so by so the superintendent works hard to prepare a needs-based budget that incorporates school board guidance and is in alignment with the strategic plan goals next slide please Janet so here is again this is on board docs as well of it hard to read but here is a current budget development calendar and you can see

[02:19:39] SCPS meetings the joint meetings for the county public hearings this is what our the calendar we use this last year and what had which been based on our calendars and previous years looks like so for that to frame the conversation what I'd like to do is open the floor for my colleagues just to talk about again just to reframe how can we be find a way that's more and better collaborative with the county in a way that serves one Fairfax and recognizing the importance of schools to our economy and to our future as well as finds a way to be more collaborative earlier in the process.

[02:20:17] So having said that, I will start with Ms. Lady followed by Mr. Moon. Thank you. Yeah, I think the most important and the priority is collaboration with the Board of Supervisors around programming.

[02:20:33] I think it would be prudent on our part to be very invested in at least bringing in our own counterparts, but perhaps also as a group closer to the programming that's needed.

[02:20:51] As I sat through committee reports on Saturday, I was wishing the Board of Supervisors were in the room, because it's evident where we're falling short in lots of areas, but it's economics. And I think that enlightening them, helping them better understand the needs and the costs, what it takes to provide the education expected from our constituents in our community, that's essential.

[02:21:21] And the other thing I want to say is that in terms of the budget calendar on February 18 after this collaboration after education and hopefully journeying on the same page around what we need to do for our schools they will provide us with it looks like on the 18th they'll release their advertised budget if at that time it's it's it's not able to match our ask I don't want to wait around till May 6 to talk about cuts. The biggest thing for me is I felt like

[02:22:01] we didn't engage with 150 million shortfall in a timely fashion and and I tried to do my best to educate my colleagues on how staffing works at elementary schools but if people don't fully understand while the AART's and the sped elementary sped chairs were able to advocate for themselves as were lots of other people at the budget hearing that went on for about six hours all the people who actually got de-staffed in the process never had a voice at the table because of this board's decision to force every elementary school to spend 1.0 to make both those positions full-time we've

[02:22:38] lost emerts we've lost counselors that were traded for we've lost steam classrooms we've lost you know I could go on and on and on there's a cost to that so we also need to make sure we're educated on how staffing models work because the majority of our budget is staffing and then staffing leads to student-teacher ratios so that's the main thing that I wanted to talk about so that we are very transparent to our public very transparent to our teaching faculties all of our staff in the system that in order for us to get to whatever

[02:23:14] number is in their proposed budget if it were to come fruition at markup day that this is what the cuts would look like thank you thank you and just to clarify this is last year's calendar we don't have this year's yet but it's why I make sure similar time frames no I understand I just want to make sure that was clear to the public mr. moon followed by dr. Anderson I guess this is rather an unfair question to dr. Reed with about 90% of our budget going into paying for people unless you start with reducing number of positions to begin

[02:23:53] with a collective bargaining already done for the next couple of years already included then where do we start and there are other things that that we have no other choice but to expand the money such as utilities and fewer costs and insurance and contractual obligations and other things that without paying for which the school system will not be able to operate

[02:24:25] so there is a very little wiggle room unless we go into either compensation or number of positions to begin with and you are under statutory obligations i guess along with the school board to present needs-based budget to the governing body so how do you think we will be different from we will be different next year from this year i think that's a good question other than other than what's been suggested by a miss lady that which i totally agree that we need

[02:25:00] to if we wanna, if we have to adjust, you know, bottom line, we're gonna have to have that conversation earlier than waiting until May timeframe. I think what's different is, if you'll recall, we didn't begin collective bargaining until the fall last year and didn't complete that until I believe November, which left very little time, again, to create that needs-based budget.

[02:25:26] We had the programs, obviously, but then we had to import the new collective bargaining agreement into that and this year we're not collectively bargaining with the large group we're still collectively bargaining with one of our groups but that will be different I also think that we know years two and three of our current agreement with FEU and you're right if we're 90% people then we're gonna have to look at programs and people if we anticipate not being fully

[02:26:01] funded again? I mean, we'll get fiscal forecast, very rough fiscal forecast in November time frame at the joint meeting. We get both county side, you know, perhaps the school side as well. But that's very rough fiscal forecast. And no matter what the fiscal forecast may be, then you are required to present in the needs-based little budget. How would you reconcile that if you know

[02:26:32] that fiscal forecast looks pretty gloomy and but still gonna present to these based and we already have collected bargaining done well we're you know we've faced turbulent financial times before in this country with regard to budgets so i think at the time we see whatever the fiscal forecast will be we'll have to look at that and reconcile that with the commitments we have as well as the rising and escalating costs of different services.

[02:27:07] We run a very large bus fleet, for example, and it's our food and nutrition, custodial maintenance, all of the services we provide have escalating costs, as do our contractual obligations for salary for all employees in the school division.

[02:27:25] So it's going to require, I think, some artful collaboration with the county staff. And I know the county staff is committed to having some joint committees on how we can maybe streamline a couple of our major topic areas.

[02:27:41] So I look forward to maybe appreciating some types of savings through strong collaboration with our county partners. Let me cogitate on what you have just stated.

[02:27:59] So I'm going to ask for it to go back a little bit later on. I'll go back with Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson. you one of the things that I do want to say because I said this before and I miss lady also raised this is a continuing opportunity to educate the Board of Supervisors with whatever happens in their world and its impact on our world an example that I can bring up is the middle school after school programming just removing that as an option from their funding sources

[02:28:38] impacted VIP summer camp which were already funded but again not knowing those implications I think put us in a very it just put us in a pickle and so I'm hoping that there is reception to having these conversations kind of a little bit ahead and I know it's a big ask and it's not an asset we control but just trying to poke and prod as much as possible what are you thinking let's make sure that we allow you to walk into your decision-making eyes wide open so I think that education piece is key not just with us and our counterparts which

[02:29:16] is key but also you and your counterpart hopefully we could get a little bit tighter in that collaboration the second thing that I want to support is the timing also miss lady raised this I I do think that we need to be different in our timing when we do have the mark not the markup the initial allocation from the Board of Supervisors I think we need to take that as what it potentially could be and be prepared for that while these don't necessarily have to be well I guess they would have to be because people have to know how they're impacted

[02:29:54] the the schedule that we had this year just really made it difficult for there to be impactful feedback from the school board I felt very much like a passenger you know the decision was happening and we were just kind of on the on the sidelines when the budget is our is one of our primary work setting the budget is one of the most important things that the school board does in addition to hiring the superintendent so i'd like for that to be reviewed a little bit and i'm not sure how to deal with this next piece because also i we didn't

[02:30:31] have much of um participation in what the collective bargaining agreement was and i don't know how to reconcile that i just want to be clear i just know with a second um unit coming on we don't want to repeat that cycle where it was kind of too late to pull it back and we weren't sure how to make things happen again it's just something that didn't really work fully in my opinion but i don't know how to reconcile that but I would love to hear any thoughts that you have but I really want to emphasize and echo what Miss Lady had shared if we

[02:31:09] know what is it that they have said said let's kind of have a plan so that we don't have two days between markup and their approval and then we have so little time to be thoughtfully responsive we were responsive because you have to be but i don't think it was as um strategic and intentional as it potentially could have been

[02:31:31] thank you mr dunn followed by miss marron mr dunn we can't hear you can you hear me now a little bit but it's very soft okay i wanted to ask about um the process for um determining

[02:32:05] a potential budget cuts because uh historically uh the budget cuts uh for example under superintendent Karen Garza were articulated, a list of possible budget cuts were articulated to the public at the beginning of budget season and then this year it came very late and it was caused a lot of shock, a lot of trauma to people who learned they might be de-staffed long after the transfer deadline. Will there be greater consideration provided to articulating

[02:32:41] on the front end of the process what might happen if the budget is not fully funded by the county and the state do you want a response to that mr doug yes so i think that given that we are not doing as major we're almost complete actually with collective bargaining with our current group that we're bargaining with i believe that this fall at the beginning of budget season we'll

[02:33:19] certainly be able to provide much more I think information around the possibility of program cuts dependent on budget I'm sorry can you clarify because it's my understanding that you know in the collective bargaining discussions I've had in this past year that there wasn't bargaining over there was a bargaining over the amount of the cut but not of the specific programs or or positions that would be cut so will there be greater insight provided to the public so that

[02:33:55] you know if if the public has you know budget cuts they strongly oppose or strongly support they can articulate their support and or opposition throughout the budget process rather than simply kind of at the tail end i believe there will be uh because we're in a different part of the cycle this year um yes i believe the answer to your question is yes great um in terms of um you know operational efficiencies and i i hate to use that word because i don't think it properly describes the situation but when I look at other school divisions across the country

[02:34:32] when they come under extreme budget pressure and that may be something we confront in in the months and years to come they sometimes look to consolidate schools close smaller schools and consolidate them into into larger schools simply to reduce the cost of operating so many separate standalone schools um i obviously there are difficulties with that but is that something that you know uh in the future that you might look to uh to reduce some some operating costs um

[02:35:06] associated with operating so many different schools and i believe we have 199 across the county thank you for that question i you know i think depending on the significance of the potential budget shortfall a number of topics will be on the table that we might not otherwise be discussing in a more predictable budget time but it's not something I would look to as a first choice to look at closing neighborhood schools I think neighborhood schools are often the strength of the community and

[02:35:40] we just had a presentation around preschool needing more space so I think that we still have a capacity and possibility of making sure that our schools are living, breathing centers for learning for our community.

