School Board Work Session

Kristina Cecereby voiceokay we're good good evening ladies and gentlemen it is monday may 18 2026. this is a work session of the city of fairfax school board for tonight's work session we will begin with the end of year report from the city of fairfax schools fcps committee representatives we want to get started with uh our representative mary kay for the um advisory committee for students with disabilities

Mary Kay Ciziunasboard this year we voted to accept our annual report for this I don't have a final copy that handout yet should be good it was it was having a minor like typos and some formatting this year our charge so what we decided to work on you know what we gave this Fairfax County School Board that we were going to work on and they said okay we do like that and tell us go do something else is that we would examine current practices within FCPS regarding data collection and progress monitoring for students with disabilities and learning differences in the division using evidence-based and research models the ASCD will make recommended for improving measurable outcomes for students by understanding the source data collected and used

by staff to recommend programs and services monitoring progress and multi-year special education improvement projects and empowering families and students to engage more effectively in education using data transparency and interpretation and then we try to align them with the accounting strategic plan that the um accountability and systems improvement pillar of that um we want the school board to the county make you know to do two town halls or four, I mean, leaving that to, from the 26, 27 school year, one each for the general public and one for special education administration school staff dedicated to discussing and answering questions about the special education enhancement through improvement closeout.

We would like, we would ask them to commission an independent third party audit of the school board advise the committee reports to evaluate how much of what we was recommended over the last five years is actually implemented because they'll tell us okay something's been implemented or it's partially implemented and the detail is really lacking at times or it's hard to figure out or like something ends up waiting on something else and then we never get an update so So that's the idea behind that. They've also asked if they update, like when we ask them a question and they give us data or answers back, we want to know exactly who it was from and what their title was, because sometimes it's hard to tell what department something came out of,

or if something got passed around. And, you know, sometimes the director of special education services, you know, just like, who's usually there, sometimes they'll know who, you know, answered it and sometimes not necessarily. So that's the idea behind that. We also want them to make sure they respond to the annual report, the written response and the plan of action to the committees and the school board. We've asked that they present the report, present the update on what they're doing by December or January. I believe we've looked at that manual. It actually says they sort of have to do it by the end of September, but to not rock the boat too much, or say we want it by the end of the year.

And then they want them to maintain that. Another thing that's kind of interesting, and this was really interesting when we looked at it, is you want the county to revise in the special education program descriptions, what they are on public pages that face parents are different from what staff can see, but the ones that staff see are much more detailed So many of the ones that are public facing are so vague. So we're asking if they get better described. So parents really know what service is what. And they may know which one they think is going to fit their child better. Or consider, you're supposed to be a team. So they want, you know, hoping that parents can then go in and say, okay, well, you didn't mention this program, but looking here,

this looks like a good fit. can we discuss the whys or why not on that so you you need what it is to be able to be an active member of the team and that's what the community wants them to do um we've also you know are doubling down and pushing for official document translations um they are translating more stuff and they do have like a telephone translation service if they don't have in-house translated have their own translators for quite a few languages so the big thing there is also to make sure when it's testing that the student can be understood and then the next one's more on data measurement and that was to clarify the data collected on suspensions they want to know like suspended kids how many are

students with disabilities versus students without disabilities. Also to get data on students who don't have the SOLs and have a 504 and IEP versus those who don't. And part of that is that so that we seem to refer to special education, although they determine patterns between impact with categories and SOL scores. because I think if you don't break it out like that, somebody does well as to score for the look. Perfectly. Another thing is to make score reports standardized more, and then to clarify that parents have a right to request an evaluation for special education services. Make sure parents know that they can't be and then the big thing was to have documentation to make sure IEP consider assistive technology services every time the IEP is like develop or

review there because a lot of times families aren't given it you know it's in the beginning and then they do not update it. And then the final one was to have a method to track the status of requests for AAC devices and services for students with disabilities and to include the number of requests that were received granted, injected, or waitlisted at FCPS. And then the final committee that was like the third one was for family student empowerment. and they want more data collected on transition related information and that is both transition to adulthood out of the system and then the major transitions within the system and then also collect data on family participation transitions including attendance rates various participation

and availability of interpretation and translation purposes. So

Sarah Knowlesthat was pretty much what

Mary Kay Ciziunaswe're asking the school board to review this year and hopefully implement. We had a town hall meeting in January where people were invited to come and give public comments, which can be done at any ASCD meeting. You just sign up ahead. Actually, don't even have to sign up. If you show up, we'll take walk-ins. but the January one, we really tried to push out information on it so hopefully people would see it. I don't think we got quite as many this year as they had the year before, but there were a decent number of people there, and it's always interesting to hear from the families and helpful to hear what some of the problems are. So I think we'll be doing that again next year.

