Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Date: Tuesday, August 18, 2026
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 3h 37m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWZmX9cdDtE
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 2026-10-27. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:01] We are returning to the public portion of the meeting. The work session will now begin at 12:02. Our apologies to the public, but our conversation in closed took us more time than expected. I have some virtual participation requests, but I do not see those folks on yet, so I will come back to that.

[00:00:19] 3.02, certification of a closed meeting compliance. In order to comply with section 2.2-3712D of the Code of Virginia is necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairfax County Public School Board convened a closed meeting on August 18, 2026, 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.

[00:00:49] Do I have a motion? Ms. Anderson, do I have a second? Ms. St. John Cunning. All those in favor, Mr. Moon, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Dixit, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Anderson and myself, all those opposed.

[00:01:05] Ms. Marin, and I think that's it for board members present. The motion carries. All right. There was no action actually taken and closed, actually.

[00:01:26] So I'm gonna turn it over to Ms. Anderson regarding our topic of middle school after school programs. - So we are going to kick off talking about our middle school after school programs.

[00:01:44] So I'm gonna turn things over to Dr. Reed. - Thank you, Mrs. Anderson, and this, or I guess it's still morning, nope, it is afternoon. This afternoon we've got our chief of schools, Megan Roman, and our executive director for athletics and activities, Mr. Tom Horn, here to share with the board sort of an update on the conversations that have occurred around charging fees for middle school after school programming and kind of where we are at this time.

[00:02:15] So I'm gonna turn it over to Ms. Vroman and look forward to the presentation.

[00:02:33] - Thank you. What we're prepared to share out is conversations that Tom's team has had with some of our partners in the county to explore what a fee for our middle school after-school programming would look like. So with that, I'll turn it over to Tom Horn, who's our executive director for school activities and athletics.

[00:02:52] - So I also wanna clarify as Mr. Horn begins that this is a potential that we understand board has not made a decision about whether or not we're going to charge fees but this is I want to we're providing an update on where conversations with staff at the county have been for the board's review and at some point we'll need to have a discussion on the appetite for a fee structure for middle school so mr.

[00:03:19] Horne staff in neighborhood and community services to work with our staff

[00:04:03] staff and Dr. Emory's middle school after school program staff to explore a fee-based structure as a potential revenue recouping mechanism for the cost of their contribution to the middle school after school program.

[00:04:23] So the setting of the stage here is that this is the work that was done by the county board of supervisors at their direction with our input in terms of data, numbers, and structure The information that we're presenting is in our office's proposal on a fee structure.

[00:04:44] It is the result of the County Neighborhood and Community Services Group saying, what could it look like to recoup some of the costs on their side? So I think it's important for us to reset for everyone the purpose of our middle school after school program.

[00:05:03] and it is to provide a safe and supportive environment for every single middle school student it is the alternative to unsupervised time after school and there's a significant amount of daylight unsupervised potential time for middle school students in fcps so this is a great place an opportunity for them to explore their curiosities the the long number of programs approaching a thousand different opportunities across our middle schools gives them a place for academic

[00:05:38] and enrichment support it gives them a place to connect with teachers and staff it gives them an opportunity to explore their curiosities in stem and theater and performing arts and it gives them an opportunity to participate in interscholastic sports the sense of belonging and growth is immeasurable we we all collectively understand the value of connecting with their peers connecting with staff members connecting with school programs that that they are interested in not that they're taking because it's a requirement but that they're choosing to attend and the middle school after school program uh over the course of more than two decades has has developed into that place where

[00:06:18] nearly 80 of our middle school students each year take part in some part of the after school program whether it's a specific event or a day or a full series of opportunities so we can say that 80 of our students are experiencing a safe and supported place where they're being enriched and and they're connecting to the school community so it's an important context that a fee-based structure added on top of may create a different type of attachment to them so

[00:06:56] the numbers there are um they're not there all right so the um the numbers on on this page are really just to kind of again shape everyone's view of how massive this program is how many students it serves how many students it connects those are duplicated numbers there that you see the weekly

[00:07:33] attendance obviously right kids that attend multiple times throughout the year it's not 15 thousand new students when we only have 28 000 total middle school students but 15 000 students are participating the average week in our middle school after school program you know i was saying we're approaching a thousand activities those activities are student-generated interest clubs they're staff-generated interest clubs they're community-generated interest groups they're sports performing arts academic enrichment homework stem we partner with a tremendous number of

[00:08:10] community organizations we have over 800 fcps staff members that contribute to those after school programs and another 350 plus volunteers that come from community and high school students that participate in those programs so the the scope of the program is enormous the impact of the program is also enormous and i think that's important context as we talk about with the future of the program could look like or would look like um the next slide is a general

[00:08:43] cost breakdown of where we stood in 25 26 with with the cost there the and this is the the total sum that you see there just over 11 million dollars is all of the sources of money that have supported the middle school after school program some of that uh direct from the board of supervisors much of it already part of the fcps budget it's about 4.8 million dollars to run the after school

[00:09:18] buses across 26 sites four days a week the salaries and benefits for the 26 after school specialists and then the 800 staff members who put programs together design curriculum and then supervise the kids in the after school window is that 2.1 million cost the the other cost you can see that outside of transportation and salaries the cost of the program is relatively low for the impact and the number of students that were serving the materials and supplies

[00:09:55] the after school snacks bringing in vendors providing special field trips competitions or stem activities robotics e-sports things like that it's exceptionally low based on the number of students that we're serving on the operating side the transportation and salaries of course being the primary driver of the overall cost the next slide is the the work of the board of supervisors staff so ncs neighborhood and community services staff was tasked with

[00:10:32] looking at models that could generate at least a million dollars that was sort of their give to ncs and ncs staff looked at our numbers looked at other fee-based programs that they offer sac senior center etc they looked at scales sliding scales standard costs and presented last fall NCS presented last fall to the Board of Supervisors a potential

[00:11:08] recommendation on their side, just what it could look like. The number that they came up with to generate approximately a million dollars based on all of the numbers that we could provide for them was $300 per program participant recognizing that a large number of FCPS students would qualify for the fee waivers entirely or some reduced number below 300 also recognizing i think this is an important

[00:11:40] assumption that sort of drives each of the slides is that a fee of 300 is likely to impact attendance by a certain percentage of students entirely in other words of the 15 000 who are choosing to attend it you know on a weekly basis a large number of them would no longer attend at all so the $300 fee assumes a reduction in overall attendance and it assumes about 35% of our students who qualify for the waiver of some point so

[00:12:19] that $300 roughly came out to about a million dollars revenue based on neighborhood and community services generation of those numbers the work was largely done by Lloyd Tucker and and dr. Emory in our office in terms of looking at the data and the slides and the history of the one previous time where FD was explored Chad Presti is there as he is the finance lead put the numbers together from both sides understands the county finance side

[00:12:55] better than anyone else in those discussions and then again I think it's important to know that that $300 is based on the assumptions on this slide. The next slide is the financial targets, their directive to try and generate about a million dollars. The attendance patterns that we have great data over the course of decades on, the number of students that are attending, I don't want to call it sporadically, but between one and 19 days throughout the whole school year are the group that are probably most likely to choose to opt out of a $300

[00:13:32] fee if they're only attending one to 19 times a year. And then obviously that $300 and that million dollars are assuming a large portion of students who would participate would be charged no fee at all.

[00:13:50] The next slide is the sort of result, right? After taking in all of that data, all of the attendance data, those assumptions based on equity and access, the best case scenario at the current numbers of participants, assuming many of them would drop off, would be a million dollars revenue at $300. Also recognizing that our baseline attendance would be dramatically impacted by a $300 fee. In other words, taking

[00:14:25] off the students that have been attending from one to 19 times, just sort of removing them from the equation and the number of kids that are participating at all again that's probably an overly broad assumption but in assessing a brand new fee you have to make some assumptions so those are the assumptions that were made and then the next slide is is just the key elements from the neighborhood community services board of supervisors side would ensure the collaborative roles and responsibilities between the two groups the office of student activities and

[00:15:02] neighborhood and community services continued to align in in our shared work in creating programs the predicted program outcomes remain the same with the assumption that we'd be affecting fewer numbers or fewer kids based on the fact that there's now a fee and then the final slide is is really should we embark on any fee model it would be really important that fcps have a

[00:15:37] collection and tracking mechanism that made sense that you could handle without additional staff the logistics of collecting fees monitoring fees ensuring that communications with families was appropriate timely professional all of those things we do believe that our my school watch system could handle something like that we loosely believe we could manage it with existing staff it would be important for us to monitor more frequently and regularly than we do now

[00:16:14] daily attendance patterns seasonal attendance patterns depending on which type of model we proposed if it was one flat fee for the year if it was a quarterly fee if the fee was spread out the monthly payments you know there are lots of potential ways to implement a fee and we would obviously monitor how the that fee structure was impacting attendance at clubs using historical data current data and then we would have to commit to evaluating both the fee structure the the number the installment plans and its impact on our programming because i think certainly from dr

[00:16:51] emory and i's perspective we don't want a single less student to participate in our middle school after school program we want our middle school after program to be designed to reach 100 of our students which would certainly be our goal so that would be the task if the fee was there how can we counteract the impacts of a fee to ensure students can continue to access the programs so again this was this was not a proposal for you to consider and ask questions this is the setting

[00:17:25] the stage of what was done a year ago at the request of the board of supervisors so i'm happy to answer questions engage in discussion of how great our middle school after school program is how many students it impacts and and your thoughts on how we can continue to improve it okay thank you so we'll get started with question dr. Anderson followed by mr. Mac thank you I appreciate you sharing that this is not a proposal that you're bringing forward that this is just a recap of the

[00:18:04] work today as someone whose children participated in middle school after school programs up until literally the last school year ended I know how typically this works and my children were not in the 1 to 19 they were regular attendees but I also know that there were times where other children went because of maybe one because of those intermittent attendees so it makes me wonder not a question for you because I don't think you have the answer but it makes me wonder whether the estimate of the impact of non attendance or attendance reduction is too conservative because of how students

[00:18:44] tend to interact with each other when it comes to participation another question that I have again you may not be able to answer it but you could bring it forward to the right folks when we're talking about not charging students with who participate and free and reduced meals how would that work for title one schools or CEP schools because I would imagine that entire school would need to be exempted I believe that's right the entire school would be exempted so so we

[00:19:18] take out CEP schools title one schools all students with FRM then we take out students who are there for academic support then we take out students who are there for sports who's left and what is that number and would that truly generate a million dollars like what do we have a working number of who's remaining yeah so and I think it's important to know that a year ago when the model was developed by NCS it was FCPS it was our office that was saying academic support would remain excluded interscholastic sports at the middle

[00:19:58] school were new and were not contemplated decades ago when the middle school after school program started so we were separating them both from a registration perspective and everything, so they were excluded at that time. Should the board decide if the model should be explored further, those activities could be brought back into the full afterschool model, should you decide to need to raise a million dollars.

[00:20:25] But the students who are not there for academic support and are not there for sports and are not there because they qualified for a fee waiver would be students that are participating in theater, performing arts, STEM activities, and would it generate a million?

[00:20:43] I don't know. Again, I think the assumption made in generating the million was that you take away every student that would be participating in one to 19 days and you take the 35% free and reduced number, which is a general county number, and that gets a million.

[00:21:01] Recognizing that six or more schools would be exempt entirely, probably makes that million dollars not accessible, be it $300 to everyone else. - Right, and that's what I thought in review of this. This doesn't seem to be feasible.

[00:21:17] I just wanna land here. You know, when this program was established by Jerry Connolly, it was to provide students with the opportunity to be productive in their afterschool hours. And I'm glad to see that it has grown in the place that it has, in the way that it has, to provide academic support, to have sports that are free of charge because we don't charge for sports at the high school level so they get a chance to participate.

[00:21:41] It is my thinking that this is not the way to go. We need to find another way. I would not be supportive of a fee structure because it would erode from all of those tenants that were part of the original structure of this program and since have been built upon.

[00:22:00] I think we'll be better positioned If we find some private partnerships to help support these after-school programs, I'm sure there'll be some business out there who would want their names to be after-school programming provided by company X, company Y.

[00:22:23] This will just erode participation, and I believe it would decimate the program over time because we know how middle school students are. My friend is not there, so I'm not there. - Thank you, Mr. McElveen, followed by Mr. Moon.

[00:22:42] - Thanks, so I certainly concur with my colleague from the Mason District, obviously, as you laid it out, the purpose of this program is to provide enrichment, but it's also to keep our students occupied after school at the base level, and this does nothing more than push them out, which is antithetical to the entire purpose of the program.

[00:23:04] So I think one thing that would be very helpful for me, it's kind of scattered through this document, but not really delineated in any particular space, is what is fee exempt and what applies to the fee, right? Because I think back to my days as being a chubby middle schooler at Kilmer Middle School, and I took part in, and I'm still chubby, unfortunately, but I think back to those times, and I was doing lots of different things.

[00:23:32] So for example, I was on the newspaper staff, I was doing theater arts and different things each day of school, right? So I wasn't necessarily attending each day, but I was doing these kind of discrete activities. And based on what you shared, I don't know if those are co-curricular, if they have a fee.

[00:23:53] If you're doing student government, you're aiding the school, but are you then having to pay a fee to help the school, right? So I would appreciate some clearer delineation of that. And then in terms of a question, can you describe a little bit for me the role of each of the, I forget if the title is site director, but the 26 individuals.

[00:24:17] Is that a full-time position? Are they doing that in addition to their daytime role in the school, and is it stipend-based? It's a middle school, after school specialist, our full-time positions in each of the 26 comprehensive middle schools. It is a full-time position with duties assigned by the principal in excess of an extra on top of what's happening in that after-school window.

[00:24:42] So, things like lunch duty are part of the after-school specialist role currently. Dr. Emery is with us and certainly has as much history as anyone could have.

[00:25:51] That's very helpful.

[00:26:15] Do you know what year that was instituted, that position? Okay. I think it was after. Okay. Okay. That's very helpful, but again, I think it's the next step, a clear delineation of what is for you.

[00:26:32] Thank you, Mr. Moon, followed by Ms. St. John Cunning. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm glad to see Dr. Emery in the room because, as you say, he's the historian behind this program, going back to his days as a chairman of the school board, when he really advocated for after-school and middle-school activities for the middle-schoolers who might otherwise getting could get into some troubles after school so you know after you know dr. Emery you know after his departure from a in a school board you know he

[00:27:09] began working very closely with the Fairfax County Partnership for youth and initially that was the organization applied for grants and then started with a two-day program on a pilot basis which eventually in 2000 began expanding And then when Chairman Connolly became the chairman of the Board of Supervisors, he did really champion, along with Dr. Emery, to have this implemented in all schools.

[00:27:42] And they were fully funding at the time, if I'm not mistaken, Dr. Emery, fully funding the program. The overall operating cost is $11 million. Counties only funding part of that at this point, even though we appreciate every penny we can get from the county you know back in 2007 when it was fully implemented fully expanded counties you know counties funding was i think two point uh let me see this number i don't want to misquote the number 2.4 million dollars but when you put in

[00:28:20] inflation factor since 2007 until this point, almost 20 years, it's a 3.9. So if they want to recoup one million dollars out of the 3.9, they are retreating from their initial commitment of funding. It's a retreating from that point which county board of supervisors, especially the chairman, late Congressman Jerry Connery took this huge pride in providing to our middle

[00:28:52] schoolers I'm not prepared to ask for any activity fees from our students at this point at all thank you thank you mr. John Connie follow miss miss Anderson so I do remember when this was implemented because I was very involved in the community and I know that a lot of this was implemented to make sure that our middle schoolers had enrichment opportunities and it was also a gang prevention initiative because at the time there were some serious issues with

[00:29:29] that the problem the problem the double-edged sword is that it has been so successful and it has expanded beyond you know some of those high-risk kids and I don't look I don't look at this as an expenditure I look at it as an investment and I think that I'm a little bit concerned about how this is all worked out and played out. When we're talking about, you know, on the slide with the program operational costs, what would the fees be if we charged the county the fee to use our schools

[00:30:04] for these programs? Have we worked that into the calculation? Because we're using our buildings and it's an after-school program and the rec centers have to pay those fees. What would those fees look like I think that we're not really looking at true numbers here my other another question that I have is how is this competing with the after school programming that the county offers I was very involved I was a community school coordinator at Mount Vernon Woods Elementary and I was employed at the time by United Community and we had after school programming

[00:30:42] some of which have been cut now because of what the fees are for them to use in buildings that that those nonprofits have to rent so I think we have to be honest about what the schools FCPS is providing when we're doing this if we're going to go straight on costs because I know - I know that two centers have closed because the county can't afford the fees to use those buildings and those were county programs so now those kids can use can be in our schools but

[00:31:18] are we charging for the county to use our schools sorry you bring up an excellent point for discussion yes community use has never been a topic of discussion for the after-school program and I so and I do want to just mention that how many we do not have title one middle schools is that correct am I

[00:31:57] correct oh CDP middle schools okay I just wanted to get that clarification I I also know from being a family liaison that you can be on free and reduced lunch, but you can also miss that. You can miss the cutoff to be on free and reduced lunch by $50.

[00:32:14] $50 in this community for a family and you miss that cutoff, that's a struggle for families. I would be interested in knowing what the fees for the middle school, for the county fees for their programs.

[00:32:34] I would be really interested to see what their fees are. And then my other question is, have we ever charged fees for any of this before? I can answer the second part. We have never charged fees. Well, let me back up with one exception. If schools choose to decide to do competitive activities, like, let's say, Model UN or Science Olympiad, we will pay the fees for local competitions.

[00:33:06] If they win an award and move to either state competitions or national competitions, they have to do fundraising to pay the travel costs with those particular events that's the only way that's the only fees that we have ever charged and we don't really charge we do fundraising the schools are very comfortable in doing that but as far as I know that teen centers there are no fees associated with teen centers and kids participating in the teen centers. Thank you Mr. Dixon. So thank you for the presentation and as my colleagues all of them have agreed and I

[00:33:45] I think this board has the commitment to our middle school students and giving this free is what we all want to do. I think I can collectively speak at this point, but I had a question about the numbers.

[00:34:00] On one of the slides, you had mentioned that 17,029 vocational attendees and labeled them as 69% of the part spends, but that's about 72% of the stated 23,526 enrollments. I just want to know if the number we are presenting here is correct, the percentage, or maybe some other denominator were used, I don't know.