[02:35:57] So that wouldn't be where I would start, but it's certainly a topic area we can explore if that's a topic area the board would wish to explore. - I certainly don't think that's anything anyone on the board is advocating for, but this year we increased class sizes for the first time, I think, since the Great Recession.

[02:36:15] And I don't think we want to go back to that tool in the toolbox anytime soon. But I think it's important for the public to understand to the extent that we do face budget constraints, what are the full range of options on the table?

[02:36:32] And certainly the pros and cons of fully funding versus not. Thank you. - Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Ms. Marin followed by Ms. Anderson. - Okay, I really appreciate having this conversation because it's on my mind like every day.

[02:36:51] And even just in the conversation so far, I've sort of reframed what I'm trying to pitch. And for me, it just keeps coming down to, how do we create time to do the work? And we can't just do it two by two. I mean, I am always in favor of doing the work publicly.

[02:37:07] And we did ask the Board of Supervisors to meet. And I think when I look at this schedule of what we've done in the past, I don't want to repeat this schedule. I mean, at a very basic, we cannot adopt our board two days after the county executive releasing his.

[02:37:25] I mean, that's just gotta stop. You know, so how, like, perhaps one task is to think about, you know, what would be the ideal schedule? Let's, like, throw this out, and, like, knowing we have to keep some dates to meet the, you know, certain deadlines, but, like, what would be our preferred future?

[02:37:43] I know, in talking with Mr. Alcorn, you know, yesterday, you know, we talked about having, you know, more joint conversations and sooner. So, you know, there is interest in that. And so, you know, we have two task force that are starting, the one on facilities and the one on technology. And I don't know if budget is a task force thing.

[02:38:04] I mean, whatever the board of supervisors wants to, you know, would be more comfortable. But, you know, I think having a joint, you know, a schedule, a cadence of joint meetings would be good. So here's the things that I'm thinking. What I would love to see is that I'd like to work together to obtain the same knowledge regarding where this county's public resources are financially. You know, no more us and them, schools and county, because so often it's intertwined.

[02:38:33] I think this involves a remarkable amount of data gathering, though. And so, Mr. Smith, I'm going to maybe look at you and Ms. Burden, because, again, even just looking at the superintendent's evaluation her her documents it's showing increased efficiencies it's showing you know reduction in learning gaps those are you know there are costs I mean maybe not I want to put together the data that shows how much it costs us to do things and just like if it's delays to get a zoning approval that's going to cost us X dollars we've started to elevate this

[02:39:08] with the CIP work but I think that it starts with us all getting on the same page. And then I think to Ms. Lady and Dr. Anderson's point, informing the Board of Supervisors as to what happens, you know, when certain things are cut.

[02:39:24] And also, I think it would be really eye-opening to have a budget that shows what would happen if our taxpayers didn't kick in that extra half a billion dollars, and what if they didn't kick in that additional half a billion dollars. Let's make a budget that shows this is what it would look like if we just funded based on what the state gave us.

[02:39:42] But so one thing is inform, the second thing is can we make a plan to improve the business processes that cross entities? The zoning, the community use, the school-age child care, like that alone could be maybe a good entry point because we both have questions and there's a lot of money, you know, going back and forth.

[02:40:04] And then finally, find new solutions and partnerships, especially regarding the maintenance of our public school buildings, including the commercial space. - Ms. Anderson followed by Ms. St. John Cunning.

[02:40:31] - I appreciate the conversation today. I think that having these discussions ahead of time are gonna help frame our work next year. I have a couple of questions. Looking at the timeline specifically, how many of the dates are actually connected in the CVA, Dr. Reed? So I know that we likely are locked in by certain things that are in the CVA because we won't be able to have those full conversations until the county actually.

[02:40:54] So some of it is, am I correct that some of it is dependent on the county's timeline. Some of our dates are fully dependent on the county's timeline in order for us. So if we don't, in the absolute worst case scenario, if we didn't have the full transfer that we needed to meet the CBA next year, that is gonna, we wouldn't be able to actually open the CBA until we 100% knew that from the county, correct?

[02:41:20] - That's my understanding, that's correct. - Okay, so some of the dates that we have are written in stone and other ones are ours. So I think that it's important to understand the difference between those two. So as we move forward towards our plan for the next year, I think understanding fully where we can move things up and where our dates are kind of hard set is gonna be a particularly important thing.

[02:41:42] As we're talking here, I am actually making notes about things because I've heard a lot from different board members about the interest of having more fulsome discussions, particularly related to the budget, 'cause I agree with Dr. Anderson that this is a significant aspect of the work that we do. And so we wanna make sure we're kind of capturing those discussions and it doesn't necessarily all look like this right so some of them are going to look like our conversations that we've started to have about procurement what which absolutely impact impact budget so i think that looking at budget as a bigger bigger discussion i think is going to be helpful for us here and then the other thing is

[02:42:21] we had some success it was a tiny little bit of success but it was success related to jlark this year that can be the roadmap for how to get the state to to pitch in more money hopefully every cent of which is outside the LCI but but we'll take what we can get and so I think that it's important for us to kind of look at the JLARC and focus on what we're going to look at next year and what we're going to go after next year so that we're not in the same do loop because I think as we've all seen throwing to all of the recommendations at once is an overwhelming thing for our state legislators so i think that looking at ways that we can target our

[02:42:59] approach and target our advocacy i think will be particularly important as we move forward here so i am taking careful notes and i'm looking forward to having more conversations thank you miss st john cunning so looking at the schedule which begins in november i think it's important for us to take advantage of the time from august to november to invite our colleagues on the board of supervisors and our colleagues at the state level and invite them to come to our schools

[02:43:36] because i really think that if they see it they will get it and sometimes people are so far removed from what's happening down in the trenches that they don't get it and my colleague just talked about understanding the staffing formula that i believe some of our own board members really don't understand and how that impact works so we need to become subject matter experts i know i have invited people to come to schools and they need to see some of the some of the work that is not just done in general ed they need to see the specialized programming that we have they need to go to key center and see the amazing work that's happening there they need to go to

[02:44:16] Bryant and see how we have, we're graduating students that thought they wouldn't graduate and we're also providing parenting classes for young mothers. We need to highlight our programs that work with some of our toughest kids.

[02:44:34] I think sometimes we put the best face forward, which is amazing and wonderful, but sometimes some of our legislators and some of our Board of Supervisors don't see the work that we're doing with some of our toughest kids and we're getting success.

[02:44:51] So I think maybe the soft work, the relationship building, is having people come to our schools and see that that work is being done and that it's being done successfully, but also when they see, you know, there's this incredible teacher and it's obvious that she could use more support.

[02:45:11] I think that's how we can also encourage our funders to understand what we do and to help provide funding for us. and you know just going back to yes the budget is the biggest thing we work work on this year was a very very extremely unique such situation and we had success because we did have collective bargaining and that was huge and i really still say that within 48 hours there was a miracle that was produced because even though we didn't have as much input as some of us would like i think that

[02:45:45] the least damage was done by the decisions that were made and i really appreciate that thank you um seeing no other placards up for initial turn i'll take a brief turn and then we'll go to go backs so a couple things i've been trying to take some notes i probably didn't capture everything that was said but i'm happy to share these with folks as to what people are saying a couple things i'm thinking about before we got here um you know we do a legislative package that focuses on the state and federal and i really think that we perhaps need to do a local you know a package

[02:46:21] right but we need to do starting this summer an explanation you know the key points of what are some great things because of our investment in public education that's going on the gap closing up i think when my colleagues talked about all of these things but also as my other colleague talked about what are the needs and why does it cost this much money and what is going on and you know we talked about 90 of our budget is staff and we have pieces of these and lots of even the facilities funding i know miss maren did a really good job pulling some of that together for the cip this year and you have a lot of that in some of the powerpoints you've pulled together

[02:46:56] but how do we have for us almost a board packet dr reed so then when we're doing our meetings with individual board supervisors we have a board packet we can go off of and we have a board packet we can use i have sort of talking points i use when i meet with the community that lays out our facilities funding and I'm just going to give a kudos to Miss Maron because a lot of the stuff she put together I've been using in my community meetings but how do we get your staff over the summer your budget staff maybe your instructional staff to combine with your comm staff to put together a community packet so when we go to talk to the community whether it's

[02:47:32] a PTA meeting or whether you talk to the community we all have a consistent packet of just trying to build this education because I think that's the biggest thing that was missing is that chances for educating what is the current state realities and why it costs this much money and what all of this is because then that's how we lose the narrative of and we have this narrative of bloated and out of touch right so I think you know and I think if we want to add earlier means the board supervisors I think we should have that but that's someone I talk individually to my counterparts they're like oh that's really helpful to hear about this challenge or why this is and I agree I

[02:48:09] think then once we have that board packet we can then invite for school visits but we'll have specific things to talk about with that board packet at school visits that we all can can talk about while we're also showing the unique things in our districts or unique programs but without that we're all kind of reinventing the wheel and trying to figure out I mean collective bargaining the first year collective bargaining is always a challenging year front of budget it's a great year and it's a great thing that we did but it's also a challenging year when it comes to budget right what can be moved in our budget process and what can't be moved in our budget process should be a part of that board packet right so when people say why don't you do this earlier well this piece can be in this piece can't be I think that fiscal forecast meeting if

[02:48:49] we're not gonna do one earlier dr. Reed that fiscal forecast meeting and I said it to you before that should be a state of our schools meeting for our side we don't have a fiscal forecast we need to give right because we don't have any revenue generating power but we can say sort of this board packet we can summarize it here's what why are here's the why of what we're asking you start with that and then it's easier to go into the ask i'll put myself on i go back all right um i will start with mr moon followed by miss marin when i say that i would need to cogitate on what dr reed

[02:49:27] had just stated there was a referring i was referring to uh uh what dr reed was saying about maybe consolidation of services was there services between us and the county was there any particular the services you are contemplating about consolidating with?