Kristina Cecereby voiceand then yes

Mary Kay Ciziunasyou can make virtual comments I think to be able to do a virtual comment you would have to sign up ahead so they can be prepared to have you have the link and that sort of thing yes we did have a couple of virtual And then we propose the charge, and the final report will have comments that were written down and like summarized. And then this coming year, the charge that the committee is proposing is that ASCD will examine current practices in FTPs regarding the intersection of student mental health with disability and learning differences using evidence-based and research model will make recommendations for reducing absenteeism related to school refusal, lowering suspensions that are related to a

manifestation of disability, be able to look at providing proactive tools to support family and addressing mental health issues for their children with disabilities and learning differences, and improving the understanding of internalized anxiety, trauma, or adverse childhood experiences relating to to access education.

Sarah KnowlesAnd one thing that

Mary Kay Ciziunaskind of goes along with that, that was mentioned at the most recent meeting is the virtual counseling that high school students can participate in from Hazel Health. That is gonna be expanded down to all middle school students. So it'll be seventh and eighth graders, but in parts of the county where sixth graders are in middle school, they will have access if sixth graders are in the middle school. I thought that was a very nice, useful thing it can be very hard to find a provider that's affordable or takes insurance. If anybody has any questions, happy to try to answer. Once I get a final report, I'll see that Barbara gets it and can distribute it.

Sarah KnowlesYeah, I have a question.

Kristina Cecereby voiceIs there a discussion about once FCPS gets back to a lot of this data about using something next year

Sarah Knowlesto come back and look at that in addition to a new charge?

Mary Kay CiziunasSometimes we can do that. Sometimes we'll take the charge there and then there'll be committees and sometimes something else will get woven into it that has kind of come out um yeah like um the transition services you mentioned and then like the second runner up or what we would put a look at for a charge was transition services so if you try to keep records of what's been suggested for charges to go back and think about them again but if anybody has an idea of something you should look at one with and even if not this coming year it'll let me know and i'd be happy to try to propose it to the committee and see if they'll go that way the

Sarah Knowlesupcoming charge sounds really good

Mary Kay Ciziunasyeah i think

Speaker 2thank

Kristina Cecereby voiceyou i um i have a i am surprised um with initial translations for special education services I'm assuming FCPS covers the five major languages of the county, but you're referring to probably other languages.

Mary Kay CiziunasYeah, they've tried to add in some more actual paperwork on some of the others, and I think they have some more actual in-house translations on it. And then just trying to make sure parents are aware of the services. And then I think they may have to look, you know, I'm not sure what they're going to do about, like if somebody comes in if the child needs to test it who speaks a language that isn't one of the ones you know how exactly you know they need to have a plan to go about that you know if they have to they probably need to you know they may have to harm it out or something but you know try to make sure there's a good process

Dustin WrightstaffSo I first of all just thank you so much for representing the city this year and for presenting this evening. Just a quick follow up to what you were just talking about prior to the session these additional questions. So you're right there's a fair amount of in-house translated documents and translation services. But I think what you're talking about in terms of assessing students they do something called a DLA or a dual language assessment. even if they need to provide translated services during the special ed testing process. And when you get some of those less common languages, they'll look at contractors, they'll look at, we're much more fortunate now with online services, you have to be able to zoom someone in.

I know as a first year assistant principal, I made a call, we had a student, we needed their dual language has been done in Norwegian. So we had a call to the Norwegian embassy to try and to find a, not to use an embassy staff member, but to find a reference for someone. So sometimes it's really straightforward and then sometimes there's, you have to be a little more outside of the box. But fortunately where we live in technology allows for a lot of that. Thank you very much. Absolutely, thank you for it.