[00:34:27] What page is it? It was, let me go look up the presentation, sorry, pulling it up, you have to scroll it down, I'm sorry.

[00:34:45] It was in the, if you go down I think, yeah, 69 percent. Actually if you take 70,000 and take from the total enrollment, it's 72 percent. I'm happy to work those numbers these assumptions were the work of the generated a year plus ago and the earlier slide was the end-of-year numbers so there could be some discrepancies there we'll make sure we provide some clarity there yeah the number goes up right that's all I'm just wanted to

[00:35:19] bring to the notice because it's you know three percentage up I have had my children in middle school after school programs you know part of being math olympiad math count science olympiads and so forth and definitely this program is one of the best program we have we are providing to our students and a million dollar after doing all this work and charging families who can't afford it's going to really push people away from enrolling another

[00:35:54] school district has a program with a fee and i've heard that nobody's like hardly anybody stays for that program because they have to pay a fee for that. These numbers are not going to be the same if we put a fee. And lastly, I'll say this, that we can find this money somewhere in our budget.

[00:36:13] And supervisors have given us that funding. We are thankful for that. But a million dollar should not be at the risk of shutting this program down or just tremendously reducing its size and scope. So I'll appreciate this to be free of cost for our all our students because that's equity and that's what we're committed to thank you thank you miss maren thank you um i think the conversation is much broader than starting with middle school fee structure and i did suggest that to the to the chair that we have a broader

[00:36:49] conversation because we are doing other things in middle school programming that are relevant i also think that this conversation is better had as a budget work session we're looking at this narrow area tagged for a budget cut when really more expansive budget work with the board of supervisors at the table would be far more useful to be candid we're looking at this now because the Fairfax Board of Supervisors is essentially telling the schools to pay this pay for this gang prevention human services program for children ages 12 to 14 I'm not willing to concede to a fee structure when all the information is not provided by the county nor the schools so look there are

[00:37:28] potential costs and savings to be provided in other ways that don't harm children, that don't remove successful youth programming, and it will take some serious collaborative work and some difficult decision-making about what residents in this community expect for their tax dollar. So Ms. St. John Cunning loved your point about the community use. This is the crux of an issue. Our buildings are used by county programs all the time, and as part of the work last year that I was part of for a very short while on the joint budget savings committee around facilities I was trying to find out what exactly is the the transfer of

[00:38:05] valued assets because it's not it's not written down anywhere it's not clear and it's not equal and it's not equitable so before we started talking about saving a few million dollars on the backs of 12 and 13 and 14 year olds like my own kiddo how about the county to meet with us and talk about what's the value of all of our cross-programming and cross-facility use of public facility assets.

[00:38:31] And let's see if there's already some savings that are just on paper that we're not even accounting for. Also, I wanna highlight what FCPS has already done. We are looking, it's very tough, but we're doing it, changing the school start times in an effort to not have so many young kids staying after school for so late.

[00:38:50] I think that's a really important part of this discussion that we're not talking about. Maybe we would need less after-school programming if we can get the times changed and kids aren't going home at 2.15. Also, the superintendent has added more sports than ever to middle school. We've got successful spring track and fall cross-country, and there's going to be more intramurals this season.

[00:39:10] Volleyball, I believe. So we are already doing things to try and mitigate the need for more programming. I also want to say, you know, as mentioned, we don't charge for high school activities. audit committee is going to be looking at you know fundraising activities maybe it's time to rethink that and always providing an option for those who can't afford but it costs money to run our athletic and after-school programs like again larger budget conversation I'm not willing to concede that this is a narrow conversation about one tiny little program that benefits tens of thousands of children in this county and I hope we can broaden the conversation

[00:39:48] thank you miss Anderson okay so I have as soon as this was brought forward in last year's budget based on the conversations that had been having for throughout the previous year I started doing some pretty serious work with different stakeholders around the county and one of the things that so what I want to do I'm gonna need more time but what I want to do is start by setting the stage of where we are and I want to this is more of a request for clarification to make sure that i'm understanding this correctly first what i see this as the county is that this is not an optional event because it can be that we raise a million dollars from other

[00:40:28] some other source but that puts the whole portion of what the county is contributing at risk because what they're asking for is skin in the game from all parties we quite clearly have skin in the game on our side they have some on their side and what they're looking for is for the participants to have some and i don't think it's ingenuous for us to say that all high school sports are covered because i have a whole lot of crew kids that are paying a whole lot of money to to go out so i just want to put that out there that not all sports are treated equitably either i understand but lots

[00:41:03] of these are clubs too um so so first i see this as skin in the game from all parties i wholeheartedly and 100% disagree with having the pay-to-play fee model. I think $300 is the wrong amount. I think 3,300 kids to pull it from.

[00:41:20] Those are the kids that have an option of what to do with their $300. They are the parents that we are putting this on the backs of. They are the parents who make the decision about whether or not they're going to pay for the extended sports or they're going to do the middle school, after school program.

[00:41:36] So it's not sustainable to put that on them. Because I think that if we go and look straight usage, some of the schools that are in more affluent communities don't have as much participation because they have other options. And so I don't think it's smart for us to put that.

[00:41:52] So what I will say is, and I've had very gentle conversations with a number of stakeholders about this, I think that we should try this out this year with a pay-what-you-can model. And I think that we should have a suggested administrative fee that's low for the entire year.

[00:42:10] I think we need to charge more for the VIP camps because that is something that is a proven benefit. And right now, $100 for the entire five weeks or whatever we run it is too low. And so I think that we need to hit it hard with more advertising. And I think we need to get more kids in that program to keep them busy throughout the summer.

[00:42:27] So, and then I would love to run this optional donation related to the administrative fee conducting this program. I want to run it through the foundation. And the idea there is that is a tax-deductible donation.

[00:42:44] And it also means that we can get community businesses to participate and donate because I have to tell you, I have a mattress store in West Springfield that has a bunch of kiddos on Friday that come through and jump on the beds that might be real interested in making sure that we have middle school, after school programs for the rest of the week.

[00:43:04] So just putting it out there. So like I said, I want to go back because I have more to talk about, but that's the genesis of, and like I said, I've had general conversations with a number of key stakeholders that I think that this is a possible option. So I'll take a quick turn.

[00:43:23] I absolutely will not have a mandatory fee. I think that's prohibitive. I think that's counterintuitive. I am amenable to pay what you can. I like the idea of it going through the foundation because of the 503c status and tax deduction.

[00:43:42] I think it does give visibility in a different way. So I think there's a lot of appetite for that. I also agree that the VIP camp fee is too low. I mean, that is, you're getting, that needs to increase because that is a bargain above all bargains. So that's all I'll share at this point, and then I'm going to ask – actually, we're going to go to Mr. Shostuck next, and then I'll do go-backs.

[00:44:08] Thank you. My apologies. I didn't see Mr. McDaniel, so Mr. McDaniel will go, and then we'll have our student rep go. These numbers aren't making sense to me. This program costs $11 million. The county's paying four.

[00:44:26] FCPS is paying seven. But we're being told, of the four that the county's paying, we have to charge fees for $1 million, so the county only pays $3 million. Meanwhile, FCPS continues to pay $7 million. Otherwise, the $4 million is going to go away.

[00:44:45] But our data shows that 70% of those kids that participate, participate 1 to 19 days total. If you tell them they've got to pay $300 to participate for 1 to 19 days, they're gone. I mean, it doesn't take, you know, a business genius to figure that out.

[00:45:03] They're going to walk, which is going to have the function of decimating the program. So effectively, we're being told, charge a fee for 8% of the total cost, or you're going to lose four of your total $4 million. But if we charge that 8% fee, the program evaporates.

[00:45:20] That's effectively putting the proverbial gun to our heads, because either way, it's going to kill the program. I'm not happy about it. I have problems now that we're rolling out sports, saying if you're on the sport team, it's free. If you're in Model UN, there's a charge for it.

[00:45:37] And all it's gonna do is continue to create the divide in this county that's too big of the haves and the have nots. So we've gotta figure out a better way to go about doing this so the program can be sustainable in the long run, but this fee structure as presented now is not it.

[00:45:54] - Thank you. Our student rep, Mr. Shostak. - Thank you. Yeah, I mean, just to put it simply, as what I assume to be the consensus here is that I think this is unfortunately not going to work. I think that, as what other people pointed out, I think Ms. Anderson, that this is something that we could roughly get between 3,000 to 4,000 paying students for a program that could potentially serve up to nearly 30,000, and at the end of the day, I just do not see how that could reasonably be worth it.

[00:46:29] I do have just a couple questions for clarification just with this proposal specifically, I know at the beginning of the year what happens usually is there's sort of like an open house with clubs, and during that we usually, like when I was in middle school, we would have still like signed up and filled out the form to show we were in that club, and it was just to sort of go around it and see which clubs you would potentially be interested in.

[00:46:57] I'm assuming that the number, the 82% number at the beginning, came from those like sign-in forms and students filling out that they were staying after, would this payment model exempt students who are just in that open house period and go to, say, one or two days at the very beginning of the school year trying to try out a club to see if they would want to do that later on in the year as well?

[00:47:26] Super question, and thank you for your experience in the program. It helps us frame it. The number of students that attend from one to 19 is tracked by the after-school specialist when they check in at the end of the day.

[00:47:41] In theoretical terms, if a student stayed a day, in theoretical terms, the fee would apply. We could operate it differently, right? We could have an open house period for several weeks. Should we move toward a fee, we would certainly look for opportunities to engage students before we actually charge students.

[00:48:02] And then my other thing here is on this slide here, the key elements of the proposed join MOU instruction models adopted that it says here that it establishes active youth-led middle school after school councils at 100% of sites.

[00:48:20] Can you elaborate on exactly what that would entail and how that's structured? I'm going to ask Dr. Emery to elaborate on that because it's an idea that is being brought forward again from past. with the priority of establishing it everywhere. And we have this at a number of schools.

[00:48:37] Our goal is to have a broad spectrum of youth as an advisory council or advisory task force at the middle school level, talking about what kind of activities they'd like to put into place, how often they should be convened, and just provide guidance to the administrators, the after-school specialists, and the rest of us about what activities will draw kids in and keep them engaged for longer periods of time.

[00:49:03] Okay, thank you. - How are they appointed to that position? - They're both asked for volunteers and also the after school specialists will make sure that we're targeting all the groups within that after school, within that middle school environment so that all kids are represented.

[00:49:18] - And do they meet after school usually? - They would meet after school usually. Actually, some are actually taking place in meeting during the school day also. - Okay, but say if they're meeting after school, would they, and say hypothetically that's all they're doing, would they then be paying for that? you're saying they're paying for their role on the council but I would imagine most of those kids would be part of it because they're guiding the activities that are taking place in after school they would participate in more than just the student council piece yeah okay and then I think my last thing here for now is it is how exactly would the enforcement of this work but at the

[00:49:57] beginning of like every club meeting with teachers and then staff sponsors would it be their burden to make sure everyone has paid to go to this? It's a super question and one we don't have a ton of experience on. It has a division charging fees and then checking kids in every day.

[00:50:14] The operational responsibilities would fall to the full-time middle school, after-school specialists. We would be very professional in communicating with families when the kids were attending and then us recognizing they had not paid.

[00:50:30] I do think student safety being our number one priority. If a student stayed after school, it would be our responsibility to take care of them, whether they had paid or not, whether we were following up with the family to say, if you are going to stay, a fee is charged for these programs.

[00:50:46] But student safety would always be there. So a student would not show up and be turned away because they had not paid. At no point would an FCPS program operate like that. Thank you. And actually, I just thought of something else. Sorry, does the 82% number, I know one of the initial ideas was that the students staying after for academic help and tutoring and stuff like that, they would not have to pay that fee.

[00:51:09] But does the 82% include students who are staying after for that? Because if that's the case, then wouldn't the expected number of students that are paying money for this program go down and we would fall sort of below that million dollar? Yeah, I think the answer is yes to both.

[00:51:25] The 82% includes students who are staying after for academic help, but because of the structure of the middle school after school program where there are essentially two sessions, students who stay after for academic help generally participate in something else as well. Rather than stay for the first half and get picked up and go home, they stay for both halves and they get an academic enrichment period or academic help period, but they also participate in some other activity.

[00:51:50] I can feel it. Thank you. Ms. St. John-Hunning for a go back followed by Ms. Marin. I worked in, I ran after school programs in elementary school, which is definitely, certainly different than middle school.

[00:52:12] I really appreciate Ms. Anderson coming up with some suggestions and ideas. I think that we all want this program to continue. If we have to go that route, I appreciate that. I am hesitant to want to go through that route because as, you know, someone else mentioned, then is it going to be a precedent and then it's going to be, okay, this year one million, next year two million, the next year this other million.

[00:52:38] And so that's a concern for me. Having said that, you know, and the idea of having skin in the game for the participants to have skin in the game is something that I think is a double-edged sword because there are families that don't have to have skin in the game because they can go to private things.

[00:52:58] They can do private dance. I ran an after-school dance program. that dance program, because it was after school, because it was nonprofit, it was $20 a month. But that included instruction, that included costumes, that included everything. However, my neighbor could have their kid in an after school, in a program that was $50 per class and had to pay three, $400 for each costume.

[00:53:26] They had skin in the game in a private capacity. Having said that, I will say that I did work with a lot of the underserved community. And yes, offering programs for free is important. But I also want to just highly emphasize the dignity involved for the family to be able to pay something.

[00:53:48] And sometimes if it's just $5, those families are willing to pay for that. And that also ensures that the kids participate. And I don't want to take away that element because I have worked with these communities. And it's not that you want to have them skin in the game because they need to have it, there is an element of dignity involved.

[00:54:10] And I just wanted to emphasize that. Just because you can't pay for it, doesn't mean that you won't make an effort to do even if it's $5. - Thank you, Ms. Marin. - So I want to continue to lift this up out of the narrow space in which it's been placed, not by us.

[00:54:25] So why is this a topic? Is it because of the funding source? I mean, that's an acceptable reason. But having something be threatened for funding is not a unique problem that we face. So what I'm thinking about is at the heart of what this is, is this is a push from the county for FCPS to earn revenue.

[00:54:46] We are being asked to raise revenue. What do we think of that? How are we equipped to do this for this and any program? The idea about skin in the game is an interesting one. That could be another thing that we elevate.

[00:55:02] Well, let's look across all of our programmings and do we want to say that about chorus, about, you know, whatever. But locally, when we look at, you know, I feel like we spend a lot of time when it comes to resources talking about money, but we very rarely talk about time. But those are the two resources, time and money.

[00:55:18] You get to pay with one of them. There is a recurring theme here about unidentified and unaccounted for costs. The extra work on our staff to run a fee collection program and issue waivers, that's one of those things that I just find after 20 years of working in public education, We'll just figure it out, right?

[00:55:38] That is a hidden cost that educators will bear, just like our people do on any given topic. This time it's about a gang prevention program. It's a human services program. Next week, who knows what's gonna happen when there's no crossing guards at high schools? We'll see what happens. I bet our staff will step up, even though they know not to go out in the street in direct traffic.

[00:55:57] So time and money, okay? I'm thinking of the work that the boosters do, my own kiddos on varsity soccer. Well, it's expected that we're gonna contribute our time or money. So how is that any different than middle school? What I'm trying to say is, why is middle school after school a topic?

[00:56:13] Because we could run this scenario on a lot of our different topics, and so can we have a much broader conversation about the budget? And maybe it's time to look at a whole bunch of different things rather than stay narrow on this middle school topic issue.

[00:56:30] - Okay, I am seeing Ms. Anderson's placard for a go back. - Thank you. Okay, so part of my angst here is that I don't want to disrupt the importance of the middle school after school specialists in our buildings because I have a rising junior and I understand what the significance of that person.

[00:56:55] They become a trusted adult in the building. And I agree with Ms. Marin. I don't want them responsible for tracking who's paid and who hasn't. And I have spent a fair amount of time visiting different middle school after school programs in my district. And I was at one of the schools visiting and we had a kiddo that missed the bus.

[00:57:15] And I literally asked the chairman of the board what happens with that, to Mr. Shostak's question, what happens to that kiddo? Are we gonna literally make him sit in the office or can they participate? The donation model doesn't require us to track anybody.

[00:57:33] All we have to do is track whether or not we've got enough donations. And the other benefit of this is I have to tell you, I graduated 30 plus years ago from Lake Braddock. I didn't know that educate Fairfax existed until I got on this board.

[00:57:48] And as a former alumnus, I wanna know. And so I think that showing in our middle schools that the amazing work that our foundation does and getting those parents in tune and getting the kids in tune at that moment is a huge benefit to educate Fairfax too.

[00:58:07] So this is a win-win because they already have the mechanisms to take donations in. 'Cause the other thing that we haven't talked about here is you can't differentiate pay on my school books. Nobody, the county has that set up with SAC. They do not have that. We do not have that set up with my school books.

[00:58:24] If you have differentiated pay, people are gonna pick the lowest amount. That's the way that's gonna go. And so I just want us to come up with a sustainable model. So I will be writing up a white paper to give to my colleagues as a path forward because the biggest risk that I see is I don't wanna lose those 26 people of our buildings because we refuse to at least listen to what the board of supervisors is asking us to attempt and so if we can show a solid attempt here even if we don't hit the million dollars and talk about the the iterative process that we're going to go through to get to what they're trying

[00:59:02] to ask us to do and to show that we tried i think that is the benefit and so we don't have to necessarily agree with it but we do have to listen to what the request is thank you miss marron i - I agree, I mean, seeing the foundation take this opportunity would be amazing.

[00:59:18] I already saw an email, I think it was today, that we got saying, you know, you can contribute $5 of your salary. I mean, look, I've had students selling oranges, mattresses, pumpkins, candy grams, cookie dough. I mean, come on, can we not figure out how to pay for things for our kids?