[02:49:52] - I was referring to the joint committees that were discussed during the budget process that were going to be established between the, I believe, county and school division.

[02:50:07] - Do you know when that is gonna be established and do the work? - I do not, no sir. - You do not, okay. Because your budget work is starting right now for the next year, and if that has not been even established, I don't know how meaningful the work of that joint committee will be on your establishing in next year's budget at this point.

[02:50:32] I'm not saying that it's not worth exploring work of that joint committee, but just reminded me of some of the things that long, long ago prior boards did to consolidate some of the services with the county side which didn't go too far because when it came down to actually consolidating, both sides realized that there wasn't going to be that much savings because both sides were, each side was large.

[02:51:04] Consolidating really did not realize, it did not materialize that much savings. So with that aside, I mean, we could, who knows, this time around we could do better than last time we did. But with that said, I have something else on my mind, which I have now just forgotten.

[02:51:25] so i'm gonna have to be put on go go back i have two board members who haven't spoken yet so i'm going to go to them and then i'll go back to the go back so i'll start with mr frish then mr mcleveen thank you um excuse me so on the question of joint committees um there's an it committee and a facilities committee uh that were to begin work after this budget process uh concluded and

[02:51:58] i can follow up with uh chairman mckay about that it was started as a result of a board matter for them um i'd like to begin you know looking at next year i think it would be wise for us to send a um a letter to the our colleagues in the general assembly kind of identifying our ask to them i know we have the legislative program um but that is devoid of the context of the budget really and I'd like just to send a specific budget ask to them, obviously JLARC-centric, but

[02:52:37] something specific that explains how this will impact our budget and why it must be done this year. In terms of other changes I'd like to see happen, the calendar the board's voting on for next school year is pretty bare bones. It has the regular meetings, the work sessions, and closed meetings. What it does not have are budget committee meetings, public hearings, etc.

[02:53:06] And that's by design, because we want to leave the latitude for the next chair and vice chair and the next budget chair and budget vice chair to work together to best align the calendar that was presented earlier from last year in the year ahead. And I'd like to see us make the most use out of that process to ensure that where we've selected different things are there for optimal impact. I'd also like to see board members get more comfortable in their post-collective

[02:53:42] bargaining roles as board members. I think we could all do well to, you know, stick to the rules and understand that we're not the negotiators and that we can provide our guidance in advance of negotiations, that we shouldn't be cutting deals behind the scenes or any of the other stuff that we've all been advised. And that's not to say other people were doing them. I'm just saying we need to get, you know, this is something that's being reported on that in Virginia collective bargaining is new. So people are still growing into the rules. And then finally, I'd like us to

[02:54:19] think about what collaboration looks like in the short term and in the long term. I don't think we're going to get everything we want out of being more collaborative in the first year of this attempt so i'd like to think of it in you know two stages like what do we want this year for sure and what are the longer term goals and finally uh you know i hope that board members are having active regular conversations with their you know specific board of supervisor members uh as best they're able to i know it's not possible for everybody um because that's the first step of keeping the door open uh that's just my general top line thinking um i appreciate i guess the

[02:54:58] BUSNER MUST HAVE GONE OFF A WHILE AGO. I'M SEEING MY TIMER SAYS ZERO, I APOLOGIZE. IT JUST WENT OFF, MR. FRISH. MR. MCLEVINE, THEN WE'LL GO BACK TO GOBEX. THANK YOU. SO I APPRECIATE THE OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE THIS CONVERSATION, BUT I WOULD AGREE WITH MR. FRISH THAT I DON'T THINK MUCH WILL COME OF IT IN THE FIRST YEAR, AND I'M ALSO NOT VERY OPTIMISTIC IN THE OUT YEARS ANYTHING WILL COME OF IT.

[02:55:26] THAT DOESN'T MEAN WE DON'T TRY, BUT WE JUST HAVE TO BE REALISTIC. And, you know, one of my number one priorities has always been bond funding, and I don't think we've had a very honest conversation ever with the Board of Supervisors about that. And, you know, obviously all of us want to maintain a AAA bond rating, but, you know, I don't think we've been as strong as we could be as a county when approaching our bond ceiling.

[02:55:57] So I want to have that conversation at some point. I also appreciated the remarks about our joint committees on IT and facilities. I've also talked with Dr. Reed about the importance of engaging with the board on transportation issues.

[02:56:15] And those don't all have budget implications, right? It's about transportation safety. We've seen, obviously over the years, we've had efforts from stop-arm cameras to cameras in front of schools and other things that I don't feel like we've been fully at the table as part of those discussions.

[02:56:40] But also I'm very concerned about the rising deaths in our county as a result of traffic violence or traffic incidents and what we could be doing jointly to combat that and I'll leave it there, thanks.

[02:56:58] - Thank you, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Maren followed by Dr. Anderson. These are for go backs. - So I too am suffering from being tired, which is why I asked that this conversation not be at the end of this long day. I mean, and so I apologize for being cranky, Ms. Heismar-Hyser. I think, what I think about collective bargaining, I don't think it was a failure.

[02:57:18] I think it was a success. The failure was in how it was communicated and the expectation of, you know, the school board, the county board for it to go a certain way. what i'm hearing people talk about is a few things one is well i kind of like drew a little diagram but if we started with the jlark advocacy that seems like a pretty good way to start and say can we get together and be on the same page as us can we do things like have the same language in our legislative agendas can we go down to richmond at the same time um can we make sure that you know if we know this title one issue is coming up can we make sure that they know about that so

[02:57:55] so that's a big thing they can advocate for. And then we could plan for that on our side, right? And then, but the other thing is informing the board about I think the operation funding situation, and then like Mr. McAlevey's had the facilities. So what if we could develop like our own team agenda?

[02:58:14] Like, okay, for this month, we're gonna make sure that all of us hit these points with each supervisor, and that's gonna be the bond, right? And let's get the data together that way, Because we can't control how they, you know, communicate amongst the other or not, just like, you know, we have our challenges and strengths.

[02:58:32] But I've also been thinking about what if we, after key meetings or decisions, some, we figured out a way to send over like a package or an email that's like, hey, or like, we just did the CIP work session. We want to make sure that you saw this data, because I don't know if they're watching. Or like, hey, just want to make sure you saw the superintendent's presentation about this.

[02:58:50] I think we could be more intentional. then the idea of bringing them into our schools right maybe we make this like we make them tangible things so each of us can say okay I know I have to make an appointment to go and do this or I have to make an email to make sure my supervisor has this and maybe that's part of the legislative work and I'll stop there so I'm not cranky but I would take another go back thank you miss Marin and I'll be on the go go back and dr. Anderson thank you this is a question actually for Ms. Burden given our fiscal year by when does the board

[02:59:25] have to adopt its budget within a couple of weeks of the appropriation being identified by the county so we don't have a set time we just have to be responsive to their time yeah I mean most of our budget calendar kind of works backwards from their appropriation based on what's required in May and then we have a couple of weeks after they appropriate it's in Virginia code if you give me a second I'll look it up sure sure you can go ahead and do that because I'm just wondering like how do we buy ourselves time and on the

[03:00:04] back end and because I kept wondering with this past budget cycle could we have approved the budget the meeting after and what I think I'm hearing is not necessarily since we are kind of tied to this timetable well I think it I think the the issue is that we have to adopt the budget in a certain time frame frame after they appropriate, but we also have to get teacher contracts put forth.

[03:00:35] And so there's just a really small window to adopt the budget because of those two competing things. But I can get that. No, absolutely. Well, that's very helpful to know even without the exact date, because I think that speaks to the original advocacy for us to be planning earlier on for the worst case scenario as early as possible.

[03:00:55] And the worst case scenario is we don't need the worst case scenario, but we just need to make sure we have that plan. And also another thing that I want to be sure to uplift, 'cause I remember in our conversations in one of our joint meetings with the Board of Supervisors on the budget, not the fiscal forecast, the second one, I think that happened, but it was badly timed, whatever it happened.

[03:01:19] But we were talking about, and Kyle was talking about the savings that we have found here, in terms of how we have sent our belts, that has to be a lot more explicit. It was just very high level, and it was just easy to gloss over.

[03:01:40] And what I think that raised were more questions from the Board of Supervisors in terms of, well, where did this $800 million come from over the last 10 years? What did that look like? I think if we could articulate that, because let's be clear, and Ms. Anderson shared, maybe it was Roshna who shared it earlier, water supervisors, they have multiple stakeholders.

