School Board Regular Meeting

Amit HickmanGood evening, ladies and gentlemen. Today is Monday, September 14, 2026, and this is a regular meeting of the City of Fairfax School Board. Please stand for the pleasure of allegiance. I

Molly Merlopledge allegiance to the flag of the United

Amit HickmanStates of America, to

Molly Merlothe republic for

Amit Hickmanwhich it

Molly Merlostands, one

Amit Hickmannation,

Molly Merlounder God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Amit HickmanThere are no changes to the agenda today. I'd like to, before we begin this evening's meeting, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the heartbreaking loss of a 13-year-old Frost Middle School student last Wednesday. On behalf of this entire city of Fairfax School Board, we extend our deepest thoughts and prayers to the students' family, friends, and all who are grieving. No words can ease the pain of our profound loss, but we want the family to know that our community stands with them and holds them close in our hearts during this incredibly difficult time. We also extend our support to the students, staff, and families at Frost Middle School, as well as to all those who knew and cared for the student.

I'd also like to recognize and thank City of Fairfax Chief Financial Officer Mr. JC Martinez for attending this evening. Our first item is the adoption of our agenda. Can I have a motion, please?

Sarah KelseyMadam Vice Chair. Ms. Kelsey. I move that the City of Fairfax School Board adopt the agenda as written and distributed.

Amit HickmanIs there a second?

Lauren BartelmeSecond.

Amit HickmanIt has been moved by Ms. Kelsey and seconded by Ms. Bartome. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. opposed? None opposed. The adoption of the agenda passes unanimously. We will start with citizen participation and we have nobody signed up to speak at this evening's meeting, correct? Okay. Our next agenda item is the report from our student representative for his first report, Mr. Kevin Murray. Go ahead.

StudentI just want to preface this by saying how lucky I am to be here with you guys and I'm looking forward to a great year with the school board. Good evening. As we step into the fall and officially kick off a brand new academic year I wanted to share a quick snapshot of how our schools are officially handling the transition. At Daniels Run the energy started building well before the first bell with the community welcome walk, kindergarten play dates, and open houses for both preschool and kindergarten. On top of that elementary school is giving is already diving into extracurriculars with signups and practices for girls on Claus Craft Club. Providence kept families connected right out of the gate with their

back to school night on September 9th following up on an August 20th open house that welcomed students and parents back into the classrooms. Throughout all of this they've kept up their Panther Way spotlight to publicly highlight safe, responsible, and kind student choices. Over at Katherine Johnson Middle School the focus was squarely on making incoming students feel welcome right away. They hosted both the Rise Orientation and Eagle Fest pairing season ice cream social to help break the ice before classes officially began. Here at Fairfax High School we kicked off the year with our Lions on the Rise program and our new student orientation and things have only picked up since. Homecoming planning is already in full swing, fall sports are officially underway

and we loved having our pyramid schools join us for a little Lions night to cheer right alongside our varsity cheer team at the football game. Looking at the big picture across all our schools students are adapting well to the new phone policy and settling into a great rhythm for the semester. Thank you all for your time tonight and I'm excited to continue partnering with the school board throughout the upcoming year.

Amit HickmanThank you, Mr. Murray. Any questions from any board members? No? All right. We will move on to our next agenda item which is a presentation from the Fairfax High School foreign language teachers. We have Ms. Coyle and Ms. Tiffany with us who will be speaking on the world language which camp that was held this past summer at Fairfax High School.

Kate TiffanystaffAll right, good evening. I'm Kate Tiffany, the Latin teacher at Fairfax High School. And I'm Natalie Coyle,

Natalie Coylestaffthe French teacher at Fairfax High School. So for our agenda this evening, we're going to give appropriate thank yous, recap what happens at our World Languages Camp, hear from some wonderful campers counselors and our wonderful esteemed principal Dr. A about the camps future plans for the camps and any questions that you all may have

Kate Tiffanystaffand that's us on one of our trips abroad you know in case you can't tell all right we'd first like to extend a huge thank you to the city board for continuing to support our program. This is the fourth year that we have been able to run this World Language Summer Camp, and we are very grateful. We'd like to extend a huge thank you to Carrie Dorsey for helping us with registration and promotion of the camp. A big thank you to Dr. A and Missy Courtney for helping us get the camp running at Fairfax and getting the building situation set. A huge thank you to our student volunteers for helping us run the camp on the days that it actually met, and to our other teachers who helped us because we can only do

our own languages.

Natalie CoylestaffAll right. So this year we hosted world language summer camps from July 13th to 17th at Fairfax High School from 9am to 2pm. That was Monday through Thursday. day we welcomed rising fifth to seventh graders from Providence Daniels Run Colvin Run Brookfield Colin Powell Eagle View and Willow Springs Elementary Schools we had 27 campers and among those there were 13 rising fifth graders seven rising sixth graders and seven rising seventh graders and then transportation was provided by the parents and caregivers to Fairfax High all students enjoyed a pizza lunch.

Kate TiffanystaffAll right. Our camp had students engaging in the four languages of our Fairfax High School World Languages program, French, Spanish, German, and Latin. Students engaged in a number of different activities such as celebrations of the World Cup, Twister, Mardi Gras mask making, singing, cultural food tasting, bingo, guessing games, making cafe menus, guessing the food in the target language, and many more activities plus lunch and recess every day. Recess had activities such as hula hoops, cornhole games, frisbee, soccer, and jump rope. Our students also received passports from their week at camp where they collected stamps and stickers their journey through the week and we have a on the next slide a copy of what

it was what it looked like for the kids

Natalie Coylestaffand then these are just some of the photos of our campers actively engaged in various activities arts and crafts interpersonal communication types of activities in all the different languages and having a great time lots of smiles and then some of the counselors did not want to be photographed but some of them are and yeah there's just some more photos of our lovely campers there some games some arts and crafts going on so we did get some the last day of camp we had a reflection sheet for the campers to give us some summer camp feedback and for some of the things they talked about for French they said they enjoyed the fun games and learning a lot they loved doing the Margie Gras masks I'm guilty

as charged for telling them all about Killian Mbappe the body parts game the french food game for spanish they enjoyed the me gusta project learning about numbers using stuffed animals to practice with spanish greetings guessing the number of m&ms in spanish the wheel game and using play-doh

Kate Tiffanystaffin latin the students really loved learning about the ancient Romans, wearing togas, learning about the Greek and Roman gods, playing the buzzer game. They actually got to play with a like a quiz bowl buzzer and playing e piscatum which is basically go fish but they had to do it in Latin. In German they enjoyed playing bingo, charades, learning about the animals and playing tournament style competitions. And we had one student who very especially wanted us to know that I will sign up again I love this camp so much because I got to make new friends and love the teachers you guys are the best don't forget that I would love more time to learn the languages and we are we will not forget no we will not forget oh

Natalie Coylestaffand these are a couple of cards that couple of our campers made as thank-you cards the very last day and those are just like on my fridge at my house because they were so cute yes okay and with that being said I'd like to call up a couple of our campers to share what they enjoyed about camps and any other comments so you guys can

Studenthello my name is Amelia and I this was my second year doing this camp and I have enjoyed it so much it has given me like a lot of background information on do in middle school and high school because I'm a sixth grader at Daniel's Run and it was I loved all the experiences and stuff I loved I had just started working watching the World Cup and I especially loved learning about Mbappe and all the buzzer game was definitely my favorite in Latin it was really really fun you

Kate Tiffanystaffknow all the answers Yeah.

StudentYeah. Yeah, and it just gave me a lot of, like, fun experiences, and I, it definitely helped me make my decision, and, like, now I know what I really want to take in high school, middle school. I think I'm probably going to take French, because I just really love that, and one of my friends, one of my friends speaks French, so I get to communicate with her. so yeah it's my sister Olivia hi

StudentI'm Olivia and I really like this camp and when my sister first went there when I was too young to go she had a lot she said there was a lot of fun experiences and I was like really I really wanted to do it so I was kind of impatient and and it kind of made the decision a little bit harder because like now I don't know which one to do because I like all of them so and I think one of my favorite parts was the games that we played because it helped me learn like in Latin we did twister and the only way to know what to do was to recognize like the body parts in Latin and the colors so that was like really fun. Thank you.

Natalie CoylestaffThank you Olivia. Thank you Amelia. Yeah, appreciate it. All right, and now if our student counselors want to come say a few words. These were Honor Society students. Yeah. Thank you.

StudentAll right, yeah. Hello, I'm Leanne. I am a sophomore at Fairfax High School, and I helped McGee Stratifany with Latin at the camp. I think my favorite part was just making connections with the kids, even outside of the class, when we had recess, like playing games with them during lunch, and also wearing the togas is really fun. So just thank you all for making this happen.

StudentHello, my name is Veronica, and I'm a junior at Fairfax High School. I also take Latin, and I was one of the counselors for the Latin language. And I really enjoyed working with all the students because they're very passionate in learning and putting in effort to all these languages, whether it was through different songs or different art projects. to be here. So thank you for having this happen.

StudentI

Speaker 11mean, I think we begin with a thank you to the school board for making the opportunity possible. By starting at the elementary level, we're able to give students the exposure and the sampling of four different world languages but I think it's a lot of benefits. Our amazing teachers get to begin recruiting and building a very creative program and legacy in that program. Our students that are taking those courses get to come back as counselors and practice in real time, actually teaching someone the language. And so I think you truly begin to see kind of building a legacy of languages, knowing they're important, knowing it's required for that advanced diploma opportunity. it's just really exciting to have that ignited passion

from the board to the school, to our teachers, to our students in the classroom, to our future students and our future Lions. And the energy is just contagious while the students are there and they're practicing. And usually the feedback at the end of the camp is that they wanted to learn more or why can't it be longer, right? So that they can learn more of the language. So we really appreciate that. Thank you.

Natalie CoylestaffOkay. So we have been doing the camps for four years. And over those four years, we've learned the importance of creating age-appropriate lessons for repeat campers and new campers with current culturally relevant materials. A couple years ago, we focused in on the Olympics, which were in Paris. this year obviously the World Cup was a huge focus and another thing that we are seeing I'm recognizing names of freshmen students in our classes who did attend camps in past years so the payoff is huge.

Kate TiffanystaffSo we've been doing this now as we said for four years and we've been enjoying it the feedback we've been getting is fantastic and this is something that we years to come. So we would certainly invite any questions that you might have for us.

Amit HickmanAll right. We'll go ahead with questions. Ms. Barame.

Lauren BartelmeI don't think I have any questions, but this is more than I've known about the programs, and it sounds very cool, and I love the high school kids coming back and working as counselors. That's great.

Amit HickmanMs. Kelsey. I'm

Sarah Kelseygoing to need to go back. One of my questions is I know all four years you guys have been doing the four main languages that are part of Fairfax High School. Have you ever thought of, and I know it's only a week, like maybe extending it and adding some of the academy language classes? Or is there a reason that we stuck only with the four main ones that are at the high school?

Kate TiffanystaffHonestly, we have been only sticking with the ones at the high school as a recruitment method. the Academy has the ability to draw from so many other areas that for us we need the recruitment I feel like more than the Academy does. So from our position this is an area of need for us and since we were putting this together we kind of put it together to our benefit to be honest

Sarah Kelseywith you. I understand that. Yes. I completely And I don't know if this is a question for you or Ms. Dorsey with it. I'm just curious on the numbers. Have your numbers grown over the four years? And then, like, returning versus new? Like, have we had a lot returning or more new each year kind of thing?

Natalie CoylestaffI definitely have seen a lot of returning campers. And every session we have brand new campers as well.

Kate TiffanystaffI think our first year had the largest numbers because it was new. I believe the last couple of years it's been a bit smaller.

Amit HickmanWe'll do a go back.

Kristina CecereGo ahead. I love this camp. My son did it two years ago and couldn't do it last summer. But he echoed a lot of the comments that we're hearing today. this is a great opportunity. You get to really dig into all four languages that's offered at Fairfax, something that even the elementary school kids don't get an opportunity to do with their foreign language that they get. I'm curious, thinking about that comment, is there any capacity of expanding the program to the elementary schools as after-school initiatives so that kids who may not be able to partake in that summer one week intensive, or even as a method to and you know pull those kids to say hey like you could even get a more intensive program right I'm curious what that capacity might look like to

support maybe those sort of club like things that Providence or Daniels run

Natalie CoylestaffI mean it's definitely something we can look at and especially our students who drive if they are willing to get some sort of Honor Society hours out of that I could potentially see them being able to go over to the elementary schools and present little mini lessons to students who might be interested.