[00:59:35] But we also have to be reasonable, right? We can't pay for everything. So that's the discussion that the board needs to have. I told, so the foundation could absolutely have a bigger role and help communicate that better, absolutely. I think it's a very unknown resource. You know, undervaluing the role of that middle school specialist, I'm glad that was raised because they are also coordinating the litany of programs, not only from FCPS, but also from our generous and expert community partners and providers. So I hope the supervisors know that all these community partners, part of the Chamber of Commerce, they're only going to get into our schools with that one person, those 26 staff members. And speaking

[01:00:13] about expert the experienced professionals providing programming to children in Fairfax County that's us we've said repeatedly over the last two years that a fee structure for middle school after school programs will not work it is based on our experience it is based on a pilot the children won't show up the cost is prohibited so again let's elevate this conversation put that recommendation to the side and see what else is possible for middle school after school but for the gamut of programs that we want to provide for every Fairfax student as part of like the fairfax promise of what education is here all right thank you seeing

[01:00:52] to other placards uh we will adjourn at 103 for lunch recess sorry not adjourn recess we're having school board recess 1.03 that is 103 okay good afternoon um call the meeting back to order at 137. Dr. Anderson and Ms. Anderson will now move on to the digital literacy and discussion portion

[01:01:26] of the work session. Okay, I think Dr. Presidio was very glad to have the Andersons as meeting managers. I just want to put that in the room. He said, yes, more of it. So for those who are in that decision-making seat. So today we're here to talk about the digital literacy curriculum, And I think one of the things that we discuss, and please jump in after I finish here, is we know that this is connected to a larger conversation.

[01:02:00] There's a huge opportunity for this to perhaps meander into a lot of other places that are important. But what we're hoping and asking for your grace, and let's capture this part first. So we'd like to keep the first component after the presentation to the actual presentation of digital literacy, going through some of the comments regarding the lessons and et cetera.

[01:02:26] And then the tangentially related questions, let's make that be in our second round so that we can organize ourselves a little bit more effectively. I think we have the benefit of time today because of a subject being taken. so while we don't need to rush we will not do 90 seconds second rounds we'll just keep everything at three minutes just organizing in that way I think will be a little bit more effective and helpful to staff to separate those sections anything else so without any further ado we are going to turn it over

[01:03:04] to staff to take us through and then we will start with our board comment and feedback and very excited Mr. Moon is Dr. Anderson may I may I just ask a one question oh absolutely yes sir what's the outcome you are looking for out of this work session I believe I will allow staff to speak to that the outcome of the digital literacy presentation thank you Dr. Anderson and Mr. Moon great question the digital literacy curriculum which I think is Dr. Presidio and Mr.

[01:03:39] Wakoda, who's representing Mr. Sethi this afternoon, will share, is a curriculum that's been, the framework has been around for several years, but the board asks for a review of that and making sure that it meets the current expectations that we might have.

[01:03:56] There's also a Virginia Department of Education expectation to have a digital literacy curriculum in place. So we want to make sure we have an opportunity to present that today. And then because the idea is we want to be able to train staff tomorrow, which is the 19th.

[01:04:13] And the board had said we want to have this ready for the start of the school year. So I think it's to gather feedback on the framework. If there are things that you have questions about or suggestions about, I know staff, we can still integrate those today with our planned training tomorrow.

[01:04:31] Yes, sir. So at this point, I'll turn it over to Dr. Presidio and Mr. Devcota and the team. I know there's staff here supporting that work, so, and look forward to the presentation. So, Dr. Presidio? - All right, well, thank you, and hopefully we'll be able to pull the slides up here in just a second, but I'll just go ahead and start with introductions.

[01:04:51] First of all, BJ DeVkota, the Executive Director of IT is here with us today. We appreciate that. As well as Michael Gillespie, our Director for Curriculum and Instruction, and Monica Van Heusen, our Manager for Educational Technology. so we appreciate having a full team here to be able to support this discussion.

[01:05:09] We are very excited, as Dr. Reed said, to share our plans for strengthening our digital literacy curriculum for next school year. And of course, as Dr. Anderson mentioned, obviously there is a lot of work happening around the school division with respect to educational technology.

[01:05:25] The board continues to work on educational technology policies, which we're happy to support from the staff perspective. But again, today's presentation materials are just focused on one small piece of that work, which is the digital literacy curriculum.

[01:05:41] Also, I do want to say right at the outset that nothing with this digital literacy curriculum work that we're going to share with you today would require additional student screen time or device usage or any changes to existing restrictions on technology use or artificial intelligence that are currently in place.

[01:06:00] So, as we move to the next slide, just again as a reminder, the origin and genesis for today's discussion really was from the board. One of the board motions that was passed in the June business meeting that directed staff to enhance our digital literacy instruction across all of our grade levels, to provide additional staff professional learning, make sure that the work that we're doing in the curriculum is transparent and the public have access to what's happening, and then to develop this work in consultation and collaboration with the newly formed Educational Technology Review Committee.

[01:06:40] And some members of that committee are here with us today, and that group worked really hard during the summer on this deliverable, as well as several others. We had three meetings during the summer, and we appreciate everybody's participation in this process. So just to emphasize, again, that the information that we're sharing today just really shows how we're building on some of our long-standing work on digital citizenship and digital literacy that has been in place for a number of years again it does not presume any future board policy decisions as the board continues to work on developing those educational tech pop technology policies and then again nothing in this presentation establishes or requires the

[01:07:16] use of additional technology including artificial intelligence particularly things like ChatGPT or Gemini. So on the next slide, I think the first question, of course, is, well, what is digital literacy and what do we mean when we talk about digital literacy? And in FCPS, digital literacy is not about teaching students to use technology devices or increasing screen time in any way. Rather, digital literacy for us is about helping students to develop the knowledge, the skills, and dispositions to use technology safely, responsibly, and ethically in order to support their learning, to develop their creativity and make sure

[01:07:54] that they have the skills to navigate safe and responsible use in really an increasingly complex digital world. So our curriculum is really going to be designed to help students develop those skills that they need to have to evaluate information, to protect themselves in digital situations and online, and to make really thoughtful decisions about when to use technology and when not to use technology.

[01:08:17] So our focus on digital literacy, again, is not on tools, it's on the four domains that you see on this slide, right? Digital citizenship, information literacy, media literacy, and AI literacy. I think it's important also to note, and right from the outset, and Dr. Anderson and Dr.

[01:08:35] Reid were both kind of alluding to this, that this work is grounded in VDOE standards about how digital literacy needs to be taught in our schools, embedded in the curriculum, and that is evolving work. legislation is providing the mandate that video we provide additional guidance to school divisions so that's under development but everything that we're doing here is an alignment with standards developed at the State Department level additionally I just want to say as you can see on this slide we are not using social media or artificial intelligence to teach about those topics right rather students are going to learn about how those topics

[01:09:13] work, how they can influence online behavior, and how to navigate those digital environments safely, but they are not actually using those tools. And it's really important to note that our curriculum is going to be delivered via classroom discussion, hands-on learning activities, and printed materials, not through a technology delivery.

[01:09:36] So as we move to the next slide, like all things, I think, in FCPS, we always want to make sure that our work is grounded in research whenever possible. And similarly, our digital literacy work has been developed based on research that consistently shows that exposure to technology isn't going to just develop student digital literacy skills, right?

[01:09:53] Just using technology doesn't help you become digitally literate. Rather, you need to have explicit instruction in areas like digital privacy and safety, how to protect your well-being, how to keep information private and safe, and how to really make informed decisions about how to use technology tools effectively.

[01:10:10] And another big thing that shows up in the research is kind of gives us guidance about how to teach these skills. We don't want to teach these skills completely in isolation. We want them to be embedded in authentic, meaningful learning experiences whenever possible. So, for example, you might think about, you know, teaching students about data analysis.

[01:10:26] It's going to be more effective to do that within the context of a lesson, maybe a science lesson where you're evaluating a data set rather than teaching students just how to use a spreadsheet arbitrarily. So our approach really to digital literacy instruction combines some foundational lessons and practical application and authentic learning experiences, which are really typically embedded in students' regular coursework.

[01:10:50] So on the next slide, just to reiterate again, this isn't new work. Our work has been embedded in the curriculum for a number of years. And on the last slide, I kind of mentioned a little bit about the research, again, linking the efficacy of digital literacy instruction to authentic learning experiences.

[01:11:08] So many of the lessons and topics are embedded in our curriculum. You can think about, again, in English classes, students are going to learn how to evaluate and cite information and sources appropriately. Going to learn how to analyze data, again, in science courses, social studies courses. is going to examine media influence in online behavior and health courses where we've embedded a lot of this work, and then learn about privacy and digital systems and courses, elective courses oftentimes like computer science. So I don't want to give anybody the notion that these are exhaustive.

[01:11:40] These are just illustrations of some of the places where this work is embedded in our curriculum. On the next slide, again, we're building on a really strong foundation that we've built over number of years teaching digital citizenship in particular at the elementary middle and high school levels and our curriculum again is based on research-based objectively developed curriculum from organizations like Project Zero at Harvard University and common sense education we're really excited about the partnership and the work with Project Zero because that's an organization that has been around since the like the 1960s or 70s and is really focused on developing students critical thinking skills creative

[01:12:20] thinking skills, analytical skills. So their approach to digital literacy really aligns with our portrait of a graduate work and the skills and attributes that we want all of our students to develop. So they've been a great resource to use. Previously, our curriculum did include topics like healthy technology use habits, student privacy, online privacy, digital footprints, media literacy. But last year, we had the opportunity, you may recall, to pilot some AI literacy lessons in our schools. And that really helped us because we know that AI is prevalent in student use. And we've talked quite a bit in previous board discussions about the amount of

[01:12:59] students that use artificial intelligence on personal devices outside of school. But oftentimes they're not receiving any instruction on the risks and the challenges associated with that. So we think it's really important that students have instruction on understanding how AI works and the risks associated with using it and how to use it in ethical ways.

[01:13:18] So we've developed some new AI literacy lessons that will be part of this curriculum as well. So the next slide, what I wanted to focus on here is really what are the things that we're doing then to build on our previous foundation and expand our work this year.

[01:13:34] So the biggest thing is we're trying to make sure that we have a really coherent framework for how these four domains of digital literacy function together. We don't want these different components and lessons to be seen by students or even teachers as discrete things. These are all important components of digital literacy that need to be connected and understood by our students in ways that require them to be embedded into the curriculum.

[01:14:01] So this year, one of the things that we're doing is building our digital citizenship work and our media and information literacy and our AI literacy into one coherent framework, K-12. So each of those four domains will have lessons that are taught in each of our grade levels over the course of the year, one lesson per quarter.

[01:14:21] But we're putting together a scope and sequence so that students can see the connections and that parents can see the connections of how concepts build over time. So things that we might introduce at the elementary level obviously become increasingly more complex and taught and more in-depth when students move to the middle and the high school levels.

[01:14:42] So we think that putting this work together in a framework is really gonna support common expectations and consistent resources that's gonna help with our fidelity of implementation. And again, our instruction is gonna remain developmentally appropriate, and students will learn about these topics without additional technology use.

[01:15:00] On the next slide, we just wanted to share some of the commitments that we've made internally as we support this work and develop this work that's really guiding our curriculum development and implementation. And really, in short, I think the biggest point here is that we're committed to keeping student needs and the instructional purpose really at the center of our curriculum development and technology use decisions.

[01:15:22] We really believe strongly that digital literacy and digital learning experience should complement and not displace other modalities of learning like print, discussion, and hands-on learning experiences. So we're committed to ensuring that emerging technologies are going to be evaluated very carefully before they would be introduced to students.

[01:15:42] And then finally, we believe that strengthening our digital literacy and establishing appropriate limits on technology use are really complementary goals as the board continues its policy development work. So in terms of the requirements for school year 26-27, again, schools are going to provide four required grade-level digital literacy lessons, one per quarter over the course of the school year.

[01:16:05] We believe that that's going to create a very consistent baseline for us and build on the work that schools have already been doing in previous years. So this isn't a whole bunch of new work. It's deeper work. It's hopefully going to be embedded in more meaningful ways. To support implementation, all of the lessons are being developed centrally and scripted so that teachers don't have to utilize a lot of planning time before delivery of lessons.

[01:16:32] And we're providing some flexibility in the delivery. So, for example, elementary schools will have some flexibility about when to schedule these lessons. It could be that they receive instruction from their classroom teachers. In other schools, that might be supported by librarians who have a tremendous amount of information and media literacy knowledge, for example, or our school-based technology specialists that really understand deeply the issues of privacy and online risks and safety, for example.

[01:16:59] To ensure our implementation fidelity, our principals have agreed to monitor and certify that all of these lessons have been taught, so we think that that's really going to strengthen the fidelity of implementation, and again, no additional use of technology, AI, social media would be required for any of these lessons.

[01:17:18] So what exactly are students going to learn then? I think that's probably the big question most folks would have. Again, the curriculum is designed to support student learning outcomes that are really focused on these major concepts, not technical skills, so those four domains of digital literacy that we mentioned. They're going to learn to protect their privacy, online safety, and well-being in digital learning environments. They're going to learn to evaluate information, recognize the purpose and credibility of digital content, and communicate online responsibly. And then the lessons on AI literacy are going to include a focus on recognizing AI-generated content, which is becoming

[01:17:57] increasingly used to really persuade or confuse folks, I think all too often. So we're going to really focus on making sure the students can recognize generated AI content, and then of course understanding AI's risks, limitations, and potential misuse applications. And then for each of these lessons, all of this work is really going to center on developing those skills to exercise good judgment in a digital learning environment. So on the next slide, we know that our student learning outcomes, of course, are going to be dependent on the staff efficacy with being able

[01:18:34] to deliver these lessons. So we've spent quite a bit of time, not just in curriculum development over the summer, but also professional development with our school-based technology specialists. And then we have planned professional development where our teachers will receive information tomorrow on the division-wide staff in-service day to make sure that they're prepared to effectively be able to support this important work. And on the next slide, some of the things that we're doing to support teachers in this work, again, is having the centrally developed scripted lessons along with implementation guidance and then additional support to teach the curriculum

[01:19:10] should they need it. And that can be provided both at the school level from the school-based technology specialist or with additional professional learning from central office staff. So I think this work, we're gonna continue to evaluate it and share additional information and provide opportunities for additional feedback with our technology review committee.

[01:19:31] Again, we did a lot of work over the summer, but there's a lot of work here just with digital literacy curriculum, so we wanna provide additional opportunities for guidance. We wanna collect feedback from our staff that are teaching the lessons. We wanna collect as much feedback as we can from students that are receiving the instruction, and we'll continue to make modifications to the curriculum and lessons accordingly.

[01:19:53] So finally, just kind of to sum up here, really our biggest priority with this work is making sure that we do this initial phase well. Again, four lessons per grade level, one per quarter, and then continuing to evaluate what we need to do to make additional enhancements as we move forward.

[01:20:12] We're also making sure that we're gonna publish all of this material on our website so the parents have access to it. going to publish our materials through schoology as well and then we want to see if we can put in some measures some success measures of how students are reacting and responding and developing understanding to support program improvement and like i said we'll continue to evolve and iterate the curriculum as necessary so really in closing i would just mention again that you know we have had digital citizenship as a core part of our curriculum for a number of years it's required at the state level and this updated work is really just going to strengthen that foundation and

[01:20:50] provide clear expectations for schools greater consistency of implementation additional staff support and increase public access and transparency to the work so with that those were the slides that we had prepared today and we're happy to receive any board feedback so we'll pause for a moment to vote in a virtual participant mr dannon has submitted a request to attend this morning's meeting remotely due to personal reasons as he's out of town for a family event is located in alexandria bay new york i performed an initial review of mr dan's request and having found it to be compliance with the school board's remote participation resolution the chair has

[01:21:24] approved the request mr dan please check your audio and video good afternoon good afternoon we can hear you and see you thank you i now ask board members who are physically present to vote on the following all those in favor of confirming the chair's approval of mr dana's request mr mcdaniel mr moon miss baron miss st john cunning miss dixit mr mckelveen and myself all those opposed dr anderson the motion passes uh the approval passes um thank you at this time i now invite board members to ask any clarifying questions or provide comments and i'm going to

[01:21:59] kick it back to our meeting managers thank you all right thank you um mr dannon um raised i don't I DON'T KNOW WHERE HE IS, HE JUST DISAPPEARED. OKAY, SO I THANK YOU, DR. PRESIDIO AND STAFF FOR THE PRESENTATION. WE ARE GOING TO START WITH BOARD MEMBER DISCUSSIONS AND QUESTIONS.

[01:22:16] AGAIN, THIS IS RELATED TO A NUMBER OF OTHER THINGS. I KNOW WE MIGHT DIVE INTO SOME OF OUR IDEAS FOR THE DRAFT OF THE POLICY, BUT I ASK THAT WE FOCUS THIS FIRST ROUND ON THIS PRESENTATION AND THEN WE'LL HAVE ADDITIONAL ROUNDS WHERE WE COULD BRING IN TENDITIONALLY RELATED TOPICS.

[01:22:35] Oh, boy. I have so many things prepared and then so many thoughts in response to Dr. Presidio's presentation. I'm really pleased that we're having the conversation to start the year off. I have delved into as much as I can, and I still can't yet get my head around, like, the whole thing.

[01:22:56] What was presented is, it seems to have a lot of good things in it, but I think it presumes a lot of assumptions that the board hasn't made, and so I have a lot of questions. was also a draft of the quarter one plans that came to the board and but I actually just want to even throw out to my colleagues about norms like what are our norms around digital literacy like what are we talking about and for for me and I tried to look in the slides for these things but there are really three things one is the functional use of technology the mechanics of knowing how how to power use something and I keep coming back to Schoology which my

[01:23:34] understanding is it's not intentionally taught and I don't understand that we could do anything in digital literacy if we're not going to teach the LMS to our kids and I don't see in there the teaching of certain applications I think that's super important even just educating kids that you know there's a difference between using a chat GPT search versus a Google search many adults don't even know that but there's a difference like that's just like basic level stuff that I don't see and I'm very concerned about especially with schoology, especially for those middle schoolers. Then there's the use of technology to innovate and create. And that's the cool part. And they're probably going to come up with things that we

[01:24:09] haven't even imagined yet. And then it's, not in particular order, but using technology safely, the privacy, the healthy habits. Those to me are really the three buckets, but I understand why you have four different buckets. But I think it's critical to have all these things in there.

[01:24:25] I don't know from a learning perspective is once a quarter enough. I think this is like a transitional moment this is not just a one lesson a quarter kind of thing that you know it was said well teachers don't have to use a lot of planning time I think we really need to change our thinking like this is how our you know society is headed so you know not thinking about it as an add-on which we I always try to avoid putting on teachers is one more thing to do it's not just like an FLE well even that could be integrated but anyway I think it takes support and care I also think that the digital literacy plan and the quarter one lessons I read, they presume use.