Kristina Cecereby voiceI'll add too, I'm very excited to hear that's great to hear of course the focus on to help with our special students with special education needs and whatnot it's so important so it's great to hear I'm excited to hear about this here just one more time we'll move on to the questions we move on to Sarah Knowles who's our representative for the Advanced Academic Program Advisory Committee AAPAC

Sarah Knowlesthis is my first year I'm gonna follow your lead and how to present the information but if I'm missing anything please let me know and we'll say that my son went here from K to the second but in the end of last year here and switch to mosaic for third grade with AAP so that's the reason why um one of the reasons why i wanted to join in this role is just have a greater connection to what it's like to be he was really sad about when we went over on as a new red school and that um decision to go fairly far out you know into vienna you know is a decision that we actually were talking about a little bit in the in the attack against committee um this year so the The charge for this year was to learn about the implementation of the expansion of the

local full-time service delivery model, the strengths and challenges of the local versus center-based delivery models, and consider how the current service delivery models meet or do not meet the needs of our advanced learners. So over the course of the last nine months, we met monthly more or less and read some different reports generally speaking about advanced or gifted education and looking at whether or not it's better to cluster ADP students just for themselves or how they do if they are in a situation where there are other students who are not in like a gifted program curriculum what that would be like we've heard from various teachers who work at local aap corporate schools as well as center schools to try and get a sense of what their experiences are like

on both of those we spent a lot of time going back to this 2020 report that was commissioned by Yes, it was an external review of the AAP program that was completed in 2020, so that's pretty old data. I mean, the data that collected this before 2020. But one of the things that this report that we keep talking about is the need to really review and provide support for high-level implementation of AAP, whether it's in a local school or a data center so our community came up with five recommendations should i just read the five they're short which is i think pretty um pretty clear the first recommendation is to collect reliable data on fidelity of implementation and student outcomes number two invest in teacher capacity for working with advanced learners

whether they're full-time or central schools improve communication about and positioning of the full-time aap model number four strengthen collaboration among full-time teachers and schools and number five conduct a robust evaluation of full-time aap it sounds like the last full-time evaluation was pre-2020 so generally speaking i would say the overall feeling from the committee and it's quite a large committee i don't know if like you're like the other committees are so big it's pretty big okay pretty big um it just kind of seems like there was some frustration that we didn't have access to a lot of actual data from the district to be able to say you know this is working this isn't working try more of this try less of that it kind of felt

that's common but it kind of felt like things were a lot of good well-intentioned brainstorming the there is a minority report so we're reading tomorrow night to finalize to vote on the final report for the year and there's been a minority report that was submitted to accompany the majority's report and just to briefly state what the minority report is saying basically they're saying that they agree with everything in the major report but there needs to be some movement at the district level toward establishing some baseline thresholds in order to expand into a local school like if you really want to run a local aap program specifically at the middle school level because that's where we're talking mostly about expanding

there needs to be some type of thresholds in terms of number of students the qualifications of the teachers on the different types of in class extensions that are done to support and so on so there's just kind of like a bigger push for a little bit more research and accountability for that type of implementation they are we are proposing that the charge for next year be focused on a deeper dive into the fcps local plan for implementing KUP at the local level talking more about social emotional learning specifically for advanced learners and thinking about how focus can be placed more on the early grades where maybe some students might otherwise be qualified for AAP but maybe they're slipping through because you know they're just missing

some of the support or I don't know access to opportunities to kind of demonstrate or or kind of make some needs in that, so kind of looking at how the district can do a little bit more in the early grades to see if we can kind of raise the number of students who would be eligible.

Kristina Cecereby voiceI think that's all. Thank you. What if there's any questions on this problem?

Sarah KnowlesI don't think I have any questions, but I would be interested in kind of the two of these and the discussion of mental health. I mean, they're very related,

Mary Kay CiziunasWe get a lot of comments from, a lot of our comments that come in from here, they're written in regards to these students.

Sarah KnowlesAnd they have really specific mental health

Sarah Kelseyissues. Ms. Felsi? I agree with that. I'm glad that both seem to have the social-emotional learning because that seems to be our big thing right now that a lot of us need to look into. I look forward to hearing kind of the talk about the local versus the center, because I've heard that talked about, you know, and why do I need to go to Mosaic if I can get, you know, there's a classroom here that has it, what's the difference, you know. So I'd be interested to see if there's something that comes out for the parents that also, you know, like a one-pager that describes this is what you get at the local versus this is what you get at the centers.