Speaker 22Ms. Coyle can I help with that as well? So we have we have talked about it's a huge lift right as far as finances and getting the kids that and the high school just working with high school kids are so busy that we're trying to get them and then obviously our staff members so one thing that we have talked about and I've world language teachers is perhaps just an afternoon of the honor kids coming like during their lion time or during their you know during their honors classes that they come and do a small session like games or something like that our challenge is that we need to do that in February or March because starting April with testing and everyone's busy graduation the seniors are gone so it's just really a matter of timing but I think for us starting at

the going one day to especially our two city elementary schools and then perhaps to Eagle View and Willow Springs I think that's where to start and then from there seeing the growth but the after-school programming is just a massive lift for all for

Kate Tiffanystaffall

Speaker 22the three of us

Kate TiffanystaffI definitely think that we had thought about it at one point it just right I think that was before COVID and then COVID hit and right yeah

Kristina Cecereyeah I think the other question I have too and and this might be more of a Dr. Wright, and eventually maybe when Region 5 is here. I'm curious, like, if there are any elementary schools in the county that do more of a rotational foreign language program so that kids who are in their day, rather than getting, say, for example, Chinese for six, seven years, they're able to experience what they're experiencing now in the summer, right? Well, no, sorry. No, no, no, go ahead,

Natalie Coylestaffplease. No, no, this just brought back the memory of the IFL class in the county introduction to foreign languages which was taught in the middle schools and I think it was a semester class it was and students were able to get samplings of their high schools core languages world languages and they spent time learning about things and they also did a passport type of a thing at least at Luther Jackson Middle School when I taught there they did. So yeah, I would be all for sort of renewing a sort of cultural IFL type of course for students to take on maybe on a semester level in the middle school.

Kate TiffanystaffI can definitely speak to the World Language Central Office and get back to you, Ms. Cessary, about elementary schools and if they have any sort of language program That'd be great. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Absolutely.

Amit HickmanDr. Wright, did you have something,

Kate TiffanystaffMatt?

Dr. WrightstaffI was just going to add that I'm not aware of any schools at the elementary level in Fairfax County that are doing the model that you're describing. You're either going to see that FLESS model, that foreign language in the elementary school, similar to what happens in our city schools, or that language immersion program, which is more of a full-time program. But like you heard from Ms. Tiffany, we can definitely follow up.

Amit HickmanThank you. Ms. Murray? Okay. Okay. So I think my only question, and this might be, again, direct a little more to Dr. Wright, is so I noticed that you do those four languages, but my understanding is German is not offered in the middle school level. I just did a quick search. It doesn't look like it is. Just at the high school. Just at the high school. So I think that would be something interesting to look into for those students who do attend your program who might be interested in German. It feels like there might be a little bit of a gap there from when they can start that in the middle schools a question more of a thought. Right. Yes. But thank you for all of your time and everything that you put into this. I mean, it's absolutely incredible, and it's clear that the passion

you both have is being very easily shown through the students. And thank you to both of you for speaking. Those of you back there, we really appreciate everybody being here. Ms. Kelsey had a go back.

Sarah KelseyI'm sorry. My go back is, I know, did we do two separate weeks again We just did one. This year just did one. Okay. Is that because the numbers? The

Kate Tiffanystaffnumbers the previous year had gone down, and so we scaled back to one week this year. We're hoping that going forward that if the numbers continue to rise, that we could expand back to two weeks. But for right now, it looks like going forward, one week is sort of where our numbers show that we are. but we're hoping that we can hopefully word of mouth will continue to build up the program and and recruitment as well I

Sarah Kelseywas gonna say if we are at the numbers for only one week I wonder if we could maybe extend it so it is two weeks but with the same amount of kids like to see like you guys obviously would have to create more lessons but to see if we could make it longer like the kids are all asking. We can certainly look into it. Thank you guys.

Amit HickmanI appreciate it.

Kate TiffanystaffThank

Amit Hickmanyou so much. I saw someone very excited back there about that suggestion. Thank you very much. We appreciate everything. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. We are going, before I move into the next agenda item, I wanted to recognize and thank Council Member Hall,

Kate Tiffanystaffand I thought I saw Council Member McQuillan, there we go, over there,

Amit Hickmanfor joining us this evening. We appreciate both of your presence tonight. Next up is going to be a presentation from the Fairfax County Public Schools Chief Financial Officer, Lee Burden, Director Matthew Norton on the tuition bill and FCPS fiscal forecast and I'd like to first pass it to Dr. Wright for any words that he has as we get into this presentation.

Dr. WrightstaffThank You Vice Chair Hickman and I know that you know some of our families might be exiting at this time and that's okay or you're welcome to stay in here the next presentation but we're gonna hear from the Fairfax County Public Schools team, Chief Financial Officer Lee Burden and Executive Budget Director Matthew Norton to talk about the annual tuition bill that we received that's a part of the school services agreement. So with that I'll turn it over to Mr. Norton for the presentation.

Matthew NortonstaffAll right thank you so much I'm in fact Matthew Norton and obviously Lee Burden is here in the audience with me. I just wanted to take this moment to say good evening and on behalf of Fairfax County Public Schools. I wanted to express our appreciation to Dr. Wright, JC Martinez, who's also here from the city, and the school board for your continued support and partnership as far as this agreement goes. As said, this presentation includes information about the final FY26 tuition amount, and then an update on the FY27 tuition amount. Excellent. And so obviously, you know, we just wanted to point out The agreement was established back in 1962. It was revised in 1978 and still in effect today. And basically the two tenets of the agreement are that FCPS will operate the schools, hire

staff, manage curriculum, all of those things in the day to day. On the city side, it's overseeing the agreement and then maintaining the city-owned buildings. And that's just a high-level summary. There's a lot more that goes on with those two items. Next slide. This cooperative agreement benefits the city in a few ways and county students as well. There's enhanced offerings that are available to students in the city due to being able to leverage economies of scale. And then obviously utilization of school buildings is much better off as we have both students from county and city in various schools across the county.

Dr. WrightstaffNext slide.

Matthew NortonstaffThis was a slide that we added to the presentation a few years ago, I believe. Basically, it's just to communicate that during any one fiscal year, there are activities related to three different fiscal years that are happening. In the first quarter, so July to September, we're closing out the prior fiscal year, and that culminates with us here as I am tonight, walking through the final bill calculation. Through late fall and into the winter, we move into current year spending, and that's where we start to collaborate more with city staff on providing revised estimates for that current year. And then simultaneously, that's also where we begin development of the future year budget. And that, you know, would result in finalization of that budget by May. So

again, timeline across the top of just a single year, but three fiscal years that are impacted with things that are city specific listed in red and just other highlights of things that are in black related to more what I would say are just core county operations. Moving on to the next slide. The beginning of the bill basically starts with what we refer to as operational costs. And so for FY26, the net increase in operational costs, this is not just city, but this is across the entire county and city as far as the school system goes, was an increase of $198.1 million, and that's a 5% increase. And just some of the high-level things that happened that kind of resulted in that operational cost increase,

really the two biggest ones are the pay increases that were provided for Fairfax Education Union employees, and then the slightly 1% lower MSA that was provided for non-Fairfax Education Union employees. And then there was actually a small savings in the grand scheme of our overall size of our budget, a small savings related to enrollment and changing student needs. Just to give you context though, the pay raises alone make up $180 million of that $200 million figure. And so they really are the main drivers here. All right. There's a couple of charts here in a row that kind of I'm hoping will be helpful in kind of explaining how the bill has been changing over the years. This first chart, two lines, the red line represents total operational costs divided by total ADM.

So that would be both, you know, combined city and schools ADM. and then the blue bar is just the city tuition divided by the city ADM and so you can see that for a long time FY 2015 through about FY 2021 those lines kind of hugged each other and kind of mirrored each other pretty closely and then they began to diverge from one another you know starting in FY 22 they stayed a little bit diverged through FY 24 and now they've together. One of the reasons that that has happened is explained by the next chart so I don't know if you can just toggle there really quickly but and then we'll toggle back in a second but on this bar chart here we're showing that beginning in you know FY 2022 there was actually a little bit of funding in FY

2021 but the bulk of funding related to post you know pandemic activities so cares act ESSER act those were large sums of money that were coming in and they were revenue credits that were being provided that were reducing the the city the city bill and so if you'll just toggle back really quickly. You can see that in FY22, the blue line sort of almost leveled off while the red line continued to kind of go on that trajectory that it was on. And then after that, there's almost like a catch-up to bring those lines back together. And revenue credits are certainly one of the reasons that that happened. It's not the only reason, but it is one of the big reasons. One of the things that I wanted to highlight here is that there is a difference between ADM, which is average daily

and enrollment and basically ADM is the enrollment modified by inclusions or exclusions per state guidelines and basically it amounts to like preschool generally being removed for the purposes of ADM as well as students who are like postgraduate students there's a whole you know minutia of inclusions and exclusions that happens with ADM but those two that I highlighted are the biggest things that are the difference between enrollment and average daily state construct. If you can go ahead and pop to the next slide. The other thing that I would just take a moment to explain here is what revenue credits really represent. So revenue credits are funding received by the county for federal, state, local, or other miscellaneous sources

that the county receives, but the city and the city school board do not receive. And so the extent they're defraying operational costs of the county school board, right? So revenue credits where FCPS receives money, but the city school system does not, I'll give you some examples. There's funding that comes from the state for the governor's school, Thomas Jefferson. There's regional tuition funding that comes for special education. There's homebound funding. There's funding related to the national school lunch program. And then there are also grants and self-supporting programs where funding comes in to FCPS, funding line item for the city and so what we end up doing is those credits that we then apply to the city which are part of the school services agreement

basically they bring down the net operational cost before the calculation of that portion of the bill and so they act as almost like a suppressor for what that portion of the bill would actually be Excellent. So after a few years of what I would say were sort of catch up years where the city bill was going up maybe a little bit greater than you might've liked, we have kind of the first year now where things have gotten back to what I would say as a period of normalcy. The bill is actually up $3.1 million or 4.6% compared to FY 2025. And I guess I would just point out than the 5% that overall operational costs went up. And then what we've done here is just attempted to break out for you why that change is what it is.

I would say that the two largest impacts are obviously the compensation increases that were provided to employees last year, or the year that just ended, is the reason for the increase. And then you can see there's a slight savings associated with ADM changes. And the next slide is a line chart to show you that and also talk through what's been happening with ADM and how it affects the tuition bill. And again, so if you look back over the period FY 2015 to basically FY 2021, again, the blue line being city ADM and the red line being county ADM, the relative proportion of the two figures to each other is what really makes a difference in the bill. And so in those years where city ADM was declining,

but county ADM was kind of flat or slightly rising, you would have seen that that would have had an impact of kind of holding the bill down because that proportion of the bill that ends up coming your way would have been suppressed by that ratio of our two ADMs to each other declining slightly more favorably, I guess, from a financial perspective for you all. Then you kind of see that something interesting happens, I guess, is that, you know, coming out of the pandemic, there's a slight tick up in city ADM, while there's a decline in county ADM that, you know, kind of continued to happen after a couple of years of declines for the county. but then it kind of reverses course and we actually go opposite directions again.

And then it really sort of reverses course in FY24 and FY25, where city ADM actually climbed pretty substantially. And certainly if you look back at the line chart that I showed earlier, you would see that in FY24 and FY25, that's where that gap between total operational costs divided by total ADM would have been closing more quickly between cities line and county line. And so that was a pretty unusual thing that happened, those big increases in city ADM. You can see that county continued to kind of level off or fall and then you can see that in FY26, which is what this bill is all about, that we both declined, but the city declined at a faster rate. And so that slightly steeper slope on the end of that

So that blue line is exactly why that $800,000 savings from the prior page is on there. And again, we both went in the same direction, but because Citi declined slightly faster, there's a savings in the bill related to that. Whereas that would have been the opposite in 24 and 25. If you could pop to the next slide. So again, just a quick, just recap here. The final bill for FY26, 69.3 million. The prior final bill was 66.2 million. That's that $3.1 million increase, or that 4.6% that we cited previously. So I think good news there. And then if you pop forward to the next slide, this is really our opportunity to talk to you all Number one, the number that ended up in our budget, which is that top line number of 77 million,

but after some of the information that we've received since that proposed budget was initiated, you know, back in last January, we really actually think that it makes a whole lot more sense to recognize what's happened with ADM and to also recognize the limited funding at the state and local level that we think may happen and really be a little bit more conservative and say that this year's bill should be based on that $72.4 million figure. And so that's completely our intent for when we send over, you know, this year's billing. And with that, I will conclude. And if you have any questions, happy to answer.

StudentAll right.

Amit HickmanThank you very much. I'm sure we have plenty of questions to be asked, start

Molly Merloon this end this time,

Kristina CecereMs. Essary.

StudentI might have to go back.