[01:25:05] It presumes that we are going to be putting devices in kids' hands from kindergarten onward. And I think a question for this board is, do we accept presumed use of devices by children upon their entry to FCPS? I think that is a foundational norm that we have to answer.

[01:25:23] And if we can, I think it will really help us. I will say in the curriculum, and I'm not sure when that's going to be shared, but it presumes use. And it actually uses technology like videos and slides to teach kids about technology.

[01:25:38] That inherent is the essence of our board discussion. I hope we can get there a little bit today. Dr. Presidio. Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to answer any questions. I mean, I think that was a lot of good feedback in terms of Ms. Marin's questions really about where does this work go.

[01:26:01] But if there was a particular question, I'd be happy to answer it. I mean, maybe I would just say in general, as I tried to mention, this is foundational work, right? It doesn't mean that this is where we have to end with this work. But we were really focused on the literacy components that we've got some concerns about students not having the skills to navigate the digital world safely, right?

[01:26:23] as opposed to how to use technology tools or applications. So you're 100% right. Those parts are not part of this digital literacy work. I think that's a huge missing piece. And if you could highlight the other question you had about Schoology. Well, can you talk about when kids learn Schoology?

[01:26:39] When are we teaching kids to learn the learning management system of the school division intentionally? Yeah, so that's generally instructed in their courses with their classroom teachers where their teachers show them where they're going to be posting information, how the course content, again, Schoology is a learning management system, right?

[01:26:56] So, and it's electronic, it's an electronic way to provide access to the curriculum, the instructional resources that are going to support students' learning in a particular course. So it's going to look a little bit different in terms of how teachers organize it, right? And each of the teachers really provides that direct information and access and training for students about how to access those course materials via Schoology.

[01:27:21] Okay, thank you. Are there any other placards, Mr. Dannen? If there aren't any, then we will take our turn. Ms. Dixit. So first of all, thank you for the presentation and the work which went into preparing this.

[01:27:38] I do know that there's a feedback I received from my constituent and the teachers that we were not giving digital literacy as a part of our curriculum. It is embedded, but it is distinctive now, one per quarter.

[01:27:55] My first question is that in between those quarters, if students are not taking a lesson like once a quarter, in between they may lose that knowledge. How do we make sure that it's a supplemental addition of more knowledge rather than coming back to the same one?

[01:28:13] Yeah, again, I think it's a great question. And what I was trying to get at in the slides is that we're developing a foundational coherent scope and sequence, again, that we can expand over time, right, in partnership with the board and the community, that helps develop some of those foundational skills in those four domains.

[01:28:31] Again, though, like I was mentioning, a lot of those skills are reinforced in the regular classroom content, right? So you might teach a digital literacy lesson on information literacy, and every student's going to receive that, right? How to effectively access information online, research skills, for example, how to evaluate and cite sources.

[01:28:50] But that's just one lesson. But that doesn't mean in your English classes, even in your language arts classes at the elementary level, that those skills aren't reinforced throughout the year. They 100% are. But I think sometimes students might not see that because it's embedded into the language arts lesson. It's not a separate lesson.

[01:29:06] So it's really kind of two complementary components. It's the foundational scope and sequence of these anchor lessons reinforced throughout the school year in the different content areas in those particular skills. And thank you for the answer. I also wanted to know what is the cost of, if there is any cost to FCPS for this initiative, is it cost neutral?

[01:29:30] Yeah, so there's not a cost. We've developed the lessons and curriculum and guidance and training. doing that all in house so there's not a fiscal cost maybe there's a cost in terms of time because when we add things into the curriculum then those you know those things that might have been taught somewhere else we're gonna run into a little bit of a zero-sum game with time but there's no financial cost okay and would students learn to identify defects manipulative algorithms online scam AI

[01:30:03] I hallucinations. So I'm going to let Monica answer that a little bit. She's really been involved in kind of leading the curriculum development and has done some exceptional work. And any of my colleagues that want to jump in at any time, please, please do so. But go ahead. Yes, we start to develop that and help support students with to identify what those are. So they'll start to identify in the earlier upper grade levels in elementary and then really focus on how they can identify and develop their critical thinking skills around deep fakes in the middle school

[01:30:38] and then in high school we really take a look at some digital dilemmas and have them really critical think about is that a deep fake yes and no and have them use those skills that they're developing in those upper level high school grade levels. Thank you. I just want to also know if the family is going to get any kind of digital literacy for parents kids who don't have parents who know how to use the computer?

[01:31:06] We are developing, aligned with the digital literacy for lessons, parent and family supplementary materials. You see some of those examples that were given to you for digital citizenship. We're also going to develop those for the other ones as well.

[01:31:24] And we are in partnership with DIT also with some learning for families around this topic as well. Thank you. I'll come back to more questions later. Thanks. Thank you, Ms. Lady. And if I could remind staff, we want to keep your responses as succinct as possible so that we have a little bit more time.

[01:31:46] Okay. I hope I'm not all over the place, but I'm thinking about, you know, the reality of lessons being embedded within an instructional curriculum that helps to solidify the learning. So elementary schools, my understanding is the majorities are done during a homeroom where there is no assigned bed in instruction.

[01:32:10] And it is done in some schools that have a STEAM classroom. I think sometimes they do tech lessons through that. And I do know that sometimes at elementary school, ESPITs do some tech lessons. But I guess my question is none of those models have it embedded within English or math or science.

[01:32:26] Just an observation and something to think on. The other thing is that, you know, it's in your slides that skills are strongest when applied through authentic classroom learning. And so I think about authentic integration of AI.

[01:32:42] An example, students write prompts to test how an AI model explains complex data to different target audiences. So they might use an AI model. But then students cross-reference AI-generated summaries with primary source documents and peer-reviewed studies. So, you know, you're saying they're not going to be using any technology within the lessons.

[01:33:02] that's kind of like saying, you know, it's kind of like studying human anatomy, which we do, but if we had a cadaver, it's a lot more, you know, crystal clear. So I'm not averse to utilizing generative AI as part of the lesson. And I also am curious to the deep fakes question, and I don't know if you all know this, but in the SRNR presentation, because that's a giant document um and deep fakes have been a problem with you know discipline um is that a teased out

[01:33:37] specific thing that is being discussed at upper upper upper elementary through high school and what the consequences are is that one of the actual hit the hard hit topics for this year's presentation do you do you want to respond to that and then if there's any follow-up on the other two points just that you'd like just let me know it is not explicitly discussed in that way so i would have a problem with that um and i will tell you that as someone who used to be on an admin team we would recognize things like that and sometimes insert slides but i think that that is one of the areas where our kids are being most egregious and damaging and harmful and it's very

[01:34:14] damaging to the mental health and the suicidal ideation of kids who are victims of this so i don't understand why it wouldn't be highlighted but that's not you all it's that's someone else's um office i guess i don't know uh the parent academy i love the idea of that but i've been hearing about it and hearing about it and hearing about it like show me the money like i want to see the parent academy i want to know where how the lessons are tied to classroom lessons or developmentally grade level lessons um and then to my colleague's question about assumed use you I think that, listen, we have to teach for safety reasons and for lots of other reasons.

[01:34:51] I would love to be able to assume non-use. Just my personal observations of being out in public, there are far more young children with devices in their hands than there are without them. So I'll take a go back. Thank you. Mr. Moon.

[01:35:10] Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Thanks for the presentation. I'll go straight to slide number 10, five bullet points. you don't have to go. Nobody will disagree with those five things that we need to teach. I appreciate that, but I guess where anxiety or the questions may rise is because that particular slide itself does not provide details to parents and students and staff members. I understand that as a next step, you are going to publish all the lessons somewhere. Do you know when that will be

[01:35:49] and how the parents and staff and community members and students could provide their feedback to those, whether that's going too far, too little, or just about right, and et cetera? Oh, thank you. That's an excellent question.

[01:36:06] So not to make excuses, but just so everybody knows, we now have new federal guidelines about accessibility on our websites to make sure that all materials that are posted are posted in a certain format, And it's incredibly complex. So we can't just post a PDF link to all of the lessons.

[01:36:25] So we're going through that process right now. And we've been working the last couple weeks to try to get the information in the correct format. So we hope that it will be up very soon. We'd like to have it up before the start of the year. I can't promise that today, but we're working to do that. So our thoughts were we were going to put it in two places.

[01:36:41] One, we would put it on the website. And one of the things that we've done this summer is developed kind of a new curated educational technology website on the FCPS website presence where everything is linked back to that. And one of the links on that website is to the new Educational Technology Review Committee.

[01:37:00] So we would intend to post the lessons and the information there so that people can have access to it there. But if that's taking too long and that's slowing the process down, while we get the web accessibility worked out, we intend to put the information in Schoology so that families would have access to it there as well.

[01:37:19] So did I understand you correctly to believe that your intention was to put everything on before the school year? That was our goal. Which is a Monday? Yeah, that was our goal. I don't know if we're going to meet that, but we continue to work towards that goal.

[01:37:37] Okay. And if there's a delay, would you say it's just a matter of a few weeks or a few days? I would say I can give you a better update after we've worked on this for a little bit longer over the next few days and see where we're at as we approach the first day of the school year.

[01:37:52] The other thing I wanted to say in response to your question, on the technology website there is a link on there where individuals can submit comments and feedback, yeah. Okay, since you're one of the co-chairs of ETRC, would you envision ETRC actually looking at the lesson plans and see?

[01:38:13] Yeah, that would be our hope because we didn't get a chance to do that during the summer. where we talked about scope and sequence, and we talked about what was the right place to start. And this is kind of where we landed with these four foundational lessons. But just our brief discussion here is illustrated. There's a lot of room for potential growth with this work and additional work that could be done.

[01:38:32] Again, we're trying not to get out in front of the board policy. We're trying not to get out in front of the process with the ETRC that we've committed to collaboration with that group to develop this work. And we also have some questions that we need to think about terms of if we have a lot of lessons that are required to be taught then what would have to come out of the curriculum to make room for these new lessons so there's a number of factors but yes 100% we're going to continue to have the ETRC evaluate and give feedback about our next since this is perhaps one of the most important topic of the day yes even for the school board and even as a one

[01:39:09] school board member that I would love to be able to really share with the public as to when we talk about what's on slide number 10, what they really mean, and be able to give some examples of how we are trying to teach our students on this.

[01:39:28] That's exactly what we're trying to do. So we're going to work to do that through both our FCPS website and through Schoology as quickly as possible. Okay, thank you. Mr. Dannen. Good afternoon.

[01:39:46] First of all, I appreciate everybody taking the time to bring this up. I've given a lot of thought to this over the summer and spoke with folks and it becomes more and more clear that this is one of those things where it just, it can't be a check the box exercise, right? I recognize that, you know, you all put a lot of work to making sure that these lessons are useful and it's not so much, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not about learning how to use technology and AI and so forth, but how to exist in a world where technology and AI is ubiquitous.

[01:40:14] Is that a fair assessment of these recommendations? Yeah, that's a very excellent encapsulation of the goal of this work and the content of the work. I appreciate it. And one of the things that's come up a lot is, one, who teaches it? I know you spoke to some of that. But also, how can this be? The question comes up, like, it's very easy for the school board just to keep adding stuff on to teachers' plays and your plays and so forth.

[01:40:43] Is there something, you know, I recognize that you spoke briefly about it, the opportunities for layering this kind of curriculum on top of existing curriculum so that we're not creating an additional burden and, you know, having the scripting and so forth. If it comes to it, have you all identified content that might need to be taken out to make more room for this type of curriculum and learning?

[01:41:05] Well, a couple things I would say to that. I mean, first, I think that's one of the strengths of the Educational Technology Review Committee is that we have individuals from different perspectives as part of our school division. So we have teachers, we have instructional specialists, we have principals, as well as our community members, parents, and students on the committee.

[01:41:27] So we can have a really robust discussion about the tradeoffs when we make some of these recommendations, and that's been really helpful. So I think we need to continue to leverage the strength and capacity of that collaborative group. Secondly, I think, kind of to Ms. Lady's point that she was raising, I believe if I interpreted it correctly, is we can do a lot more to reinforce these skills through the content areas.

[01:41:50] And we've done some really, I think, solid work of that in many instances. Many teachers do an excellent job of that. But there are gaps. And I think having this coherent kind of framework, this articulated scope and sequence is going to give us a really strong foundation where every teacher understands these four domains of digital literacy and what it looks like.

[01:42:10] And then I think we're going to see more opportunities for reinforcement of those skills and development of those skills in all of our content areas and grade levels in the future. So I think that's another place where if we can do some of that embedding and do it more robustly and effectively, then it's not about adding more lessons.

[01:42:28] It's about integrating this into the work that we're already doing. And that's the goal of this work. I appreciate it. Can you give me a sense? So I've got a rising second grader. We don't let her use Journal of AI, and I don't think she'd be interested in it.

[01:42:44] She's too creative to want to rely on a tool like that. But what would be a sample lesson for her and how much technology access would she be given in that situation? to learn some of these. I know you said that we wouldn't be giving additional technologies for those kids.

[01:43:00] I understand that technology use at second grade is typically very low, but can you speak to maybe an example of where, and again, I don't want to put you on the spot, but take it as a go back, but where she'd be able to learn about some of these concepts and perhaps the benefits, but also the dangers and risks of those tools without having direct access to that technology, if that makes sense.

[01:43:23] No, I think it's an excellent question. So if it's okay, I'm going to let Monica, who's kind of shepherding and leading the process of the curriculum development, give you a little bit more information about what that would look like at the primary grade levels. So I'll give you the example of the second grade lesson for digital citizenship, and that's about device-free moments.

[01:43:39] So talking about reflecting on how technology can be distracting and when distractions can lead to not being attentive, when are areas that we should be attention completely and put the technology away. And then also about sleeping time, about just about how we should distinct between how technology does distract us and how it can distract us.

[01:44:06] And then reflect on if we are using technology, what are some areas in our lives where we should have tech-free time. - Yeah, I appreciate that. That's very helpful, thanks.

[01:44:22] - Thank you, Mr. Dannon. Ms. Anderson. - I want to go back to the idea of presumed use just for a second because it can be a slippery slope conversation when we talk about any kind of education that we're doing because we don't assume drug use just because we're teaching drug reduction.

[01:44:41] We don't assume sexual activity just because we're teaching. It's actually the opposite. We actually understand that more information, it actually takes some of the use away if it's not something that's being relied on. And to your point and to Ms. Lady's point, I think, I would definitely like us, if we know that there are opportunities in other courses that we see the connections for, then I want to make sure that we are modeling that for our teachers.

[01:45:09] We can't just assume that people are gonna understand what's happening. I know at the high school level, almost everybody has an advisory class that they would be doing that, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they automatically see the connections that could be made that are the, They are the best parts of learning when you can remind kids, hey, remember when we talked about this or remember when we had that lesson that seemed like a standalone lesson and now it's coming to fruition.

[01:45:33] And so I just want us to see those moments where we can model it for our teachers so that not because it's the only way that it could be done but because I think that it's not fair for us to assume that those connections are going to be happening without giving the content the right amount of energy.

[01:45:50] Now I really appreciate that suggestion will definitely continue our work there I think we've got two opportunities to do that one is through the content professional development that we provide to teachers now We don't have a lot of opportunities for that We've got two days a year and they're you know not even full days, but a hundred percent We're going to continue to focus on this through line across PD this year and then more importantly perhaps is through our school-led professional development and our school-based technology specialists and work that they can do to help teachers see how they can actually reinforce some of these concepts in their own curriculum areas.

[01:46:23] And not to add anything to your plate, but if you guys are developing the lesson plans, how hard would it be to create something that said, hey, if you're an English teacher that's doing this type of assignment, like I think we can create those supplemental guides for different levels already. And so I, and I'm sure you're going to tell me that, that we're already doing those things, but I would love just to, to make sure that when the board has the opportunity to see the materials I would love to see that part of the materials as well yes as you predicted I was going to say that we we've already started down that road and so for ELA teachers tomorrow

[01:46:54] we have those connections in place that we can do that Ms. St. John Cunning thank you first of all from my experience in the schools this is already happening but the fact that it is now put out this way I think is really important for staff for parents if we go back to slide number 10 that Mr. Moon was talking about. I think that where we stand is everything that is here are things we've been teaching our kids regardless whether technology was involved or not. We've taught,

[01:47:34] I mean, we've taught our kids to protect their privacy, their safety, their attention, and their well-being. Find, evaluate, and synthesize and cite information. I had to learn how to do that when I was looking at exactopedias. Analyze the credibility and purpose of, if you take out digital content that's something we've been teaching all along create communicate and participate responsibly all of these things we're teaching and have been taught we are now adding the technology piece to it and i think where we are the moment in time that we are standing in

[01:48:10] is that technology is emerging so quickly that where do educational institutions meet teaching this and being on top of it as it is maybe outpacing what we can do and i think that is a huge lift for any institutional organization that is an academic institution because it's happening so quickly so i appreciate that we're trying to codify this uh and these are all things that we look at in portrait of a graduate in the making of the mind which we you know explored before

[01:48:48] and our challenge is how we meet how quickly everything is emerging so I just want to say that I know from what I've seen we've been doing this all along what we're confronted with is how fast technology is hitting us and how kids are exposed to it but I want to thank thank you for not only all the work that you did to put this together so quickly but thank you in advance for all the work you're going to have to do as things keep emerging. Okay, I'll take a turn and then it

[01:49:25] will be your turn. Mr. Chastic will be right there, Newt. I will work it out. I will figure it out before it's your turn again. First of all, I do thank you for this. I did spend quite a bit of time going over the lessons as well as the standards of learning. Again, from my world, you know going through the standards is not unusual and i would agree to this extent that we have had digital citizenship that's been occurring for years and years and years but

[01:50:00] it has not been to this level of detail i think what you have provided it's a nice little curve i was able to follow how it starts in kindergarten in the same way that we start everything else i really liken this a lot to family life where we're just learning about these very basic families and and then we move into the stronger and deeper and more sensitive areas across the years.

[01:50:24] However, it took me quite a while to kind of do that. I wonder if there's a space for there to be a general overview. If you're going to make this be a public document to better understand what's happening on this slide, I think that overview might have been very helpful to answer the questions that Mr. Moon has raised.