[03:02:01] They have fire, they have homeowners, they have all kinds of folks that they're trying to balance. But if we're showing that we've already tightened our belts very clearly and explicitly, I think that will go a long way. So the more specific we could be in some of those examples, the better we will be served.

[03:02:19] The overall 800 million over 10 years, frankly, it doesn't even land well on me because I don't know what that means. - Dr. Anderson, May 15th, they have to appropriate by May 15th and unless the state's budget process is delayed and then the rule is 30 days after the state adopts its budget.

[03:02:40] - Okay, so there's a little bit of wiggle room. Thank you. I'll take a go-go back at this time. - Mr. Moon followed by Ms. Merritt. - Thank you. This is something that Dr. Anderson also alluded to, is, you know, whenever a county executive presents his budget, he starts with cost-cutting measures that he's going to be instituting.

[03:03:11] Starts, always starts with that, just trying to prove to the public and also tell us that they are fiscally prudent. That's what they are doing. We do the same, but I think we need to make it more explicit, more clear to everybody in the world.

[03:03:28] We are doing the same thing if you're not better. So with that in mind, have we, Dr. Reid, I'm asking you, have you ever considered for us something called zero-based budgeting?

[03:03:48] Is that something we may not be calling it zero-based budgeting, but you already do that by department, by program, by program to see what you are spending, what you are contemplating spending is starting from the scratch.

[03:04:12] Yes, sir, zero-based budgeting is obviously a budget building strategy. It's also when you're looking, as the Baldrige work expects us to do, to begin to deconstruct a budget to think about how to reconstruct it.

[03:04:29] I certainly have experience with zero-based budgeting. And as we asked our departments to cut 3%, We began nibbling at zero-based budgeting. I expect that this year we're gonna be taking a look at that again as we face budget challenges.

[03:04:46] And that's certainly an area that I have a great deal of experience in other divisions doing. So happy to share in that exercise. And I think Ms. Burden, it's not just the zero-based budgeting it's also position control documents and monitoring in Fairfax County Public Schools we have sort of unique practices around trades position trades and a lot of autonomy in departments and schools and sites for managing funds which is a

[03:05:23] good thing because we want decisions made closest to the work and it's something that we're going to have to be thoughtful about as we both construct a budget for this year and then monitor it throughout the year you know doctor is that is something that I would like to suggest you know for you to consider you know doing it honestly I realize that that may require a lot of work on the part of everybody involved and and something that I want to share with you is in the past administration I'm in superintendent's office even the school

[03:06:00] boards were not always receptive to that receptive to that but you know keeping in mind what some of the things that we are some of us at least are hearing directly from our funding authority members on the funding authority that next year's budget may be even tougher than this year whether that's true or not I think we need to be prepared to look at all our line item to make sure that we are we will be able to say to them in public that we have done all our due diligence yes sir thank you mr. miss miss Marin followed

[03:06:35] dr anderson if i could interject i just wanted to make clear that we are we do zero based budgeting at the schools we don't just add on we take new enrollment and we rerun all the numbers again from a zero base and of course most of our funding is at the schools the departments we roll over their existing budgets and reduce anything that's one-time funds you know those kinds of things but the the schools the school-based funding we absolutely start at a zero base yeah i was just 15 seconds just as long as you don't need to go go back that'll be done in a 15 second

[03:07:14] thank you thank you for pointing that i think it is it is if you was us to point that out say that because most of our money goes into schools not departments and that's where we already do that Thank you, Ms. June. Ms. Marin followed by Dr. Anderson. Okay, I'm just wondering if we could, if we think about our work schedule ahead and I'm looking at our meetings and, and this has come up as we've gotten more into the strategic plan, which is giving us way more information than we ever had and the executive limitations. How do we continue to lift ourselves up to this, you know, the highest

[03:07:53] board level we can and be the, do the things that only the 12 of us can do? And so what trade-offs are we willing to make? You know, we've talked about the student rights responsibility, not having two or three meetings about that. You know, maybe we can come to some agreements around what we're willing to take off of our usual agendas so we can make time to either go have these meetings or talk together to say, yeah, what should we, you know, this month focus on, you know, in educating or, you know, making the time. I just feel like more and more for me the value is in talking with all the different people and but that

[03:08:31] means that we have to change how we do our work and so when I look at the proposed schedule well one all-day work session I mean again I'm pretty tired and this is not how our kids work or teachers work all day long like this how can we sort of think about setting ourselves up for success is it a different budget committee organization is it more than two people is it meeting bi-weekly is it the committees you know like right now I don't think our meeting structure sets us up to be able to do this next level work? Is it having more robust committees where some of us can trust the others to do the work and carry the load, but we have to be willing to give up some of that? You know, I'd

[03:09:11] love to hear what people think because what we make time for will get done, and I already see the work because that's kind of how my brain works, but you know when? When do we do this work and who's doing it and what else is gonna, you know, we just can't do everything I think we can leverage the legislative work as a twofer with the state and then better partnership with the Board of Supervisors could we focus on that as a new way to do this thank you Dr. Anderson yes just super fast the only thing that I'm asking is in the construction of the

[03:09:48] budget schedule next year for us to go to the very end of the timetable that we have in order to give ourselves plenty of time and also to leave enough time us to be able to be responsive to the public hearing feedback because we also had that as a little bit of a struggle what we do not want to convey to the public is that the decision is made and the public meeting is perfunctory and so having time in order to respond to that is going to be important as well in the construction of the schedule thank you thank you mr. McAveen then I'll take a

[03:10:23] quick turn no that's all right I'll just take a quick turn in listening to everybody here's where my advocacy would be one I agree with my colleague I think we should look I think some of us have talked about the calendar the SR&R there's different pieces that I think could be is more operational that we could pull back where I'll work on so I think as we do the whoever the chair vice chair budget chair I think that's a really important piece too and Dr. Reed I've been saying this to you for a long time in a lot of different areas but we are in and have been in an era of tough budgets which is I think new to our

[03:11:02] community to our staff and there's a lot of education plan that needs to be done around that right I think we've just gotten used to you know not having to think about really tough budget things so I think we need to dig deep with a perspective-taking lens you know on what information do we need to be able to put out there for example the zero-based budgeting I'm glad mr. moon asked that question right that the schools do the ball how do we put it together in a cohesive informational story this summer into so that way when we or into the early part of next year perhaps

[03:11:39] tied to the calendar tied to the meetings you do tied to the meetings we do with a packet of suggestions for us because we've and for our community because people love their individual schools and tied into recognizing what are the needs of our county how does this tie into the overall county picture and plan and their challenges too so we can look at it as one system while of course lifting up the information about the schools but I don't think people are in this mindset right now and I think we need to get people in the mindset of what it is that we do what it is that our challenges

[03:12:14] or why what is our budgeting process is why do we need the money that we do what value does it bring to everybody not just our families and how can we systematically get that information out to our partners to our advocates and to our board and other key and you so we all are educating and informing in a consistent way that I think is critical in the calendar as well I'll stop but I would love to whoever's in leadership but when these positions work that plan out so we can present that to the board when things start up yeah I'll speak to

[03:12:50] Beth Fazoli and make sure the team is working on that like starting tomorrow Thank you. I see no other hands or placards up, so we'll move on. Did you have it move on from this portion? I think it's Miss Anderson's taking over the next portion of our meeting. Yes So we have one more section that we're hoping to get a high-level brief about what's going on with boundaries right now Just to as an update to the board. So I'm gonna give us another five minutes just to get switched over Stretch grab caffeine if you need it and we'll get going

[03:13:22] That the rest of our colleagues can join us in the room So, Dr. Reed, turn it over to you, ma'am.

[03:13:56] - Okay, I don't need the photo on me, Janet. No, you can put it on somebody else, that's great. On the slide, what?

[03:14:14] Nevermind. Oh, well thank you, Janet. Anyhow, this afternoon, really, this is more so, I hope that's interesting. I know, this is more so just a really quick review.

[03:14:30] not going to go over every slide because i don't believe there's a slide you haven't already seen it's really more an opportunity to share where we are and then listen to any questions that you might have i think we've got a couple of the boundary advisory committee members here so let me just go through the slides and really then have an opportunity for a conversation yes well it's kind of i just the team wanted you know sometimes our community uh checks in to see what's posted I want to make sure that there's ample material posted, but I don't know that we need to discuss each slide.

[03:15:06] So just a reminder that last July, although it seems like a decade ago, it was really just almost a year ago, Boundary Policy 8130 was approved. As part of the commitment, we're undergoing this comprehensive review, honestly, for the first time in four decades.

[03:15:22] So next slide, please. These were the challenges that brought this to the table. Next slide, please. And these were the four priorities the policy outlines, which really serve as filters for the work we're doing.

[03:15:38] Next slide, please. I want to linger here just a moment. The calendar for the review process was updated as a result of community input. And the community input, if you recall, the original calendar had the first round of community input meetings during the summer.