Kristina CecereSo I'll start with just two questions, one clarifying question and one just feature setting question of sorts. The slide on page seven, including the revenue credits, that's highlighted in our tuition bill be correct like that deduction of other operating costs I believe that's the numbers that kind of matched up there so

Matthew Nortonstaffyou're talking about the actual yeah two-page bill which

Kristina Cecereyeah using our wonderful formula for city funding here yeah yeah

Matthew Nortonstafflet me just let me just ensure that that's correct but it sounds like you're correct yeah so in in five there would be that less revenue and bus replacement costs.

Kristina CecereOkay. Exactly.

Matthew NortonstaffGreat.

Kristina CecereAnd then, you know, thinking ahead, just to clarify, the current collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union ends June 2028. So that means that for the next two cycles, FCPS has a rough idea of what that pacing looks like on the salary end is that is that a fair assumption or yeah

Matthew Nortonstaffso FEU began FY 26 27 and then 28 so those are the three fiscal years covered by that FEU bargaining agreement and we have a fairly good sense of what the costs related to that that bargaining agreement are

Kristina Cecereokay okay miss Kelsey and

Matthew Nortonstaffthen if I if I may just, you know, the years two and three are very similar to each other, just so that you know that in case you didn't.

Kristina CecereYeah, just I know when we, when I first joined the board, there was a lot of conversations around the fluctuation of the tuition bill due to staffing, and rightfully so, right? I know that we want to remain competitive in a very highly marketable area. I see what Prince William is trying to gain ground on teacher salaries and whatnot. but also it helps us on our end. I'm not saying me personally, but I know our staff and just even working with y'all, so at least feature cast of sorts, right? So know what that consistency may look like and such. So that's mainly why I had that question. So

Matthew Nortonstaffthank you. Absolutely.

Sarah KelseyOkay,

Amit Hickmannow let's go

Sarah Kelseysee. I'm gonna ask the question we ask every year more for people that are listening. Can you explain what the operating costs, included in that because

Matthew Nortonstaffit's

Sarah Kelseyso

Matthew Nortonstaffso operation operational costs are basically our our entire budget so i mean it would be the cost for you know everyone unless unless you're asking me to get specifically into out of the elementary middle and high school piece and just get directly into

Sarah Kelseyno just like a couple like thing like obviously you said it was the salaries what else would be covered under that?

Matthew NortonstaffYeah, so number one, a little bit unintuitively, other operational costs are where special education costs fall. And so we don't actually break special education costs into elementary, middle, or high. And again, that's the way the school services agreement is. I would say that other operational costs include just a variety of other activities. So like the entire financial services staff would be something that is a cost of the school system that is included in all that. Our entire HR function, our entire instructional services function of writing curriculum and things like that. I mean, I could go on and on, I guess, but those are some examples.

Sarah KelseyYeah, we always get asked that question, and so it's sometimes easier to have you guys explain sometimes. On page six, just, I may have missed it, the red line, the total operation cost, is that the city's total operation cost or the county's in a whole? Because it just said total.

Matthew NortonstaffThe red line, total operational costs divided by total ADM, that would be like that on the prior slide, I think slide five, I talked about that $198 million increase. But that overall number is $4,159,000,000. So it's the cost of just all activities.

Sarah KelseyBut all activities for FCPS, not just the city. That's correct. Okay. That's what I just wanted to double check on that.

Lauren BartelmeMs. Barrow, may any questions? I think they covered some of mine, too. but I was curious with the ADM kind of fluctuating so much between the city and the county do you all do things to predict what the future ADM ratio might look like

Matthew Nortonstaffso there's a projection done at the state level for ADM which is what we tend to rely on when we're developing you know the future years bill what I would say is that during the course of the year when we're when we're working with Dr. Wright and staff here, we might be in a little bit more of a position to kind of estimate what's going on. But when we're talking about the estimate for the FY27 bill, we haven't done an estimate other than just take what the state is estimating for ADM.

Amit HickmanMs. Copsley, do you want to go ahead and do your go back?

Kristina CecereSure.

Sarah KelseyOn page 7, just a quick question. The FY25 and 26, I'm just curious if those numbers are, because they've gone back down a little bit, obviously, because we don't have all that extra pandemic funds anymore, but they're still higher than the other. Can you kind of explain why they're still up there? Like is it is there some other funding that a revenue that's coming in or Just I'm looking at compared to 2021 and stuff because they're Hundred some on

Matthew Nortonstaffyeah, that's probably a question that I would want to do some research and get back to you on I Wouldn't want to hypothesize whether or not you'll continue to see those revenue credits fall headed into 27 in the future I suspect that may be the case, but I'll do a little bit of research and get back to you.

Kristina CecereAll right. Thank you. Looking at going back to my question about the item 5B, and this might be a follow-up with an email. I noticed in the calculation for our tuition bill involves a deduction related to the division superintendent salary. Can you kind of help me with the math on that one to understand what that looks like as part of our overall tuition package? That's sometimes a question we get.

Dr. WrightstaffMr. Norton would be okay if I responded first? Sure. So Ms. Sessori, I believe what you're referring to is some information from the original 1978 document. Is that correct? So that is how the operational credits were calculated at that time. And it was based on the state financial report that's submitted every year. That report has significantly shifted over time. So the information that's in there, it may or may, we might need to do the research to see if what you're asking about is included in that. But it's evolved over time and that's probably one that we need to look at in the agreement to have it reflect the same as what's being included in the operating credits now.

Kristina CecereThank you for that. And then I have one other question. I'm curious. Beyond our school services agreement, is there anything that's within the last 20 plus years that you all have had without any modifications? Any agreements, contracts, et cetera? Or is this pretty much the only agreements in the books? an email question too for further research.

Speaker 17Are you asking about the SSA?

Kristina CecereYes. So I recognize the SSA is older than I am. No, I know the SSA has not changed.

Speaker 17Yes, we do. We have other MOUs that are

Kristina Ceceredated in the SSA. Do those MOUs tend to get modified every so often? Is there a protocol that you tend to modify to ensure that they're up to date with current state code and such? There are agreements between two parties and we really see them right there, like the SAC agreement. Right. Accounting up for it. Now beyond the bill. You know, if the

Speaker 17two parties have been given, most of the MOVs have language that says what you would need to do if you'd like to revise the agreement, but both parties have to agree, and that's not happening.

Kristina CecereThank you.

Amit HickmanMr. Murray, do you have any questions?

StudentOkay.

Amit HickmanI don't know that I have any questions at this time, but I just want to point out to those watching or those who are watching later that this is obviously one of the largest part of the city's budget, school's budget, as well as our city. And so we are definitely keeping a close eye on all these costs and what it's entailing. And I think it's important to recognize when we say operational costs, right, we are talking about all the things that are offered through FCPS that we are able to take advantage of. And so there are definitely areas in this that I think we will continue to look at as a board and in collaboration with the FCPS school board said, right, this is from the 70s, so we have some pretty, we've been working with this tuition bill

and these numbers for a very long time and figuring out what does still make sense in this day and age, maybe what doesn't, and how we can proceed in a way that is mutually beneficial for both city and county. We appreciate the time that takes to put into this presentation and being able to share all that information with us, so thank you very much. Thank you. All right. So I don't know if I was supposed to be saying agenda item numbers, but we are now on 2.05. Next up this evening is an update on the Blenheim Boulevard project from the city of Fairfax transportation director. We have Ms. Wendy Sanford and the capital projects manager, Mr. Sonny Sarna, who are going to give us an update on this project

and allow some time and space for any questions that we might have on what this looks like specifically related to schools. I'll let Dr. Wright start it off.

Dr. WrightstaffYeah, thank you, Vice Chair Hickman. So we're looking forward to hearing from Ms. Sanford and Mr. Sarna. And again, in terms of the parameters of the conversations tonight, what we've asked them to come to talk about is specifically the work that's being done on the Fairfax High School property as a part of the Blenheim Boulevard project. This project has begun and is moving forward. And so it's just an opportunity for the board to ask questions about that specific part of the project before we move forward. So I'll turn it over to Ms. Sanford and Mr. Sarna for the conversation.

Wendy SanfordstaffThank you, good evening. I was asked to come this evening to speak a little bit about the improvements that are shown on the construction plans for in front of I just have a couple of slides that show, and I just have one slide up front that just shows overall, this is for the project as a whole, what is being constructed on Blenheim Boulevard. It is a sidewalk on the south side and then on the north side, which is, it's difficult, it's sort of east-west on this road, but on the Fairfax High School side, there is a sidewalk, a buffer, a two-way cycle track, and that is all behind the curb, and then there are two travel lanes Daniels Run side of the roadway. This is the typical section. There are turn pockets and

other improvements along the roadway, but this is the typical section for the project.

Speaker 22And then moving on, thanks.

Wendy SanfordstaffSo what you're looking at now is a look down, and what you see is at the top of your screen you have the high school, and what this is showing is the plan sheet from the construction plans that show what is proposed, and I'll move from left to right. So at the left lines up with Cornell Road closest to the to that road you have a little a small little seating area with four benches or three benches and then as you move closer towards towards Lion Run you then have this little semicircular area also with some seating and then as you move all the way over what is proposed what is shown is an outdoor seating area that is terraced and is built into the topography of the of the land and what you have above that is a picture just

sort of an inspirational picture showing where the where the inspiration for this came from so it's an outdoor seating area and that is what is shown in front of the high school and again that is behind the sidewalk and so if you're moving sort of down the page you have all of these improvements in front of the high school you have the sidewalk a buffer the two-way cycle track buffer and then the roadway just to show you the separation of the high school from travel lanes of the road. So that is what is shown in front of the high school. And I believe that's all I have actually. Is there another slide after this? Oh, just some construction considerations that the construction contract has been awarded.

We are currently under contract. Sunny Sarna, who I'm here with, is our capital projects manager. He is managing the project in the field. We are working to maintain our schedule alongside school events. And Dr. Wright has actually provided us with most of the dates of major events We know the dates of early releases, the homecoming parade, things like that, so that we will make sure that we are out of the roadway for those events. Other than that, normal work hours are from 7 to 5. Work in the road is restricted to 9 to 3, so as to not conflict with drop-off or pick-up. So you might see work occurring outside of the right-of-way, along the side, but not in the roadway, before those hours and after those hours.

Any night work, weekend work, and detours require City approval and again, we are under construction. We are looking at approximately two years. We are About three months in at this point And that concludes my presentation Sonny and I would be happy to answer any questions

Amit HickmanAll right, just as a reminder to our board members this is a chance to ask our questions We will be having further conversation and a vote on this at the next regular meeting And as well as opening up for some time for public comment at that meeting

Dr. WrightstaffWe have Dr. Georgina A here from Fairfax High School in case we have any specific questions that she's gonna have the best answer to.

Amit HickmanThank you for pointing that out. Ms. Barron may go ahead.

Lauren BartelmeI was wondering about the setback of the amphitheater from the sidewalk and then from the parking lot.

Wendy SanfordstaffI don't have the exact dimensions but I can certainly send those to you. As you can see, they are between the sidewalk and then the parking lot and so I can get you the exact dimensions.

Sarah Kelseyback. Obviously this is looking down and my perspective is not quite working right on this. Is when you have when you have the picture is it going like where they're sitting on it and looking down towards the high school or sitting okay just making sure because my brain

Wendy Sanfordstaffwas not

Sarah Kelseyfocusing on

Wendy SanfordstaffIt's working with the topography of the land. So when you're at the street level, there's a hill that goes down. And so the idea is that it would be built into it. So if you were standing on the street, you would be looking down.

Sarah KelseySo this would be more for the high school students to sit on during the day or anybody.

Wendy SanfordstaffSo there has not been a use agreement that has been worked out, but that would be a future step to work out the hours of use or the use agreement and how this would work. but the concept when this was discussed early on with the representatives from the school board was that there would be hours that were school hours and that it would be a shared use between the schools and the community. But again, those details have not been worked out, but would be something that we would go forward with.

Sarah KelseyOkay, last one. And this is probably for you and Dr. A. This amphitheater, obviously, it's gonna go out a little bit farther. Is it taking away any parking spaces?

Wendy SanfordstaffNo, this is being built, again, into that curve, into the curve of the land, and it is not coming into the existing parking lot.

Sarah KelseyOkay, so none of the space. Dr. A, are those all staff right there, or are they students?

Georgina AstaffThat's actually an academy parking. So that's the one that's a portion of the 1,000 students that come and go all day long that are driving right there. So they would actually be in and out. So that's just something you can consider access because those students are coming and going from the 27 schools that visit their class school.

Sarah KelseyAnd they're only the students parking there for the academy, not the teachers, correct? Okay.

Kristina CecereThank you. Ms. Estery. Yeah, it's the amphitheater. How many rows is that? What does that look like? Is that three or four? Like, just thinking about, like, so it could, in theory fit a full class size, right? Yes, that is the idea. Is that also, is there like a fence between the sidewalk and the amphitheater or is that effectively open for public to say walk down from the sidewalk into the amphitheater?