[01:50:44] So I just offer that for your consideration. I do have a few questions that I want to talk about. I do think it's really important, and you've said this multiple times, we're not going to use AI in order to instruct in these lessons. And I know there have been some different advocacy in the room.

[01:51:01] I, for one, I want to stick to that premise, that we do not need to use AI in order to offer this instruction. As it's laid out, I think we have a really, really strong foundation, a really, really strong start. want to offer some kudos to the group here very quickly oh the other piece that I want to highlight is the lessons being scripted I think that's such an important piece because it supports a consistent presentation and delivery across all of our kids because our teachers are all over the place in terms of their knowledge level and confidence level around these topics so

[01:51:37] ensuring that they're scripted means every child across FCPS at their grade level will receive the same lesson delivery i've had some questions about just the physical device itself typing it's kind of tangentially related but if we're talking about just learning all of the tools when do we introduce that because back when i was a principal typically at third grade we would have some basic typing lessons and that has gone by the way of cursive do we see space for this to be reintroduced here well it's a great question it kind of gets into the domain of teaching the technology skills that i think miss marin started our conversation with

[01:52:17] so it is a challenge to figure out when and how to do all of these things so a couple things i would say one we do have elective courses that students can take in middle school and high school where they can learn to type many of us when we were in school might have taken a typing class in high school maybe some might have taken it earlier we understand students might need those skills and might be interested in developing those skills earlier so we do have software starting at grades three that students can use but it would be on a more individualized basis kind of a self-directed process to learn typing

[01:52:54] skills we really haven't figured out how to teach that and integrate that consistently into the curriculum because that would be a fairly large chunk of time to have to give up for other things and as one of the board members pointed out, Mr. Dannon, earlier, we continue every year to get new curricular requirements and new standards from the state. They never take anything out, so we get new things. And then there's the things that we would like to do, our portrait of a graduate work and many other things. So it becomes incredibly difficult to figure out how to schedule time for all of these things. So the approach we have now is we do have the resources available for students and families beginning in grade three that would like to do that. And then

[01:53:31] students that would like to take it in a course-based experience can start doing that in middle school or high school. Thank you. My next question is regarding media literacy, regarding bias recognition. Again, while I scanned the documents, I was not able to find where that occurs.

[01:53:51] With media literacy? I'm sorry, just bias, recognizing bias exists in all of media, particularly in AI. Yeah, and so the digital citizenship lessons, we do talk about bias and misinformation and those types of things that can happen in any types of media.

[01:54:10] that you find it is part of the digital citizenship lessons in part of the dilemmas for the upper grade levels but also we start to talk about information literacy and media media literacy and digital citizenship are really intertwined in some cases so a lot of that will come in during the media literacy lessons that are not shared right now we just shared the digital citizenship lessons for the first quarter but they will get that as well within media literacy in ELA and also library as well embeds those skills.

[01:54:48] Okay if we could speak to that a little bit in terms of right now we have the digital literacy lessons so when are the others going to be rolled out? I had in my mind's eye that we would have one of these each quarter but it doesn't sound as if that's what's going to happen. We'll have digital literacy one quarter, media literacy another quarter. I think I misunderstood that.

[01:55:12] yeah no it's one lesson per domain each quarter so for digital literacy uh excuse me for digital citizenship for media literacy for example i think we only sent you the slice of the materials that were digital citizenship and i think that's where the confusion is coming in um so we've got to package this all again kind of to your earlier point and suggestion about having a an introductory statement for all of this and getting this in a format that's more digestible for community members parents board members we're still that's still a work in progress very good I'll put myself on a go back and now we will go to mr.

[01:55:51] show stack she'll stick she'll stack newt thank you it's shostek for future reference um so just a point of clarification here will the additional lessons in the later quarters of the school year are they replacing or adding on to current advisory lessons, or are they filling time that would have otherwise been independent time for students?

[01:56:17] So it's a great question. At the secondary level, we're trying to integrate these into the actual courses using the language arts time as much as possible with supplementing time through advisory. So kind of a shared delivery model through academic content courses and through advisory.

[01:56:33] OK, and I guess to follow up with that, would this potentially have any conflict with curriculum surrounding like AP, if you're in an AP English language course, because they're on very like strict time schedules in terms of when they're doing tests and then studying for the exam.

[01:56:50] Could this potentially be pushing that back? - So I think that's one of the things that we're trying to protect against to make sure that that doesn't happen. And that's where like the advisory then would take on more of that content. But that's one of the things we're concerned about as we expand or potentially, I should say, expand the scope and sequence beyond four required lessons per quarter.

[01:57:10] - Okay, I guess to that, thank you for that and thank you for the presentation. I guess that I will say that there could potentially, especially with bleeding into more advisory time, especially, I mean, I understand the importance of reinforcing the ideals of digital citizenship and educating students on this, but for students in high school later on, especially if they've been given a lot of these foundational resources and lessons earlier in their, you know, FCPS careers, that this could potentially, like, dig into some advisory

[01:57:46] time that could have otherwise, I think, been very critical to students in high school later on with their studying for tests or, you know, just working on assignments that they always couldn't do or anything along those lines that could present some issues there. I think you're 100% right, and that's a good caution for us to keep centered as we roll this work out again there's going to be opportunities to get feedback from students from teachers and you know hopefully from our initial rollout in the first quarter we'll get some information about you know some of the challenges some of the pain points and we could even adjust during this particular school year okay um just one last thing and along the lines of that would

[01:58:25] it potentially be possible to condense the the content review of of the the multiple because i I guess the idea is, you know, one for each quarter is, like, the baseline, but would it potentially be doable to condense that to maybe just two or, like, one a semester or something along the lines of that?

[01:58:43] I think it's definitely possible that the challenge that we've got is kind of competing priorities in a sense, if you will, right? Like, we know this information is really important to develop these skills, and we know that there's a lot of other content that has to be covered, so we're trying to find the sweet spot. I'm not saying we found it, but that's kind of why we landed on these four lessons per quarter as a starting point with trying to collect information to see did we get it close, are we a long ways off, and then continue to iterate from there.

[01:59:11] So I think the first quarter is going to be a good learning experience for us, and we definitely can reset after that if it's necessary. Yeah, and just one thing I would add, I think this speaks to a couple of board comments, which is one of the reasons why we picked English language arts is just because of, like, the really high overlap between some of the digital literacy skills that we're focusing on and the content level skills.

[01:59:30] So as a former English teacher, we were talking about these kinds of things almost on a weekly basis, not always with technology necessarily, but in terms of how we look at sources critically, how we really evaluate those things. So I know as we looked at, like, the 11th and 12th grade lessons, which I think is probably when you're hitting, you're definitely hitting the, well, 10th grade as well for AP English as well.

[01:59:48] But I don't think that those will feel foreign to what's already happening in the class in terms of, you know, for example, rhetorical study within an AP Lang classroom. Like, that's going to feel really in line with what we're doing in these things. So hopefully the synergy there will help. Okay, thank you.

[02:00:04] Yeah, and on that note, I'll actually say that last year we did, I think, I mean, I could sort of speak to that in my AP Lang class. I think naturally there was a lot of media literacy, digital citizenship type content that we did. and i will because i know that that part of what the board has been speaking on recently is is whether or not because in this proposal the idea is that ai will not be used to to to teach digital literacy here but i for one would potentially be open to that in the future um for for using ai to help prepare students for you know what they're going to eventually have

[02:00:37] access to later on in life um to to try to set them up for for success here um because i i think that there are definitely positives it could be used as a very vital tool and if we're teaching literacy on it and trying to get students familiar with how to use it properly part of that is is allowing them to use it in some limited capacity so i would not be totally against that i really appreciate that perspective and miss lady's comments as well i think the conversation we had in our work during the summer with the committee is we don't want to get ahead of where the board policy is going to land so again that could be something that could even be adjusted later in the school year pending board policy and board direction.

[02:01:14] Thank you. Okay, we're going to move over to some go-backs, and we're going to kick things off with Ms. Marin. Okay, so to me, it doesn't seem like we're starting at the beginning of the K-12 journey and thinking about the students' experience and what they'll be able to do and what apps are introduced when.

[02:01:31] I mean, kids in primary grade, they do not need media literacy when they're literally trying to learn technically how to read. I think we need to really differentiate what's happening. And we're making big statements like, you know, deep fakes and media literacy.

[02:01:47] That's not what every grade band needs to understand. What do kids need to know? I think this is a norm the board needs to decide. We want kids to be safe. We want kids to not be addicted to devices. Those are the lessons I think would be repeated throughout the year. I think we need to accept where kids are when they arrive.

[02:02:04] You know, if they're generally arriving at their early years, those whose parents have kept tech away, those who have had limited experience, and those who may have had too much. You know, this word embedded seems to keep being made. It's all embedded in the curriculum. No, it needs to be distinct and explicit. That it's not embedded, that's why Schoology use is the way it is.

[02:02:24] Because every teacher does it differently in grades and in schools, and it's not okay for kids. I view this as a paradigm shift, okay? And perhaps it's the board policy that will make it happen, happened but I do want to say I think that the superintendent is ahead of the board policy I mean slide 10 says this is what students will learn how do we know what students will learn if the board hasn't said it yet you know the board directed that there be no devices in kindergarten but to my knowledge the superintendent is going to allow it for Lexia and I don't know what the truth is and how our classroom teachers even gonna be provided input I I don't think

[02:03:03] that even discussing like when I looked at the sorry so discombobulated it's a lot like FCPS like we haven't even inherently decided if we want to use Google slides as the mechanism of delivery of instruction because that seems to be what's happening when I looked at the sample curriculum it's look at this slide look at this video watch the Sesame Street video and yet this board said we're gonna wait until 8th there's a lot of incongruous things happening does this board agree that content that instruction will happen on a google platform or a powerpoint slide beginning in kindergarten do we agree with that i think we

[02:03:43] need to answer that question because somewhere with covet it morphed into that is the norm but we never intentionally decided that and now it's just the way business is done um again on the presumed use you know we're going to say parents please wait until eighth grade but here's your device little kid we can't say both things um you know the thing of the example of device free time in second grade I actually had a different opinion on that one but again that is a lesson for every every year let's remind we adults need those lessons maybe as a board this is the time when we say okay how about this is

[02:04:20] the impetus to have a steam elective a steam special in every elementary school and every week kids are learning that or how about we have a required course at the start of secondary school about healthy technology and digital literacy see one class a quarter is just it's not good enough we need to accept this paradigm shift and not dabble at the edges with an extra class here and there let's give the kids what they need and stop adding it to teachers as an add-on I have more to say but I'll stop with that Thank You Miss Marin mystics it so

[02:05:00] I wanted to talk about the next steps and board discussions and one of the point this is gather staff student and family feedback is that also basically on a quarterly basis what what are the plans for that well summer was short so we don't have final final plans but our initial thinking was to try to do something at the end of first quarter after we had actually delivered a few lessons and could have some you know informed input from different perspectives so that's what we're working towards right now is to figure out what that could look like so that we could do course corrections if necessary during the school year thank

[02:05:40] you so the feedback I've been receiving from parents it's mixed right some are pro like using of AI some are not in favor of using AI in school and I just totally I think their decision as they think it is right for their child or not but I as our high schooler especially step into college I think the literacy as absolutely needed and if they don't know how to use is AI they will I guess use it in college and maybe then they'll be first time coming

[02:06:13] across that the tool so I was a part of digital literacy I think it is important to show teach them the ethical use of AI and the guardrails around it because school has those guardrails which may not be there and at the college level so So I would be okay if it's a part of the specific instruction to teach them that what AI can do and not do and should not do, even when you go to college, can't cheat.

[02:06:42] So lastly, I would say that the part of digital literacy is the burden is not only on schools. The burden is not only on the school board and the people in this room, including parents and staff it's everybody who's involved with the child in our in our county and I I will urge all the parents in this room today is that talk to you other parents because when we go outside in the supermarket or dish going to get in the restaurants we see this two five-year-old and seven-year-old on their devices it has become an epidemic and this needs to stop and this is not

[02:07:21] something we could do even if we prohibit I mean we don't allow our kindergartners to bring phone to school but they're using it outside and then they are coming and we are saying we're not going to teach you into those computers and these devices but power the parents who are giving it for like a free fall right so I would like our community to come together and just not this become like a school issue it is an issue of the general community everybody's issues I'm basically I'm saying is that we need to work together and all the parents have to be part of this part of this so lastly I'll say

[02:07:58] this the the lessons I think we need to do a lesson for our parents make it mandatory for them to also attend it thank you Miss Lady all right I too have a lot here so I want to comment on technology I guess two points I want to is that there are, there's a Senate bill and a House bill that I want to make sure are addressed.

[02:08:31] One is about the online scams. So we're charged with teaching specifically. That's House Bill 17122.1 dash 70.2. And then there's also Senate Bill 6822.1 dash 206.d that talks about the addictive potential of technology.

[02:08:53] So I'm going to start with Daniel Tiger. Televisions are devices. And when I visit my granddaughter, the second my daughter leaves the room, I am begged to put on Daniel Tiger. And there's a limit on Daniel Tiger, but I'm using it as an example. So when we talk about teaching at primary levels the addictive nature of technologies, I think we have to use examples that resonate with children. So we talk about assumed use.

[02:09:22] I can't imagine any kindergartner coming to school who has not watched a television at some point. And again, I'm not trying to minimize. I also want any device use at any level to be explicitly purposeful around learning.

[02:09:39] So I just wanted to share those two things. To the idea of typing, yes, the best class my mother ever required that I take in high school was typing. I can't name another one that set me up for success in life any better. And now, more than ever, kids need to know how to type on home keys.

[02:09:56] And I'm going to give you an example. I was just talking to a student yesterday who took APUSH. We were talking a lot about paper-pencil. And she was sharing that the majority of her courses are very paper-pencil, where she attends. And I'll share in disclosure, it's Madison High School. And she said all year long in APUSH, they did their DBQs handwritten a whole year.

[02:10:16] Didn't once do them on a computer. She sits down and takes an AP test. Guess what she has to do? She has to type it on a computer. And she types with three fingers on one hand and one finger on the other. That's just however she learned. That tripped her up because she had never practiced it before she sat for her AP test.

[02:10:32] So this is a moving target. It's a multilayered target. I've got 38 seconds left. And I will say this, the wait till 8th, I very much supported from a cell phone perspective and a social media perspective. You know, that comes from the mental health expert in me in wanting to get that out of children's hands.

[02:10:51] I didn't at all, when I made that vote, say I was voting that a computer should never be in a child's hand before eighth grade. And if that was misunderstood, then I'll share that. Having said that, I will reiterate in my 12 seconds that if we're going to put a computer in front of students in a learning environment, it better enhance the learning, the creativity, the critical thinking.

[02:11:11] I'll stop there, and I'll probably have another go back. Thank you. Mr. Dannen. I want to ask those ladies' comments that, you know, the more you think about this, talk about with parents and constituents, you know, it gets a little bit bigger, but, you know, there's an argument you made, and I had a great conversation with an SBIT earlier this year that, you know.

[02:11:41] Mr. Dannon, I don't want to interrupt you. Mr. Dannon, Mr. Dannon, will we start his time? Your reception is pretty poor. Maybe if you turn off your camera, that might give us a little bit better reception. sometimes that works. Let's just restart his time, please. Thank you. Is this much better?

[02:12:01] Absolutely. Very much better. Oh, good. Okay. Well, I appreciate it. A couple of months ago, I talked about that. Mr. Dannon, I apologize. It was better and then it isn't at this point. Can you? Okay. If you want, you can just call my phone and I'll hold

[02:12:32] it up to the camera to the microphone because your reception is okay if you want to I don't know if we have chat feature or anything we apologize dr. Anderson for go back okay again I've been a big fan of saying two things can be true at the same time and I think in this case they are just reviewing back

[02:13:09] with what I watched the other day when I went through the lessons I'm looking at the kindergarten standards it talks about here that the students will the objectives is that consider the feelings of people around them even when doing things online yes that does presume that that child has done or would be doing things online we do know we have some students who are coming in they're all over the place as Ms. Dixon has shared. Some heavy usage and some no usage and everything else in between. So there is a tone here that there is some usage. If I

[02:13:46] keep reading it talks about how the device that it's being articulated here talks about any electronic equipment from phones, tablets, laptops, and television. I just think we need to parse that out a little bit in order to not put things in front of kids that their parents have been very intentional of not putting in front of them which leads me to the question that I did not ask earlier our parents able to opt out of these lessons so digital literacy lessons yes yes so we we haven't developed an opt-out process at this point again we're

[02:14:26] building on a foundation of existing curriculum that didn't have an opt-out that doesn't preclude us from doing that but that's the current state I think that's an opportunity because we have parents who are who have very strict rules about what they want their children to be to have access to and we see this all the time when we have parents who want to homeschool their kids they have all kinds of reasons this is another place where we can give some control back to what they want to do for their and have their kids be exposed to by having an opt-out to it so I would want to throw that into the con into the

[02:15:03] the feedback that you talked about receiving what is that structure you mentioned that there's a link on the website is it just there how is this going to be organized so teachers students and parents can give feedback again I apologize that we don't have the plan fully developed for that I think my comment about the website is there is a link there where individuals can submit comments and feedback about all things technology with respect to getting feedback on the lessons that's what I was trying to articulate is that we're still working on what that plan would look like but we think it's really

[02:15:40] important that we get feedback from multiple perspectives again right parents are incredibly important teachers are very important students are important so we're still working out the details of what that's going to look like and I don't anticipate that these lessons are going to be done the first week of school next week so we have a little bit of time in order to get some of the technology oddly enough to catch up to capture some of these things and to even be posted however we do have the benefit of the 30 schools that piloted these lessons talk to us in terms of the lessons learned well I think I'll open it up and see if any of my colleagues want

[02:16:17] to address that but I would say just remember those lessons that were piloted last year were just with respect to AI literacy right we're talking about four domains of digital literacy here so that was just one of the domains and I don't know if anybody has any feedback from lessons learned from the pilot that they'd like to share natalie do you want to do you want to address that one okay I'm Natalie Lorenzi the library services senior manager nice to meet you all so my team and Derek Kelly's team that tech team work together to develop these lessons and one of the big pieces of

[02:16:56] feedback is our lessons learned is with the feedback so we you know collected feedback from everyone from kindergarten through eighth grade and a little kindergartners would you know draw a picture or and all of that had to be translated into a Google form that we could crunch the data so and that was you know 30 schools so that's one thing that we're considering how can we have student voice with 177,000 students so that so that's one of the things we're grappling with right now oh no I think I was asking in terms of the AI literacy lessons that were piloted what did we learn from that experience oh lessons learned that's a good question so we learned that elementary school students

[02:17:36] are extremely confident. The pre-test, when asked how much they knew about it or what their knowledge was around AI literacy, they were very confident. And then it was nice because their answers that were either dictated for the littles or written by hand with older children really showed growth. And it wasn't all positive. AI is not always good. Sometimes it's not true. So they really found that they learned. There was a depth and breadth of their knowledge that they came away with that we were the teachers find those lessons easy to

[02:18:11] administer impactful what was the teacher feedback a great question they were and we got feedback as far as this question came up in the lesson could we integrate it into the new lesson so what we did in february is we took that feedback we evaluated it and made changes and did revisions in the late winter early spring you kind of answered my next question which was how different were those original lessons from the ones we're going to be reviewing at some point.

