School Board Work Session

Carolyn PitchesAll right, there you go. Oh, yeah, that was great. I'd like to welcome everybody. Feel free to keep eating, get food. I am Carolyn Pitches, and I'm chair of the city school board. And I thought we could start a joint meeting, because I recognize a lot of old members, but maybe not old like you're

Speaker 6old. but

Carolyn Pitchesand we have new school board members so over here was Dan Phillips who's our assistant superintendent mr. pottenberg do you want to

Sarah KelseySarah Kelsey I'm school board member

Mary Kay CiziunasI am a student member. I'm Mary Kate Chazumas. I'm the student representative for the advisory committee for students with disabilities.

Speaker 6Hi, I'm Sarah Ross. I am the proud chair. I am the proud vice chair. I'm Diana Gibson. I'm a community member of

Katie McKimmonstaffpride. I'm Katie McKimmon. I'm the work ratio manager for those of the American side.

Stacy SomerfieldstaffHey, Kalen. I'M THE ADMIN FROM THE PARK DEPARTMENT. I'M STACY SOMERFIELD. I'M THE PARK DEPARTMENT DIRECTOR FROM THE CITY OF PARK FIX.

Speaker 6NEW ON THE ORCHIEVE, CRAB, I'M THE ON FOR COMMUNICATION. I MEAN, OH, WAS COMMISSION ON THE OTHER?

Chuck PasleyRUSSELL, I'M THE ESC RECORD TO CRAB. ACCORDING TO THE SIGN, I'M CHUCK PASLEY.

Speaker 6I AM THE UNION REPRESENTATIVE OF THE HAYNAKER SENIOR CENTER, HOWEVER THAT WORKS OUT.

Carolyn PitchesOKAY. SO THE FIRST THING ON THE AGENDA IS TO DISCUSS THE SCHOOL USE AGREEMENT BETWEEN PRAB AND THE CITY SCHOOLS. I THINK EVERYBODY HAS A COPY OF IT. IT LOOKS LIKE THIS AS COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT. IT JUST DISCUSSES THE USE OF THE FACILITIES AND THE FIELDS MAINLY BETWEEN OUR BOARD AND YOUR BOARD. And the only thing in the agreement that is inaccurate is if you look at Section 4's, the fees. It says that all the revenue that's collected for field use at Daniels Run in Providence and Catherine Johnson is held at the city school board office. It is not. They charge five. If you look on, well, where's Barb? Where did she go? Okay, it's fine. So Rich Wyant, they charge $5.50 per player, and that money is collected by Parks and Rec. So, Stacey, do you want to speak a little bit to this?

Yes,

Stacy Somerfieldstaffand so I went through to just do an audit today of the fees that we've collected because, of course, like if we were to be collecting fees that exceed our maintenance expenses, then we would obviously share those with the school board. And so in the last year, our expenses have been just under $13,000, or our revenue that we've collected has been just under $13,000. And now each year we do spend just under $6,000 on the turf maintenance GMAC testing for the high school field and then also pay bridge and then we've also last year we put $60,000 into the Providence Elementary irrigation system so at this point we're definitely still our maintenance costs are still exceeding our revenue

Carolyn Pitchesokay um speaking of the turf at Fairfax mr. Blottenberg I can let you speak to this but we in our CIP don't worry about CIP, we contribute $20,000 annually to the turf maintenance. I'm not sure how we just pay it. I don't know what we do. There it goes. It's always been part of the agreement. Okay. So, of course, we're all pulling from the same pot of money. we're just all transferring it from one entity to the other so that money is somewhere yeah

Jeff Platenbergstaffand and if I could one of the most important things that was mentioned that Stacy mentioned is I used to oversee 26 other individual high schools with Kirk and the GMAX testing what that does is that test the ground and really it preserves part of the repercussions the injuries sprains and occur in our fields and some of the spots that are worn areas. Sometimes you can look down on a field in the middle of the season and you see around the goal area, field hockey, whatever it may be, these areas that are kind of worn and that's really huge. And the city and Stacey and her team do an amazing job of making sure Fairfax High School is well maintained and well cared for. And I can certainly say that it's not the case across the rest of Fairfax County,

but the city does take care of well and I just want to commend you and your take for that I

Stacy Somerfieldstaffcan't take any credit for it but I will say our crew is amazing and when we actually had a turf expert here and he came out looked at our fields and said that they the condition of them was nicer than some national football league fields that he had gone to work with in the past because our guys routinely do all the cleaning and brushing in-house and then we work with a company outside to do the additional cleaning where all the rubber gets pulled up and runs magnet and then the GMAX testing.

Jeff PlatenbergstaffWhich is absorption in the field and what that does is it extends the useful life of the field and at the end of the day it saves taxpayer dollars. Yeah. Thank you so much for you and your team here. You

Carolyn Pitchesdo such a good job. And Stacy, Rich had noted that we charge $5.50 per player. The county charges almost double that, is that correct? $10 per player? I

Mary Kay Ciziunascan double check.

Carolyn PitchesI'm pretty... So, my point is, is that something that Parks and Rec would look at maybe? Because we haven't increased. That's been the price charged or the cost to players for, gosh, my kids are in their 20s. And that's back then. So, is that something we might want to look at? maybe a two dollar a dollar increase to will it help with the

Stacy SomerfieldstaffI think so I think one of the things you might want to look at for the FY 26 rates of levies were approved by the council but when we get to FY 27 to look at rates and levies because for our multipurpose non turf field we don't charge anything for FBYC and a lot of places do like just for their sports organizations just a flat fee per player it helps offset some of those costs maybe looking at what we do for the school and then the rest of the fields in the city to see if we can do some more cost recovery on there.

Carolyn PitchesOkay, I guess we can discuss that further. Is anybody, anybody over here, anybody have any thoughts on charging?

Stacy SomerfieldstaffOkay,

Carolyn PitchesI thought it was $10. And I mean, obviously it's up to you guys. I'm just trying to think of ways that we can support, you know, more revenue for parks and rec. I don't think it's unreasonable. The rates have not been raised. Like I said, probably at least 15 years.

Speaker 6I agree that it makes sense to you know incrementally increase

Carolyn Pitchesexactly exactly they can find like a happy medium yep I think that that and in terms of a youth organization, comparatively

Sarah Kelseyspeaking. And I was going to say, as a parent, we don't know they're paying you anything for players, so if you raise it, it's not...

Speaker 16That's what I was going to ask, it's part of like a...

Sarah KelseyNo, they basically say, this

Speaker 16season

Sarah Kelseyis $175. Yeah. We just assume it goes with the jerseys and all, but I mean...

Stacy SomerfieldstaffYeah. I think that we could look at doing something like $7 or $8 so we're still competitive with the county and we could meet with FBYC and just talk to them in advance so that they know when they're planning it out for their upcoming season and their pricing.

Carolyn PitchesSounds good. Okay, so. Sorry,

Speaker 8can I add to that? Yeah. That's for outside of FBYC also, right? Is it the same cost for other people that have printed? so

Stacy Somerfieldstaffso we charge for the schools is it's the same and then I do have different pricing because our community partners for our city field get better pricing rate which is free then are like for-profit entities like for example there's like a like a lacrosse club that charges a couple thousand dollars per season competitive club we're gonna charge them fees to use the field That is literally what I was thinking. Yes. My son played on it, and I was like, huh, what are you guys doing over here

Sarah Kelseywith all that money? Yes. Well, the other day I was starting using, like, the Providence field, because they don't have a whole lot of 90-foot fields.

Stacy SomerfieldstaffYes. Yes, so we do charge. There's a couple different rates. So, like, Falls Church, the field is here. We charge them a school rate, so that's a lower rate than what we charge for private clubs.

Carolyn PitchesYeah, Falls Church City Schools, their fields were, and Stacey and Dr. Noon and I sort of went, and Stacy was kind of

Stacy Somerfieldstaffyeah Stacy

Carolyn Pitcheswas very and I we appreciate that

Stacy Somerfieldstaffyeah

Carolyn Pitchesso So what we'll do is we'll correct number four on the fees, and I'll have the clerk send it over to you, Stacey. Is that okay? Is there any other comment or questions on the school prep co-operament?