Wendy SanfordstaffI don't believe there is a fence that is shown in the plans there. I will have to look at them again unless Sonny you know uphand. I don't believe there's a fence shown there.

Sonny SarnastaffThere is no fence on that side, it can be added.

Kristina CecereOkay. And then I noticed that there's benches on the, I believe that's still door seven, I'm still trying to remember, like to the left of that, right? Little jut out from the sidewalk and then there seems to be like a little pedestrian roundabout, it's kind of off to that, where that intersection at Cornell is. What's the purpose of having those there? Outdoor seating. For who? For the community, for students, for whomever. Is that something that was expressed interest in community hearings or?

Wendy SanfordstaffSo what we heard when we were doing our outreach for the corridor was that the community was looking for various places to sit, to have conversation, to gather. And so what we are showing in that location is that a community gathering but let me also just mention at this point because I didn't when I was first speaking if there are at this point we are under construction that said if there are certain elements of this that you do not like and again the city council would be the ones who would make the who would what would it it would be a recommendation from the school board towards the city council but if there are elements that you do not like we are not too late to pull these out so if there is concern about that seating area in front this would be it would be appropriate at

because we can certainly remove these items from the plans.

Kristina CecereI think, you know, as a former teacher who classroom literally looked out on that one, I do have strong opinions about those sections, but I am curious, like, since we do have Dr. A here, if, have, like, what this looks like for staff, I know security, that kind of thing, with or without offense, and so I don't know if that might be something we need to table and ask later on, or what. I also don't know what the timeline is to notify you as a board of any agreed upon changes in a public hearing like this. So I wanna be mindful of all those sort of pieces there.

Wendy SanfordstaffSo I would look to Sunny actually to know sort of what our timing is, but you have time. We have just started again, we're looking at a two year long project. This is one of the things that would be a little bit later because we're trying also not to work in front of the school right now while school's in session. So I do believe you have some time. I don't think we have months and months, to make to have further discussions and and let us know if this is something you want to remove the thing the the two seating areas on the left are relatively minor not really worry about those I do think that if there is desire to remove the seating and the one all the way to the right we would that is more

significant but again we do have some time

Amit Hickmanso my understanding in terms of timeline is if we continue this conversation at the next regular meeting we offer a public forum at that point and then we provide again it's a the council that that then gives them time to have those discussions, which is why we've invited them here to hear this conversation and we hope that they will continue that on their own.

Kristina CecereYeah, I would like to know, like I said, I'll iterate again, I would like to hear from, you know, whether through email, through Dr. Wright or whatever, but what the school would prefer to see just in lines of what's best practice. Again, I love the idea of an outdoor amphitheater. I don't know if that's the best spot, but I also recognize I'm one voice of five It's not even my decision in theory. The other question I have, may I? Okay. Is, and I know this is not within the scope here, but thinking about that intersection at Lion Run and Blenheim, when you now have a bike path, and then you have, you know, cars going back and forth and whatnot, I want to be mindful of safety. and is there any consideration of maybe putting like a three-way stop there so

that it does slow traffic when going into Blenheim or a stoplight again I recognize that's maybe not an answer that you can give me today but just thinking about our new drivers and even even some older drivers too who it's early in the morning right just thinking about what's best practice and safe for all modes of transportation.

Wendy SanfordstaffAnd I will get more information to you on that issue. I didn't bring it with me, but we did look at that intersection very carefully when we were doing the traffic evaluation. And we looked at what was warranted at that intersection. And it did not warrant a stop sign on Blenheim. But I'm going to go back and look at that and send you that information.

Kristina CecereI would ask, then, if you do have that report, that possible. Thank you.

Amit HickmanAll right, Mr. Moraney, thoughts or questions?

StudentI was just wondering, do the seating areas and the amphitheater, do they both cut into the campus of the high school or is that public access?

Wendy SanfordstaffThey, so it is located on the school property. The intention was that it would be a shared schools community asset and that the details of how that would work would be arranged.

Amit HickmanI have a question for Dr. A and I don't know if you have the answer to this now or can get back to us but with since this has been approved I know there's been an addition of an outdoor classroom from FCPS is that classroom space being utilized over utilized underutilized and how might an additional space it does it feel at this point with that addition if that's necessary

Georgina Astaffthe usage of that varies. And then the newest outdoor classroom is utilized at the first, second, third, fourth, and seventh, and eighth. And then it's closed off at the sixth because you actually have a hundred and some or more kids lunch outside every day, right? Which is like well-mired. I think one of the things here is just that with the location of this and who would monitor it, right? With it being on the school's campus, it's not in proximity to the building or where security travels or any of those footpaths right now. I think this is one thing we've been trying to consider because it's not there. And then even knowing that it's the amount of kids we have coming and going with the academy,

that's I think enrollment is 1,600 kids this year. So it's about 800 kids a day that are traveling on and off. So we are pretty much in the 8 and gone at 3. We literally are a revolving door of students coming and going and don't have any outside security there to monitor if people are on the campus as kids are traveling to and from.

Amit HickmanThank you. I think what you said leads to my thoughts that have been my concerns about how to monitor that space. slightly different than some of the other school spaces that we do utilize as rentals, right, the tennis courts, areas that are fenced in versus something that's completely open and how that would be monitored and if it would be able even to be done so. And then also thank you to Ms. Kelsey for who parks there because that was a question that I had in terms of, you know, that space. I know it's much more utilized, again, than it's been in past years as configurations of bus drop-offs and all those things have changed. there's been just traffic pattern changes there as well. Dr. Wright, you have anything to add or questions?

Dr. WrightstaffNothing to add at this time.

Amit HickmanOkay. Board members, anybody else have any go-backs? No? Okay. Well, then we appreciate your time and we will continue the conversation.

Wendy SanfordstaffSure, and I will be back in touch with answers to the questions. Thank you. You're very welcome.

Amit HickmanAll right. So not quite last in our agenda, Thank you very much to those of you who are still sticking with us. We are going to move into an update on the capital projects that are happening. I'm gonna pass it to Dr. Wright to introduce, because we have a large group of people here to speak with us tonight.

Dr. WrightstaffOkay, thank you, Vice Chair Hickman, and welcome to everyone who's gonna be a part of this next presentation. I'll invite Mr. Nebbitt and Mr. Bonvecchio up, and then some other members of the team. either join us now, however it works best, or we can, yeah, we'll bring everybody up right now. So as they come up here, I'll do a quick overview of the plan for our time together, and then we'll do some introductions. We've asked this team to come here to provide the school board and the public with an update on the capital projects that are taking place in the city of Fairfax school system. We've received several updates throughout the spring of 2026, especially concluding with an April 20th work session

that talked about the direction we wanted to take with our two elementary school modernization and renovation projects and what conceptual design directions we wanna go. Our architecture firms were here to join us and to answer questions and the school board gave them some very good direction. What we're gonna do now is talk about a lot of the work that's happened since then and then preview some of the next steps that will be taking place. So our conversation will introduce our owner's representative firm from Brailsford and Dunleavy to talk a little bit about who they are, what an owner's rep does, and how they're going to be supporting us specifically here in the city of Fairback Schools. And then you're going to hear

the schematic design updates for both the Daniels Run project and the Providence project. You're going to hear about where we are now. And then the final part of this is to talk about what has to do with the procurement process for bringing on the construction managers or the actual builders of these projects. So you'll hear some timelines and updates about that. And then we will see if there's any other questions or any topics that come up that we need to address. I'd preview that there's going to be three chunks of questions. So you're going to hear from the Braille, Surt and Denim Levy team and be able to ask them some questions. You're going to hear from our architects about both Daniels, Ryan and

and then we'll hear about those next steps. So with that, we'll go ahead and get started. I am going to actually have our team members introduce themselves as they, as their part of the program comes up, but I would just say we are really, really grateful to have so many wonderful partners on this and I think the future is very bright for these really important projects for our city, our community and most importantly, our students. So I'll turn it over to the Brailsford and Dunleavy team to get going. So it's important to talk into the microphone so the cameras pick you up.

Jeff BonvecchioGotcha. Okay. I'll try not to pass this back and forth too much, but good evening, everyone. Jeff Bonvecchio, Vice President with Brailsford and Dunleavy. We're very excited to be here. We're thankful for the opportunity from the school board, from Dr. Wright, from the City of Fairfax Council to really be your trusted advisors to assure that the promises that you have all made with this $200 million bond investment are in fact delivered as anticipated on time and on budget for the citizens of the City of Fairfax. I'm just going to talk quickly about Brailsford and Dunleavy. Dan will introduce himself when he talks about the schedule. You'll hear a lot from him throughout the life of this project. But just a little

We've been in the industry for 32 years. We are based in Washington, D.C., a top 20 engineering news record program management firm. Aside from the 13 offices across the country, I think one of the big things, one of the big takeaways is that we primarily work with mission-driven clients or agencies like yourself, that we are working on projects that are going to enhance the communities that they serve in. Go to the next one. And then just a little bit of our experience here in the Northern Virginia, DC and Maryland area. And again, just highlighting higher ed, K-12 municipalities, you know, again, we have that emphasis on, you know, working with clients, working on these projects that actually matter

and that actually can impact and change the lives of the students that are using these facilities. And then, you know, Dr. Wright mentioned, you know, we are an owner's representative firm, but we are much more than that. Yes, we are going to provide the project management and the oversight of both the design team and the construction firms, but we also are bringing a whole bench of other experience and other resources that we're able to help the city of Fairfax schools deliver these projects, enhance these projects, and really create value for the school as we move forward, especially in the areas I think of energy and sustainability as one that we can create some value as well as enhancing already the public

and community engagement work that's already happened around these projects, knowing how important that can be to the continued success that we're offering here. And then just a little bit more, we are primarily K-12 focused. Both Dan and I have spent a large portion of time on the D.C. public schools modernization program and we'll apply a lot of those lessons that we have learned from D.C. here to the city of Fairfax. We know this market. We know the contractors. We know the design teams. And then probably most importantly, we really want to not only deliver these on time and on budget, there has been an expectation set of what these two elementary schools are going to look like. And it's really our job to ensure that that vision becomes a reality. And it becomes a reality

at the budget that's been set and approved by the school board, by city council, and ultimately by the citizens. Questions?

Dr. WrightstaffAnd so this is the first time that many of you, some of you have met them in meetings, but we just wanted to provide an opportunity if you have questions about

Jeff BonvecchioBND

Dr. Wrightstaffor the services that they will be providing us, we wanted to provide an opportunity for that.

Amit HickmanAll right, Ms. Betterlman, any questions? No, Ms. Kelsey?

Georgina AstaffAll

Jeff Bonvecchioright. Waiting for the good stuff. Yeah, you're

Amit Hickmangetting let off easy tonight. Thank you, we appreciate your time and it's great to want to meet both of you.

Speaker 19Great, okay. Won't stand too much longer in the way of the good stuff. So program overview to date, we'll dig into right away here. If you'll go to the next slide, Barb. We are on our program roadmap, starting with contractual award of these two firms to my left for the design services, finishing in the future, like Jeff is mentioning, with those beautiful new renovated modernized schools in 2030 we are at the node just after the one we've highlighted with schematic design and so what we'll talk about in just a minute is all of that goodness but before we get there we are just past it and as B&D came on board we dug in immediately and started working on what you'll see next so while we have designs ongoing we have started with the procurement process of who is

gone with the construction manager at risk delivery method. We have started by doing a request for qualifications, a blast went out to the marketplace, they all responded. We got a very strong response with lots of very hardy documents to pour through. We made a committee and a team and a criteria by which all those submissions were evaluated and then scored. The committee met a few times actually to discuss all the information that had been and then to discuss the consensus and make choices in order to create a short list of offerors. That short list was then invited to respond to the request for proposals. So those were just recently sent out. I'm going to misquote the date if I try it now.

Is it the 9th? And it was, right? The 9th. And we are in the process of letting all those offers go in. We have some site visits coming up next week, and we're excited to get going with them. in the award of construction manager at risk for the projects which we will deliver and so with that we're at a good place to share schematic design updates just as a brief point of reference here I believe the last piece of content you guys were reviewing here was the concept design so we have a slide that we love at B&D but it's basically just a graphic timeline here of what happens between design start and finish obviously the building you walk through at the end of the day is the true finish but you have started already with that concept

review concepts to schematics rather than massing or what we sort of call like a watercolor version start to draw with some sharpened pencils draw in dimension make sure that the program that's necessary fits into the space that we have allotted and start to consider some of those design themes how the building is going to interact with everybody who uses it and vice versa paths of circulation making sure we're getting safe egress and all the other requirements that are put before us and with that i will turn it over to our design teams tell you about each of the schools

Molly Merloso i'm molly merlo managing principal and project manager for Daniel's Run Elementary School and very pleased to be with you this evening. I don't know if...