[02:18:40] Great question too. So not too different. I feel like they were enhanced overall but there were none that we completely scrapped but that said this is set to go in the fourth quarter and so those are still under construction and there's still possibility for change. Thank you. So Dr. Reed, I'd just like to get back with you a little bit in terms of investigating an opportunity for parents to opt out. What are your thoughts? I think that'd be a great conversation for the educational technology review committee but it seems reasonable okay all right my last question I think that I have on this topic I'm trying to keep

[02:19:20] it to this topic no okay now seeing that we don't have any more people on a go back for this particular topic we're gonna go ahead and open it up so that if there are other points that people would like to make or questions they'd like to ask of staff outside just the digital literacy aspect we kind of knew that this is part of the ongoing conversation that the board's having related to educational technologies. So if there are folks, if you want to go ahead and put your placards down and then

[02:19:56] you can reset, that would be awesome. Okay. We're going to go ahead and start with Ms. Lady and then go to Ms. Marin. Thank you. And this is, thank you for the conversation. A couple thoughts. One is I like, I want to elevate my colleagues' comment about a paradigm shift. And I think that's the case in a lot of what we're what we're doing is uh and we're trying to get out in front of things uh appropriately um i do want to go back because i did have a go back on the digital literacy can i gave you an example um skills applied through authentic classroom instruction

[02:20:32] you know students write prompts to test how an ai model explains complex data to different target audience students cross-reference ai generated summaries with primary source documents and peer reviewed studies. How are you going to do anything like that? How can you really teach how to evaluate AI, generative AI, without letting them utilize generative AI? Well, I mean, I think you've kind of uncovered the dilemma that we have a little bit in terms of the development of a board policy and trying to figure out how these things can move forward in the absence of that. I think the idea was that we could demonstrate, teachers could demonstrate that, and students wouldn't have to

[02:21:09] have access to the tools and the devices that are prohibited right now that would enable them to be able to do that on their own devices is that the best learning experience probably not but it's kind of where we are as we you know try to figure out where the board is a full body is with respect to ai use yeah um because i just want to point out like in terms of a paradigm shift it's a fundamental requirement in the workforce is demanding um and you know that students graduate a college or come out of high school with AI literacy. I'm just going to give two examples.

[02:21:43] The Ohio State University, they've implemented an AI fluency initiative, making AI a general education requirement starting with the class of 2029. And then also the University of Florida aims to integrate AI into every undergraduate major and undergraduate program, while smaller colleges are creating programs to teach AI from a humanistic and societal perspective, examining how it impacts communities and professors. I think it's going to push down.

[02:22:03] So I'm not saying I want to do it now. I don't want our young people doing general AI. I actually even have a problem with image creation of generative AI. Because once they start to learn that they can, you know, create an image, then they're like, oh, well, now I can make it wear a hat. Oh, now I can make its mouth move. Like, these are things that I want to protect our children from. So I just think there's a lot to think about. But kind of transitioning, I also want to talk about the fidelity of UDL. And to do UDL well, and we're talking about instructional delivery, and perhaps Mike or someone else can speak to this, that it's multimodal, right?

[02:22:41] Like there's lots of ways in which we do this. There's lots of ways where we give student choice. There's lots of ways where we assess maybe via student choice. Can somebody speak to that in regards to use of technology in UDL appropriately? Yeah, I think it's an interesting point.

[02:23:00] I mean, I think that when you look at the history of how UDL was created as a concept, it definitely started as kind of a reaction to a text-only world and recognizing that there are a lot of different accommodations that can occur when you provide choice and use certain technologies to be able to do that.

[02:23:17] I think that I use the word accommodation there, but I think I mean that a little bit more broadly that in a lot of cases there are situations where students benefit from the ability to access different tools that might exist that are harder to exist in a print format. So whether it's a read-a-lot accommodation or anything down that road that really helps you think through that, we see students all the time who benefit from that.

[02:23:38] um in in different ways whether it's hey i wasn't ready to say something out loud so i was able to write it and share it with the class that way um so i think there's different different ways that it approaches there it's not to say that's the only thing that the only way that you provide choices within a udl framework but it is definitely historically how kind of one of the ways that started i appreciate that um i also have heard teachers talk about using things like a hoot which can give a quick snapshot of where the learning is in the room without kids outing the fact that they're not up to speed with maybe their peers.

[02:24:10] And I think all that's important when you're trying to teach and move through a POS. I do have a question about CLTs and tech use, because we're having a lot of conversation about technology. So I'm curious to know, like, if CLTs are supposed to be creating formative summative assessments that are aligned, I understand there's some, you know, freedom in terms of delivery based on, you know, a teacher.

[02:24:31] But it is part of that conversation, tech use and when they're going to use technology. so there is maybe some consistency across the CLT. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely conversation about that. There was a lot of conversation, I think, last year as teachers in their classrooms and in their collaborative learning teams kind of watched what was happening at the board table and the discussions that we were having.

[02:24:54] I think those conversations started. I think they're going to continue this year. And one of the things that we've really tried to do and we're going to highlight in our professional development tomorrow is to really be cognizant of balanced use of technology. So we have this kind of purpose before platform framework that we're introducing to make sure that everybody's thinking very intentionally and making thoughtful decisions about when to use technology and is technology actually advancing the learning task and the outcomes for students or is it harming it?

[02:25:27] And if it's not advancing it, then we shouldn't be using it. And what could we do instead? So we're providing guidance around that, a framework to have those discussions And I think we're still kind of at the forefront of what that's going to look like. But absolutely, that work's happening. Singh, I have two seconds. I'll take a go back. Okay.

[02:25:45] Mr. Dannon has called in. So we're hopeful that his audio will work a little bit better. I think I need my own digital literacy instruction on how to properly call. We can hear you. Have to get the spot. Okay, thanks. Can I ask a little bit more, Dr. Sidhu, just to elaborate more on the Purpose 4 platform?

[02:26:06] that you mentioned or purpose for a platform or I missed the term. Yeah, I can try and then Mo and Derek want to jump in. Yeah, so essentially I think really just a refresh of a conversation that we've been having for a while that the reason why we use technology is not for the sake of technology, it's not for the sake of any tool or anything like that, but we're looking for opportunities or rather we're seeing if there are opportunities where technology can push learning further.

[02:26:36] And oftentimes the answer is no. There isn't a reason to use technology in a certain case. So an example might be if I'm doing writing at the beginning of every class, I don't need to do that online. That's something that can easily happen in an analog way. But there are other situations where technology can push things a little bit further in terms of the ways that we collaborate with maybe people outside of the classroom, for example.

[02:26:57] Or I'm thinking of a tool like Gizmos, which allows our science students to do labs that are otherwise impossible to do in school because they're either dangerous or at a micro level that you can't actually observe. So I think really what we're asking teachers to think through starting tomorrow is really just in any conversation in the future. If we're thinking about introducing a technology tool, why are we doing that? What's the reason for that? Does it add meaning to what we're doing? Does it enhance learning beyond what would have happened without it? And if the answer to that is no, then that's not something we need to introduce in that scenario.

[02:27:33] - I appreciate that. And I do want, at the same time, I wanna just extend publicly thank you to the teachers that are gonna be taking on new, and I recognize every year something new, but I'm gonna work with you all and your team the next several months with the committee and so forth to ensure that we're taking teacher perspectives into account and so forth and being thoughtful about this.

[02:27:53] So I'd also heard librarians be mentioned. Can you talk a little bit about how we're, 'cause I had a great email exchange librarians last week about this. Can you talk a little bit about how librarians and library science is being included in the digital literacy? Yes, absolutely. This is Natalie again. At the elementary level, principals, as was mentioned before, can choose between librarians or ESPITs or it might be the classroom teacher. But we are hoping, and we'll say this tomorrow, librarians, that it is librarians. We feel that a lot of this is in our wheelhouse. It was mentioned before, information and media literacies have always been something that, you know, for decades have been

[02:28:31] taught. The AI literacy, again, espets and librarians were involved in that field testing. At the secondary level, secondary librarians will also receive the message tomorrow at our in-service to support, and that's what they do. The English language arts teachers are probably some of the best customers that come into the library and bring their classes for instruction, so they will be well-versed. And also, I will say that the librarians have have received AI literacy PD for the last two years in our PD sessions and in the spring they had the opportunity to look at the field tested lessons and really dive in and we had a panel of librarians who participated

[02:29:10] and those who didn't were able to ask questions. So they're already well versed coming into this school year so they're well poised to support. - That's really awesome. And you mentioned this as well. I had a great conversation a couple months ago that fit around this discussion, the larger discussion, you know, I should point it out that, you know, there's an argument made that the 10 to 15 minutes of, you know, device use in class is used on a tool that we know works well and it asks for your research and data to support the tools that we're using.

[02:29:46] You know, that could be a good example of intentional use of technology, right, versus, as my colleagues pointed out, you know, two or three hours of YouTube short, or, you know, I've heard from other teachers and staff that, you know, kids are having meltdowns because kids are in mind because they go 10 minutes without, you know, watching, you know, their favorite show on tablets.

[02:30:05] And that's the kind of stuff I think that, you know, we're not setting teachers up for success if we as parents are not doing enough to regulate this. So, you know, I don't know if there's a board involvement for that, but I think it's worth mentioning that we're not going to be able to fix all this just as a board or as a school division, you know, this broader societal discussion that we need to have about how we can be intentional and meaningful about using technology and when how to use technology.

[02:30:28] Again, I appreciate all the work that you're doing and looking forward to hearing the recommendations from our policy making and coming on. Thank you, Mr. Dannon. Ms. Marin. So just on the topic of opting out, I'd like to share an example of when I worked more fully in environmental education, teaching kids geography.

[02:30:49] The younger they are, the more local you start. So you've got a little kid, you're going to teach them, right? they're going to draw pictures of their house, who's in their house. Then maybe the next year they're going to draw pictures of their street. And then their neighborhood, then we're going to talk about county, state, country, continent. That's how I think the approach should be for this. So we're going to talk about don't share your personal information on devices or how do you feel when adults around you are distracted with something, right? You don't even have to talk about device in kindergarten. We could talk about how do you feel when you don't have the attention of someone you loved that's pretty universal if it's designed to be

[02:31:28] age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate we don't necessarily have to parents might not want to opt out because yeah I would like my kid also to know like don't you know I'm okay with this school saying don't share your information on Roblox right that's the same as don't give your phone number you're standing in the grocery store with your parent you know these are like universal things that I don't know that we teach the traditional stranger danger so that's one thing. I also, the term balanced use of technology, okay, that was in a memo that went to all staff or back to school. I don't know what that means. The board did not define balanced use of technology, but that is what the staff is using to give teachers materials tomorrow.

[02:32:07] So colleagues, that's not our work. We didn't define what balanced use of technology is. I also want to touch on the citations in the sample plans. The VDOE standards for digital learning are from October 2020. Is that accurate? That's what we're working with? Six-year-old standards? Yeah. A lot's happened since then. So, you know, we're Fairfax. We like to go above and beyond. Is there a new version coming from the state? Because I'm not comfortable using almost seven-year-old standards, or six-year-olds, I guess it's October. The second thing is the common

[02:32:44] sense work is how did staff determine that common sense media was the go-to resource? Because you know who's on the board of that? Jeff Bezos, Google, a lot of companies whose best interest is not to educate children. They are not education experts. How does this board, who does this board want designing digital literacy and curriculum lessons? Is it FCPS staff? Is it common sense media? Is it other non-profit, not commercially connected entities? We have not decided that and the staff have gone ahead and used materials from for-profit interests. I also must take a moment

[02:33:23] to talk about the perpetuation of social media culture in this school division, if I could finish this point. My daughter will be in 11th grade next week. The amount of information that she gets from unofficial social media accounts is a problem, and there is zero guidance from this division on who gets an account, who gets to say what. I'll also say my son was in the VIP camp this summer.

[02:33:48] I got an email saying, hey, the camp's going to start an Instagram account. We're going to post pictures of our kids on this. Let me know if you want to opt out. Completely not okay. Completely. Not to mention, we're setting up kids for our culture of we're always going to be taking your pictures, and we're always going to be recording you. Do we inherently endorse this, colleagues?

[02:34:12] That is a question for a norm for us to decide. We'll put you back as well. Mr. McDaniel. So I'm going to take my time and talk about an issue that's popped up in the last 24 hours, and that's this iPad situation in kindergarten. I'm going to ask some very clear questions, and I need some very clear answers. Dr. Presidio, did you know at that July 16th board meeting that rolling back iPads, thus rolling back Lexia, would put us crossways with the legal requirements for the

[02:34:48] early intervention reading initiative? So I knew, no, first of all, no. To elaborate on that, I would say I tried my best and my limited ability that I was given to answer questions about Lexia usage, and I tried to indicate that we needed to do some additional analysis of the situation with that, but no, I did not have the ability to do the analysis to figure out how many additional hours of staff time we would need if we didn't have access to that resource.

[02:35:20] Well, going forward, if you know that a board action is going to put us in violation of of state law, I would appreciate a clear, direct answer, a very clear, direct answer. And if you have to take more time to get there, that's fine, but we need to have direct answers because now we're in the position where we are being told that we're going to roll back a board action on July 16th, taking away iPads from kindergartners because of this problem that was identified in ETRC.

[02:35:49] Another interesting thing that I read here, the recommendation is for a limited use of 1.25 hours of Lexia per week. That's 15 minutes a day. At least that's my back of the napkin math. But the Department of Education's own overview of Lexia, a program challenge, the second bullet point, says it recommends approximately 40 minutes per day. Lexia isn't even, we're not even implementing Lexia for the time that the Department of Education is saying we need to to meet the intervention requirements of the EIRI. But I'm supposed to go out to the public and tell them that we have to roll back a board action to meet legal requirements?

[02:36:28] This board has been put in an untenable position right now because we were not informed in very clear, plain language of this problem. And now I have a problem because I'm gonna have to second guess everything that comes to the board from staff on these topics.

[02:36:45] So I'm not happy. I've talked to a few of my colleagues. I don't think they're particularly happy. And the constituents not only sitting in this room, but the ones that have emailed me that I know are watching online, they're not happy. you know what? I don't blame them. We've got one shot to get this right, and we owe it to the public to get it right the first time. Okay, I think I will take my turn. That is one of the things that I wanted to raise, which is the Lexia use. I do understand that the state has put that

[02:37:21] on the use of approved materials for intervention. Is it the only method to fulfill the intervention requirement. No, and I appreciate the question. So let me see if I can kind of clarify. So let's back up and just remember that the state law passed through the Virginia Literacy Act requires us to assess students in grades K through 3 at the beginning of the year to determine students who need additional reading support through Erie, the Early Intervention Reading Initiative. We have about 30 plus percent of our students, incoming kindergartners and FCPS,

[02:38:01] that require additional reading services and intervention services. Students are entitled and were required to provide 2.5 hours documented in a reading plan for every student who on that state assessment is identified as needing additional reading support.

[02:38:20] You can deliver those services in a number of ways. We have chosen in Fairfax to be able to serve all of the students that we have to deliver teacher-directed instruction for half of that time, 1.25 hours of time, individually and in very small groups, and to use Lexia, which is an evidence-based program endorsed and supported by the Virginia Department of Education and allowed to be used to deliver the additional 1.25 hours of instruction. When we had the ability to do additional analysis and

[02:38:55] figure out what the impact of not using Lexia would be, we found that with 30% of our students needing reading plans, that we would need additional staff time if we were to provide all of that through teacher-directed instruction. We would probably need at least 20 additional FTE across the school division to be able to do that because we have 75 of our schools that have more than 25% of their students that have reading plans. So we would need an awful lot of additional staff time to be able to do that. That was not something that was passed

[02:39:32] in the budget. I don't believe that that would be something that could be staffed now and paid for now, but at the time when the board was having the discussion very late with many different motions on the table, we didn't have access to that information and that analysis. I certainly apologize if board members didn't have the information that they needed because we try very hard to get that information, but that wasn't a question that we anticipated going into that meeting so that analysis has been done at this point and it it would require a significant amount of additional staffing to be able to do that no I appreciate it thank you I think one of the things that some of the emails and

[02:40:11] everything else have presumed is that we must use Lexia to fulfill this requirement no we absolutely have the flexibility to provide all of that instructional and intervention support with teacher directed instruction the problem that we have is how do we hire train and pay for those additional instructors that we would need to be able to do that so right now from what I understand the interventions for kindergartners it's provided 15 minutes by the teacher and 15 minutes through Lexia which is not a must do these were

[02:40:48] local decisions is that accurate that's true and many of the school divisions around the state. Now, I haven't surveyed all of them, but I know Loudon and Prince William County both use Lexia in the same way that we use it as part of the reading intervention services. Because again, when the state passed the Virginia Literacy Act and put that requirement in place, there was no additional funding to be able to provide that intervention support. It was incumbent on every local school division to determine how they were actually going to do that and provide the funding to be able to do that. And you said earlier that 30 percent of our kindergartners have reading plans yes so then we have a small subsection of our entire group of

[02:41:27] kindergartners who would require our choice to deliver their intervention by the use of Lexia so this would not be something that would impact 100% of the students that's correct so well I just want to clarify these there's been some discussion about that the committee I think felt that that all All kindergartners would, for a variety of reasons, I'll let Dr. Presidio explain why the committee thought that, but when I received those recommendations, I felt that in order

[02:42:02] to be consistent with the board direction, which was that pre-K and K would not use devices unless there was an IEP or a 504 multilingual reason, what I then went back to Dr. Presidio and said I'm going to narrow the committee recommendations to those students requiring extra reading support slash in alignment with their reading plan to get to your point, which is if 30% roughly of our kindergartners require a reading plan and roughly, Dr. Presidio, what percentage of kindergartners

[02:42:42] would likely be on an IEP slash 504, 15 to 17 percent, many of those IEP goals are actually written in tandem with reading plan goals is my understanding.