[03:15:58] And we heard from a number of our constituents, parents, families, and staff that people want break over the summer and it didn't feel like a genuine and authentic engagement process if we were going to do that when many families wouldn't be here so we did move up the community review process by about six weeks which means that now i believe monday evening the 23rd will be our first meeting as an advisory committee to review all of the feedback on the first round of maps that were provided to the community i want to acknowledge for community members watching and also to you as

[03:16:37] a board there are a number of situations in the very drafty draft maps that are better understood today and will be resolved and discussed at the meeting on the 23rd and i think as we see the next iteration of maps as they evolve we should see tighter and tighter boundary lines matching data but i did want to acknowledge that the boundary review we did um move this up so that we were not trying to connect with families in the middle of the summer but the advisory committee is continuing our work

[03:17:12] throughout the summer so i appreciate the steadfast and stalwart efforts of that committee they've really put in a lot of time and will continue to do so reminder that this fall we'll be doing another round of community meetings bringing forth less drafty drafts and there will still be an opportunity after that round for refinement and review prior to my bringing you recommendations in january of 2026.

[03:17:44] so next slide please again the this is just a little bit of data we held 28 meetings and i think that's probably why i know that i have not had a night at home before nine o'clock in the the last several months but we've held 28 meetings with close to 4,000 community members attending be it virtually or in person next slide please we had three scenarios and I think if you've all of you have been at at least one of these meetings and maybe more so you've seen this explained next slide please again

[03:18:20] these are simply sort of definitions of the terms next slide please and next Next slide, next slide. We can just zip through these cohorts one, two, and three. As board members, you've seen all of these.

[03:18:37] Next slide, please. And next slide. And next slide. And next, and why don't we back up, there we go. So the red dotted line shows where we are today. So it's the same map or same chart I showed you earlier, but the red line kind of we're about a little over halfway through.

[03:19:00] I also think what's interesting is as the community explores different topic areas related to boundaries, which is to say, there were some communities where split feeders, I think we had a strong predisposition to not having split feeders.

[03:19:17] In some cases, we have community members saying, you know what, given all the pros and cons of that, maybe split feedering isn't the worst after all, right? So we're just, I think, really getting to the space of having a conversation around competing interests perhaps as a way to frame that.

[03:19:36] And I think there'll be more conversations about that. Also, I think we're learning that more than one thing can be right at a time, and that's okay too. But it just adds to the complexity of the decision making. But anyhow, this chart gives you red dotted line. Here we are.

[03:19:51] We're in the middle of phase two data analysis and scenario updates. So we're right at the beginning of that section. Next slide, please. The explorer maps on the website, again, were designed by a group that through consulting worked with so that we've collected quite a bit of feedback on these.

[03:20:11] They are on our website. Next slide. The boundary review communications. These are the communications and the numbers related to those and big props to our team that continues to work very hard both on the website and collecting minutes and distributing those.

[03:20:30] Next slide, please. uh this is a continue continuation um next slide and this talks a little bit about the advisory committee again uh from january to may we've had nine meetings with three additional meetings scheduled uh one of those being this coming monday through september and again this committee's feedback was not incorporated in the original drafty drafts because we compressed the timeline by a number of weeks next slide this is really what's next we're looking continuing to look at

[03:21:06] these topic areas i will say what was added this spring is start time considerations and as we begin to or really began to look at middle school start time and what's possible and we were asked to look at is it better to do those separately together you know sequentially or in parallel we really feel like that's a topic area we need to integrate into this conversation and so that's something that's part of our thinking right now next slide please the other piece that's new that we didn't

[03:21:44] anticipate when we began this work plan is that we have now the board has approved a purchase and sale agreement for a new western high school site and so the topic of how that fits into this conversation clearly is going to be something we need to integrate into this process which we could not have foreseen a year ago when we began this process but it it's a new piece of information which clearly will require discussion not just with the board but also with the community in terms of the possible use for that site so I think

[03:22:22] that's it Janet unless there's another slide oh for sure the new feedback all of the feedback that was collected at those six meetings will be made available to the Advisory Committee and we'll be looking at that on Monday evening and next slide that's it so happy to really engage for the next little less than an hour and conversation feedback I also would like to pose the idea and I've heard from a number of you that perhaps regular updates about boundaries might

[03:22:59] be something that would be helpful much like we do strategic plan updates at each once a month for board meetings or academic matters where we do a short update I'm certainly willing to put something like that together and would appreciate some direction from the board about what you would want as part of that, or the cadence that would be helpful, or if you think it's a good idea at all.

[03:23:20] So I, again, think that I'm here this afternoon just trying to make sure we keep this process as thoughtful and collaborative as possible. So thank you. Okay. So I wanted to give a lay of the land. We have a hard stop at 5:30.

[03:23:36] And so we are going to have a conversation as long as we need to, but we're gonna start with Dr. Anderson. Try to be very fast. speaking to the last thing that you just shared I think that's really important to do and I want to throw in my advocacy for those regular updates because I do believe that the board needs to have a space to be the representatives that we are to bring the things that are being risen to that are being brought to us because right now it it felt I'll just be honest with you kind of embarrassing to be in that Timberlake meeting and had to say to the folks I see what you see I you know the person who is on the committee knows better than I do and I don't think

[03:24:15] that should be exactly it I I don't think we need to run the process but we need to be way better informed of what is happening and have a space to raise questions so that's one secondly I am very very very very glad to hear what you just mentioned regarding what are what has been articulated as division priorities should I stop can you I need to have some of my seconds be restored I know what has been articulated as division priorities may not necessarily

[03:24:52] work everywhere two things can be true at the same time because the focus on fixing out-of-boundary schools has impacted my community in a significant way and I'll just name it because I know people are looking for that Bailey's Upper which is a magnet school located on a highway no one will ever walk to Bailey's Upper but yet the focus to fix Bailey's Upper meant that they did not do anything at Park Lawn and nothing with Glasgow which were which was supposed to be a part of this but if the if the consultant is thinking I have to fix the out-of-boundary schools first and that's kind

[03:25:28] of the priority and everything else is secondary then we're going to land where we have landed which is a very unhappy Mason District community so I'm glad to hear that and I would love to see how that continues to play out the other piece that I want to make sure that we provide is again we want to be fully transparent with what we're doing when the data is provided it has to be done with and without the modulars right now it is only provided our CIP shows with and without modular and I think any information regarding capacity needs to follow that same format because what has

[03:26:04] been provided is with modulars and it was hard to absorb that park lawn is fine at 86% capacity with 30 outdoor buildings so we have to make sure we have that information also a couple of things that were asked from community that I want to raise here is when the information is provided are we going to also provide the FRM because there are some schools that are concerned about losing their title one status and there's some schools that are concerned about losing students that diversify their schools as well as transportation studies.

[03:26:41] There were questions that were asked as to when those would be available. It was my guess that we're not anywhere close to that yet because we don't have very, very specific scenarios which will be articulated in those pyramid meetings that are to come as per the boundary policy.

[03:26:59] So I'll pause to hear you respond to that. So yes, ma'am, you're correct that the transportation studies require very specific boundaries for them to run the study. I know they've done distances as part of the conversation, but once we get, I think the next round of maps, those transportation studies will be done.

[03:27:22] As far as the modular conversation, Donna is here taking notes. We certainly can pass that along to the consultant. the distinction between modulars and trailers and the way in which our CIP has traditionally reported those I think is part of a broader conversation, but certainly within the context of the boundary work, we can take a look at that.

[03:27:47] And I don't know if there was a third point you were making. - Oh, there were lots of points. I'm trying to be fast and just take one turn. And my next point is grade six, middle schools. I know that was part of the conversation. Update please, stop my time. - Yes, ma'am. I think the early map to look at the plausibility of that did not indicate that at this time we could do that division-wide.

[03:28:10] It looked like in some areas there was the possibility we could do that. And it would be as we move forward with the next iteration of maps, I think that where it is possible, I think it's certainly something I'll consider recommending.

[03:28:28] And I just had like one last question with my last two seconds. board is to make decisions do you anticipate having just one big plan that we are going to be responding to or will there be this is a section you know maybe we might accept one section and not the other i don't know if you're there yet but it's a question i think it's an open question for me as well just given the scale of the division i think that the point of doing a holistic review is to have one plan because for better or worse every time it's kind of kind of feel like i'm in my element with chemistry which is to say anything that happens in one part of the

[03:29:05] county really does impact things that happen in other parts of the county so I think it's like more likely than not that there will be maybe one or more than one large scenarios with sort of different how do I say different choose your adventure in a couple different areas potentially with one or two options but I think the point of doing this holistically is to look at the entire County miss Sizemore heiser thank you and I appreciate the chance to sort of talk about this I would very much appreciate I think maybe every two

[03:29:43] months once every two months update I'm not sure what the right cadence is in terms of the I think it's kind of depends on how fast decisions are being made or changes are being made to what's being presented but I agree I found that my the one of the people that represents my district knew a lot more than I did on some of these issues and the reason I knew about some of these issues is just because I've lived in this district for so long I was able to oh yeah I used to because I used to do this I know about this so I agree I think one of the things I think it's important to look at right is you know we grappled with a lot of this we did our policy and we came to we didn't have a 1 through 10 in order of priority criteria but it was a shall may framework right there was

[03:30:22] four things that shall be prioritized now that access to programming transportation capacity right and being community connection keeping neighborhoods and students together and then there was a whole May framework of things that could be looked at and one of the things in that May framework was reliance on temporary classrooms and modulars that might be why it wasn't prioritized but I do wonder if there's space to look at those May frameworks as well when we're working on this I do recognize that first we need to get to that access to programming and transportation that's a huge one I get you can't really look at transportation that have something to look at for