Sarah KnowlesThere's a recommendation in here somewhere, not as part of the overall advice that we have, but there was a comment made that it would be helpful for the orientations for the you know the center school

Sarah Kelseyto also have the feeder school do that together yeah because i think sometimes when you when a parent you know after you've had all the testing done and you find out yes your kid qualifies for it it's your mind's blown already with that sometimes and it's like now where do i go i mean it's the same you know versus special ed too so um that'll that would be something that I look forward to seeing. I also would like to see the collab between the AAP teachers, even the, I don't know if this is part of it, but like the centers and the local schools collabing together. Because a lot of times those local schools, there's one teacher that teaches the third grade AAP. Yes, they have the other AAPs, but no one else is teaching third grade curriculum, so it's a little bit different.

And so having the centers collaborate with the local schools would be very beneficial, I think.

Speaker 2I don't know if that's specifically a question for you, but, you know, as the Daniels-Rump family has seen that, despite this is the ninth year there's been a localized AAP program here, it doesn't have the same buyer interest that Providence has full classes for, right? AAP students, which is very different than our manager model here, where there's maybe between five and seven a year. And I think I brought this up before, but I just continue exploring what that is, difference is because like you said, having your son go far, I don't know if parents would change their minds if there was more of a robust program as an example of additional students. And maybe it's time to kind of re-look at that because I think the hope has been that over the

years that progressed. I know my son was here in third grade when he started and he just never really seemed to progress. So I'd be really curious if I mean it's something that we as a keep an eye on or take maybe focus on a bit more and with your connections I think we'd be really welcoming to bring that conversation together.

Kristina Cecereby voiceI'll echo Ms. Eiklin's comments there. Since our children are the same age, I remember much remember being in that seat of third grade parents, second grade, second grade parent, considering third grade and having conversations with Mr. Phillips, I'm just going to see a difference all the time of like where our oldest would go, Jose, or Providence. Which was Providence. So it's interesting hearing about the names, our community, and that experience there. And I'm curious, like when you go through that charge, and if there's any information that comes back to MCPS, if we can even drill down, recognize some of the school level maybe too they want to see a city our priorities as well but even just like our region so

we can understand those certain local centers are seeing a lot of directors and I do have a few questions you mentioned qualifications of teachers and I apologize for throwing out my experience. When I was AP coordinator at Fairfax High School, we often pushed for teachers to have advanced academics or education. There was both one in the state and the county. Is that still in place there? Or do you know? If

Sarah Knowlesyou don't,

Kristina Cecereby voicethat's okay. I'm just curious. If they, like, if staff thought that out of, like, if they had any numbers of how many staff were certified in those centers through those classes, if that seemed to be still in place.

Sarah Knowlesdefinitely did not we're not giving data on numbers I do know that both in central and local programs the class the classroom teachers have or working towards so it could be very the cost of the process but we might not have actually they're

Dustin Wrightstaffable to begin teaching the curriculum that they've begun the process and then they have five years to What it is the licensure is between six to eight The state

Kristina Cecereby voiceWhat were the counties five years Let's see what difference I was

Dustin WrightstaffI think it was the five years I was saying there was six or eight modules or classes that they had to complete but I believe the state was probably five years There's some alignment there but that's definitely one of the things that's a consideration for this entire conversation

Kristina Cecereby voiceand then the other your next year's charge I don't know if you guys started dipping into it the board here is mentioned number times in meetings about the concern of the push for advanced math into the elementary school. From what I understand that, it seems to now be a state in which you have pushed it a little earlier than expected, which I'm concerned about, right? I mean, we have all this concern in the past. I'm curious, like, if that's, when you talk about social emotional awareness students what's how far is too far what's developing appropriate

Sarah Knowleswell I mean generally just kind of talking about the level of anxiety and pressure um perfectionism you know things like that that um it's like this my experience but not in relation to the advanced method well

Kristina Cecereby voicei look forward to any other questions

Dustin Wrightstaffi would echo miss history's uh comments about we have thank you for supporting and also representing the city. I think one thing for the board to keep in mind and for Ms. Knowles and the public is the potential, you touched on it just being the potential expansion of middle school level four centers to, you know, there's explorations that can be happening in every single middle school. So thinking about that in terms of some of our building capacities, our boundary studies, all of those things are intertwined. So that's just kind of, that's a good thing to keep our ears on. Sarah there's ways they kind of monitor that for us because it's similar to if you have city of Fairfax historical knowledge you know our level four middle school students used to go to Rocky