[02:42:57] So we could have a significant overlap of kindergartners who we've already and the board has already identified as utilizing potentially technology to support those narrow extra support needs.

[02:43:12] And so I felt like if we could narrow that and make sure that we have our kindergartners who require that extra support or who do have reading plans, that we are able this year to support that with Lexia based on Dr. Presidio's assessment that the budget is completed already, and we certainly don't have the flexibility right now to hire more staff as we work on class sizes, that that would probably resolve as much as we could for this year pending a further board discussion which we're having right now and i appreciate mr mcdaniel's point as well

[02:43:50] i will say that if i'm a kindergarten parent of a kindergartner who's reading at a well above grade level i think we would all agree we would expect that youngster to be reading a book or reading other materials right a tactile text so and i think the committee would prefer that as well. I think we're also asking kindergarten teachers to be flexible this fall in terms of how they're planning to utilize this intervention block time. But I just wanted to make sure we were clear that we did the memo I sent to you narrowed that focus to the students, kindergarteners

[02:44:29] requiring additional reading support in alignment with their reading plan. Right. Thank you. I appreciate that and you're probably you just got to some of the places why I wanted to go because there have been lots of communication about this over the last couple of days so I want to make sure that the public that is hearing this and watching or in the room have clarity we will not give devices to a hundred percent of our kindergarten students that board motion is still valid and still stands it will be a small group of students just like there was already a carve out, as you mentioned, for students who need that additional support. So

[02:45:07] you're grabbing them in that group. That's correct. And I think the language I chose was very specific because in speaking to Dr. Presidio and also a number of other staff, you could technically not require a reading plan and still have some need for reading support around certain elements of the reading process. So we want to make sure that those students and consult teachers and families around because families are a part of the reading plan conversation that teachers and family members are able to have that conversation about those supports of the reading plan and there it is possible

[02:45:46] for students to be on grade level but have comprehension for example challenges or fluency challenges there's certain phonemic or phonetic challenges that may still benefit from some enrichment around that, but it is not intended to have all kindergartners on devices, because the board's been very clear about that.

[02:46:08] Okay, I appreciate that, and I appreciate that you've just raised that the families are part of the reading plan composition in order to say yes or no, that I don't want my child to have more instructional time on a computer. That's a potential result.

[02:46:26] The mechanics of the development of the reading plan, Dr. Presidio's team, will have to discuss. I know families are involved in that. Because, again, we have some families who are making intentional decisions around how much media their students are exposed to, particularly when they're five, and if there's some space for them to contribute to that conversation to really determine what the gaps are for their children and how else they could be fulfilled.

[02:46:52] Which brings me to my last point, as my time whittles down. I appreciate the narrow components, the narrow focus that you've put together, the guardrails, that this is going to be still super limited. However, I was in elementary school myself as a teacher.

[02:47:13] I realize we are doing this because it's a matter of convenience, because we're able to just provide more. This is not the only way to offer comprehension, intervention, or reading intervention. just more expedient because we're able to just get them through I I will not be convinced that this is the only way to intervene by providing an online support well well it's not and again all of our students are getting at least 1.25 hours of teacher directed instruction as part of their reading plan as part of

[02:47:47] Erie so I would look forward to if we have to do this this way this year for this very small limited group of students from whom parents will have opportunity to say yes or no the next year will have a different plan in order to figure out how to intervene for those students that is not technology based necessarily because it doesn't have to be delivered through a technology based it's just there's an expediency around that oh I think that's my time go backs no I'm gonna go ahead and take a turn real fast a couple of things this is I

[02:48:26] think a cautionary tale for the entire board as we move forward with these motions to make sure that we're giving staff enough time to understand the long-term implications the other thing is I want to remind us that the amended main motion for motion number one was actually that it was prohibited until the ETRC came back and gave the superintendent a recommendation about adoption so I feel like this has gone through the process that we said that it was going to go through the other thing that I want to ask about a possibility and I mentioned this to you before is I think a lot of our parents are very

[02:48:59] concerned about the tablet use specifically and so what i'm wondering is is this a place that we can try out some of the classroom set type of idea related to computers because we've talked a lot about whether or not we could have a classroom set at the elementary level that would allow students to to be able to log in and uh you know on individual laptops and i think that this may be a place that we could try that out to see whether or not it actually was a viable solution And whether or not one-to-one devices were required or whether or not that classroom set where every kid grabbing could just log in to whatever computer that they were on.

[02:49:37] So I think that I would ask whether or not, I know it's still 4,500 laptops just doing back of an envelope math, but it's not an insignificant number of laptops. But I'm just wondering whether or not we could figure that out as a way to not put kids on tablets specifically.

[02:49:53] So I think it's a great question. I'm going to invite BJ in in just a second. But one thing I just really want to clarify for anybody who's watching in particular, we are not checking out devices to students in pre-K and K. We are not checking out devices. There's no individual device sitting there for a student, right?

[02:50:11] I think that's a great clarification. Students will be provided with the devices to do the activities that they need, right? So if it's necessary for the IEP, they will access that device to complete that particular instructional task that's necessary for their IEP. If we move forward with the Lexia exception, they will use the device for that 15 minutes a day, and then it will go away.

[02:50:32] We're not checking out devices to students. In terms of if we have enough supply of existing resources to use. Dr. Presidio, can I interrupt you just for a second? Because I think you just said something that I will have 15 e-mails in a second. If you have kiddos that require a device permanently for their IEP, that will be honored.

[02:50:53] That will be through the IEP process, 100%. I just want to clarify. No, I appreciate clarifying that because there's a lot of nuance in this. But the general rule is we're not checking out devices unless the student is required through their IEP process to need that device for the entire day.

[02:51:09] Now, with respect to whether we have enough inventory to use laptops instead of tablets at kindergarten, I'd have to defer to BJ on that. We could figure that out. There are a couple of options. We could do computer labs. We could bring computers on wheels. they usually call them calves, we have a lot of options.

[02:51:28] - Okay, the only reason I ask is just because I think that it is worth it to look at it as we can use it as an unofficial pilot on some of the things that we keep hearing that parents have interest in implementing, but there's concern within the division about whether or not they're feasible in the long run.

[02:51:49] And so I just think that if we're gonna look at those as a possibility, then this may be a good test, particularly since I agree with parents about the fact that there's not necessarily a skill set that kiddos are using on a tablet that they're not, that they would replicate in the future because most of our devices are not touch screen and that's not the way that that's gonna work.

[02:52:10] So I just think that that's something that might be considered as we move forward. When, just so I have an understanding, when is the timeline that we would actually be starting this work with Lexia for our kindergartners, just so I know how much time we have to figure these things out. I'd have to triple check with the language arts team, but it's a couple weeks into the school year because the first step is to establish, obviously, classroom culture and routines and everything. And then with respect to the Erie plan, then we start with the assessment, which takes several weeks to administer. We get the data, then we develop the plan. So we're several weeks into the school year before that would happen. Yeah, I want to say our priority

[02:52:48] one is helping our youngest learners to kindergarten right they need to learn that right so the we've got plenty of time reasonably to um to work on this as a challenge yeah i'm not making obviously not making an official motion or anything like that i just think that this is an opportunity and it would show that we are listening to parents about the concern specific to tablet use because it doesn't replicate anything else we are doing it was for quite frankly it was for ease of access with during covid and so i think that that's just a just something that we can consider moving

[02:53:24] forward miss lady thank you oh no i apologize i apologize we have somebody else who has not had a first turn i moved on to the second rounds too quickly mr moon thank you thank you chairman lady this goes to chairman lady first and then perhaps you know dr reed is since we have the amended motion number one passed the second second meeting in july which pretty much says the prohibition

[02:54:00] of use of digital devices by the kindergartners will remain in effect in effect pending etrc's recommendations to the superintendent and it's and any resulting bold action which we have not taken and we perhaps i don't know i don't see mr foster here i don't know whether we can even take any bold action at work session so class starts on monday so if the board doesn't take any action

[02:54:37] at any time so prohibitions will remain in effect so whether madam chair you're going to put this on the agenda at the next meeting which is Thursday and if if that's not the case you know how we're super intended to proceed so we're the teaching our kids thank you for the question I think that this is unique among the motions that were brought on that particular meeting because this one had that caveat within it within it and by the way I don't know I want to know that this is one of the motions I support it right yes sir so what I would say is that the ETRC made a

[02:55:17] recommendation to the superintendent she in turn shared her version of what she would like to see implemented and we have discussed putting it on new business and then perhaps voting on it and to the conversation about the amount of testing that has to take place before they do even identify who needs to get a reading plan I think that we can make that all happen and you know do you want to add anything dr. Reed yes ma'am I think the board direction is clear that there will be no devices issued pre-K and K unless students have a documented IEP 504 or multilingual need

[02:55:56] until those recommendations came to me and I provided them to you, which I've done. I've narrowed them in two spaces on two of the topics. And I think motion one did have the and with the vote. And I've asked Mr. Foster if that requires or not.

[02:56:11] Either way, I think we certainly have time for that. So we can put that on new business, and that would put it the first meeting in September, which would still provide time for, you know, the reading. They're going to be doing reading assessments regardless before we'll start the intervention block.

[02:56:31] Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, Ms. Nimone. Ms. Lady. So two things. Well, maybe three. I don't know. In talking about the requirements of VDOE in terms of reading plans and staffing, you know, I don't know about my colleagues, but I assume that you have had principals in touch with you about their desperation for staffing at the moment.

[02:57:04] We are in a very, very, very fiscal tight budget bind here. And I'll give an example for one of my schools. know I've got you know third grade loading at 29. Now that's within the confines of the VDOE but it's not what we traditionally do and I had a very specific conversation with a specific teacher who has among the 29 six students with an IEP and talking about how do you manage that many third graders without a full-time aid which is what a kindergarten classroom has

[02:57:40] and keep technology out of their hands. I'm just sharing the question that was posed to me because of trying to do station work and to try to do what has to be done and you know after i this came after i presented to a faculty my expectation of not putting a computer in front of someone for passive use so this person found me in the parking lot to articulate a different issue i also elevate it because in an ideal world we could do all direct instruction and all one-to-one support for reading plans which is the ideal way to address this but fiscally it's just prohibitive so i just want to

[02:58:14] make sure people understand that we as a board would love to do all these things with fidelity around instruction and teachers and support so i just want to mention that and you know we're going to be hearing it and and again we're going to be hearing from parents as soon as they get their class roster and their student goes to school and come home and they find out how many kids are in a classroom and so we've got to be prepared to respond to those um and try to help our teachers again um you know do direct instruction one of the other things that went

[02:58:50] to the etrc was a motion that i was the maker of and had to do with the bring your own devices i saw in some of the notes a reference to shutting their access to the network down that was never discussed ever i heard there was a lot of conversation in the meeting about that i'm here to tell you as the maker of the motion we didn't even talk about the cell phone ban having the fact that they had to not build access the network they they're on the network it's just they're put away these own devices some of them use them before school some of them use them for extracurriculars after school must be

[02:59:25] put away belt about but nowhere in there where I was the motion requiring IT to be involved in anything to do with accessing the networks I just want to make that clear clear as the maker of the motion and then I just also want to reiterate the fact that I think that we have to figure out a way to make sure we have a STEAM classroom in all of our elementary schools because that's important work. Thanks. Mr. McElveen for our first time around. Thanks just one question so I know that access to CLAWD has been disabled throughout the system

[03:00:04] can you tell us the the status of that and what it looks like for potentially restoring that at some point i don't have any updates right now but we're working with legal counsel john's office we're working with instruction trying to figure out how we could get them to sign the ndpa and as soon as i have that update i'll provide it to you uh i think i along with many others are very eager for that to be restored thank you uh ms marin for go back okay um first

[03:00:42] of all i think that this board needs to think really hard about its work agenda for the year head in the decisions we want to and need to make we have to have discipline to not make standalone recommendations and we have to bring motions that have considered budgetary and staff workload I'm guilty of contributing to this timeline but I will say I tried as early as May to obtain decisions so that we would not be putting this kind of pressure and confusion on our staff it's it's really I'm embarrassed for us and I apologize to teachers I want to confirm understanding of how the superintendent came to this decision about the kindergarten devices. There was the board directive in June. The committee, the

[03:01:20] ETRC, met three times. The last meeting was on August 4th. There was a memo from the chief academic officer to the superintendent on August 10th. Then there was a memo from the superintendent to the board on Friday August 11th with the recommendations saying she will adopt the ETRC's recommendations about the K devices. But here's the thing, I don't believe that the committee's recommendations are legitimate. We heard from a member last night, we were all emailed and said there's a mischaracterization of the ETRC recommendations. This person was surprised to see the items in the memo

[03:01:59] upon which the superintendent has adopted that these actually are formal, they're not formal recommendations. The memo states, so this member said, I don't recall the committee reaching that recommendation. Let me find the other thing. I don't recall a discussion, vote, or other process in which the committee agreed, in this case, to increase the number of frequency required lessons. Several other members I've spoken with and have the same recollection.

[03:02:30] There is no vote, no consensus data. Instead, the memo summarizes themes from individual feedback and then presents that feedback. The recommendations that the superintendent is using were content from a Google form submitted individually by members and not synthesized through an actual vote of the committee.

[03:02:51] And just like the Boundary Review Advisory Committee, where the recommendations were presented publicly to the board and the board voted to take them or not, take the recommendation or not, this defies that precedent. We get it in a memo from a committee that didn't approve those final recommendations, and now it's going to be implemented tomorrow against the board directive.

[03:03:13] This is not okay. It's not legitimate. And folks, if our board doesn't stand up and say our directive with no devices for kindergarten stands, I don't understand the purpose of this board. We gave a directive, and the superintendent is not keeping it.

[03:03:29] And the integrity of the committee is not intact. Now, I could give grace, but there are just too many things. There's too many things. And a Friday email to the board is not the sufficient way to do public business. Dr. Anderson.

[03:03:48] Thank you. One of the things that I had, because, again, there's been so much traffic around this, was, and I don't think I have all of the information that Ms. Marin just talked about, I wanted to get a better sense of the recommendation, Is the matter in which Ms. Marin described the recommendation being provided, is that accurate?

[03:04:13] Well, so there were a number of things that Ms. Marin raised. If you're referring to the board motion on digital literacy curriculum. No, not at all. Just the recommendation out of the ETRC. How has the recommendation happened to have Lexia be?

[03:04:34] So the board, let me just start with the board motion and I'll try to get to that. So the board motion from June 11th, 2026 was to provide enhancements to digital literacy instruction with sufficient professional development for staff directly instructing students and to make the content publicly accessible.

[03:04:53] So what we did working with the ETRC was to mention at the very beginning of the process, starting at our first meeting, was to map out kind of a list of things that we believe that we needed some discussion and feedback from the committee members on before the start of the school year.

[03:05:09] Because if we're going to have digital literacy expansion work, then we're going to need to prepare the curriculum and we're going to need to train our teachers. And we have two central staff development days a year, one on August 19th. So we wanted to get that work started.

[03:05:24] We prioritized that among the various deliverables that the board had given us, is something that we would start in the summer. We did not fully vet all of the lessons and all of the materials. We were very transparent with the committee about that, that we would come back and we would continue to do that, but that we needed to provide information and direction for the start of the school year for our teachers during in-service week.

[03:05:49] So that's what we've done. We stand ready to make any revisions to the lessons that we need to make. I think we had some very good suggestions in the work session so far today about some things that we can look at. We're going to collect feedback. I apologize. That was not the one that I was speaking to.

[03:06:05] I was not clear, so it's definitely on me. I was speaking about topic four, the kindergarten device access, that recommendation coming out of the ERT. I apologize, I thought you were talking about digital literacy.

[03:06:21] We have 100% gave every individual that attended the ETRC meetings the opportunity to submit their feedback with respect to the pre-K and the K device issue and Lexia. 83% of those members that submitted feedback favored expanding the exceptions for students to allow use of Lexia during the intervention block.

[03:06:50] Thank you. Can I ask, is there a rationale for, and I'm assuming because I was not there, so I should probably just phase this as a question. What's the discussion prior to the submission of their feedback?

[03:07:06] There was a lot of discussion. We started with the original recommendation, well not recommendation, but the board language from the motion that was passed in June, which prohibited the device access with some limited exceptions.