Speaker 16We were just discussing under Sure

Speaker 6Yeah,

Carolyn Pitchesso KJ Fields is the next thing on the agenda We could just roll right into that Where are, I mean, okay So Catherine, I will just say The fields have been in the PRAB CIP since at least 2010, because I was the PRAB rep to the school board in 2010, and it was on there. And I know that it was approved to be done, and then the previous, the new council, or the previous council kind of stopped it because they were concerned about health risks. and then that's the last we heard of it I will just put in a plug for Katherine Johnson our PE department is quite limited in its space to hold any outdoor it's not a great school site to have outdoor space and that field is not a is not usable year-round and if it was turf we're happy you know we

it so I don't know where where are we with that Stacy

Stacy Somerfieldstaffso we have a great plan from Timmins which is includes two turf fields the rubberized track and the asphalted play area which is in the center of the track which was requested by the KJ athletic staff and the teachers so because as you all know that site is the old school number of stormwater problems and site problems the estimated cost for the site was ten million dollars and that is unfortunately mostly in things that you can't see it's mostly in site work and stormwater and so like doing something like taking away the track because that was the question like oh do we need the rubberized track what if we took that off it $250,000 so it's not even really a big number it is a big number but not within the scope of the project and

We would want to do the whole thing because the access to the back where the track is you would have to go along the side of the Turfield and we will be putting The proposed plan included the rubberized track the asphalt area the two fields and then a full gravel walk Like walking path around the outside that could be utilized by cross-country and along the side by the tree line That walking path would be wide enough for a vehicle to get in to do maintenance like a standard sized truck But in order to do the site work required for the track We need to bring in a much larger piece of equipment and so it would make the most sense to do the whole thing at once because You don't be Messing up the car we already finished in the front in order to do the track effect

point there was at 1.4 million dollars in the account there was two million dollars from ARPA and then an additional two I am not sure if the two of that has been reallocated the two from the ARPA are still there and then we would need to find the remaining funds to do the full site and the difference in cost between like doing a natural turf field and a synthetic turf field is also not that large because again the biggest cost is in fixing the site and

Carolyn Pitchesdoing the

Stacy Somerfieldstaffstormwater

Carolyn Pitchesquite a bit of trash underneath the surface. Okay. I just wasn't sure we were moving forward with it because of the artificial turf situation. As far as you know, is that not an issue anymore?

Stacy SomerfieldstaffI think there's some options to look at there, but I would say our biggest hurdle right now is the money.

Carolyn PitchesOkay. And we are short $6 million? $6 to $8 million, depending on the location.

Stacy Somerfieldstaffokay yeah we actually swapped out some of the ARPA money but it's still tagged so the original $2 million we put that towards Vice Park and then put in $2 million that's not actually ARPA money anymore but it's still tagged too

Katie McKimmonstaffyeah

Stacy Somerfieldstaffso we were able to reallocate all the money from ARPA so that gets spent okay

Carolyn Pitchesso our is prob asking the school board to contribute yes I

Stacy Somerfieldstaffwould say as you guys know like we definitely come out of a really tough budget year so it certainly wasn't the time for us to come in and ask we were in fact giving back money

Mary Kay Ciziunasyeah so as

Stacy Somerfieldstaffyou guys were and I know that full at us and the county so you know I think if at this point I think it would be a stronger proposal if we could get the you know like the schools to contribute part and us to contribute part because it is a shared space but I would love the middle school to use it during the day and for our school for our after school and then also extracurricular and FBYC sports to use it in the evening and weekends okay

Carolyn PitchesOkay, my CIP friends over here, Mr. Plattenberg, you want to jump in, my friend? Is that going to be a possibility with any time? I mean, we just gave back money we needed to cover Title IX problems, so.

Jeff PlatenbergstaffYeah, for context? I

Carolyn Pitchesmean, could we, what I'm asking is, Stacey, how long would the project take to complete?

Stacy SomerfieldstaffI would say once we're, it looks, I think their estimate was similar to something like dice car probably 16 to 18 months and actually less if we do synthetic turf because a large part of a natural turf field is two growing cycles.

Carolyn PitchesOkay. Thank you. Yes, necessary.

Kristina Cecereby voiceJust a quick question for me, proposals for the cost, does that consider only artificial if we mix our turf with grass does that reduce the cost

Stacy Somerfieldstaffof the project

Dan Phillipsstaffshe said it

Stacy Somerfieldstaffwas slightly it increases the overall operating cost each year so that will increase that part and then we would need to install a larger fence around it because we would have to lock and unlock it based on weather

Jeff Platenbergstaffso to your point artificial turf is the most playable that's the reason why people put it in some form of synthetic I should say and you know as was stated we give back over 1.3 million dollars for the reality in total and a deferral of some of our projects in this a IP but certainly if the board should want to go ahead and include that I mean and just like we talked about that's like 27 fees we've done our 26 capital improvement program we would have to go ahead and look at the 27 capital improvement program and certainly something that they can consider as well to contribute i think shared use i think going forward i think it's incumbent upon all of us to figure out if there's any other possible ways that we can go ahead and fund a lot of these needs

that we have because the need is much greater than revenues to support

Carolyn Pitchesum i would say that two of the projects that we gave money back from the CIP. One of them, when we redo the CIP, I don't know what next year's budget or FY27's budget cycle is going to look like, but we could definitely contribute the money we were going to put into that project, into supporting the KJ fields. I'm sure we can maybe ask talk to JC also to sort of see if you know what key things in terms of how we could maybe fund it if it's 18 months to I feel like we could we have four million like how could we structure it in our CIPs we don't necessarily have to put any money in FY27, but maybe in the out years. And then if we start the project, obviously if the money is in the CIP, it would have

to be funded to finish it. I am not a CIP guru, but. That's pretty guru-ish. I

Stacy Somerfieldstaffthink it would be a stronger proposal if they worked on it together and brought it to the council for FY27. Absolutely. Together as

Jeff Platenbergstaffa guru.

Stacy SomerfieldstaffAnd.

Jeff Platenbergstaffespecially addressing the educational programming because we currently don't meet the current educational programming for athletics for PD and that's why we included the members of the staff at KJ yeah

Carolyn Pitcheswe use a lot of parking lot space for recess it's just it's not it's not a good situation

Speaker 6necessarily as this conversation you know equity of parks you know we know that you know in the city warmer parks are concentrated on the Daniels greater proportion right across condo yeah and we have a very small park you know if it's an artificial turf field that you get more usage out of it absolutely I don't think that our board to any particular position on turf versus the part of the person was not for last year and neither did the former those were at

Carolyn Pitchesthat time

Speaker 6you know playability and equity as well as I'm an FCPS alum. I went to Patrick Johnson. I remember how terrible that field was.

Carolyn PitchesYeah, it's bad. And

Speaker 6when I was there, I hate, I get it.

Carolyn PitchesYeah, and I do think that because it's important to both entities, to schools as well as the youth clubs and the neighborhoods, because there really is not a lot of green space or park space close to the Providence, Katherine Johnson, that area. I think we kind of owe it to the community to find a way to make this work. And when the issue of turf came up, we did at that time discuss other alternatives other than the rubberized pellets, but there's like a sand sub. But the rate of injury was much higher. It was slippery. When it rained, it would wash away, and it was much more difficult to maintain. So we supported traditional artificial turf. Yes. Walnut

Speaker 6shells.

Carolyn PitchesYes, there's lots of difference. And more things that I knew existed.

Katie McKimmonstaffmore steadily, even when we were really here at the first time, like, that basically said that they've studied all of these people that it's on the turf that's causing the aid or is doing it.

Carolyn PitchesRight. And we have to remember that a lot of the health issues that were cited in some studies were from professional athletes who practice on the turf five to eight hours a day over the course of, you know, 20 years. that's not going to be the case for kids who are in PE you know or playing a youth sport a couple of days a week and there's no there was no definitive findings that it was the turf it was just a correlation for some. Mr. Pottenberg wasn't that sort of the understanding that it wasn't

Jeff PlatenbergstaffBut there are a lot of strong opinions still. Yeah. And they persist. I mean, the health director for Fairfax County had stated that there was no correlation. That's why the whole county continues with the firm rubber application. Right. Either way, synthetic turf of some sort definitely allows and attributes to greater playability. And all the issues that we brought up about access to parks and so forth, it makes a huge difference. AND SAFETY AS WELL BECAUSE WE'VE HAD, YOU KNOW, WHERE IT KIND OF BOGS OUT IN CERTAIN PARTS OF THE FIELD AND SO ON. SO, YEAH, IT'S BEEN AN ONGOING ISSUE.

Carolyn PitchesSO I WOULD SAY, YOU KNOW, BACK TO NUMBER SIX OF MAINTENANCE AND ENHANCEMENT, YES, OBVIOUSLY, THE SCHOOLS WOULD HAVE TO BE A PART OF THAT WHEN IT COMES TO KATHERINE JOHNSON. I'M NOT SURE IF WE ADD IT NOW OR WE WAIT until we actually start the project. I mean, there's really nothing to maintain right now, but we can keep that in the notes that we need to, because we will have to figure out how to sort of word that, what verbiage we want, whose responsibility is what. Is it going to just be a financial responsibility on the part of the school board, and then you all would maintain it, or is it going to be some sort of shared agreement?

Stacy SomerfieldstaffI think that would make our CIP project stronger because, of course, with all these, there's operational costs. And so we come in and say, like, okay, we're going to partner up for both the CIP to install this, but then looking forward, this is our plan to maintain the space in perpetuity.