[03:31:01] transportation having said that I do think it is really important to look at program placement and split feeders right because split feeders aren't just because neighborhoods are split sometimes they're split because of where students are having to go access a particular program whether it's advanced academic centers or special education programs or other programs and I think it's important to look at that piece of it I appreciated the chance that sort of lift up to what were I believe mistakes in my district that are going to be corrected because one was the school wasn't labeled and the other just it

[03:31:37] wasn't updated the way it was intended to be but the one piece that I noticed is that the what came out of the conversation was it seemed like the the definition of neighborhood was based potentially on some outdated data or outdated information right in terms of our school assignment groupings I can't remember the exact acronym for it but some of those may not have been updated for 30 years and that's led to another problem my district where it wasn't understood that this neighborhood is actually a neighborhood so I'm wondering as we move into the next round whether we can look at the data sources for some of the decisions to make sure that they're a little more up-to-date on what

[03:32:14] we're doing that's I know that's the consultant not you but I'm just sort of lifting up some of the things that I'm I'm hearing as we move forward and then I would love to get a sense of that access to programming because I am concerned that that's not being taken into account and also what programs are already out of school so I know there's some thoughts of moving some students into one of my schools that has a lot of special ed programming so they may not have I don't know how well that's taken into account the capacity numbers but I want to make sure that it is so we're not unintentionally overcrowding a school because of the programs that are there I know my time is up so I might

[03:32:49] take a go back mr. McIlvain thanks so I appreciate all the work that's gone into this and the efforts you're undertaking on the communications front for me that's been the biggest challenge is as one board member and I'm seeking guidance from your and your you and your team on on how to handle it so obviously it's it's different for magisterial members versus at-large members but I assume mr. moon is getting just as many communications as I am from around the

[03:33:23] County there's no way I can reply to all of those with any any knowledge so do you have advice to us on where to direct those should we send them to Donna should we is there another central repository because I want our constituents to feel heard but a response from me would amount to nothing thank you mr. McIlvine I I think that the community knows that obviously you care a great deal about how this process is going and I think forwarding those I've provided

[03:34:01] Donna as a point of contact because if we have points of contact in multiple departments things are going to get lost and balls will get dropped so Donna is the repository for all incoming information and then will be that point of contact for the consultant team And just how would that look mechanically?

[03:34:21] Should we be forwarding everything to Donna or -- Yes. Okay. Yes, sir. That would be -- Apologies in advance, Donna. Because that's a lot. And I mean, you'd be getting it from three at-large members, but I can't think of a better way to deal with it. No. And some of the responses, we should see fewer and fewer notes as we're resolving or meeting with communities, but having one person look at all of them also provides an opportunity to see a theme for example if there's a particular neighborhood and a lot of our neighborhoods have been great about just coming together and sharing group emails where they've or in the community meetings we've had a

[03:34:59] chance to sit down and look at maps they've drawn and make sense of what they're talking about so I think we're able to resolve things and minimally get those moved forward to the consultant in a way that is usable quickly and then just the last question is on obviously we're undergoing a transition in our facilities leadership how do you think that will impact the process if at all well I think that our new chief of facilities is going to have to come up to speed very quickly I do know the team works hard and so it'll be a matter of

[03:35:35] integrating into the team that's been providing data for the consultants but as with any transition it'll create I think some challenges but I believe we'll be able to work through them we have a strong team that's been working with the consultant in terms of providing data and so I think I think we're gonna be okay it's it's a little challenging but we'll be okay mr. moon I just want to inform Donna and ask Donna not to be disappointed if she doesn't see many emails from my office because my staff you know can

[03:36:15] handle at least some of them by themselves please also if you're seeing a theme please reach out to Donna give me a copy on those kind of theme emails and we'll try to draft a communication that you could use sometimes it's the same question and that communication with links to new information on the website might be helpful for you miss Marin and then mr. Frisch okay I am eager to see

[03:36:53] the program input I can't recall the exact phrase but when we're talking about the real instructional programs, that's where I really wanna see what's gonna be medicated. I agree about the trailers and the modulars. It's kinda like if you own a home and the basement doesn't count with your square footage, but it really does because it's your living space.

[03:37:10] It's like it's there, but we're not really counting. So how do we really make it work and part of the considerations? Because a whole grade level in a trailer doesn't mean the school is not at capacity. I think that's really important. We should figure that out and make a decision.

[03:37:26] I do agree with the regular updates And I'm actually thinking more and more, not only about our work plan, and this gets to the budget, but how are we being prepared to make these decisions? Are there things that we should be reading, or some kind of training, or like what, if we backtrack from January 26th, whether it's just your updates are getting more fast and furious, or are there things that we really should be paying more attention to, or I'm thinking like case studies, I don't know, but I'd like to, other than the policy,

[03:37:58] what are there other resources that we might be equipped with so that's my ask i don't know and that's it mr fresh and then missing john cunning thank you excuse me um i guess my first question is kind of looking backwards um are there plans in the works for a holistic review well the holistic review but a look back on this process um so that we can refine it for future

[03:38:33] use because who knows who's going to be in the division in five years when this happens again i do think one of the things mr frisch that's been very important is the use of the chart that's up right now and how we're creating if you will um a story map uh an action map uh because i think that there are best practices around uh cyclical reviews and iterative processes that are authentic so i do think we're trying to capture this to make sure it won't need to be in this depth every

[03:39:08] five years but certainly an opportunity to review to have pyramid level representation i think is important i think there are many pieces that are critically important and perhaps tools we haven't used to date that we're going to find to be very helpful for future work i think you'd also get plenty of feedback from board members and others if uh asked to opine about things that could go differently um one question i have although it's not in the um boundary policy itself uh

[03:39:46] except perhaps in uh community cohesion um there are various changes that move title one students either you know kids who go to title one elementaries out of uh the high schools they attend which may result in that high school not having any elementary schools that feed it that are title one or wealthier neighborhoods being moved out of title one schools how will those issues be considered and addressed by the committee and and the consultant so at this point those issues haven't been discussed as an entire group because really we're focused on the four filters of the

[03:40:25] policy, the access to programming, capacity issues, and so forth. So I think that's a question yet to be determined. And then in terms of, you know, what you just said kind of indicates one of the problems that we've had, which is they roll out a scenario and it has other impacts. How are we assessing the impact of these trade-offs. So in my community, perhaps it's a school is zoned

[03:41:02] outside of where it's located, so they've moved it, which then creates a ricochet effect of other changes downstream. How are they judging whether one of those is worth, if the juice is worth the squeeze? I think at this point, looking at the filter, and Janet, if you can go to the slide that has the four filters from the policy, essentially the working rules which are being applied are these four, and those are the four filters by which the data is being currently filtered to draw maps.

[03:41:38] So I would say that if we're going to add Title I, you know, how do we want to say, Title I qualifications, or if we're going to add those types of filters, we certainly can, but that hasn't been in the first round of map iterations.

[03:42:00] I think I'm just trying to get towards what's coming as opposed to, you know, looking back and not only on the Title I question or the whatnot, but also if, for example, we're looking at capacity and removing a split feeder pushes one of the schools up in capacity above the overcrowded number, how are we judging to move that forward versus maybe deciding that that split feeder isn't what needs to be addressed?

[03:42:33] so i think that's something the committee is going to need to wrestle with that becomes sort of more fine-tuning um and we probably all have an opinion and it may not be the same i think on that but that'll be something that the committee will wrestle with and i'll keep the board updated on as to how the committee is leaning on those topics picking up a little bit where miss seismorheiser left off how is programming going to be addressed when you consider you know one of the things i've heard most often from various communities is they're they're not, you know, the maps are out and I don't know what this means for the AAP center or

[03:43:08] what have you. Is my kid going somewhere else? Will that all be part of this next phase of understanding the overall impact of proposed changes? Yes, sir, it will. And at this time, there's no plan to move the AAP centers. So it's really going to be how communities are adjusted in terms of attending which ones but there isn't a plan on the table at this time to move those out of from one building to another yeah i don't think people are necessarily concerned about moving it from one building to another they're worried about where they're going to be moved or

[03:43:45] not um on the additionally um do you anticipate that the underlying data driving these changes will be shared in future uh parts of this process yes sir for sure and then uh can you speak a little bit about the responsiveness to community feedback, whether folks are receiving acknowledgements for other communications and responses to specific questions? I think to the degree possible, and we've had some folks in and out and a little bit of a leadership change in facilities, but to

[03:44:22] the degree possible, I think people are getting a response, but not necessarily a direct answer yet. The response might be or feedback is being included in feedback provided to the consultant, but until the committee wrestles with the feedback, there really isn't an answer other than thank you and please continue to provide the feedback.

[03:44:47] - Even for questions that are not necessarily about. - Mr. Fresh, that was your time. Can I go ahead and put your go back? - Thank you. - Okay, thank you. Miss St. John Cunning. - Thank you.

[03:45:02] So first of all, I'd like to say thank you for all the work you've done and for all the work the advisory committee has done. And I know that we have to be responsive to constituents and there are competing forces. You know, one constituent will say, I want this, while the other one will say, I don't want that, and it just kind of, you know, neutralizes everything.