Allison LeggI'll introduce myself now, but I think Molly's going to talk about Daniel's Run first, but my name is Allison Legg. I'm the principal in charge and the project manager with Architecture Incorporated for Providence Elementary School, and it's wonderful to be back with you all again this evening. And we're very fortunate because we get to do

Kate Tiffanystaffthe good stuff, I guess.

Molly Merloso hopefully that keeps going. So just to recap for those who may be listening and not as familiar with the process, Dan gave a good overview. So where we are right now, we are looking at Daniel's Run and Providence. Similarly, for Daniel's Run specifically, we're doing renovations to the existing building, which means a full systemic renovation of everything. We're taking out all of the finishes and casework and we're getting all fresh, new, upgraded, updated current systems throughout the building. There'll be new ceilings, new lighting that's energy efficient. The new HVAC system is very important. It's going to be more energy efficient, saving the city money in the long term and meeting those sustainability goals.

We're also gonna be looking at reconfiguring spaces to bring them more in the line with the Fairfax County ed specs for elementary schools where we can. We are working within the constraints of the existing building and the program to bring you that. So we're giving you as much as we possibly can within the budget that we've been given for the project and as asked for by the city. So we are looking at significant renovations to the existing building. At the last concept design, we showed you different concepts and we were tasked to go forward with the most ambitious design and then still said and we want to see this building really reflect the care and the concern of the city and improving the entry and the look of the building

from the main facade so we've taken that to heart with the renovation portion we've also looked at the additions for the building we have one larger edition that's a two-story edition on the right hand side that has its academic classroom support space and relocating the sack classrooms with their own secure entry and then one of the big features of this edition is that it wraps around both the first and second floor to a three-story stair that now will connect all three levels so you'll have multiple points of circulation to that lower level and really enhancing the life in the building and being able to make those connections and function better for the students and staff and really feel more cohesive as a school and then also with the exploration through

the schematic design we did realize we needed to do a small addition at the kitchen area to expand that to provide for some additional needs for the kitchen as well as a new mechanical room systems going into the building through the renovation of the building. And then on the site, as you know, Daniel's run is a pretty tight site. We'll see a picture of that in a minute, but we are going to be upgrading the outdoor spaces, making the play spaces better. We're going to be including an amphitheater built into the hill. That's for the school's use, creating that outdoor gathering space. And it's also going to connect the front of the building to the back accessibly so that has for everyone to be able to access those play spaces and come together outside we're also looking

at reconfiguring some of the parking a little bit there's not much room for that so we are adding parking spaces where we can and then we will be providing some ev charging stations on site at Daniels run as well so this is a image aerial of the building you'll notice north is down in this view so that all the plans line up so if I say east-west don't think left-right so I'll probably go more left-right than east-west just to keep everybody on the same page here so the original building built in 1956 had multiple renovations additions around 2000 the last renovation was done where it brought together green acres and layton hall and became what we now know as the daniels run school serving the fairfax city students it's on 13.6 acres and it backs up to the daniels run

trail system park and the stream in the back which gives us a lovely flood plan across the back of the school property which also influences where we could or could not build additions so we have looked at how we can best maximize the use of the site and respect the boundaries that we were given so here's a a pretty picture of the site with the new building on it you can see circled on the large two-story addition this is made possible where we have demolished a one-story addition portion of the building smaller portion and that makes the availability to go up and increase the use of the building and functionality there and wrap around to the back where you have that three-story stair the new addition will have structure that is ready for photovoltaic panels

on the ceiling on the roof not on the ceiling so we'll be bringing in some new energy that way as well as where we have to strengthen already for snow loads on the existing building we'll be able to increase that to accommodate some additional photovoltaics on portions of the existing building on the site you can see the bus loop and the car kiss and ride circulation is primarily the same We've done a traffic study. We're waiting on the final report, but the initial findings are showing that there's adequate queuing on site for the traffic to be out of Blenheim Boulevard and that there is stacking for the buses within the current bus loop, but we couldn't shorten it from where it is currently.

So they did need that. They're going to be doing some additional recommendations for anything they see that future use so we're still waiting on the results of the traffic study but the initial reports show that the circulation patterns are going to remain about the same however you can see in the back that we did add about 10 parking spaces toward the gym in the back side of the building and i think we've got about two or three additional spaces in the bus loop in this configuration Also, we are looking at some covered canopies at the Kiss and Ride and at the secondary entrance to help with that transition time and also be able to be used during the school day as an art patio or something outside. Reconfiguring the courtyards is part of this

project as well. So this is highlighting the areas I mentioned this is a small addition on the left side by the kitchen it includes space for a new walk-in cooler freezer that they don't currently have as well as the new mechanical room to be able to enable both systems to be operational throughout the phased occupied construction and then here you can see all three levels for the two-story addition I still call it a two-story addition because really it's the stair that goes to three levels but it is two stories of academic program space so you can see on the first floor the sac spaces are to the right hand corner with an exterior entry for coming and going relieving congestion at the main entry

designated spot for those families to come. And then on the upper level, it wraps around so that you have a complete loop and then another means of egressing up and down off of the second floor. We're also able to reconfigure the classrooms so that we're grouped by grade level and not splitting floors between grades. And then we were tasked with looking at the main entry, really making it more welcoming, inviting. And so you can see here in the axon and in the rendering here, these are concepts for the main entrance. But what we've done is opened up the second story there at the main entrance, made it wider, so the three doors, lots of natural light. As you come into the entry, then it's a two-story vestibule

that's going to welcome staff, students, visitors alike, but also maintaining a clear visibility, secure entry and vestibule there. But he will still check in through the main office before entering into the main building area. The widened space past the vestibule gives more of a gathering and staging area for people coming and going, relieves some of the congestion at that academic and public space corridor intersection at the stair. By reconfiguring the stair, we've kind of eliminated some of the space that wasn't being utilized fully and being able to give them that back to the library by enlarging, reconfiguring the stair does expand the library slightly and give opportunities from some special moments

there as you come in. stairs you'll see there's the extended learning area that's available for small group or pullout spaces for all of the staff to be able to use and there's two different ones one smaller and one's a little bit larger accommodating different functions and spaces within the school and giving the opportunity for flexibility for planned and unplanned activities there and in and helping with student engagement so all of this really results in a more efficient circulation in the building and then the main entry being welcoming and opening and a new palette across the front of the building if we want to go to the next slide so you can see the overall of elevations here demonstrate how the proposed additions complement and integrate with the existing

structure we've carefully selected a palette of materials and colors that echo the character of the existing building while introducing a refreshed identity and really a new front facade out facing to the community there are similar architectural elements that were repeating in the addition that really helps tie it together and gives through the material palette and cues gives a cohesive feel to the project so it feels like it's all refreshed together and not just something added on and really together these strategies create a cohesive composition that allow the additions to feel intentional and seamlessly integrate with the original building so this is the current schematic design elevations all of this will continue to be revised as we go

through design development on the project.

Amit HickmanDo you mind if we pause for questions here? I feel like there's, if not, we're going to be here all night. Sure. We'll start with Ms. Sessori, do you have questions on this?

Kristina CecereThe addition, additional parking to the left of the building, What does that look like in relation to the baseball field that's back there, the little tee ball field that's back there?

Molly MerloSo it's off of the service drive that's coming around currently. So there will be a little bit of grading there to be able to make those. But it's not infringing on the field space at all. It's coming off of the drive that's currently there.

Kristina CecereGreat. And then I'm a little confused when looking at the entryway for the school. back to that. What's the flow? Like I can see the atrium, right? But I'm having a hard time seeing how visitors enter the building, go into the front office, what direction they go, and then how from there do they, where would they then enter the school?

Molly MerloWell, yeah, you're seeing the second floor here in the cutaway. On the first floor, so the administrative wing is still where it is currently today. So the vestibule you go to the left as you come in you can't go through the doors straight into the building oh you have to go left into admin there's a door there it's just hard to see

Kristina Cecerewhich goes into my other question about like the stairs being reoriented but they they are it's just they're they're going

Lauren Bartelmefrom

Kristina Cecerehere to there right like that okay okay now now that makes sense yeah

Molly Merloand so yeah you go into the admin and then come back out on the other side of those glass doors

Kristina Cecerethat's going to be really nice with

Molly MerloIt will bring in a lot of natural light and really open up that area. And I think especially for the arrival and dismissal, being able to have a widened area there and queuing of people coming and going.

Amit HickmanAll right, Ms. Kelsey.

Sarah KelseySo one of my questions is when we do cut that out to go a second floor, I'm not as familiar with this building. Is there, and I know she'll answer it, are there any classrooms that will be taken out right there? Yes. Yes. So you're losing

Molly Merloone classroom on the second floor. Okay. That's over there currently.

Sarah KelseyGotcha. Because I don't know that I know it's on the other

Molly Merloside. Okay. But you're gaining half of it as an extended learning area.

Sarah KelseyGotcha. Okay. And then just to refresh my memory, ride. They're still walking around to the same front or did we, because I know we had talked about it one time that they're trying to go through where the office is now, but are they still walking around? Yes.

Molly MerloSo they would still be coming around to the main entry. We did look at some options where if we were to reconfigure the entry to the Kiss and Ride area and work through those during schematic design and for a number advantageous and would not have been as opening open and welcoming and then face the main entry for the community as well.

Sarah KelseyOkay. And then the last thing at one point there was also the cover at the bus loop is that gone like yes okay so there won't be a cover for our bus loop. Okay they can I just want to.

Dr. WrightstaffYeah, they have a very effective staggered dismissal to keep the students out of the rain.

Amit HickmanGo ahead, Ms.

Lauren BartelmeDormey. Could you speak just a little bit about the plan for the courtyards?

Molly MerloYes. So we have two designs for the courtyards that are focused. The one on the right-hand side is adjacent to the science classroom and looking at both of them making them lower maintenance, but the one on the right having a covered area for the schools to have outdoor teaching area that's covered as well as reconfiguring the planter areas to be able to reduce some of the maintenance needs out there but still provide opportunities for the science class to be able to go out and do planting and growth and work in that courtyard. and then the this one on the left that's adjacent to the library and corridor there we're still developing that the current concept is that it would be split between teaching area and then

some play area that's something that we want to discuss with the school in more depth to find out what is the best use of those spaces so those will be developed more during design development but learning and growing in one and play and growth in the other is kind of the overall concept, but the final designs of those are still to be worked out in design development.

Dr. WrightstaffAnd I would just emphasize the two things that Ms. Merlot said of a focus on how much maintenance is needed for them, and then second, allowing them to be instructional spaces for our educators in the building that they can use in a variety of flexible ways.

Lauren BartelmeThanks. And how big is the amphitheater and what is the seating capacity look like? I was just,

Molly MerloI knew you were going to ask me that after the last one. I was like, oh, dang. So I don't have that number on the top of my head. I think what we were looking at there is around 50 to 60 seated. But I don't want to be going, like, don't quote me on that right now. It's still under development as we're working through the final grading. how the fire marshal has asked us to look at potential fire access on that side it might change the reconfiguration of things a little bit so We're thinking two to three classes In that area as a as a goal, but that'll be further defined during design development as well

Amit HickmanDr. Wright you look like you have something that no, okay

Dr. WrightstaffI was gonna give the same answer miss Merlot gave so In case she didn't have it so

Amit HickmanI should have just waited and let you answer for me. Before I ask my questions, Mr. Murray, do you have any questions or thoughts?

StudentDo you know exactly where the charging stations are going to be in the parking lot? So

Molly Merlothey'll be on the left side, kind of at the top where the blue arrows turn and come back right before the downhill spot. So that's closest to the mechanical electric room. And that's where the connections would be easiest to make and would make sense. So that's where we're looking at the charging.

StudentAnd then does this take into account the renovation of Blenheim Boulevard, like the buses? Yes. Okay.

Molly MerloYeah. So as they presented earlier on the Daniels Run side of the street, it will be widened slightly and the sidewalk will be there. The bike lanes are on the opposite side of the street. So this will be the sidewalk coming by, but we've already got the CAD files from the Blenheim Boulevard project and we're incorporating that into our design as well so that it doesn't interfere.

Dr. WrightstaffThat's a really important question, Mr. Murray, sir. We appreciate you bringing it up. Although you heard from Ms. Merlot that there won't be significant changes to the flow of our parking lots and our bus loop, one of the features of the Blenden Boulevard is an addition of a left turning lane right in front of Daniel's Run that will, I believe, help with that and help with the flow as we do arrival and dismissal every single day. But there's really close coordination between that project and these projects. I'm really proud of how the architects and BND are working with the city staff. And that's gonna be just as important with Providence because there's a planned, there's a significant amount of work planned

to update Germantown Road as well, which is right where Providence is. So that same amount of alignment is taking place already with that project.