Carolyn PitchesI think that's, is everybody agreeable?

Speaker 16Can I make

Sarah Kelseya difference? Yes. Just because you brought it up with the track I will say if we can keep the track. Oh, we are. No, the only reason, the track and having that cross-country thing, because going to the cross-country this year and the track, KJ has the biggest teams, both out of everybody. Like, the first track meet, we didn't even have everybody, and we had 86 kids there.

Speaker 8And

Sarah Kelseyit's like, we couldn't sit with the other teams. We had to go sit. And so it would be really beneficial if the track could have a track team could have a track.

Stacy SomerfieldstaffIt doesn't

Sarah Kelseymake any

Stacy Somerfieldstaffsense to remove it. And I only bring it up because everyone's like, oh, you can take things out and save money. And it's like, well, when you have $10 million and taking out the track team is $250,000, I agree that's still a big number, but in comparison to the overall cost,

Carolyn Pitchesit's really not

Stacy Somerfieldstaffworth

Carolyn Pitchesit. And quite honestly, I think that the school would appreciate the track because they do right now they're using that one-sixth of a gravel oval we have out there. And I'm

Stacy Somerfieldstaffalways surprised like all the walking tracks at our current parks are some of the highest used facilities. Like when you go to Draper in the park there's so many people. I used it when my kids

Carolyn Pitchesput it on the track. I think we all have used the one at Draper at some point.

Kristina Cecereby voiceEven to discuss this from your point as well, even the high school too, I mean I will say $200,000 to provide that service is a great deal.

Sarah KelseyI was going to say FPYC has a track.

Kristina Cecereby voiceDo

Sarah Kelseythey have a cross country too? I knew they had track, but I'm sure they would find it beneficial to have another place to practice. and stuff so

Stacy SomerfieldstaffI think it's not a people with you so excited to take it out because it would be so hard to put it in yes

Carolyn Pitchesyeah okay so the other the stall knicker field at the high school Fairfax high school that is the other sort of area that we both sort of share. And as we stated, there is $20,000 in the CIP annually for the upkeep of the field. And obviously, I mean, maybe not obviously, but Fairbix High School has first right of refusal to the field for high school sports. and then after that there's some sort of hierarchy I'm never really sure who goes first and who goes last but I'm sure rich no

Stacy Somerfieldstaffactivities that get scheduled and then we schedule it around that and then the thing that bumps us is if the school activities like the school sports get rescheduled due to like a

Carolyn Pitchesright now or something like that. Oh, yeah. Okay. Is there anything specific on this agreement that anybody feels strongly about addressing or discussing? I don't know if everybody's ever had the opportunity to read the agreement.

Speaker 6I'm just going to ask, since it came up with the other one, for the student accurate or does that ultimately no

Carolyn Pitchesthis this is accurate I believe so Jeff do you want to talk about how the money is parceled out well

Jeff Platenbergstaffthere's a portion the distribution from the actually the maintenance portion that's put in there and then a subcomponent that goes to the schools to pay for any kind of custodial fee or any kind of supports. That's generally it.

Carolyn PitchesHow, but does Parks and Rec have to, like how do we, how is that charged? Are you guys charged? I don't know, or is it just the organization that schedules the field?

Stacy SomerfieldstaffJust the organization that schedules it. I know like long running the 4th of July, Yeah. Oh, yeah. Rich handles any of the fees for an organization utilizing the field.

Carolyn PitchesOkay. And obviously, schools, it's free. Okay. I think it's the one thing about the

Dan Phillipsstaffscoreboard. Yeah, yeah.

Carolyn PitchesSo

Dan Phillipsstaffwe will have a new scoreboard, a video scoreboard, at the high school. July, mid-July is installation. And I think we probably, I know different organizations have access to it. We've got some pretty tight rules because the new scoreboard will be effectively assigned in the zoning world. We also have a ribbon scoreboard along the bottom for score keeping and time keeping. So we probably, why don't we get it and then figure out how to manage it. You know, because we don't want to set anyone up for failure or to use it in a way that they're not supposed to. I think it's something we haven't had to deal with before. So,

Stacy Somerfieldstaffyeah,

Dan Phillipsstaffjust precursor to it. Are

Stacy Somerfieldstaffthe new bathrooms up at the top concession stand open? Yes. Okay, perfect. You're talking about kind of, that hasn't been there before for the fourth of nine.

Carolyn PitchesRight. Well, we haven't done it yet, but we're renovating the old restroom building. The women's bathroom was along the back side facing Lion Run in the dark. You can't see everybody

Sarah Kelseywhen you stand

Carolyn Pitchesup. So that's all going to be.

Dan PhillipsstaffEventually, but not for the Fourth

Carolyn Pitchesof July. Not for the Fourth of July. Don't get your hopes up. But there are some new bathrooms. I

Speaker 8know that nothing goes that bad.

Carolyn PitchesYeah, nothing

Speaker 8goes that bad. But, Dan, for Fourth of July, have they figured out the plumbing and the water and the toilets?

Dan PhillipsstaffAs far as I know, everything is functional. And that all goes through Giselle at Fairfax High School. And I know you all already work with her. Stace, I think one thing to think about, too, they're not using those restrooms as much. most part the ones at the top are the ones that are open

Carolyn Pitchesright

Dan Phillipsstaffjust like they think remember that as you get to those last conversations with Giselle it's not that they're dysfunction or anything like that but we have been locking them so

Stacy Somerfieldstaffjust that you have

Dan Phillipsstaffwhat you need yeah

Speaker 6because

Stacy Somerfieldstaffnot everyone want to climb out of the stadium to go to the tap so right right yeah and

Dan Phillipsstaffthe thing I always spend for the last 30 years the home crowd has had to walk down and walk back up so the visitors can do that too

Carolyn Pitchesand green acres did you want to discuss green acres

Stacy Somerfieldstaffwould trigger the building of a new elementary school because there's been kind of

Carolyn Pitchesnot there

Stacy Somerfieldstaffyeah we

Carolyn Pitchescannot I will just tell everybody we cannot build I mean we can't renovate that building we can't build a new school on that site it is not a its location is problematic being in the back of that neighborhood for buses and yeah it's one way in and out the the actual acreage does not meet ed specs right now um we'd have yeah we would have to build up which would not make the neighborhood happy um so we had tried to well i had tried to trade that property for uh west over on west drive the park there and the prop i wanted the city to buy the property field from Fairfax County that's right next to it because that's a much better location. It's in between Providence and Daniels Run and I said you guys can have green acres. We'll take this.

Nobody fit on that offer. So currently we just hold the deed on that property. I'm aware that the building is in, has some significant issues. I'm assuming the roof is some love

Stacy Somerfieldstaffyeah

Carolyn Pitchesyeah

Stacy Somerfieldstaffthere's two holes like we haven't wanted to put any real money into it because it's full potentially you know it's there's been this company held on it for an elementary school would be you know really didn't happen but also that both the assessments the assessment that the schools did in the one prior to that all said it was not worthwhile to invest in

Carolyn Pitchesthe building facility.

Stacy SomerfieldstaffThe current facility, the most cost-effective would be to carry down and build something else there.

Carolyn PitchesIt was similar to Westmore. The condition back when we were looking at Westmore to either do something with it as a community or level it, which we ended up leveling it because it just was not a viable facility. And it was obviously too expensive. And again, we couldn't use that space as a school because of its sort of one way in and out.

Stacy SomerfieldstaffGreen

Carolyn PitchesAcres is now sort of in that same place that Westmore was at that time back in 2010. Yeah, I think it didn't come down. It was still there in 2010. I believe we took it down in 2012. Yeah, it was very soon after that. So that's sort of a state of, you know, we are in a bad place with the school, elementary school renovations. THE BOND PASSED 70% AND THEN THE COUNCIL DIDN'T RAISE TAXES ENOUGH TO REALLY SUPPORT BEYOND THE BEGINNING DESIGN PHASE. SO WE'RE SORT OF IN A WEIRD PLACE WITH THAT AS WELL. AND I HAD BEEN LOOKING INTO THE PRIVATE PUBLIC PARTNERSHIPS. AND REALLY THE ONLY THING THE SCHOOL BOARD HAS THAT WOULD ATTRACT A PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP WOULD BE GREEN ACRES. Other than that, we don't hold any other properties of value.

So that was really, in theory, the only use for green acres that the school board would have at this point.