[03:45:22] So we know that this process, we're not gonna be able to please all of the people, and that we're going to go for the greater good, and that's why we're doing it in a holistic way. My question is this, I know that the advisory committee has been working really hard on this, and I've been approached by a few members saying that they feel some board members are working against what they're doing.

[03:45:49] Is that information something that you would relate to us or to specific board members? Because our advisory committee members, a lot of them are volunteers, and the last thing I want them to do is to feel that their work is not valued and that we are working against anything that they're doing.

[03:46:08] Or has that come up in the meetings with advisory committee members? So I think that right now, the advisory committee is leaning into probably the more sort of more feedback time because we've now gotten the feedback, I believe it's going to be sent out this week to advisory committee members, which is from all those community meetings.

[03:46:37] So the first time we're going to get back together will be Monday night, the 23rd. We've not been together as a committee for a little bit because we've had graduations and end of year and all of that. So this will be the first time we've looked at all the feedback, we're going to be dividing into very likely regions to have groups really look at the maps that they're most familiar with and then provide feedback to the consultant about a redrawing of those maps.

[03:47:04] I think that there are a lot of perspectives, as I mentioned in my overview, that our community members have, different communities, different neighborhoods, likely different board members different advisory committee members and at the end of the day it's gonna be my responsibility to make sure that we have a space for really authentic conversation and bringing concerns to the table because I think we're all truly focused on doing what's best for our kids and it's just we don't all agree on the same way to get there and but I know that's where that's where we want to be so I I think we'll make sure that in within our process that everyone's

[03:47:44] ideas are at least looked at reviewed discussed and there will be some that will move forward and others that will not likely as a result of those conversations thank you I think the updates would would help us as board members I know that I have told constituents that we very purposely decided to not do it ourselves because I know that we might have competing interest and i didn't want us as a board to be you know miss anderson's district is very close to

[03:48:19] mine and what might be in in beneficial to hers might not be to mine and that would not serve either of us um so i appreciate that we've decided to do it this way to somewhat not get into a battle amongst ourselves and to do something that holistically is best for everyone um i just want to make sure that our advisory committee members don't feel we're working against what they're their their work and those updates would help us i think i appreciate that miss st john cunning and i i i believe that our advisory committee knows that everybody each board member community member

[03:48:56] wants what's best and so um i will reiterate that and our um we're gonna have to filter like i said a lot of feedback and information and i know everyone's trying to help and um we'll get there again i want to thank you and the advisory committee members because they're doing a lot of work and for the school staff team that has been supporting all the meetings it's been a lot and the i very much so appreciate that thank you for noting that miss st john cunning mr dunn uh thank

[03:49:36] you um first i i appreciate my colleague's question i think there's a question that i've encountered which is what is the proper role of the of the brach member the boundary review advisory committee member because i've had a couple who uh from one high school pyramid who i don't think show up to many of the meetings or or uh don't don't do very much outside of attending the advisory committee meetings and then there another couple from a different high school pyramid who are organizing their own meetings going out into the community um and you know being ambassadors uh in a very expansive way and so i'm trying to understand you know what is your vision

[03:50:14] dr reed for the proper role of boundary review advisory committee meetings is there is a role and responsibility limited to coming to your braq meetings and providing input as randomly selected community members or do you have an expectation and a desire that they actually go out and represent fcps and the committee to the broader community thank you for the question mr dunn i think our first advisory committee meeting we discussed the responsibilities I mean minimally with having an email address and being named on the website and at

[03:50:53] that first meeting we had several people not feel comfortable with having their names on a website so stepped back from the role and we then went through a selection process to replace them I think that as we've commenced this work and as we continue it to be fair i believe people want to be part of that advisory committee to have access to information and help make decisions that are going to improve our school division and i think people are more and less comfortable dealing with conflict and dealing with difficult

[03:51:30] conversations and so i think that one of the things i want to make sure that i provide our advisory committee members with are the the tools and the information to really be able to be effective resources because I think there is an iterative effect in other words their communities would obviously provide them input and then in turn they would provide that input to the committee and then take the committee's input back to the community and so I think that you know my expectation is just that the process that we discussed be honored and that

[03:52:06] people are thoughtful about what they're bringing and what they're taking back to their communities so i i don't think um any two members are going to be the same because many of them are volunteers but i think they really want what's best for the division i have not heard or felt that anyone was there to in some way not be supportive of what's best for kids um so you've articulated three scenarios in these slides you know the attendance lens the split feeders and the and the rebalancing um are these the only three objectives or should i understand that there might

[03:52:46] be additional objectives that might be added over the course of the summer before october mr dunn it's possible one of the things i need to look at is you know there are thousands of pieces of feedback if there is a strong pattern of feedback that leans in another topic area it's certainly something we'll need to explore.

[03:53:09] I have not personally sat down to read all of that feedback yet. I will before Monday night, but it's possible. Yes, sir. Where where do we stand with the evaluation of the grade six through eight for middle schools?

[03:53:26] I think that was one of the first items discussed by the Boundary Review Advisory Committee, but I haven't seen it in the in this presentation or other things. So where does that kind of fit into this comprehensive school boundary review so the committee hasn't really discussed it much other than to say that was one of the very first scenarios we drew and we drew it as one of the very first scenarios for a couple reasons one as practice to take all the data and actually populate a scenario and two because again I've talked about instructionally feeling like that is the most sound the grade band to go six through eight what was clear from the

[03:54:03] initial map is it's not currently possible based on all of the locations of students basically when we ran the data and our facilities I think that it's a longer term plan if we're looking at that division-wide it would require us utilizing some buildings differently and perhaps more upheaval than I would anticipate for this process and its very first time in 40 years however if there there are spaces in the division where it is possible without the significant disruption

[03:54:39] or cost, I certainly won't hesitate to consider recommending that. Given that the scenarios presented in the past few weeks were not -- I mean, there's a footnote on the slide seven saying they weren't formally endorsed or recommended by the Boundary Review Advisory Committee -- that the maps that will be presented in October will be much more detailed at a much more granular level and presumably will have been reviewed and endorsed in some measure by the boundary review advisory committee um is it still realistic to

[03:55:17] expect the school board to vote to approve the recommended package in january because if if you're having let's say 24 high school meetings in october in a month of only 31 days unless you're kind of doing two meetings per night for you know 12 nights in a row i'm not sure how you how you get through that month with 24 high school meetings um and uh and if there is pushback from the community to the more detailed granular maps it doesn't leave a lot of time for you to kind of

[03:55:52] adjudicate and maybe present a revised version 2 to the community uh in the november december time frame when we have thanksgiving in december so i'm just trying to figure out if we should anticipate that january school board vote being pushed uh back a little bit so i think those are good questions and i i think it is an ambitious timeline uh recall that we would only go back to the pyramids that we are planning to affect or that a boundary in that pyramid would be moved which is likely many of them i can't speak tonight or this afternoon if it's going to be all of them

[03:56:32] i don't i don't know that yet um i think fundamentally for me it's more important to do this well than it is i don't want to be in a situation where we're feeling rushed on the other hand i still you know endeavor to try to keep the timeline the board has set because it was january 26 that the expectation is that I come back to you with a recommendation um what about trailers

[03:57:06] um we have 900 classrooms and trailers and modulars and is there an opportunity through this comprehensive school boundary review to achieve a significant reduction in the number of trailers and I'm being specific as to trailers not talking about modulars at all hey Mr Dunn that was your time so I can put you on a go back okay thank you okay so I'm going to take a very quick turn and then we're going to go to go backs understanding that we do have a hard stop at 5 30 so we will probably go to one minute go back just to keep things moving for today i am hopeful that i don't need one as well um the first thing that i wanted to say is that i have a question

[03:57:43] from miss dixit to share is that um she and i both have some folks that are very close to their existing high school that according to the draft maps that we have have been moved and so the first question that I had for you is do we know that there are some mistakes in the existing maps that are going to need to be fixed in this next iteration so if we have students that are a mile away from their closest high school that have now

[03:58:21] been moved away from that high school we should bring that to the attention of you and Donna yes ma'am okay thank you I I would strongly advocate for us to have joint meetings with maybe schools that share a line that have been changed as we move forward just to keep the process moving forward I do understand that that's a concern I do I have also been very clear with folks when I've been talking to communities about the fact that we are not likely to fix all of the problems that we have right now this was a problem that that was created over 50 plus years it's not something that we're going to be able to get out of with one

[03:59:00] minimal change that we're trying to maintain as many of communities as possible so at some point are you going to be able to come back to us and talk about how we're going to change things slowly over time so it would similar to the budget conversation it's kind of give communities a heads-up that we're not fixing it this time but we recognize that it's a concern that kind of goes against what's in the policy so if you're referring to the possibility of phasing being part of my recommendation I think it's very likely that that'll be part of the conversation that I'll be coming back to the board with in January I also mean things like when we're talking about the percentage of split

[03:59:39] feeders things like what you were talking about where we identified something that is technically against what the policy says but we've acknowledged that either a community is asking for us to keep something status quo and it could be that it's not in this iteration of changes but it could be something that's further on down the road is that a possibility yes ma'am I think the one of the keys to the board's thoughtfulness around five-year looks at this is we're not going to resolve every boundary concern in the county in January of 2026 it's not realistic to expect that I think what we want to do