[03:07:24] we asked for feedback on that again we have a variety of stakeholders on that committee teachers and principals raised concerns about the viability of not having an exception for Lexia for Erie we had substantive discussion about that and ultimately ended up soliciting feedback with respect to whether or not the committee would recommend to the superintendent to expand the number of exceptions on kindergarten device access to include Lexia usage for

[03:07:59] the Erie intervention block 83% of those members that were in attendance supported that recommendation to the superintendent so I summarized that and submitted that to dr. Reed we had a conversation that she's already shared with with the board today that we thought it was more prudent to amend that committee recommendation to be more in alignment with what the board had adopted in June. And that was provided, that recommendation that obviously was ultimately provided to the board. So 83%, if we have a meeting in which, and I'm just throwing out just for the sake of

[03:08:36] this conversation, a meeting in which it was primarily staff, then that would offer a skewed perspective. Can you speak to who does that 83% represent? Who was in the room? Who elected to submit feedback so again I don't know that off the top of my head I have all of the percentages of all of the committee members and all of the votes I would say that the community representatives that have been imported that have been submitted and appointed to the committee from the Fairfax County School Board the Fairfax City School Board has one member and then we have a

[03:09:14] parent from SEPTA so we have 14 community members that make up the majority percentage of the committee when we took this consensus and it's not a vote it's just gauging consensus allowing everybody to provide their opinion out of the 14 committee community members on the committee 11 were present and 11 submitted information six were in favor of the additional Lexia exception which would be 55% of the voting members of that group that day um and five were opposed so the majority were in favor one of the five that was

[03:09:50] opposed was opposed and they submitted a rationale and notes and everything to support their vote one of the five opposed was opposed because they thought that the access should be broader and include things like st math thank you because i don't have all my background myself i'm being hinted a number of different things this says that 43 13 of the 30 supported for 12 of the 30 says I can accept it yes so you're right so what we've done and what we've tried to clarify is you kind of have this continuum of options there's three options that we've used for gauging consensus one is whatever the

[03:10:28] recommendation is can you support it the second is can you accept it and the third you cannot support it or you're opposed to it so 43% supported 40% could accept it so together that's 83% that could either support or accept the recommendation and this was just like hand no it's a confidential google form where people go in record their vote so we have a record of it and we can see who submitted what and they can provide information to support their opinion sure thank you for this i'm going to go back to my

[03:11:04] original comments one of the things that i wrote here is this would qualify i do believe as intentional use but it is not the only method to achieve this that's the piece i want to hone it on and i'd like to think there is a different space for us to land that's not lexia or more staff i i and i don't know what that is i i have some thoughts in my mind but because i'm not in these classrooms is it five students who need the support is it seven students that need the reading

[03:11:39] plans? Yeah, so we can only have a maximum of five students per group receiving intervention services. So the figures that I was giving you to calculate how much additional staff we estimate we would need is calculated based on groups of five students receiving the intervention. It's not based on one-to-one intervention services. So the state law says you have to cap these intervention groups at five students we need approximately 20 additional staff members using groups of five if we don't use Lexia because there's only two types

[03:12:18] of instructional intervention service deliveries that are available one is teacher-directed the second is state-approved technology instructional supports which which is Lexia one of the things that I would like to better investigate because again I'm very familiar with how it happens in a classroom and I would refute whoever accosted you in the parking lot to say how do I make this happen without technology stations have always happened in our schools since I was in school since I was a teacher and I didn't have nary a computer to make those stations happen we just use different things

[03:12:53] again just because it's the most convenient opportunity doesn't make it the only opportunity or even the best opportunity so I have lots of wonderings in terms of how these groups of five can be better managed. Would it be an additional group?

[03:13:10] Yes, but that's what it is when you're doing language arts and reading in elementary school. It's always groups, so it's not new to the structure. Somebody has to deliver that instruction per the Erie Guidelines and the Virginia Literacy Act. Absolutely, but I also did hear that all of our kindergarten classrooms have an assistant.

[03:13:30] And again, I am very familiar with how kindergarten classrooms are run. I'm very familiar. I just want us to be, to just turn every stone in a little bit instead of just saying this is the only means. So I 100% can go back and work with our language arts team again to see if there's any additional opportunities.

[03:13:53] My information, to my knowledge, the only way that we can do it is with additional teacher-directed instruction, which would require, Because, again, you have to have a certified teacher delivering the instruction with training and professional development and how to deliver the literacy intervention services would require the additional staffing.

[03:14:14] But we can certainly recalculate that again. Ms. St. John-Cunning. Okay, so I'm kind of along, somewhat along the same lines of what Dr. Anderson was saying because that's all my work has been in elementary schools and also our student ratios.

[03:14:37] and I'm already getting letters about class sizes and school hasn't even started. And then we're talking about class sizes in some instances for kindergartners that are very active. There's a lot going on. The issue that what we're up against right now is complying with what our state law is requiring us to do and being able to implement it this year versus alternatives that involve additional staff,

[03:15:12] additional training additional expense and additional time because time-wise i've been i've been in the kindergarten classes where they're working with with with the group one group and then the other group has the 15 minutes and how they rotate so this recommendation was based on the immediacy of the need is that correct that that's correct so again this is different than what general classroom instruction might typically look like this is requiring a certain number of minutes to any individual student that qualifies for the services and there are

[03:15:50] a lot of contingencies or restrictions that go about how we can deliver that instruction and what that needs to look like so currently and I know that we I know that we have time because I know the first couple of weeks in kindergarten they're just learning how to line up how to do the place to the bathroom how to pull their tray, and they're also getting the testing. Is there any way we can implement anything else currently, like in two months, aside from what the recommendations are, realistically?

[03:16:28] I don't believe so. I mean, I 100% can go back and work with our language arts team to re-evaluate, recalculate what additional resources we might need. But my understanding as I sit here today is to meet those additional minute requirements an additional 1.25 hours per week for over 30 percent of the students in kindergarten is going to require a significant amount of additional staff to be able to deliver that additional instruction so i appreciate that and believe me i have the highest respect for kindergarten teachers and i love kindergartners because

[03:17:04] they're the ones that give you hugs there's the one but also i have never had to be in a classroom with kindergartners all day long. So I have the highest respect for kindergarten teachers. And I think that, as one of my colleagues said, is we have to be careful as we move forward with all of this to not in our haste make decisions that have extreme budgetary requirements that we haven't been considering.

[03:17:31] So I would request that in the future, if staff has an inkling of what might happen, even if they're not 100 percent sure that they inform us like if you're going to move forward these are the possible implications and you may or may not have known that i understand that because a lot of times we don't exactly know that but also we're sometimes when we're making some of these decisions we're basing it on the information you're giving us and i would also caution our board that we also take the time to maybe take a little bit of time to and or to give you time to

[03:18:10] to give us back the information because we don't wanna be put in this position. So again, I thank you for your work, just thank you. - Okay, I'm gonna take another quick turn here.

[03:18:28] I have no delusions of grandeur that staff is watching all of the iterations of our meetings and so while I understand that we created quite a wave with the action that we took at the end of July, they didn't necessarily see how we got there And so it could look like we had made this split-second decision at the last moment.

[03:18:48] However, it did take us months to come to a board compromise as to a path forward. And I fully and completely understand the implications of what we did in July and how that impacted the work that staff had to do in order to get us ready in a month.

[03:19:09] And so I just wanna say publicly for the record that I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the work that has gone into this to try to be responsive to the requests that we have made. And I don't say that lightly, this is not lip service.

[03:19:25] I understand the hours and hours of work that you guys have taken in order to be responsive to what the board is requesting. And I also understand that to many members of the FCPS staff, that it looks like we made this decision thinking of them and I just want to make sure that that was that is known to not be the case and so but I am so appreciative I know that IT has been spending a ton of time I know that you know instructional services has been spending a ton of time and in addition to everything else that we have going on just to get school off and running for the year so I just cannot tell you how

[03:20:04] much I appreciate the effort and the in the thoughtfulness that you guys have taken in amongst all of this and we're not going to be perfect i know i agree with mr mcdaniel that i would love to have every decision we make to be perfect i will continue to say that i'm going to make the best decision that i can with the information that i have at the time and what this has taught me is to to take that extra second just a little longer and so that doesn't always mean that we're going to move as fast as everybody wants us to move but it means that we're going to move smoothly which i think is just as important so i just wanted to say thank you robin nope

[03:20:43] uh dr anderson i did have some questions that were unrelated to lexia so i'd like to take a moment to get to that um to to one of the things that we've discussed quite a bit and again this is probably just a foreshadowing into the the policy where we talk about balanced use of technology, as much as possible, just kind of hone into what does that mean?

[03:21:07] Because when you think of balance, you're probably thinking 50% of the time. I don't think that's what we're looking for. And so just to be able to tease that out a little bit, I think would be very helpful because it shows up in so many of the documents. Yeah, so I think I'm going to ask Michael to weigh in on that again.

[03:21:24] But I think in general, that was kind of the idea is the purpose before platform framework that we're trying to introduce again because the committee worked very hard during the summer but we weren't able to get through all the deliverables obviously in just a couple meetings one of the things that we have on the calendar is to talk more about what that would look like operationally and how to create more kind of screen time balanced guidelines if you will right but we haven't had the chance to do that so again going into the beginning of the school year knowing we've got one shot in front of all of our teachers before they go into the classroom and knowing the importance of making sure that they're thinking very strategically, intentionally,

[03:22:04] and critically about how they use technology, we wanted to offer them some initial guidelines and a framework to help them think about balancing out their technology use. So I'll just let Michael say a little bit more about what that looks like very quickly. Yeah, just briefly, I think I would say that, again, it comes down to the question of, like, intentionality of use.

[03:22:24] I mean, sometimes when we get asked about screen time guidance, if the answer is that the technology isn't being used well, then zero minutes would be a good screen time use in that situation because we need to make sure that what we're doing is intentional. So I think that for now, really, where we are, I don't know, it's necessarily about a percentage, but it's about people like an inflection point and people taking time to think through it and start to question the things that they've done in the past and say, okay, was this actually the right usage? Or was it something where, hey, this is how I've been doing it. So I continue to do it that way versus pausing and saying, okay, what am I actually gaining? Is the learning outcome enhanced by this? If the answer

[03:23:03] is no, then reconsidering that usage. So I think right now where we are with teachers is really just giving them a framework to think through that and maybe just a reminder that those conversations are important. And then I think as the committee continues to work, we'll continue to develop that out and get more specific on the guidance as we go throughout the year.

[03:23:21] I'd love to see that guidance become part of the vernacular in the way that we said, you know, this could have been an email instead of a meeting. Sometimes if you reflect, coming together is not necessarily the case. If you could speak a little bit more to the staff guidance, because you shared that document with us as well as the student guidance, that staff guidance document that's only available internally, that's not going to be something that's on Schoology or on the website?

[03:23:48] Well, the staff guidance, we're intending to publish both the staff and the student guidance again once we can get it formatted appropriately to comply with federal accessibility requirements. But again, the idea is to provide some guidance to make sure pending board policy that we're consistent with where we've been over the last several years and not expanding the use of any artificial intelligence prior to adoption of a board policy.

[03:24:15] So we've had guidance in place since, formally, since school year 24-25, and we had kind of informal guidance in place prior to that. But it was difficult for, it wasn't as transparent, I think, as probably it needed to be to the community. So we're going to try to make sure that we can get that, again, posted in multiple places on Schoology and on our website.

[03:24:35] Thank you. Speaking to the student guidance, are we going to have any kind of orientation to that for students, or it's just going to be posted for them to navigate? Well, I mean, ultimately, that's part of AI literacy, so that's where that would occur. Thank you for that.

[03:24:52] I know that we've had lots of conversations here in terms of sometimes an activity could be enhanced by AI in terms of having students have access to that. I just want to be mindful that we are not unintentionally contributing to the addictive nature of that kind of thing.

[03:25:11] Because if it's too fun, if it's too fancy, I want to keep doing that more and more. then I want to only do that more and more so it's a balance in terms of creating something that is high interest but still not making it as addictive because we all know that's kind of the overall plan I want to speak a little bit to that other email that went back and forth quite a bit regarding the Fairfax high school AI plan so just to clarify to make sure everybody understands because I don't think I was fully clear initially.

[03:25:45] High school students, well, secondary students, are allowed to use AI for assignments under these conditions. The teacher and the parent agree, and it has to be done outside of school on a non-FCPS device.

[03:26:06] So that's essentially correct. And again, this has been our... Oh, and they offer the citation. So that's that. Yeah, there's a number of technical things about making sure that any AI use on an assignment is transparent.

[03:26:23] Again, in school year, well, not school year, but in 2023, when ChatGPT 4.0 was released, right, we did not allow any access on FCPS devices. Today, we do not allow any access to generative chat-featured AI on FCPS devices.

[03:26:40] However, we know and the national data tells us that over 70% of students use it on personal devices in that age range. So we started to get questions from teachers about, well, what are we going to do about academic integrity? So we allowed teachers to determine whether or not they would permit students in their classes to use artificial intelligence on some or any assignments in their class.

[03:27:05] And teachers would need to communicate that and those expectations clearly to their students. That language is included and has been included in the SR&R since school year 24-25 as well. It's the same guidance that's there, and it all has to do with academic integrity.

[03:27:21] Because the issue is teachers were really struggling with students that would maybe go and have AI do their homework for them, right? So they needed to be able to provide guidance that AI would not be allowed to support homework, to support writing, to support research.

[03:27:37] However, if they chose to allow it, they could choose to do that. But it would require teacher permission, and parents should be aware that students would have access to that. So language is included in the syllabus.

[03:27:54] We've provided draft language for teachers to use in the syllabus to communicate what their personal classroom policy would be with respect to whether or not students could use AI to support their learning in classrooms. And there was an email that you're referring to where a school was kind of developing their own guidance around that.

[03:28:12] And we would obviously prefer and are working with the school to make sure that they follow the guidance that we've had in place around academic integrity and AI use since 24-25. Thank you. I think that would be an important reminder. And just lastly, just to kind of recap some of the other things that were discussed, the kindergarten use of Lexia, I understand the position that we're in.

[03:28:33] But again, I'd like for us to turn every stone and use that as a last option rather than a default situation. And also I want to raise into the room that I don't even believe class sets would be necessary because if we're using this for groups of five, six, seven kids, however many in your classroom that would require a reading plan, I don't even think we need as many devices, whether they be iPad.

[03:29:04] Well, I know iPad is not it. That's correct. And again, I just want to reiterate, we are not issuing one-to-one devices for kindergarten students right it's only in the the only exception for a one-to-one device would be if that was part of the IEP process as determined by the family and the school together and if we get to the space where the Lexia work has to happen then I would love it to be you use it and then you yank it away after the 15 minutes it goes away it doesn't just sit there and continues to be accessed thank

[03:29:35] you miss Marin yeah I'd like to get our own house further in order you know about AI and follow-up to the Fairfax High School I mean I saw this because a parent sent it but I had not heard anything of what was just said about students can use it for assignment not on an FCPS device I mean come on is that written down anywhere so that's part of again the academic integrity policy it's referenced in the SR&R it's been there for a couple years and that guidance is

[03:30:13] written down in a staff handbook and a student handbook which we will publish it does not presume. First of all, students do not have to use it, and it does not presume that all teachers would allow it to be used. In fact, most teachers do not allow it to be used, and they clearly communicate that. But there are some instances where if they allow it to be used, it needs to be communicated clearly. The tenor of this is so frustrating and sad. Why do I have to dig for all this stuff? And our last student board, Megan Sawant, said at the dais she could not find that document. And you did send it to us, updated in July, but it was never published.

[03:30:48] So these are facts, okay, that are trying to be explained away that only erode the trust that I have and the public has. The social media universe, that has got to be gotten under control. It cannot be okay that there is just haphazard use of social media by groups, by students, by teachers. I went through my own Instagram account. I checked. There are tons of accounts I was following that have been used in years with the fcps name on it do we care about our brand integrity or our legitimate

[03:31:21] risk to reputation or use we know there's been issues what's the plan um also we have got as a board to talk about graduated access to meeting learning needs it is not okay that an 11th grader cannot send an email outside the school division or or ninth grader or 10th grader they have internships they have community partnerships if we want to teach our children this is digital literacy. That's digital literacy, right? Ninth grade, here's how you compose an email. We want them to be civically engaged. They have to use their own. Actually, if I'll say, Mr. McElveen,

[03:31:59] your lovely global classrooms project, it says, use this Google form on an unofficial FCPS account. That's how we're doing business here. I don't think Mr. Sethi is okay with that based on the hard work he's done to make sure that we are as digitally safe as possible why is all of this the way it is and where's the plan to fix it does the board need to say these things in a directive because they seem pretty basic to me um people have been talking to me for years since robotics teams communicating with people in other countries they can't email they can't email their coaches

[03:32:36] and look trying about meeting parents where they're at i spent time yesterday going down the links the digital literacy link the title of it is digital privacy and I tried all sorts of search words just to look up I went down the rabbit hole I and I have a lot of access and a lot of knowledge I have been saying this stuff since my 11th grader was in seventh grade and I have not seen marginal improvements so is it going to take a board directive or a lawsuit or a loss of student life to make these changes we've already had students get in trouble

[03:33:10] because of social media use so colleagues is it our job is it the superintendent's job because this status quo cannot continue on any of those things miss lady yeah um i think a lot of valid points are being made um but i also i mean you know we got a lot of pushback and criticism from staff when we pushed out or it pushed out a scam email a practice scam email and it was on

[03:33:44] valentine's day and it was something to the effect of someone sent you a valentine and every time a lot of staff click on it um and then they're directed to go revisit the you know safeguards of your email and other things so i elevate this because i do agree you know when it comes to applying to college you can't access common app you can't do a lot of things on a fcbs issued device and i've brought this up but i don't the chromebooks are shut down and you can only participate inside the network because it's safety safety of opening something that's going to be

[03:34:23] destructive within the infrastructure so these are very important points i and i do think we have to i don't i don't know how we get to something different because we do need kids to be able to intern email about internships or receive an email from someone who they're employed by that says can you pick up a ship today at four because we took their phones these are all very important questions but i think it's the infrastructure and also when it comes to the conversation that i do know has been in the srnr related to the use of ai or the prohibition of

[03:34:56] ai which is more the case in in folks in their syllabus you know i would argue also that we have a lot of kids in this system who don't no one in their family has a personal computer nobody so to me it's an equity issue if i do give an assignment in my syllabus that says you may with parent permission utilize ai on your own device and i'm sitting there being othered because my family can't afford a second device so here's the thing we can't we can't solve all the problems

[03:35:31] we can elevate them i think that we need to be very intentional and and i do think it's you know we need to think about what needs to be in policy and what needs to be operationalized in regulation when it comes to the conversations that we're having about technology but we have to keep our entire one fairfax in mind we have to keep all of our kids in mind um and there's a lot of things that you know uh families who you know have never been food insecure and have never you know they have an abundance of technology in terms of multiple tvs in a house or in an apartment i

[03:36:07] I mean, our kids are in different places, and even streaming services, where they can stream National Geographic, or not that, but something much more modernized, which is a learning tool. I mean, a lot of kids are streaming things that teach them. That was one of my questions when I worked at TJ.

[03:36:24] What do you do in your outside learning? I was blown away with what kids are learning on their own, but they can't go to those sites on a Chromebook. So, again, it's limiting the learning that kids can do independently on their own. So that's not a question. It's not even really a statement. It's just sort of a wax and waning philosophical, which I hate to do in meetings because it doesn't get us anywhere.

[03:36:45] But I think it's things we need to think about as we move forward and continue to work on policy. Thanks. Okay. I think we've had an amazingly good discussion, and seeing no others, at 4.13 we are adjourned.

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