Run and now they're here at our center and so that's just that again that's a fascinating issue and things like that and then I was going to tie it I really appreciate bringing that up accessory the idea of this is intertwined with some of the advanced mathematics push and similar to you were talking about staffing implications of do we have enough qualified advanced academics teachers to some of these lower level like elementary school level program decisions and the staffing decisions trickle up and we just need to think ahead about that so when we offer more advanced math classes at English Run and Mr. Smith and KJ has to be able to offer more sections of geometry and algebra 2 which is a licensure issue right

And you're gonna just kind of keep seeing it so it's a really important thing to think about holistically or just There's a lot of tentacles to this conversation Connected in really good ways

Kristina Cecereby voiceWould you like to I'm sorry. I'm already put ropes here. Do you prefer a bike?

Speaker 2No, I didn't know. We would love you to continue. We'd absolutely love for you to continue. Please email us. Email us. Email us. Email us.

Sarah KnowlesEmail us. I'm sorry. Do you have to do it in writing? Or can I just?

Sarah KelseyYeah. Okay. Yeah,

Sarah Knowlesyou don't have to do it in the spot. I'm curious though, why is it that we only come once a year? I'm just curious. Is there a need for more? I wish I would said something during a meeting meeting you know and we're reading tomorrow but then not again I assume

Kristina Cecereby voicethat's a great point you guys are always welcome you know the school board let us know as things come up I know I've gone to the ACS meetings and I used to be in the APS but like but you know but email us too and you know if there's something that's important first

Speaker 2conversation that you know as you begin the new charge towards the beginning information gathering as opposed to a information presenting conversation I just don't think it's done in the past and sometimes we do things the way we've always done it it's really great to have that feedback

Sarah KelseyI would say probably like if we could maybe look at our calendar too, like not before your first meeting, but like after the first meeting. Yeah. So you kind of know where your thoughts, where the meeting whole group's thoughts are going. You can share those with us maybe then. We can look at, that's something we kind of look at when we do our retreats. Yeah, because we

Mary Kay Ciziunaskind of, thinking about the first meeting, usually they put, you know, folks go into like a subcommittee and kind of figure out what actually, you know, what's is looking at more a little bit more specifically within the charge so usually

Kristina Cecereby voiceabout like where i remember quickly like usually the first two meetings are kind of like information building is that still the same

Mary Kay Ciziunasdefinitely the first sometimes the second we don't and like asd at the air force meeting is usually september like we don't need because we our meeting date is almost always the second day of the month so school is not back in August by that point thankfully.

Sarah KnowlesI've only done it one year but for this year we started by the campus 2020 report.

Kristina Cecereby voiceThank you again so much for sharing your own welcome to hang out with us as we go into the next slide if you like.

Sarah KnowlesThank you so much. Thank you.

Mary Kay CiziunasWe're still on. Are you?

Kristina Cecereby voiceAll right. So we'll move on to the renovation update. All right. Take it away.

Dustin WrightstaffThank you, Ms. Essary. And again, good evening to the board and to the public. This will be pretty brief, but I think there's just a few important things that we wanted to share with the board in a public setting. and just to have on record for the public. So as we look to the next slide on the presentation, you've seen this before, but just as a quick reminder of how the renovation process is working with our elementary schools. We've left the conceptual design phase and we're moving into schematic design, which is an exciting process. We had a staff meeting here at Daniel's Run a little over a week ago getting some staff feedback on some of those schematic design ideas and it was really exciting. So difference between those two is concept design is kind of

big picture, you know, and then you know do you want to have a one-story edition or a three-story edition? Do you want it to go on the east side of the building or the west side of the building? Schematic design starts to think about should the kindergarten classes go here or here? Should we have, they're starting building. It's still pretty high level. We're not talking about paint colors or tile colors or what type of light switches and that will all kind of come in the next stage of the process. So that's where we are and we anticipate that going through the summer. What I wanted to update the board about right now is information that's on the next slide. And so what you'll see is the first bullet is I just wanted to provide a quick update on the RFP process

for selecting an owner's representative. As a reminder, this is a group that we've put an RFP out for to provide a lot of different services. But some of them are project management. But essentially, at the end of the day, for a small school division like ours and a small city like ours that doesn't have a large amount of architects and engineers of all different types, civil, mechanical, on staff. An owner's representative comes in and has all of those people with those levels of expertise, and they work through our projects with us, giving us advice, giving us counseling, and helping us work through every stage of the process. So I think it's something that's very important. A lot of the other city projects that you'll see going through right now,