Stacy SomerfieldstaffAnd I think just to say we put the covenant on something else, I'm guessing that like at an element like I know Providence is getting close to being more like a capacity But it's a lot of county students. So before they built a new elementary school. Oh,

Carolyn Pitchesyeah Yes per the per the SSA this student services agreement We will not in the county is aware of this we do not build an elementary school until until we have no more capacity for city students. Meaning, if we removed all, what is it, almost 300 kids, 300 county kids out of Providence and still didn't have enough space for our city kids, that's when we would have to consider building a new school. Now, if we could get the renovations done, we would have four new classrooms at each school. which gives us a you know a good amount of space but again

Stacy Somerfieldstaffright

Carolyn Pitchesso we're sort of just waiting to see what happens in terms of taxes basically tax rate

Speaker 629 up here like you

Katie McKimmonstaffknow

Speaker 6me standing up

Carolyn Pitchesyeah but

Speaker 6that's the

Carolyn PitchesBlake property is dead in the water that will not happen the neighbors you can talk I was at that meeting well

Jeff Platenbergstaffyou point is correct the county does own property there is a I think it was Baylin Road there, that little behind this tower of Parkland's. That land is owned by Fairbanks-Gainton Public Schools. However, in order for them to have two access roads, they would have to get an egress pathway through the park for the property. And the former county representative of that area was not in favor of doing it. So they had shifted us to Blake Lane property and the community was pretty vociferous about not wanting that part to be addressed. So everything over that region's kind of didn't want it.

Carolyn PitchesRight. And then COVID happened and everybody's numbers came down. Providence came down to it was around 88% capacity at that time. So we weren't as concerned about the county building a new elementary school. the county has expressed an interest that when a new school is needed partnering with the city on a school I don't know who will be on the school board either school board at that time if that would be an option but we do have a lot of county properties within the city so you know that's for down the road that's for when I'm not here so but I don't believe I've always said I don't think we will need a new elementary school I I just don't in looking at the numbers over the last 20 years

Speaker 6I

Carolyn Pitchesdon't see how we would get back to having 4,000 kids in the city it just doesn't seem likely to me

Speaker 6yes we

Carolyn Pitchesare

Speaker 6so

Carolyn PitchesI would say

Speaker 8yeah I'm

Carolyn Pitchestalking yeah the elementary schools you know I would say once we you know the capacity on those buildings is each under a thousand so we would have to have about 2,000 elementary kids probably before we are at a place where we absolutely had to do something drastic

Speaker 8yeah

Jeff Platenbergstaffyeah two of those five

Speaker 8things to get rid of But the building still needs to be built. So those children are going to need somewhere to go before the next seven years. I don't know that it's going to hit two

Carolyn Pitchespercent. And keep in mind that two of the classrooms at each of the schools will replace trailers that are already at the schools. But I still don't. We haven't been over 3,100 kids in 20 years. And

Jeff Platenbergstaffkeep in mind that conversation. And that's

Carolyn Pitchestotal.

Jeff PlatenbergstaffWhat the Prefects County did was they went ahead and added on to Mosaic.

Carolyn PitchesRight.

Jeff PlatenbergstaffThey added way more than the capacity they had at that school as a backup because of all this shit. Yeah. And then the whole Dunloring project that was still moving forward, what they were going to do is through boundary adjustments, the theory, if the creep kept pushing in that region, they'd be able to boundary certain students to Mosaic, county kids, and boundary county kids off to Dunloring.

Carolyn PitchesRight.

Jeff PlatenbergstaffIt's not really close to this.

Carolyn PitchesBut I don't think Dunloring is a viable project still. It's still going. It is going to be. I know there was some . Okay, I had heard that they, oh, you know what it was? It was that before they were just going to renovate. Now it's like .

Speaker 8There's also the whole boundary study.

Carolyn PitchesYeah.

Speaker 8Then there's less things that happens. And it's a very, I think it's all very .

Carolyn PitchesEverything is very . Right now. so but yeah so in terms of green acres we are not 100% not going to use that building for a new school and

Speaker 8no

Carolyn Pitcheswe don't we don't have anything so we definitely can will not be able to do anything with that facility it would be a tear down and then it would end up we would have to find some way to get a road out on the backside it would be very it would be a very costly project

Speaker 6well

Carolyn PitchesGeorge Mason wants that property bad yeah I mean and I hate to say it but But don't get me wrong, like it has crossed my mind. And I actually, our F-PAC chair is here. We were talking about the PPPs and thinking like, oh, well, who would be interested in doing something with green acres that would help us with the renovations? And, you know, George Mason is an entity that, that property is very valuable to them. But the neighbor, I know Green Acres neighborhood has really strongly opposed that. And everybody, I think, has respected that, you

Speaker 6know.

Carolyn PitchesNobody wants, they didn't want any college housing, because I think there's a lot of rentals anyway to college students in a neighborhood that's also a lot of families. So we all know some college kids in our lives, and we've been college kids. don't necessarily want them you know living right next door so is anybody have anything else to discuss about Green Acres are you guys I know the senior center is currently at Green Acres is it going to stay there or for the time being well

Stacy Somerfieldstaffyeah for the time being a long-term plan is right

Carolyn PitchesRight.

Stacy SomerfieldstaffAnd then we currently also lease to Main Street Child Care, which is kind of the city's

Carolyn Pitchesanswer

Stacy Somerfieldstaffto Head Start.

Carolyn PitchesRight, right. So it's a Head

Stacy SomerfieldstaffStart to File program.

Carolyn PitchesAnd I do know, I mean, I know that there's been a lot of conversation around the Willard Sherwood project. And looking at the tax increase, I don't think it's going to support that school renovation. I don't know what the tax rate that increase will support at this at this point

Stacy SomerfieldstaffAnd will

Carolyn Pitchesthe county if the city doesn't fund or isn't able to will the county then Just create something with Willard on their own because they own that property

Stacy SomerfieldstaffSo the roughest thing I've heard is that they're in it for about $20 million at this point, so they would have to leave that $20 million and then start again on the time.

Speaker 6Okay. That's what I'm talking about. At the present time, basically, Green Acres is just status quo?

Carolyn PitchesWell, we don't do it. I mean, we don't maintain Green Acres. covenant. But the city is supposed to do what?

Jeff PlatenbergstaffSorry.

Carolyn PitchesNo, go ahead. Go ahead. Well,

Jeff Platenbergstaffthey are maintaining it to keep it operational for the purposes that are currently being used there.

Stacy SomerfieldstaffWe own it and maintain it and you guys hold the deed of covenant. Right. And the ongoing, there's been some ongoing deferred maintenance because of its potential and if the will insure would get bills which was the plan that would that would be moved out in FY20 at the end of this little year yeah so the end of 2029 um and so that was kind of i think when you think about like doing making big changes to green acres that had always been like oh well we shouldn't put that money there because we're moving out now we've kind of

Carolyn Pitchesgone to a place where we don't know if moving out

Speaker 6grab has not wanted to you know take any kind of strong position on this site because you know you guys have a covenant you know and it's not you know like a

Carolyn Pitchesyeah yeah

Speaker 6we've wanted to have this conversation because it does keep coming back just as like you know we're not the school board we don't understand the demographics so like all the information we've provided this has been extremely edified for us, but we wouldn't want to make... We

Carolyn Pitchesjust need a space. Like, the school board just needs to have a property that's viable to build a school, should we need to, in 15, 20 years. And I don't think anybody on the school board, this school board, the school board before, the school board is married to Green Acres. you know it was just it was sort of the last school board property standing and I understand that it's not a great facility for a senior center I think it's fine for Main Street in some capacity just because it was an elementary school at one time but ideally like the facilities the ed specs on that place are ancient yes

Stacy Somerfieldstaffand I know the willature would get filled in its current design Main Street will go after that RFP to have the space in there the county is building a child care space and they're looking for an entity and why I can start to take over that space and since Main Street is already in the community I think they have a strong ability to potentially get that and then if something were to happen and the county and still build a child care space.

Carolyn PitchesOkay. So, I mean, I guess the long and the short of it is until we have, you know, until there's obviously some decision made about the joint venture with the county, we just hold tight on Green Acres and figure out, you know, what your needs are going to be and then, you know, work with the school board to figure out a way to, you know, give you all what you need. I mean, to me, if they do go ahead with the Willard-Shorewood project, to me, that space is better used as sort of a green space, as some sort of field. I mean we already use them for fields but I because the building I think the building it's not worth it to put the money into the building if we don't have to that being said if we don't have a senior center well then I would say that

the city should look at that property because and maybe not that building but definitely the property to try to work out some sort of facility on it for seniors and in the process then we could work to find a different property for a school I know spaces you know land is at a premium in the city so Does anybody have any other comments or questions about Green Acres?

Kristina Cecereby voiceMy in-laws do enjoy Green Acres at the Senior Center. They go play cards there. It is a great resource for that. My father won't just take it away. That's great. That's what I knew you were last name.

Mary Kay CiziunasYes.