Amit HickmanI

Sarah Kelseythink Ms. Kelsey had a follow-up to that. Is the left turn lane to go into the parking lot or to go into the bus loop?

Dr. WrightstaffThe parking lot.

Amit HickmanI was hoping we can go back to slide 22 now that I understand that I'm looking at the upstairs, not the downstairs. Can you describe that kind of that gap in between the first set of windows and the second? Will something be taking place in between those, or is that just showing what it looks like from the bottom?

Molly MerloAre we talking about from the entry door, the two-story volume?

Amit HickmanYes. So see, there's like the, you've got three different column areas.

Molly MerloSo not

Amit Hickmanbetween the first and the second. I understand that's outdoors, but between the second

Molly Merloand the third. That's just an open-air lobby, two-story volume with natural light coming in. lights hanging down

Amit Hickmanin

Molly Merlothat space.

Amit HickmanAnd then you said there will be a reduction of one classroom space, but additional learning flex space. What does that look like in terms of total number of additional classrooms?

Molly MerloWe're still meeting the same program, so we're at, I think it's 33 classrooms total. Sorry, I don't have that.

Amit HickmanOkay, that's okay.

Molly MerloIf

Amit Hickmanwe can get that number, I'm just, you know, I know people will ask us how many additional classroom spaces do we have

Molly Merlojust as

Amit Hickmanthe population and flows and while right this year it's gone down as you saw from the other presentation two years ago went way up so

Molly Merloyeah so the net number of classrooms we're adding one additional classroom into the building from what's currently there but then we are adding in some additional spaces like the music rooms and art rooms and enlarging some of the classrooms be closer to the ed specs and some of the support spaces.

Dr. WrightstaffNo, that's well said. I think on both of these projects, it's in terms of what's happening through the additions or alterations elsewhere in the building. It's really, it's adding a few classrooms in each one and we can definitely provide those exact numbers, but it's also adding the spaces that are not currently there that are, whether they're support, whether they're instructional, whether they're meeting spaces for our staff. but I would also say that one of the things we're looking at too is that if there are unexpected enrollment growths over the years, are there rooms that we have the amount of flexibility built in where it could be converted to other classrooms? So a good example would be we really want to have

two music rooms and an instrumental classroom in each of these buildings, but it's possible that we might need one of those rooms in the future for classrooms spaces and those could easily be converted and we can have that instruction elsewhere. So trying to future-proof it a little bit as well so you'll see what's being added in terms of net growth in classrooms, but also know that we're thinking about how can we ensure we have that flexibility for whatever those schools are gonna need over the next 30 years.

Amit HickmanGreat, thank you, that's appreciated. Any other go-backs before we move on to the next part? Go ahead, Ms. Essary.

Kristina CecereI see on the second story, looking at that again. The window of that hallway is you're

Lauren Bartelmegoing to be updating the windows obviously, right? Yes.

Kristina CecereAll new windows and all new doors. That's a silly question.

Molly MerloThat's currently Cal wall that will be removed.

Kristina CecereFantastic.

Amit HickmanAll right. Obviously none of us are architects as we couldn't figure that out. That's okay. Thank you very much and we'll move on to the next portion.

Allison LeggAll right. The good stuff for Providence. So Dr. Wright has asked Ms. Merlot and myself to play nice in the sandbox. So it's been a real pleasure for Arc, Inc. to collaborate with another architecture firm and Mosley. And so a lot of things that you will hear for Providence are very similar to what is happening at Daniel's Run. But there also are some very unique things about each school and each community and each site. that will be a very different solution and approach. And so you'll get to see that tonight with Providence. So renovation, very similar. So the school board had a really good foundation set by doing a facility condition assessment for all of the city of Fairfax schools. And that report told us that the bones

of Providence are really good. So that is a good foundation for then investments to come to just upgrade the facilities. So as Ms. Merlot said, new finishes, new heating, ventilation, air conditioning systems, new ceilings, new lights, new windows, new doors. So the building, although it is remaining, will look new with finishes and sustainable features. Also during the concept phase we evaluated what the school currently has and the important programs that currently make Providence, Providence. We also looked at the spaces that were there that were maybe undersized. So some special education classrooms were using rooms that were originally designed to be storage rooms or that's one example.

So part of the proposed plan is to make sure that these spaces that are necessary for Providence to function have the appropriate size. And then also to look at the discrepancies between the FCPS ed spec. So are there spaces that the FCPS elementary school ed spec recommends that Providence doesn't have? So those things are also part of the proposed renovation addition. One unique thing about Providence is that there are two temporary classrooms on site. So part of the project is to make those permanent. And we don't want at the end of the day in 2030 when the building is done to still have, you know, those temporary facilities on site. So part of the addition is making sure that we have the adequate number of classrooms and accommodating the spaces that are undersized.

And that doesn't necessarily mean, you know, the two trailer spaces are going into the addition. We've looked at how the complete school functions holistically, and maybe that means moving some spaces around so it just functions a little bit better. during our community engagement and staff engagement one of the things that we really heard Providence is a two-story elementary school sort of oriented in a in a circular triangular shape and on the first floor circulation is continuous which works really well but on the second floor it's disconnected and so that was a one of the big ask from the staff to kind of finish the And so that is another purpose of one of the additions that is being proposed.

Site, probably the biggest change, Providence to Daniel's Run. Daniel's Run, the Kiss and Ride functions well at Providence. It does not. It's the opposite of that. So this project is going to be a big collaboration with Ms. Sanford and Mr. Sarna to figure out how we can make circulation be more safe and more appropriate, not only for the school, but also for the city. And there will be Germantown road improvements, as Dr. Wright mentioned. And so those collaboration efforts will continue as we move forward into the next phases of design.

Kate TiffanystaffYes, please.

Allison LeggSo Providence Elementary School is about 103,000 square feet. The original wing built in the 50s is along Germantown Road in the front. There was a smaller addition put on in the 80s which included an elevator. And then there was also a larger addition that really expanded the footprint of the school quite drastically in 2000. The site is a little bit larger than Daniel's Run, and there are a little bit more students here at Providence than Daniel's run, a little over 900. Providence also serves Fairfax County, so there's city as well as county students that go to school here. So our proposed site plan, so Germantown Road is on the bottom, and you can see that the existing building there is kind of in that gray tone,

And we're proposing additions in three locations. So the large addition sort of in the rear of the school is in the blue area and that is a two-story addition and it's two stories so now it can complete the loop of the second story. We also are showing, proposing an addition in the front, also in blue, which will help us to modernize facade makes something welcoming, something that everybody coming to the school can enjoy, and it also helps us to reorient the classrooms in that front wing, which is the original portion of the building, and increase the number of classrooms there. The third addition is in the courtyard, which is being proposed as an ad alternate right now. it was originally introduced to the project during concept as an alternative solution for this connector piece on the second floor.

And so it does encroach upon the courtyard and it would be a circulation space as well as an opportunity for resource. So from the site perspective, the original site has three curb cuts for access. So if we're looking at the right side of the page, the right curb cut is for service and also for bus access. The second to right curb cut is we're proposing for bus access and also for cars. So we're trying to minimize the amount of cross traffic between buses and cars. And then the third curb cut, which is now being proposed as the exit from the site for buses, is currently where the Kiss and Ride enters, which is the area that's problematic. So in this image, we're proposing to have a new curb cut all the way on to the left side of the property

for kiss and ride it orients traffic in the appropriate way we now have a longer queuing space through the parking lot for cars to queue on site rather than on Germantown Road and it also reorients the car traffic so students can get out on the curbside this is currently in works and coordinating with the city road improvements on Germantown Road that are going to affect kind of that area of the apartments to the left side of the Providence site. So this is the preferred approach from Dr. Wright and the design team at the moment, but there is some coordination to follow. Also part of this area is expanding the parking so in the same kind of footprint where there is parking now This will be paved it'll have curb cuts will address stormwater issues

So we're not encroaching on the fields. It is just going to be a more permanent solution similar to Daniel's run we're showing opportunity for PV panels, solar panels on the roof to help support the energy use in the building and any space that is displaced by new footprint, new additions such as the rear on the hardscape that is being relocated. So you can see the relocation of the black top kind of near the playground and the ball fields. So we can move on. Okay, great. Thank you. So this just shows a little bit more about the proposed addition. So again, in the front, a two-story addition that is going to be for classroom space. And we're adding additional classrooms by gaining extra square footage in the front of the building

the classrooms. So right now classrooms are oriented parallel to the corridor so when we turn them we are able to get more along that front facade. The largest part of the addition is in the rear and that has the connection on the second story and it also is going to be for classroom space and then also some music and art classrooms. systems. And then within the courtyard is the sky bridge which is an ad alternate which is an alternate connector as well as having some resource space. So next please. Okay. So during schematic design we explored several ways to approach upgrading the facade and kind of noticed about the original building and Providence is the way that the brick the masonry plays and is very fun with color and

with using the brick to create sort of this dynamic facade So in this concept we're calling it woven. How can we take inspiration from the original building and and modernize that and have it still be playful, but maybe in a new way. So we're proposing to use a metal panel that could be in various sizes, various shapes, various colors to dress up and have new fenestration, not only on that addition that comes out, but also on the existing building. so it looks like a cohesive upgraded facade and this character will then be wrapped around the entire perimeter so whatever playful gestures are decided here also happen around the building so it feels like one building that is cohesive and works together so we are just at the beginning stages of this

concept but we look forward to working through it a little bit more and refining it and making sure that it will work as appropriate.

Amit HickmanAll right. Thank you very much. Dr. Reich, do you have anything to add before we go to questions?

Dr. WrightstaffI think the only thing I would add is just the last slide we were looking at that Ms. Legg was showing us is again it is just a concept of a design. The big thing for the board and the public to be aware of is that because of the addition that's happening on the front of the building, we'll have the opportunity to have significant changes to what the front of the building looks like. So it's just showing you that similar to how you saw a new facade at the front of Daniel's Run, there'll be a new facade at Providence. Whether it looks like this is what will then happen in the next step of the process. So

Amit Hickmanto clarify, will that be a conversation that we will be participating in?

Dr. WrightstaffAbsolutely.

Amit HickmanThank you. All right. Which way are we starting? Down here? All right. So that remind you of questions.

Lauren BartelmeI was curious what the timeline is for us deciding which route to go on the Sky Bridge and if you have some diagrams of kind of what those two different scenarios look like.

Dr. WrightstaffSo I'll start with I think it's something that we won't look for a decision tonight, but it's something that we can, we wanna decide on soon because as we work with the builders and are looking, one of the things they'll be doing is providing cost estimates. It's something that we're gonna wanna know. You heard Miss Legge talk that it's considered an ad alternate, so it's something that could be a part of the project or not a part of the project and we'll get a specific cost for that. So it'll be built in a little bit through the process to be able to make that decision. If there's not an interest to move forward with it, then the sooner that we know that, the better. And then in terms of designs,

I think what I would say is, and Ms. Legg chime in, think of it mostly as a passageway with a larger space open in the middle that could be used for some functional uses in a building, but it's still, you're gonna be limited in size. But we can continue to work are and then I think especially try and graphically represent what that would look like in the existing courtyard because I think that's an important consideration and and for my colleagues from BND to feel free to chime in if I'm missing anything or not speaking correctly

Allison Leggand from a programmatic standpoint we've we've done a sketch to see how challenging it would be if we you know needed to make a decision now and how that would affect you know where basic essential program puzzle pieces get relocated if it would be very challenging the farther down we got in the program but because of having to connect this sky bridge to the school there are smaller program at programmatic elements that are infilled in that connector so the pieces of the puzzle are more easily moved around and think if we share the sketch that we had started earlier, it would make sense.

Amit HickmanAll right, Ms. Kelsey.

Sarah KelseySo I'm going to go on the same kind of topic to start. Are there, I don't remember this, but I think you answered it previously with previous designs. On the sky bridge, did we lose classrooms that are currently there to make the entry?