Willer-Sherwood being a good example, use an owner's representative as well. terms of precedent and something that we see across the city of Fairfax. So where we are in that process is the RFP was out to the public and we looked for offerers to submit a packet. They had a very detailed set of criteria. That first set of submissions came in. They were scored by a review panel and then interviews with the short list of groups took place last week and so we're At some point in the very near future, we'll select one of those firms to begin negotiating with. Just as a reminder, any of the contracts or any of the final selections will always go to this board for approval. And then we'll also go to the city council

because it's professional services. So that's where we are with the owner's representative process. I'll stop to see if there's any questions about that or any clarifications I can provide.

Sarah KelseyMs. Kelsey? Just a question, just because this person is going to be working with both of our firms. Do they have to say how they work with multiple firms in their interviews or if they've worked with these firms before or anything?

Dustin WrightstaffI think it's so one thing I'm just going to be a little hesitant on since the RFP is actually going on. I'm not going to get into a lot of details or who did you interview or things like that. But I would say, I think it's fair to say that those topics were addressed throughout the process. I'd also say that all the firms that we're looking at had demonstrated a track record of expertise in phased occupied renovations, which are, again, the renovated building while you're still having school in it. That's a special set of expertise. They all have expertise in that. and we heard good proposals of how they're going to manage really three projects at once when you add in the Fairbanks High School roof.

Oh, yeah.

Sarah KelseyThe other question I had was, so you keep saying firm, but does that mean we're going to have one person still at that firm to contact or is it you get to contact another firm?

Dustin WrightstaffYeah, that's really a great question. So, yeah, we'd be signing a contract with a firm or a company. But some of the things that we're hearing about through the RFP process, and this part is public, like where we ask them to talk about their project plan and how they manage that. They actually lay out who would be, typically they have a project executive, a project lead, and then they have several people that are, the term that often gets used are the boots on the ground. So and we've had the opportunity to interact with all those specific people throughout the process to understand, are they the right match for the city of Fairfax schools? Do they have the right level of expertise that we're looking for?

So although everyone that we've been looking at are, you know, national level companies that at some point we might, you know, talk to an engineer who's based out of San Francisco, our main points of contact will always remain the same. But that's a really great question and an important part of this process.

Kristina Cecereby voiceGreat.

Dustin WrightstaffThank you so much. And then the other update I want to provide is a consideration of the delivery method for these projects. So as a review, the initial contracts for both the renovation at Daniels Run and Providence Elementary School were set up as a design bid build, which is a very common renovation and construction delivery method. It is one where you hire an architecture firm, they finish all their work, all their drawings, and then you go out and hire a construction firm to build what that architect designed. We talked with this board at a work session, work sessions in April, about some other possible delivery methods. There's one called design build, which is not something we can consider because

we've already begun the design process. Then there's another one that's an industry standard called a construction manager at risk delivery method. So to be clear, we've not decided on this yet. We've not said, hey, we're 100% going down this path. It's still something that we'll bring to this board for consideration. But I wanted to let you know that we are making progress to even allow it to be a decision that we can make because there have been several things that have needed to happen along the way. The first was a change to the City of Fairfax's purchasing policy, which the City Council made on March 24th through action at one of their meetings. They updated their policy basically to allow these other two construction delivery methods

to be an option. Then as we look at the state code, there are a few things that need to happen before we can even consider going to the next steps. So one of the things is we need to have a licensed architect or engineer under contract that can provide us guidance about selecting a construction manager at risk. And so we're fortunate that we have that with our architecture firms that the school board has already contracted with. The other thing that needs to happen is that the city council needs to basically provide consent that we can consider this process and it's on a per-project basis. So on June 9th, you'll see on the City Council's agenda two items. Right now it's currently on the consent agenda

for consideration for a construction manager at risk for Providence and then the exact same with identical language for Daniel's run. I don't know if the staff reports are publicly posted, but when you see that, it will have the justification, the explanation. and really what you're looking for is an understanding that you want to consider this approach because of the type of project we're doing is complex enough and it makes sense for the project and for the funding of the project. So that's scheduled. And then depending on that action, if it ends up we receive the consent from the city council, We can come to this board to decide if you want to put out a two-step process. It's called an RFQ and an RFP.