[04:00:16] is comb the county and make as many adjustments as are reasonable and feasible to improve the four filtered areas with the understanding that there will be more work to do the other thing that I wanted to ask but thank you for that the other thing that I wanted to ask about is right now I think that it would be helpful for you once we determine how we're going to be able to use the feedback how that we come back to the community and explain how it's being done. My concern here is the same concern that I always have with these things. The people that have the most time and bandwidth to put their energy into this are the loudest voices and they have the loudest feedback and so I

[04:00:56] don't, I think that it would be problematic for us only to rely on those things when we know that there are issues in other communities that may not have the time and space to be advocating or you know that that those communities also have a right to have those those things fixed within their community as well despite the fact that they haven't been able to spend the time to organize and have marches into schools and things like that so I just I just want to put that out there and then the other thing is that I absolutely want to talk to what mr. Frisch was talking about that we need some sort of after-action report related to this so that we can codify because five years is

[04:01:35] just a far enough apart that you're gonna have a new board and all of those things new you know potentially new staff involved and so we want to make sure that we can kind of learn the lessons that we've learned from here so absolutely okay so now we're going to hit as many go backs as we can we're going to start with miss Sizemore heiser and then go to mr frisch thank you i'll try to be quick um i think it's important and as we're talking about this i know the consultant and the community meetings i meant to mentioned these four

[04:02:13] mentioned the but i don't think they really or i don't think it's a good understanding the community of all the things we grappled with in the policy, right? I don't think that shall may has come up of these other things that we thought about because I think that would help frame some of the conversations if they know, look, this is a bucket of priorities.

[04:02:31] This is what this means. I can't tell you the number of times people ask me, what does access to programming mean, right? And when I explain it, they're like, oh, okay, that makes sense, right? And then also, what is it? So there's a common basis of understanding of what the shall may framework was supposed to be, how these other things that people are bringing up were thought about and our priorities, for example, the modulars and trailers, but we split it into these are the things that we think are the most important, the board did, and these are the other things that are important that can be considered.

[04:02:58] I think if that helps with the common framing where we start with, I also think maybe the advisory committee members could send common updates to the board members that they could then share those as well. But there isn't anything coming out of those advisory committee meetings specifically about scenarios that would be helpful to share and what they're thinking.

[04:03:14] I know my time is up, so I'll stop there. So we do, you know, collect key takeaways at the end of those meetings, and those are shared with the community the very next morning was our commitment, or the very next day you get them ahead of the community, but not by much, because we do send it the next day.

[04:03:37] But I think as we begin to make decisions, there will be more sort of narrative around recommendations, so I take your point. Dr. Anderson. Yes.

[04:03:52] Thank you. wanted to to share my advocacy is not to add more drivers or filters I think you as you've talked about it onto that list of those four but it's just to provide the calculation like what happens when we do these things what happens with our frm what happens with the modulars I think that just offers a different perspective but it doesn't necessarily need to drive the work we just need to see the impact of the work on those components and my last thing is we also talked about the Annandale pyramid not having an AP Center which was going to

[04:04:27] be looked at in this work is that still an ongoing conversation yes ma'am in fact I have a timeline and plan ready to roll in fact I can send it this evening I would be so excited to see that yeah you yes ma'am it's the team they put together a timeline and I can get it to you this evening super duper and then you talked about this a little bit but I don't know if I captured it well how will the middle school start times be incorporated like where does this fit in the grand scheme of things of discussion well you know it's been a an

[04:05:04] abundant opportunity here to do this boundary process and I think with the spring have sprung new possibilities one being where do start times fit but we have a segment obviously we have a commitment to healthy start times we know those benefit our adolescents in particular so we're trying to make sure we integrate whatever those plans are and mr. muick and his team are working on those in-house right now for the fall of 2026 potentially in your consideration as a board in January of 2026 because I know that for me and for many parents

[04:05:43] really January is when we make arrangements by then for the next year so we want to come to the board with some recommendations on that topic by January and that coincides with this topic so the degree to which these intersect is very important so we're going to need to look at how the boundary adjustments match up with start times and so that work will be integrated as well as as I mentioned earlier the opportunity to purchase a west side high school site from with the financial you know realities right now

[04:06:23] and having this really opportunity sort of just arise again will also be something that we have to integrate into our thinking that we didn't think about a year ago and we were setting this work plan miss Marin and then mr. Dunn okay so man quick would you mind pulling up slide is it 19 that has the review process with the phase please or the other one does the same so just to get super clear january 2026 it the the boundary change approval process is showing up starting like november december and

[04:07:03] is the vision that you have doctorated that the board is approving some changes in january to go into effect for the fall yes ma'am okay so i'm just envisioning you know getting a document in a presentation and then is it two weeks is it four weeks like when we think about our schedule that we're planning you know what time are we going to need are we going to need the public hearings um i also am wondering do you expect that it will perhaps say like okay this would be

[04:07:36] for fall 26 and this will be for fall 27 and fall 28. i predict that's likely but i until the committee really takes a hard look at that I can't say for sure today but I think some type of phasing is likely going to be part of the recommendation and will the recommendation include the budgetary component of this is there a budgetary component to these changes because it will be hard to do that when we're just starting the budget process ideally it should help our budget right

[04:08:13] because it should make our transportation a bit more efficient and perhaps enable us to staff more efficiently so ideally it should help our budget if we do this and it ends up costing us more I don't think we'll have done the work in a way that is perhaps the most thoughtful okay mr. Dunn and then miss st. John Cunning could we include within the analysis being done this summer a significant reduction or a significant percentage reduction in the

[04:08:48] number of trailers in the county yes sir we could what would you need to do that I what would I need to do that I think it's I suppose the board as a body would have to make that direction because right now the board as a body has directed those four priority areas which I think trailers could be subsumed under them but they I think we're left in a may versus shall but it's certainly

[04:09:25] I think an implied benefit that we have fewer trailers and would you view a a reduction in the number of trailers as a net positive for the school system? - Yes, sir.

[04:09:40] - Do you have any thoughts on how, what we can do as school board members to best prepare the community for the October meetings and to ensure that they get involved and have their voices heard?

[04:09:57] - Well, I think the school board advisory committee members for each community are gonna be key. And I think that making sure that they are comfortable in each pyramid, being part of that conversation. I also have parent vision groups that have membership from all schools in the county.

[04:10:17] I'll be encouraging them to have people come out to share their feedback. I think once we post new maps online, I would encourage community members to comment on those.

[04:10:32] I know that the PTA, the FCC PTA is represented on the advisory committee and would encourage all PTA groups to really be part of the conversation. So I think the more eyes on the plans and the more feedback, the better the plans will be.

[04:10:51] - Could you do the analysis with and without modulars? - I'm sorry, could you repeat that again? - Could you do the analysis showing the percentages or number of students at each school with and without modulars? modulars or trailers i i'm i'm talking about modulars because modulars are kind of as interior space so could you do the analysis as miss and dr anston was stating um i have riverside which is 126 percent without modulars 89 roughly with modulars could you show the student enrollment at

[04:11:27] a school with and without modulars if modulars are in place at that school well i think any data is possible i think we have to go back to the cip and how that's drafted as well though and i think the definition of um oh capacity includes modulars it doesn't exclude them but i again i don't draft the cip personally but i think the cip includes modulars as part of capacity it shows it both ways but it does show it both ways so it would be great if

[04:12:03] this analysis could also show it both ways I'm talking about the analysis done as part of the school boundary review can we as part of the analysis show with and without modulars just like the CIP does I'm sure if that's a direction the board wants I am I'm sure we could make that happen thank you missing John Cunning and Mr. Moon's going to bring it home okay I'll be very quick because I

[04:12:38] just want to reiterate what one of my colleagues said about the loudest voices not being representative of all the voices and I just did some quick math here and actually took the lowest number of the comprehensive you had several numbers here about boundary communications and we had a hundred and forty five thousand two hundred sixty two parents that went or people that went into the comprehensive boundary review landing page and of all the languages, we only had 313.

[04:13:06] And I just want us to be cognizant of that and I know we're all trying to do good work and just not let the loudest organized voices drown out the better good for all of those voices that sometimes for a lot of reasons can't speak.

[04:13:21] I know that that's one of the reasons that I was motivated to be on that board, on this board to be a voice for some of those have a difficult time either attending the meetings accessing the information even though we do a lot of good work putting it out there that's a big difference and so I know that the work should reflect that yes ma'am mr. moon I just want to note that I concur with a statement made by and Marcia saying

[04:13:54] John Cunning is walking away how do we hear how do we hear a non loud voices That's one thing. But secondly, I want to comment and also ask you, Dr. Reid, about the cost implication.

[04:14:10] I could easily see for the near future, for the first few years, depending upon how we do the phasing in or grandfathering, it could cost more and then costs could go down in the long term.

[04:14:28] Depending on how we phase it, and budget will obviously be a conversation with regard to phasing, right? So I think that's a valid point. I think we may have scenarios of phasing, right?

[04:14:44] Budget neutral phasing scenario and a budget impact scenario. There's going to be a lot of data to look at and a very complex set of not just conditions but possible solutions. Thank you. Since I still got 21 seconds, the budget neutral phasing, I haven't really seen budget neutral phasing it in the past. So good luck to you. Yes, sir. Okay. Seeing no others. With five minutes to spare, we are done for today. Thank you guys for all the great work. And thank you to Dr. Reed and her staff.

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