Chuck PasleySo I work at a lot of their long-term planning mapping slides do show it. Kelly mentioned this. It's really quite difficult to see. Their director of transportation has told me personally that if he had kind of his way, he would connect Patriot Circle to Cyprus as an additional exit point for campus. So I think the reason I mentioned Mr. Cantor's kind of dreams about an external kind of way of funneling traffic out is that a lot of the folks I work with that are on campus other than, you know, the good people that are part of the city, they're just tone deaf about the issues and it's just living on that south border of the city just perpetual issues you know leaf blowing at 6 a.m. on a Sunday and their generator testing at

their public safety facilities you know Saturday morning at 5 a.m. things like that that happen right it's

Carolyn Pitchesalways yeah it's always yeah because I sat on the board with John forever and it's that has always you know he's always like

Speaker 6because he's right there he lives

Carolyn Pitchesliterally just off of yeah and and that's sort of why you know we've never we know how the neighborhood feels about that property and George Mason and obviously since it's gotten so large there's a lot more facilities now just beyond that tree line

Chuck Pasleyfaculty and staff housing was built there was a lot of difficulty over the impacts in the neighborhood and then the physical plan itself had some defective compressor equipment that would line and screech that we could all hear right the facilities chair at the time Thomas Calvin met with us at Green Acres and just was unapologetic just like this yeah it's been

Carolyn Pitchesa difficult relationship

Chuck Pasleyyes so sure and it's my career of course so I'm careful about what I say to save space oh yeah

Carolyn Pitchesand believe me like that's not what that's not what the school board wants we just renovate I

Speaker 8do think it's an important word, though. Now that we've heard people say, oh, it's on all these maps, and it sounds like they have plans for something that's not happening, that maybe we need to reach back out and be like, what's going on? What's your thought process here of including it on your maps? On what? Because it's our property. Well, if they're

Carolyn Pitchesincluding it, it's in their maps. Yes, I'm sure, but I think it's always, they don't own it. They know they don't own it. They've approached the city a number of times. That's not unusual. You could just

Speaker 8put maps out

Jeff Platenbergstaffon there. yeah they're envisioning their master plan

Stacy Somerfieldstaffit's

Jeff Platenbergstaffthere I

Stacy Somerfieldstaffmean

Carolyn Pitchesit's been on yeah

Speaker 16it's not three acres one of the things that we have a sort of a gap in programming that would be an educational and I know Fairfax County has excellent major centers in programming for environmental education I said this of course I would have high school science teacher environmental educator person so I I got my start volunteering in the Fairfax County major center systems so I have a huge spot in my heart for that kind of thing that can also be an a programming resource. People mentioned green space and a kind of, some kind of organized center that does not have passage high capacity but could include programming and storage and some restoration to the natural areas there. Especially I know people like to use the spaces as

you know, plague fields, but things like it just well, of course, or even a bluebird trail. So using a natural meadow environment is kept mostly liquid. there's a lot of options for restoring some of the biodiversity education space for I know we don't have to compete with but that's something that we really don't know

Carolyn Pitchesno and I don't think anybody on the school board would be opposed we just are obviously our main concern right now is renovating the schools. We have not been responsible in the city for saving for these renovations. Unfortunately, we do have four buildings in the city and they don't last forever and they don't meet ed specs forever. And until we understand that as residents, you know, we're going to have some serious issues. My kids have gone through city schools. They've been done. They've been graduated for quite some time. But the schools are, I mean, they are the center of a community. We raise, kids spend more time in their schools than at home. and we have to make sure that the facilities are able to educate them.

So, you know, that's our first responsibility. In terms of green acres, as I said, we would be happy to support anything. And if the city had a use for that, one, as long as they could give us another site, which I think is possible but we also don't want to give anything up until we can be assured that you know the community voted to have the renovations to have this bond and we we should honor our commitment to that it's gonna make the school board look a little silly. It's going to, it's just, I'm just disappointed. I'm just going to say it. I'm very disappointed because we've all worked so hard to get the bond passed. We know, we've read the facilities assessment. The middle school and the high school are not

far behind and if we don't start sort of understanding that we have to maintain these buildings then you know I venture to say we're gonna be in a bad place in 10 years so but we'd be like we'd be happy to support whatever needs the city has and like I grew up in my went to high school in Reston so the Walker center glenn walker that was his dad who was a very good friend of mine who like something like that it's fantastic you know something like that i'm sure the schools would you know wholehearted the schools could visit something like that it would be a great um i i just feel like we could partner on some things um and i think it's important for us to support one another you know because we do have a lot of shared interests crab and schools have a lot of

shared interests and I honestly don't think that we communicate enough as boards

Speaker 6we always really appreciate the opportunities that we have to face-to-face communications with the other boards and commissions and the council or whatever, you know, because these opportunities for discussion are so valuable. And, you know, we talk a lot about how this is so intersectional, you know, that...

Carolyn PitchesVery much so, especially, I mean, I always feel like, especially with schools, with, you know, the summer programming and before and after school stuff and field use and, building, I mean, I just feel like we, you know, it's important that we sort of support each other and keep the lines of communication open.

Speaker 6That's been a goal, at least for me as chair, and I think as the board as a whole, because we're so intersectional, you know, these relationships are so valuable and it makes it all the more important to work make and it brings more power to what we're saying.

Carolyn PitchesAnd

Speaker 6all right, you know, this board is, you know, it's not just one board saying, oh, this is what we want, but it's, hey, it's this,

Speaker 16and it also has the backing of this and this and this.

Carolyn PitchesAnd that might, Stacey, that also answer might be something we think about when we approach the Katherine Johnson project is that we come to that as a united group

Stacy Somerfieldstaffputting it forward as a CIP from both of us would be very helpful

Carolyn Pitchesyeah and I do think that when we do like the CIP presentation that maybe that's a time where we both come to you know we all come to the table and say this is a project that's important to this community and to and two ways you know for two different actually I mean it's not really two different you know students are the athletes and so

Stacy Somerfieldstaffit is all the same kids okay Katie is here. If anybody had any questions about

Carolyn PitchesSUCCAMP

Stacy Somerfieldstaffshe did introduce the

Carolyn PitchesAML. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Katie, do you want to say a few words about your, the camp program this year?

Katie McKimmonstaffSure, yeah. I just came, usually we do like a presentation.

Carolyn PitchesRight. There's a

Katie McKimmonstafflot on the schedule for tonight, so I just wanted to provide you guys with some information. Yes. I know a lot of your friends are familiar with the SUCCAMP program. So we have five traditional programs that we use the schools for to really make it a high-end space. And we do also provide speciality programs at Sherwood and we'll talk about this summer. But some of our other spaces and parks and things as well are individual week programs. They're long traditions. Dan used to run these camps right now today, so he's very familiar with them to be by. We found a picture of him when he was a camp counselor.

Sarah KelseyOh no.

Speaker 6I'm a

Sarah Kelseycompletely different guy. It's not you at all, is it? If you saw it, you'd know for sure it's not me.

Carolyn PitchesI begged Dan, crying, to let my, what was she, two and a half, and they wouldn't take anybody until they were three. I was like, you cannot, I can't have her home all summer.

Dan PhillipsstaffBut the deal worked out really well for me.

Speaker 6This

Dan Phillipsstaffis the

Katie McKimmonstaffpoint. Yeah, this is the

Speaker 6point.

Katie McKimmonstaffMost of the kids are going to work for her for city, so we just try to continue to work with the schools and send out flyers, with the parent liaisons to get some of the kids on financial assistance. So

Carolyn Pitcheswe do still offer like the sliding scale.

Katie McKimmonstaffYeah, we do a sliding scale so we get 25, 50, or 75%

Carolyn Pitchesoff.

Katie McKimmonstaffA majority of people get 75% off. But we do have people that just qualify for that 25% and they're extremely happy because it's usually helpful to them to be able to do that. A lot of like single parents qualify for like 20% or 50% off even if they don't qualify. Or even if they have a good job and it pays them well, and they're still single parent workies. because they're really grateful to have a family. Are

Carolyn Pitchesthere any new specialty programs this year that

Katie McKimmonstaffwe can highlight? Yeah, we're doing chess teams this summer. And also we have two new art vendors. One is mud skippers, which is more like clay and pottery. Not like real pottery, because that could be a lot to haul everywhere. And then just like a hard free-year-old, which I don't know, just all kinds of different teams in 12 weeks they do. So we added those on this year along with our regular traditional, or not traditional, the ones that we usually run like the CFTC, the surf shop, the skate camp, the soccer camp, a variety of different options. We try to get like each week we try to have like different options that will kind of satisfy every kid's like what they would possibly want to do.

So we don't have like all sports camps one weekend or camp that week. Right. So we try to set it up so that there's like a little bit of everything for everyone. So, we have nine weeks of summer camp this summer, six weeks of traditional camp, and then the rest of them we have special camps throughout the time.