Allison Leggso any space that has been displaced for any part of the project has been given a new home okay so so the spaces that were classrooms yes but they had been relocated somewhere else and some of them were maybe undersized anyway so it made sense for them to find another place to be

Sarah Kelseyand then the other question for that with the sky bridge is you said like the center part is like for them to kind of look out the wind at windows and stuff is there seating in there for like around the sides or is it more you stand and walk through and if you want to look out the windows you keep standing

Allison Leggwe're not there yet but um there is opportunity and the the i think the intent would be yes that a teacher could use this as a breakout space. I think one of the, maybe the science, one of the teachers had said, I can see bringing my kids here and having them, because there's also a lot of grade change at Providence. So as you walk through the school, there are a lot of ramps. And so we would need that same ramp system in the Skybridge too. And one of the teachers said, I can see my kids all sitting here in this resource space. And at the top of the ramp, rolling cars down. So it becomes this interactive science fun class. So that was one example. But I think with the projects and both, kind of the message that Dr. Wright has really asked us

is to be flexible, right? Because we don't know what's happening. So whether it's a bench or whether it's they bring chairs something that the kids can you know sit on or stand or be flexible for for many types of abuse thank you

Amit Hickmanall right miss history

Kristina Cecerefirst of all i love the kiss and ride flow um as a former providence parent like this looks amazing to clarify the skybridge i'm going to ask for that too the skybridge design came about because in initial concepts there was no connector looping the second floor around and now the choice we have with concept four it we have that so ultimately the skybridge is just is an extra way of connecting two sides of a building where ways that do that. I think my concern is the impact on our sort of internal, like that internal garden space that we have in Providence that's used for all kinds of things, gardening and such. And I'm curious what, I know that you shared previously that you've done like a sun study

I'm just curious what that footprint would look like. And to be truthful, I don't know if it's a good value add considering we already have a connector that's there. It feels, no offense, it just feels a little extra flashy for something that we don't, maybe we could put somewhere else for like a true functionality. So Dr. Wright, you look like you want to comment, go for it.

Dr. WrightstaffI was just going to confirm what you stated at the beginning of kind of how we got here, of an initial plan for connectivity when there wasn't that second floor connection that we're getting through the addition. So that's where it started. And it was a request that I asked our firms to develop, that what can we do to improve the flow, which was also based on feedback they heard from the staff and the community. And then I think second, it's important for you to bring up the idea of what impact this would have on the current courtyard setup. there yet at the point to be able to say, it's going to be 100 foot diameter. There are shade studies that can easily be done if there is a consensus to strongly pursue this.

But I think we can get some idea of the information that we have now of it is gonna drastically change the composure of that courtyard. And in some ways it might change it. but it'll look very different out there with a large structure going above. So I think that's the important information to focus on now to determine, do we even want to go down some of these next steps?

Kristina CecereI do have a follow-up question. Thinking about... Can you come back to me?

Amit HickmanI will. Mr. Murray, do you have anything?

StudentJust a quick question of, access the parking lot next to that addition on the right side?

Allison LeggHow do you access the parking lot on the addition on the right side? So really on the right that is just going to be service and the blacktop that is there currently is going to be relocated. So there's a mechanical yard back there. There's service back there. It's really not going to be a location for parking or really outdoor play any longer. There is going to be more parking on kind of the left side by the fields, and that's kind of like co-locating all the parking in one place.

Dr. WrightstaffMr. Murray, it's a really good question. I think some of it is just based on lines you see from the overhead shot from a very fancy version of Google Maps that where there's some currently some basketball courts painted there and things like that that doesn't show up as well on the printed copy. I think the important thing you heard from Ms. Legg is it's not intended to be parking for the staff or the community. Think of more of loading dock area.

Allison LeggBut that's good feedback because we'll update the graphic.

Amit HickmanThank you. I actually was going to ask the same thing. And even as a loading dock, I guess my follow-up to Mr. Murray's question is, how do you get there? It looks like there's grass in between it, or will that be opened up?

Dr. WrightstaffYeah, let's, you know, because we're just in the design phase, let's get back to you. But, you know, if there, I would say one of the things that's important to think about this, too, and you heard a little bit from Ms. Merlot when we were talking about Daniel's run is there are very specific access points and setbacks from the adjoining properties that are being covered up a little bit by some of the trees that you see back there. So that might cover it, but we'll definitely clarify that and make sure that in the graphics it's really easy to understand.

Amit HickmanOkay. And not to be repetitive, but I did want to bring up a sky bridge as well. when we went with concept four is it was concept four without the sky bridge so what I'm hearing from my colleagues and I could be wrong is that really sounds like maybe we feel that you know it's a redundancy in some ways and I do think we have a fiduciary responsibility that if it's not completely necessary and there's other places that we can utilize that money that that might be the best so I don't want to speak for everyone else but that at least is my opinion as it stands and then we have to go backs miss Kelsey first I

Sarah Kelseymight have a go Go back, go back. I know, okay, just finish, okay. So I'm going to get off the Sky Bridge, but I'm going on to parking. The, so you've, I see you've kind of changed that back parking area. My question, because as a former Providence parent, as well as a mother of a baseball player who uses those fields, that little section that goes back a little farther Is there any way to possibly extend that? Because I know during like back to school night, during any family event, even baseball games, a lot of people park even in that grass area. If you go back and look right now, it's like if it rains, it's a mud pit. But I'm just wondering if, because a lot of times they're having to park in that

because there's no other parking spot other than going into the neighborhood. So I'm just wondering what the thoughts on that would be.

Dr. WrightstaffRight, I'll take my best first shot at it. Or maybe I'll have Mr. Bonvecchio, or we'll put him on the hot seat, but, or Mr. Nebbitt. But what, I think, Ms. King, if you could back up one slide before that, what you'll see is, I think it's what you're talking about, how there's really kind of two spaces. There's a semi-temporary asphalt pad and then there's some gravel section, right? And then, right? So, you know, when you go to the, if you advance one slide, Ms. King, you'll see that the planned improvements kind of cover both of those spaces. So it's definitely gonna be a lot more than what's currently there. I also think we'll try and look at things to ensure that even when that extra parking

is needed on those grass fields, it's never ideal. So with some of the curb cuts and the stormwater management that's gonna happen back there, I think it's going to help not only with the flow, but just ensure that we are using the appropriate parts of the property, whether it's on the big school events or on the weekends when there's a lot going on there.

Sarah KelseyThen my other question is on the bus loop, where the three buses are right now, there's also some like, is it all handicapped, Ms. King? Is it just one of them? There's like three or four parking spots along the curb there. Are those disappearing now?

Allison LeggSo right now the accessible spots, you cross the Kissin' Ride and they're in the parking lot. So those will stay where they are. Okay.

Dr. WrightstaffI believe, Ms. Kelsey, you're referring to at the front of the school, there are some parallel parking spots. I don't know if they're handicapped or not. In this new version, I think it would go away because we actually, because of the bump out expansion on the front of the school, the whole bus loop needs to shift by about six or seven feet, I think. But one of the things that all of our firms and our project managers are looking at are those really specific requirements around ADA and accessibility. So we'll, regardless of where they are on the site, we'll meet all those requirements.

Sarah KelseyI was just curious, I don't care if they're there, I never get one, so I was just curious about that. But I will say, I do appreciate the blacktop being over there now because I think it's more useful to some because currently right now, I think that's just a fenced in blacktop, literally with nothing and I'm sure the bigger kids will love having the use of that. And again, yeah, I agree, the flow is much better. Hopefully that will alleviate some of the weekend accidents that happened because of our kiss and ride flow.

Dr. WrightstaffSure, and let me clarify on the kiss and ride, we will, it will be addressed. It will go to a traditional system of entering on the sides of the street that we're looking at. Whether it'll look exactly like this on the screen right now, we have to wait and see. This is our preferred option, but there are other options able to have that fourth curb cut, that we can still address the key functionality issue, which is going in on the opposite side of the street. So that will be addressed in terms of how the site actually looks in the end. That's again, this next phase, this design development phase.

Sarah KelseyOkay, Ms. Kelsey was there. There's one more. Ms. King, can you, I don't know what slide it is, go. Two. Nope, the other way. Two. One more. That one. Okay. I had to put my readers on to see it. The little writing up top, but it says on one of them it's the aluminum plate box. Is that like an awning? It's the third little writing. Literally put my, that's the only way.

Amit Hickmanit's yeah perforated with school initials right in mascot panthers oh we

Allison Leggwe were so we're trying sunlight right very very important so we're trying to play with be playful

Amit Hickmanum

Allison Leggand trying to create a dynamic facade so these plate boxes could potentially be on the facade somewhere maybe they're, you know, PES, or maybe they're the little paw print. And as the sun changes over the course of the day, or as the sun changes over the course of the year, that shadow changes. So you can kind of see it in the renderings. You can kind of see the PES on the facade.

Sarah KelseyYeah, I was kind of looking at it. That's what was kind of a little confusing to me, Because like on the southwest side, it looks like it's more an awning, but on the north side, it looks like it's under the window. So I was trying to figure out like the place. Could it be either really? I mean,

Allison Leggokay. It's just an idea. Okay. You know, it's an idea to play with sunlight and create a dynamic facade in a playful way. So yeah. Sounds

Sarah Kelseygreat. Thanks.

Kristina CecereAll right, Ms. Hester. Just a clarification. So we're in the schematic design. and when we last met, I asked about bathrooms and just wanted to try and think about bathrooms that are accessible to all students. I'm assuming that would be a discussion during the design developments. Is that correct? Like what that could look like and just having input on that. So,

Allison Leggyes, in programming, accessible bathrooms take up more space. So for Providence, and I assume also for Daniel's run, have the appropriate space for accessible bathrooms. So, you know, so per code, you know, that's what they will be. If there are additional things that are requested or important to the school division, then, you know, that is something that we can talk about in design development. But basically what the law requires for accessibility, these restrooms will have them.

Kristina CecereI think I'll clarify my point. Not necessarily, definitely accessible, obviously, for any ability needs and whatnot. But also for, I recall when I think Falls Church City School designed their high school, they had bathrooms to where there were stalls. And you could clearly see the stalls were full and the kids could pop in. And then there was a shared sink area. And when we last met, so that would be a great design section or near the cafeteria, just thinking about some of the comments I've heard from teachers and whatnot about how to have kids wash their hands quickly and then go to the cafeteria, or even just thinking about accessibility that way. We

Allison Leggdefinitely heard that, and there's space for several new toilets within the cafeteria, so it's easier to monitor students going, and they don't have to go down the hall. So there was the noise issue too, right, with students in the cafeteria going down the hall and those students were in session and the noise of the students using the bathroom. So yes, that is part of the proposed.

Dr. WrightstaffBut I would add to answer your question, this next phase of the design is when a lot of those decisions will be made. So again, right now we have the space. We know what's in the program. We know how many we need. In terms of the actual layout of it, that's where we'll go next.

Amit HickmanI myself have two follow-ups. One, in terms of the restrooms, and I think we had talked about some gender-neutral spaces where it's less differentiated between who is using which restroom, and I would love to continue that conversation because I know that's something that's happening across the country in different ways and be creative with both schools of being able to think of those possibilities where students feel less othered by having to use maybe a separate restroom The other question I had was back to the rendering, the conceptual imagery, and it could just be again the drawing. Do I remember that we were, I know that we were going to lose one of the baseball fields, but it looks like we're losing both.

Sarah KelseyThis is field one, two, three, and four back here.

Amit HickmanOkay, just can't see them in the picture. Oh, so we're not losing any baseball fields.

Dr. WrightstaffSo the plan is to not lose any baseball fields at this time. You can see where the blacktop is and might impact a little bit of the outfield of a tee ball field. But I would say it's still, again, we have other options that we could look at. I'll be upfront though, those baseball fields will be impacted during the renovation and construction. Yes, of course. But we'll try and limit that as much as possible. Great.

Kristina CecereOkay. One more go back. My apologies. The going back to Ms. Kelsey's point I think I think she does highlight a good point with the back part of that parking lot is that something that we need to reach out to parks and recreation or is that is that our purview to extend the parking lots along that strip sort of the back end of what does that feel to?

Dr. WrightstaffWe can definitely coordinate with them and make sure that they're aware and that there's no unintended consequences of this. But my looking into the crystal ball, I think it's all going to be good news from them about this.

Kristina CecereAbsolutely. Thank

Amit Hickmanyou so much. All right. If we have no further questions, then thank you all for your time.

Dr. WrightstaffOh, wait, there's more. But I ensure it will be brief. I'm going to

Amit Hickmancontinue on.