So you do a request for qualifications and then a request for proposals. And so that would be the next step if we get through June 9th. So I just wanted to make sure everybody knew that, to see if there's any questions about that. And I'd be happy to answer those at this time.

Kristina Cecereby voiceCan you go to some questions?

Sarah Kelseyum so on you said the delivery method is her project so daniel's run is one project providence is another project the high school group even though it's based off of the firm that because we have different architectural 100

Dustin Wrightstaffokay

Sarah Kelseyuh then when you say we have to put like if this is So for June 9th, I think you've said it before, but I'm just trying to refresh my memory. You're saying we have to do the RFQ and the RFP. Does that mean at that point we have to, like our current two firms have to reapply to do it?

Dustin WrightstaffNo, really good question, and I appreciate you giving me an opportunity to clarify that. So our current two firms would not submit for the RFP because what we're actually going to be trying to hire through this is a builder. So the fancier term is a construction manager. And then so we'd be putting out a contract for the company that's actually going to do the building work, the renovation work on that. So we have already hired the design firms. This is to provide an opportunity to hire the builder. And so the key distinction in this is that you're hiring them way sooner in the process. So they're talking with the designers at the same time. Right so as our architects are designing the building they can also talk with the builder that we've contracted with.

And the other again the other really strong attribute of a construction manager at risk process is that you'll end up with a guaranteed maximum price.

Sarah Kelseyand then sorry one last time when we do so if it's approved and everything do we have to go back to the table for the contract that we have with our current are they saying anything needs to change with those contracts or basically just saying we need to change how we wrote the delivery so

Dustin Wrightstaffthere will likely be some type of addendum but we've had those conversations with the firms we've provided very similar updates that we're providing we're considering this as a process. And they're aware, again, they've been consulting with us on this, and they actually provided us some documentation showing that they're in support of that. So the original contracts to them would likely change, but it would not have any impact on their cost or their timeline. That was my question.

Sarah KelseyOkay. Okay.

Speaker 2My question is, so hearing that it's on the consent agenda is great. Do you foresee there being challenges? Obviously, the school board has said that the CIMAR is the option we'd like to go with. Is this a conversation that needs to continue with the city council? Even though I know you can't read their minds, but...

Dustin WrightstaffYou're naming all the things that I'm thinking right now that I can't speak to the city council, but I can give you some data. It is that when they approved this construction manager risk delivery method as an option that we could consider, unanimously approved and there was minimal discussion of it and the discussion that did take place was supportive so so I don't have any concerns about June 9th but we can continue to monitor that and update the board if additional advocacy is needed I can tell you I'll be there on June 9th and so we'll patty it in a city who is the city of Fairfax is procurement director to be able to address any questions if they come up but I'm optimistic that there's not going to be any changes to the agenda.

Kristina Cecereby voiceI have one follow-up question. The consent agenda items are they hinged for the schematic design or a hinge for the design developments? Like are we moving forward with the schematic design regardless of this piece, or is this like this needs to happen in order for us to move forward? We're just trying to figure

Dustin Wrightstaffout what operations are. Again, great, great question. So we're in schematic design right now.

Kristina Cecereby voicePerfect.

Dustin WrightstaffOkay. But there is an order of operations. Typically, you don't want to go past schematic design if you're going to bring in a construction manager at risk. You really want them to be able to have some input through the schematic design process, and especially before the end of schematic design. I think the timing is going to work out well. It's probably going to all line up right around the end of the summer where we're bringing this on. Again, our design firms feel that they can work with it and keep us on track. But we definitely do not want to move into design development, which is, again, starting to draw detailed plans without having them on board.

Kristina Cecereby voiceThank you. Any other questions? Thank you Dr. Reitz. If there is nothing left, we will adjourn the meeting at 721 p.m.