Carolyn PitchesAnd what is the percentage filled for the traditional day camps as of right now? Do you know, is it on here? Yeah, so

Katie McKimmonstaffmost of them are almost 700% or are in the high 90s. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't look here. Because we take per session. Right. We do three week and three week or full summer session. and at some point they had done them in individual weeks before COVID, but it's really great for the staff and everyone to really get to know the kids that are there for a long period of time. By the time a kid comes in on day one and is out five days later, they just learn their names and barely anything about them, so it's really great. And we have a lot of people that want to sign up for the full summer, majority of people do sign up for the full summer, so we just kept it that way, and it's great for our staff.

It's great for the kids, and it's just fun to go, rather than trying to sign up individual weeks. They don't have to come every week if they're on vacation for a week, but we just don't program it or anything. We try to keep it at an affordable cost so that it's not really affecting them.

Carolyn PitchesBack in the day, we had, yeah. It's a little fun.

Speaker 8What's the biggest difference in the middle school, like the middle school camp and then the travel camp? Because the city just rates on PJ, right?

Katie McKimmonstaffSo it's, our middle grades camp is actually like upper elementary, so it's rising first at the elementary, at the Daniels Lord in Providence for rising fourth graders, and then rising through rising seventh graders at the middle grades camp. It is like kids that have been in middle school already essentially or at the teen center.

Speaker 8Oh, the teen adventure camp. Yeah. It's

Carolyn Pitcheslike rising eighth through rising

Speaker 8tenth. Okay, sorry. I said rising fifth to seventh on here. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. That makes way more sense now. I understand. And then my second, and I don't know if it's a question or more to point, I don't know if you've been following the whole like middle school start times and it's not going to go back next year. There's conversations about it going to go back to the

Katie McKimmonstafffollowing

Speaker 8year, school that will wait longer in the morning, is that something that would be

Katie McKimmonstaffbetter for us? So we don't offer for the middle school right now, the only after school, before we actually offers for Daniel's run just because we don't have the ability to bus kid or drive them or anything, it's not covering the city's insurance. Well it can

Speaker 8impact the hours of elementary school. They're changing the middle school start times as a plan, but then some of the proposals were putting elementary school start times at like 9 40 a.m. getting counted. 25 or 35. I don't think it'll

Speaker 6pass.

Speaker 8Just to put it on your

Katie McKimmonstaffradar. I saw some of the like, but I didn't say anything definitive yet, so I tried to keep up and Dan keeps me in the loop. Something crazy happened. Some

Speaker 8of those were very crazy.

Katie McKimmonstaffYeah most of the kids are there every day after school some of them get picked up at 4 some get picked up at 6 so we just kind of it's an ebby flow situation yeah

Carolyn Pitchesand just know that this is the third time that they've brought up elementary start times over the years and

Speaker 8one of these days they're gonna figure it out and all of a sudden they have no

Carolyn Pitchesmoney they figured it out it's a lot of money to change elementary start times there's a lot more elementary schools and bus routes so

Chuck Pasleythat's

Carolyn Pitchesthat's what saving us right now so

Kristina Cecereby voiceyes

Carolyn Pitchesnecessary

Kristina Cecereby voicecapacity for your sure report after school is it at capacity or like it's

Katie McKimmonstaffonly right now working to kids under what capacity is there three staff numbers we try to keep a blend at each ratio it is just hard to find staff numbers a lot of our staff members are who we say no more students and the classroom that we're using at Shorewood currently can only take maybe a couple more kids or it would be bursting at the seams someday so Sarah can attest if you open the door sometimes there might be a ball flying at you so it's

Speaker 6a little tight in

Katie McKimmonstaffthere so just based on the space that's kind of where we're at right now what about I think two kids under because someone got into SAC earlier and then someone moved during the school year so I'm glad we usually are pretty pull it and we're almost well definitely full enough before and after school and then after school it's also been just before chair options for this year it's

Speaker 6a fantastic program my kids have been going to that since my younger servant first grade because she was a coveted kindergarten baby uh

Katie McKimmonstaffbut yeah they are phenomenal and actually one six-figure this year have gone all the way in the kindergarten in third, sixth grade, so we'll have done the whole elementary school. Some days I see them in there playing parties in the kindergarten, so I'm like, I hope they might be well.

Speaker 6Yeah, it always ends up being a little bit better.

Carolyn PitchesOkay, wow.

Stacy SomerfieldstaffThank

Katie McKimmonstaffyou so much.

Carolyn PitchesThank you guys always.

Stacy SomerfieldstaffThe trees are back in their original location.

Carolyn PitchesYay!

Speaker 8We are trying to take some down some of those trees. We're not that.

Carolyn PitchesZip it.

Sarah KelseySo sorry you have to come to the high school and study your own

Carolyn Pitcheshouse. Let's not bring up the trees, please.

Sarah KelseyOkay, we're on. like a microphone

Speaker 6okay so we are going to continue with presentations to the school board um we have all our oh we have almost all our committee reps one um leslie's not getting okay um i am actually i know i'm tax at the bottom but it goes last every year so I'm gonna give Katie the option to go first this year. Do you want to go first? Sure. Okay.

Carolyn PitchesOkay. So Katie is our F-PAC representative. Facilities, advisory, why can I think of the F-PAC, Facilities Planning Advisory Commission? I can't sit with you

Speaker 6all the time. all right okay

Speaker 12thanks everyone for having me again this year happy to be back and provide an update on a very busy and eventful year that FCPS has had facilities wise at least that's effects for perception we started out our year where we retooled our F-PAC charter and decided to create a suite of memos each year for the school board because there has been so much movement and support from the FCPS school board to move things along very quickly to try to combat some of the backlog issues that they have with facility renovations we to their needs and so we are doing ad hoc memos for them that are getting compiled into our annual report every year because staff is going quickly so they're going so moving so quickly on certain topics like p3s different

contracting mechanisms for all their construction work obviously the boundaries renovation queue that we felt like we had to kind of keep up with that task and we couldn't just wait to brief the school board once a year so we now are going to be doing more iterative memos for the school board when they kind of ask for that mostly through their subcommittee which is the comprehensive planning and development subcommittee so anyway just that was a bit of a change we tried to implement early on this past fall and then just updating the charter or the bylaws which now we have to change the bylaws but that's neither here nor there was quite the process more than I thought but we did it so we're moving forward on that and then our other memo topics are

listed on the handout that I provided we are presenting to the FCPS school board on like a Saturday retreat time ours is May 31st so I am feverishly trying to pull together the report for FFAC this year but our memo topics were p3 studies and just like a responsive memo on a P3 study that FCPS had hired a independent consultant to report on and then staff FCPS staff provided a response to that report and how the information that that independent consultant could use to implement it into FCPS staff provided a comment and then I've provided a comment for the school board members so the things bulleted there talk about specifically related to P3s are high-level designations and I'm happy to chat through any of that if there's any interest in talking more in more detail

about P3s our second memo was focused on the FCPS school board has a policy is on essentially procurement policies and how they want staff to work through a procurement process so staff is working through providing recommended recommended updates to the school board on this policy so F PAK because it had to do with procurement and contracting for their construction projects also provided some feedback to them our next memo is on construction costs strategies we all know that FCPS is in dire streets to try to resolve some of their backlog there's the large backlog of school renovations so this past year the school board asked F pack to try to continue to provide some creative and I guess we're not looking for creative and cost-saving benefits that could work for

FCPS so there's things in here about the use of swing buildings have a having a better understanding of the FCPS buildings that are owned but are not housing students right now and if there's flexibility in using those spaces and then just thinking about on-site swing spaces which that is where you put a temporary building on another part of a school campus and essentially either put a modular school there in place and move your students over there while you're doing a renovation of construction or you build which is really new school right next to the one that you are either renovating or tearing down and some of these are very high in the sky ideas but part of the issue that FCPS has is that when you renovate schools with students in the school at

that time it further extends the renovation process by a couple years destructive to students it costs a ton more so again we're trying to offer some different cost reduction measures so that was one topic and then our last topic was related to permitting strategies FCPS central office talked a lot about how they feel that the permitting process with the county has been difficult takes a long time so we did a deep dive into that process and tried to give some recommendations and then at the bottom I just have a list here of the potential potential memo topics that we are offering up to the school board for next year I am I've only heard from one school board member there yet on which items they feel like they might be interested in hearing more

from F PAC next on for next year so we're kind of waiting on that but that was our I was our year moving parts but hopefully in the right direction

Speaker 6presentation on p3 because I think that would be really helpful for everybody to do the presentation and Katie and I have talked a little bit about some of the what she was talking about in terms of renovating building a new building

Carolyn Pitchessomewhere

Speaker 6else basically so we get renovations like her we were just sort of she and I just sort of that we kind of talk things through just because of our issues our on the top of up in the air status of the elementary school renovations. So, and maybe we can have you back to talk about.

Speaker 8So I was going to show you the question. Can you read the new work session on 93? Yeah.