Dr. WrightstaffYeah, I know, I know. But it's, I think this is some of the things that are also just important for the public and for the school board to know. And I would just, before I wrap us up here for the evening, just what you heard from me at the beginning, I'm really, really proud of the work that our designers and our project managers are doing, and especially on the timeline that we're doing it. And then I'm going to put a plug in as well you're about to hear me talk about is the procurement efforts that are happening. And that's with our partners in the city government and they've really been supporting us to do two massive procurement projects. And really when you think about it, bless you, when you think about it, it's times two

because of multiple projects. So I'm going to be on the slide with the budgets and what you see here is just basic overall budgets for the entire program. And so when I'm referring to that, we're talking about the Daniels Run, and the planned work at the high school. On the right side of the screen, you can see the estimated costs that we have for each elementary school project. I'm going to emphasize the word estimated, but also give some context of when that estimate will move into something where we have a lot more clarity on. As we've, these are the budgets that we've asked our designers to work with and what we're having the construction managers do their bids on, that those prices could go up based on some of the things

that are requests or some of the work that we're trying to do or some of the things that are just current costs that are a little bit different than when we started this project. So these are estimates. And then as we go to the next slide, we'll see our timeline of where we've been and where we're planning to go. And there's a few things I'd like to point out on here. You can see with the star of where we are right now. So last Wednesday after having bids from a significant amount of builders that you heard Mr. Bonvecchia and Mr. Nebbitt talk about, we shortlisted them and issued an RFP for them to provide presentations about our elementary school projects that will close next month. And then we'll work through this board

and then we'll work through our city council to hopefully award a contract. And that will get us into the design development process in the construction document process. One of the advantages that we've talked about in the spring about going with the construction manager at risk procurement method is not only having that construction manager come in earlier on in the process, so again, we're hoping to have them here working later this fall. They'll be looking at all these designs with our designers, with our project managers and ensuring that a lot of the important questions that you're asking that we can address. The other key advantage is that through the construction manager at risk process, we'll end up with a guaranteed

maximum price, which I think is critical for our, the fiduciary responsibilities that we talked about earlier. And Mr. Bonvecchio, is it accurate? It's typically around 80% through the construction document process of when we can typically expect that guaranteed maximum price. When's a good time when we're looking at this chart here to estimate when we might get that.

Jeff BonvecchioNow you're going to put me on the record.

Dr. WrightstaffI told you. I warned you.

Jeff BonvecchioWe'll have a GMP, but we will want to take advantage of having that builder on board reviewing those design documents. I, and Dan will kick me here if we try to do it any time, you know, sooner, but I do think, you know, towards the, you know, that summer timeframe, we can, you know, start to have a better start to look like, and we've had our builders on board doing a lot of pricing, engaging the subcontractor market as well early on in the process to help with pricing, you know, fine tuning design elements if need be. But I would say in that, you know, late spring, early summer timeframe is when we could start to expect to see some, you know, contract numbers or budget numbers that we would present to the various boards.

Dr. WrightstaffI think that's helpful. And the other thing I would point out on this calendar is the construction start date. That's an estimate at this time. It's gonna be based on how we move through the next few parts of this process. But our colleagues with BND, they're here to help us through all that. And they're off to a great start. Our designers and our project managers have already met with the permitting offices, the code offices, the planning and development offices here in the city of Fairfax to make sure so we can build that into our plans and build that into our timeline. But we know that we're targeting that start of the 2030, 2031 school year for these projects to be

Matthew Nortonstaffsubstantially complete.

Dr. WrightstaffThe last thing that I would point out is for members of our community. There are gonna be two community meetings about these projects. There will be on the evenings of September 23rd and September 24th. They're a virtual setting, so anybody in our community that's associated with these schools is welcome to hear a lot of the information that you heard tonight, but there'll be also some opportunities to provide some feedback. And then speaking of feedback or questions, on the final slide, there's going to be lots of information that's there right now on our city of Fairfax schools website and the ability to submit questions. And then this will also turn into the hub of all of the updates around this project.

So if you wanna know what's coming next, are we in the project, what is the progress that's being made, all of that will live on this website. So those are just good resources to be able to share. And now with that, I'll say if there's any additional questions that we haven't asked, we're happy to address them. And we really appreciate all the hard work that was put into this update tonight.

Amit HickmanAll right. Thank you very much. Does anyone... The tables have turned, haven't they? Go ahead. This

Sarah Kelseyis normally her role to ask the questions. I'm going to ask you guys the question kind of because you mentioned it earlier that there's more site visits coming. Who is doing the site visits that you were talking about? Is it I didn't know if it was the architects or the people coming up? Sure. So

Speaker 19the site visits are for the offerors, those contract managers at risk to see the sites firsthand beyond first person in the building on the site we're gonna have teams there City Fairfax procurement will also have teams there we'll be showing around my theme and I'll say it now I'll probably say it there is everybody stays together questions get submitted formally after the fact conversations are cordial and it's a good experience but it's not as if it's an open invite to absolutely everybody there yeah that's my next thank you oh Oh yeah, that's a given. I don't even consider that.

Amit HickmanAll right, well thank you very much and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your evening.

Georgina AstaffThank you.

Amit HickmanAll right, we will move on to agenda item 2.07. Dr. Rade is gonna give us an update on the school's opening data and some facilities updates of what occurred over the summer.

Dr. WrightstaffThank you, Vice Chair Hickman. So this is a opening of schools report. have a few areas of focus. It'll talk about the enrollment that we saw on the first day of school across the city of Fairfax. Some updates on some of the summer projects and facilities updates that happened. A few new faces around the city of Fairfax and then some updates from the first week. So as we look at our slide number two, you'll see the opening day enrollment compared to the first day of school last year with the first day of school this year. I would share that these are unofficial numbers, number that gets submitted to the state and is something that we use for a lot of our work is a September 30th number. And so we're not there yet, but these are the enrollments

that we saw on the first day of school. You can see a slight drop across the city of Fairfax schools overall, but in all four of the buildings they're slightly smaller than the year before. We're down about 145 students or 2.8%. This follows a trend that we saw last year but also across the Northern Virginia region. We're starting to see that similar trend as well. Arlington is the only division that I've seen that has publicly shared their enrollment numbers and again they saw a very similar size drop that we saw. I would also note that with these numbers, this is the combined city of Fairfax and Fairfax County enrollment, but our opening enrollment of city only students last year was 2,942 students.

When we have that number finalized, we could anticipate a similar two to 3% drop in those students this year, but we'll know that more at the end of the month. As we move through, you'll see the enrollments of our elementary schools and how it breaks down across grade levels and classes. And so you can see where there's those adjustments, where you might see a greater number of students at one grade level than the other. slides which I'll go through fairly quickly just show the grade level breakdown at Katherine Johnson Middle School and then again at Fairfax High School. I would say that the last thing I would share about enrollment is the you know over the last several years as we've been looking at the causality of

these enrollment drops and there's been lots of different discussions around federal workforce reductions, immigration policies, parents making choices about I think one of the biggest things we can see in the data is really just a decline in the birth rates for the students that are entering our schools. And I don't have the exact numbers here, but a lot of this can be attributed to more seniors graduating than there are kindergartners coming in. So at the end of the day, in an area as diverse as Northern Virginia, it's probably a mixture of all those reasons, but we're starting to see more and more about the birth

Matthew Nortonstaffrate decline impacting these enrollment numbers.

Dr. WrightstaffOn slide six, we're gonna look at the facilities upgrades and these are things that I'm gonna go through fairly quickly but just some quick updates. We are very fortunate to be able to put a new turf field in at Fairfax High School. Construction on it began on July 6th and was finished in mid August which is very, very fast. So our teams did a great job of ensuring

Matthew Nortonstaffthat we could turn it over to the schools before the start of the

Dr. Wrightstaffschool year. At Fairfax High School we were also, through the support of this board, able to add an electrical program to our CTE offerings which meant we needed an electrical classroom. And this, just to clarify, this is students who want to learn to become electricians and develop those skills. So we converted a classroom for this setup and that is about 95% done. There is some casework that needs to be installed and it'll be, the update I got this morning is that it'll be put in on September 22nd. And casework is just some cabinets, but they've been working in there, they've been teaching in there since the first day of school, The final update we have is for the security vestibule, again, through the support of this board

and the support of our council to be added at Providence Elementary School. The steel framing is in for this. There were some unexpected structural challenges with what they thought was gonna be inside the wall. They found something a little bit different, which is not atypical in projects like this. So they had to shift some of the orders and the frames that needed to come in. Those are on their way and are planned to be installed on September 21st, which is the day the school is closed. So that is very close to being done. Finally, we have two wonderful school police officers that are a part of our city of Fairfax police force. You'll recognize Officer Talbot, who has been at Fairfax High School in the past

and is returning. And we have a new face at Katherine Johnson and Officer Cox. And Officer Cox is doing a great job and we're very grateful for this important partnership. Our team was able to get out to all of our schools on the first day and it was just inspiring to see what's happening in our schools on that first day and just the warm and welcoming environment and culture that is taking place in each of those four buildings. As you go to the next slide, we will see some just great photos of our elementary students. I'd like to point out that bottom left Providence Courtyard that we're talking about and that is our kindergarten only orientation and it's a scavenger hunt that they do. And I remember fondly going there as a parent

of my kindergarten students at the time and sadly they are no longer in kindergarten. But it's a great tradition. And then I'd just point out the top left and the bottom right is instruction happening right away in our classrooms. I'm just really proud to see that happening. Our teachers have high levels of expertise with our students, which is a result of the procedures, the relationships that they establish in those opening days. And then in terms of our upper grades and our secondary settings, you can see at Katherine Johnson on the top row, they have an interdisciplinary teams model where they meet as teams. And so all of our administrators were talking about how the school works. They had a modified schedule for the first five days

where it allowed time for dedicated lessons about behavior expectations, dedicated lessons about procedures, about how the middle school recess program would work. And then they did a lot of team building. On the top left you'll see it's a grade level wide rock, paper, scissors competition which starts as complete chaos with 600 kids going rock, paper, scissors. And it ends up with a one singular champion and it's always a lot of fun. And then on the bottom you can see Fairfax High School, there's a bottom left is from our senior sunrise game on September 3rd. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions, but that's our opening of schools report.

Amit HickmanAll right, Mr. Murray, any questions? No, Ms. Astray? It's part of my, any questions? No.

Kate TiffanystaffI was

Amit Hickmanjust going to

Kate Tiffanystaffthe end there.

Amit HickmanOkay, I have one request. I would be curious to see the data comparison numbers from this time last year in terms of per grade for each of the schools and grade levels. I want to kind of track that theory of yours in terms of that maybe more sixth graders left than kindergartners came in and just see if we have any specific places where we had gaps because we had been rising for a while. It's interesting that it's kind of dropped back down.

Dr. WrightstaffYeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Amit HickmanAll right. With that, we are going to move on. There are no public hearings for this evening. We do have one action item, 4.01. This evening is the approval of the July 1st, 2026 regular meeting minutes. The clerk has provided these minutes, and is there a motion?

Kristina CecereMadam Vice Chair? Yes, Ms. Essary. I move that the City of Fairfax School Board approve the minutes of the July 1st, 2026 school board regular meeting as printed and distributed.

Amit HickmanIs there a second? Second. All right, Ms. Essary has moved, and Ms. Baramay has seconded Let the City of Fairfax School Board approve the minutes of the July 1st, 2026 regular meeting minutes as printed and distributed. Are there any changes or modifications or discussion? Okay, seeing none, all in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, no members are opposed. The motion is unanimous. We are gonna move on to our superintendent's matters. Dr. Wright, you again.

Dr. WrightstaffThank you, Vice Chair Hickman. The information that I'll share this evening will be brief and it'll just be focused on several of the community engagement sessions that will be hosted by the City of Fairfax government and the City of Fairfax schools related to the 1% sales tax that's on the ballot in November. We had one community meeting last week and we have three more planned and there's a lot of information on our websites about those events. at Green Acres during the day. And Ms. Dorsey's gonna help me with the exact time that it's at, and I'm seeing one o'clock. So, and then we have several other opportunities for that in October, and we have lots of information on our website and the city government website.

And then I would just close with that we have the Fairfax High School homecoming parade coming up, not this upcoming weekend, but next weekend. So a parade on Friday afternoon, and a wonderful set of events that weekend. So I'm looking forward to all of that.

Amit HickmanAll right, thank you very much. We're gonna move on to board matters and Ms. Barrow may we'll start with you.

Lauren BartelmeI just wanted to welcome back all of our staff and students and wish everyone a productive and happy quarter one.

Sarah KelseyI just wanna thank everybody who's presented tonight, especially the team that's still here a lot of work to get these designs ready for us and also doing the new RFPs for us. So I really appreciate that. And thank you to the students that came tonight to share with us their view on the language camp.

Kristina CecereI just wanted to say how fun it was to visit the schools on the first day and hear about the ready to launch from KJ as well as see the new electrical room. about that. And I'm also excited to have our Pyramid and Military Appreciation Night this Friday at the football game as well as homecoming.

Amit HickmanAll right. And I just want to say thank you for bearing with me. I've never led a regular meeting. Oh, Mr. Murray.

StudentI'd just like to thank the board for having me back again this year, and I look forward to the coming year ahead.

Amit HickmanSee, even more reason, too. Thank you for your patience with me. I'm running my first regular school board meeting. And then if there's nothing else for the board, then this meeting is adjourned at 9.06 p.m.