Speaker 6Do you think you'd be available? Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm not an expert, but I'll share what I know. She definitely. Yeah, she, it was actually, it was super helpful for me in talking to them. You know, we talked. um can we look at um we don't have any more work sessions until school starts or to get some stuff together could we look at uh because we don't typically have our meetings start until after labor day but since school starts it's could we just have a work session prior to you know whenever school so it's whatever that i don't know today i think it's the 18th it's the 18th so maybe the next

Carolyn Pitchesone day we

Speaker 6can look

Carolyn Pitchesat kate and that we

Speaker 6can

Carolyn Pitchesobviously we have months now um but we can we can look at

Speaker 8we're not clearly yeah when they've err anything locked down

Carolyn Pitchesgood for

Speaker 6us some education checks it up well because I think they're sort similar sort of prospects for city projects does anybody have questions or comments or do you have any for katie okay

Kristina Cecereby voiceit just seems like a question about the windows um is that just for school renovations like water or is it more facilities management yeah so

Speaker 12we were open for the FCPS school board to write memos on really whatever topics they want we had suggested the ones that are listed on the second page just from what we've been hearing talk being talked about related to boundaries related to Some of the newer ideas the FCPS staff are chasing things that we've heard from the community so But it covers like anything related to school campuses the CIP planning either for renovations in the next five years planning for what learning in K through 12 looks like 20 years from now like if the school system wanted us to say tell us what the future of education looks like so we can plan our schools to be the most functional for that educational system that is certainly within f-pack we have a couple mechanical

engineers that are on F PAC who love to get in the weeds on maintenance and systems and so we do that too so I mean it kind of runs the gamut just like with any of our other advisory committees where the topics can range

Carolyn Pitchesthey're mostly

Julianna Nelsonexciting times transformation no more people laptops everywhere plugs power Wi-Fi zooming through the air sorry I'm getting carried away but

Speaker 12yeah I mean that's that's definitely there's a ton of A&E like architectural and engineering firms that specialize in the designing of school facilities for not just present day but well into the future and how you can best service students you know because we probably all went to schools where there were there were like no windows like this but there's a reason why design components like this kind of come into play and it's because of you know people meeting and talking about what the future of education should be how you deploy that curriculum how you deploy that in helping teachers and how you create great spaces

Speaker 8are you the school from DC See? No, I want to wait for out. I can't wait. There's no walls. Yeah, Southlake's no

Speaker 6walls.

Speaker 8That was the theory. That you could collaborate easily if there was no walls. And it's just like a 40-inch silence. But God help you get ADHD.

Speaker 6You're like learning from some other teacher over a bookcase, not your own. It was kind of thing.

Carolyn PitchesOkay,

Speaker 6thank you. You please, you don't have to say. I'll say for a little bit. Julia, are you comfortable going second?

Julianna NelsonWell, of course. So I was really happy. I'm really glad to have the opportunity to meet you all. I was nominated as the representative, and I was like, what am I supposed to do? Show up to the meetings and tell us what happens. And I'm like, but what do you want to know? So much happens. And so I had a lot of fun representing Haki-Noah Fairfax City, really honored in MSALC. Thank you. And so it took me a while, first and foremost, to get the acronym right. So we are the Minority Student Achievement Oversight Committee. Several times meeting people, what is MSOC? So I got it down now, and I'm looking forward to tell you everything that happened. So, you know, in the current climate, minority achievement, minority period is like, you know, a touchy subject.

So our year went like this. and we just finished the draft of our report, which we're presenting on the 31st with you. And it has been a fantastic year representing Fairfax City. And we had 10 meetings on the schedule. I was able to attend eight. The ninth is actually the last one, so I only missed one meeting. And by the second meeting, I was nominated to be the co-chair in training. so I also had the pleasure to attend weekly meetings like 30 minutes every Monday and it was it was really interesting to see like you know how many members and and how the great collaboration between the Fairfax County School staff the community members and other related stakeholders really pour into these committee meetings you had some people that are

members like they have been members like 10 years I would say for some of them and so we had some visits at some point at the very beginning so you have the explanation to what the whole committee entails the goals the objectives what the charge represents and what pillars we're working under and from that point we built like subcommittees to identify what would be the best initiatives to align with the charge and its current standing because I think it's a strategic plan that uh lays like five years and so now we had to put together these small committees to identify the actions that we're looking to implement as recommendations so um i sent a little table with a synopsis of everything that happened during each meeting i feel kind of bad reading

it out loud to you guys so i'll just go straight to the meat and potatoes potatoes so pillar a um brought together around the pillars and we all had to identify the problems they away yeah subcommittees set around the charge pillars and tests to identify a problem of practice so pretty much we were trained not to come into the picture of that thinking pattern as oh we should do a B and C but looking at it more as a problem of practice and the committees had to identify what best initiative they would gather around and then ask for the appropriate data to really refine their thought so pillar a decided to focus on social social emotional learning pillar b standardizing student leadership opportunities i was part of that pillar pillar c staff retention and pillar d

accountability for student being algebra one ready by eighth grade so um we also had the visit of very good representative from Fairfax from the board in April no not in April I think in December they came and they spoke to their accomplishments from the last year's recommendations so these are all on the email I sent Miss King you have the hyperlink actually that can take you to the report and that was a very very good meeting so I took so many notes but I did not know what was actually relevant to Fairfax City to your board and and with that I was like oh maybe there's something I should read to see how whatever we're discussing alliance with our priorities so I can get a better understanding of what really

matters to the board but we did also this committee also focuses on advocating for the minorities at some point there were discussions to actually change the name from minority to marginalized because the scope is we've just felt like the word minority was really focusing was really focusing on the racial aspect of it but we focused more on the marginalized students the one that does not have enough food but still we chose to maintain the name because there's so many subcommittees uh for the transgender for So we were like, okay, it took a while for this name to be recognized and known. And so we all voted against changing, while the thought behind it was maybe officially expand beyond just racial boundaries.

Because we had very good conversation on neurodivergence, which is also, was part of the conversation. And so we had several very good conversations. and I appreciate being part of a committee that really acknowledges all the layers without focusing just on the racial side of it. Also, we were very passionate about the boundaries because the committee wrote a letter to say, hey, don't forget what you're defining these pieces. And actually, I attached a letter, a snapshot of the letter to the email sent Miss King if you want to look at it. They take fantastic minutes. So if you're ever interested, it is, I was impressed. you know working for the government and have no this really good now as we came

together all the groups issued recommendations and to be specific so for pillar a do one focus on differentiated and culturally responsive learning environment which is the name of the pillar we issued two recommendation with four subcategories for one of those I could read them out to you i have them but that the document i have is still like the draft that is going through edits uh the second pillar homeschool and community partnership issued two recommendations the third pillar uh issued two recommendation one holding four subcategories so i was like how about we wrap it call it what it is and wrap it up at seven because at this point right it looks data and multiple layers and the last pillar focus on culture and equity excellence

and accountability to recommendations so we are compiling up those actually at four o'clock I was at the Fairfax County School building to finalize the presentation and to identify who speaks to what since I am a co-chair in training waiting I really want to call it but you'll see me up there and I'll try and and really speak to that. But, you know, that whatever I do, Fairfax City is in my heart. You guys raised my voice. I'm so happy to see you. And, yeah, and that's that. And funny story, my son actually joined me by the third meeting, and he was so interested that he became a member at large of the MSOC. And the Nelsons, you have some commitment in whatever Fairfax City needs. And our support for that.

I felt like I was I was all over the place I'm sorry but I really didn't know what you wanted to a

Carolyn Pitcheslot of these committees is very broad they can talk about a lot of things over the years and you come here it's still sort of a draft for me can't really share a final document so we understand we we just like to hear because we can't We're not a

Speaker 6board

Carolyn Pitchesof 12, we're

Speaker 6a

Carolyn Pitchesboard of 5.

Speaker 6So it's just great to know that we have representation

Carolyn Pitcheson committees that we feel strongly about. And

Brenda Silvia-Tormapassionate. Yeah.

Carolyn PitchesAnd it's nice that the CPS knows that we have city residents who are passionate about these and can contribute to these committees. I

Julianna Nelsonmean,

Carolyn Pitchesyou all are fantastic representatives from the city.

Julianna Nelsonalso appreciate that it's actually a resident that is speaking at the committee because a lot of times like you know there's not enough residents to represent it and you have staff that has to fill in and that kind of impacts their credibility so when I was nominated like you know to to be in training they were all really really the staff at least that that supports the program was really really happy about it and and and they really think they're in the next city of Calgary. So beyond that, there is another letter. Like so with all the changes that occurred with the administration, as we're all aware, there was also a letter that was issued during our last meeting to, I think it's not officially pushed yet

because we're still refining the language. We did it recently to really speak again on the importance of, because there's issues about pay

Speaker 6where

Julianna Nelsonthey're looking also to remove some specific staff. I think I actually sent a message to my son because he wasn't there on that meeting. And I'm like, do you know who your special advisor is? And apparently their positions are at risk. And so the MSOC drafted a very passionate letter where I was like, rah, rah. And everyone was like, let's be softer. committee we are the people we need to be forceful so the administrators that advocate for us say listen i can be the middleman but my community is hurting and my community is not pleased with the fact that it's very divisive to say this group will will get this much and this group will it's just creating a divide between the staff that plans and structures versus the staff that is in

the school giving instructions so MSOC is also speaking very strongly and very loudly about that and know that luckily Fairfax City always has a little bit more money thank you

Speaker 6but

Julianna NelsonI'm not telling them that we're hurting to you

Speaker 6do

Julianna Nelsonyou have any questions

Speaker 6yes yes good thank you so much the one

Julianna Nelsonfor the boundaries

Speaker 6oh

Julianna NelsonI'm right here and the image is not loading I would read it out loud to you yes and so I took a screenshot of it because I was kind of doing it on my military email and then I send it to myself and then I send it to myself again it was it was complicating not working when I was at home I was making I said yeah for my son so he was like but I didn't know the format really is is really nice and and next time I'll be if you choose to send me again yeah okay

Speaker 6yeah

Brenda Silvia-Tormaand and I can say one of the things that I'm really proud of over the six years that I've been doing this is elevating Fairfax City to the other people on the board because they all were like wait what like Fairfax City has a school board I'm like yeah I represent the city school board and the other thing that I would love to get changed is the fact that not one of us has the ability to vote for a board of supervisors, which is a problem.

Carolyn PitchesYes,

Brenda Silvia-Tormaexactly. But yeah, so I'm proud of being what? Yeah, this is my daughter, Olivia. See, you don't understand what I'm doing. Yes, when I started with Shaq, she was in third grade. and now she's going into ninth grade. I know so many SOLs. She's like, does anyone here have any decision power over cancel? No. No. Nobody

Speaker 12here does.

Brenda Silvia-TormaYeah. I said, no, I don't think so. But

Speaker 6yes, we would really, really love to have you return. Katie, you don't get a choice. That's all right. Your chair about that.

Speaker 8I was just saying, I think it's really fascinating co

Brenda Silvia-Torma-chair for two years

Speaker 8now I'm going to that coach our position it's not saying how we are such a tiny city you don't

Sarah Kelseypressure okay but

Speaker 8it's just I greatly appreciate it because I think part of the work is saying hey we have this city we are a part of you yes remember us here and I know Lord and I have this similar interest of the boundary and boundaries are looking very specifically at the patient and capacity and not always the students and what neighborhoods need additional support and where they are and what the impact would be. So I appreciate you guys working.

Julianna NelsonAnd since now I know it's something that is really important to you, next year I will for sure pay attention, push the voice and be nicely loud.

Kristina Cecereby voiceOkay. I do. My, I would love to see the recommendations around Alpha 1 by 8th grade. I have mixed, I mean, I'll be very open. I have very mixed feelings about that, just as a former math teacher. And that's... As a current one? Yeah. I think pushing kids sometimes too far, too fast. I get these sentiments, like, because oftentimes our marginalized students are left behind when it comes to advanced courses. That's something that I, that's very much supported in me. I'm trying to find ways. I'm just curious if there's anything that came out of conversation.

Julianna NelsonI can read it to you out loud. Whatever you want to do. Easy day. And so, if something doesn't sound right, I'll go tell them. And so. And I won't need my glasses, I promise. Let me get there. Okay, I'll pass and I'll read it at the end. Oh, okay. Tag, you're it. Tag, you're it.

Carolyn PitchesAngelina, I would say that I think you and I would agree on that. It's not that we are against trying to get kids into eligible 1 by 3, as long as they have the appropriate supports prior to entering the course, we're gonna make we're gonna say we have all these kids in algebra one and then they

Julianna Nelsonyep

Carolyn Pitchesdon't master the learning target and push them on to the next math course and they don't have that strong foundation to be successful

Kristina Cecereby voicefrom

Carolyn Pitchesthere forward

Kristina Cecereby voiceyeah it's a thing that often times I think you know my my youngest step is dyslexia and I've seen the work has been done around the reading initiatives of Virginia support to something there's a lot of positive limits happen since then I think we're leaving that kind of behind and the rest of my worries that we have this metric here that seems arbitrary to me without really understanding it like what's happening in the elementary math and supporting teachers and supporting kids and finding ways of lifting up marginalized populations so that they can reach advanced math maybe not that you grade but definitely in high school setting so they can be successful whatever they choose out there one

Julianna Nelsonof the members was a math teacher trust me I love

Kristina Cecereby voiceit

Speaker 6think that there is a gap between, you know, our elementary school teachers are general. And the problem is that that was fine 20, 30 years ago, but now, you know, we have progressed so much with the math programs that they, you know, I think the system as a whole needs provide the training for those teachers, especially I would say in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, before they get to those.

Julianna NelsonAnd there was a lot of conversations also around the additional assistant teachers that are deployed in the schools and the funding that is kind of like, you know, going away that needs to be reinforced and enhanced for that. And so these also came up, but we had some strong Fairfax County representation in terms of leadership of Fairfax County. And we had some very detailed reports with the metrics and so on and so forth. But they were there and they also listened to those points. And especially to a very, very vocal and passionate math teacher that was there. Actually, two.

Carolyn PitchesThank you, Ray. Thank you.

Speaker 6Okay.

Julianna NelsonTag,

Brenda Silvia-Tormayou're in.

Speaker 6All right. So Brendan's our representative for Student Health Advisory Committee.

Brenda Silvia-TormaYep. And do you guys have access to the PowerPoint?

Speaker 6Barb. Do we? Okay. We have printed copies.

Brenda Silvia-TormaOh, yes, you do. Okay, perfect. We have

Speaker 6printed

Brenda Silvia-Tormacopies.

Speaker 6We have the, we all are accepted.

Brenda Silvia-TormaYeah.

Speaker 16Okay. Oh, wait a minute. My back doesn't go back. Thank you. Sorry.

Speaker 6I'm going to go through. Thank you. Nice

Speaker 12to meet you. We'll see you back here. Just here.

Speaker 8End of the report, you want the other one.

Brenda Silvia-TormaThe PowerPoint side. Yeah. And in the meantime, we can go through with the paper. So of course, as you guys know, every year I always like to start off with our purpose. We're broad-based community representation parents students health professionals educators and others this year we had a person who's a neuroscientist On there which was wonderful because we were talking about right now So that was that was really cool. There was a lot of really good representation And as you can see from the next slide We had a full roster with the exception of one one person from food and nutrition services, so We had two students this year, which was really nice to have their perspective. So our charge was to continue its research on technology overuse, and we also explored

the mental wellness of students. We focused on brain health, and because of the impact that sleep has on brain health and academic wellness, we also focused on sleep. The three key areas were fostering brain health for all, enabling preventive support for developing and maintaining brain health, and identifying innovations to pilot and evaluate brain health initiatives with students. So our research came from a variety of sources. So of course, as always, we worked with the Youth Risk Survey, the Wellness Survey, CDC, Harvard University, National Sleep Foundation, and you can see it on the slides. We also had two really amazing speakers. One was Dr. Richard Freed, who's a licensed clinical psychologist,

and he's the author of Better Than Real Life, which I have not yet read, but I am looking forward to reading it, and I think anyone who has questions about technology, that is a really important book to read, and you'll see why in the coming slides. The other person that we spoke with was Dr. Tara Thaygarajan. She is the founder of Sapien Labs, and she had a lot of really interesting perspectives as well. The impact of technology overuse is well documented. Well-rested brains learn in supportive environments and allow for the development of foundational academic skills, joy for learning, curiosity. It also builds age-appropriate self-regulation and attention skills. We found that increased utilization in all aspects of our lives in combination with

a hectic and frenzied achievement culture, which is Fairfax County, I think is a bit everybody is focused on achieving has created a lot of opportunity costs, especially for our children, both in home and school. So I like to talk about statistics first, just to kind of ground everybody with where we are. And so we have statistics on feeling, screen use, and sleep. And 25% felt persistent hopelessness or sadness, And this is for 8th, 10th, and 12th graders. The 29% of 6th graders reported feeling sad or hopeless every day for two or more weeks in the past year. And that was really interesting to find that there were more 6th graders that felt that way than the older students. And so that leads us to a recommendation that we make later on that you'll see.

9% considered suicide 3% attempted suicide 21% felt stress all the time and then 45% of 8th 10th and 12th graders reported three or more hours of technology for non school reported purposes and 35% of sixth graders for that time sleep so six to twelve year olds need nine to 12 hours of sleep and 13 to 18 year olds need 8 to 10 hours of sleep according to the CDC currently only 32 percent of students obtain the recommended amount of sleep for 8th 10th and 12th graders and that correlates to the other statistic identified that one-third of students obtain the recommended amount of sleep and that can lead to more more reactive behaviors impulsive behaviors is more likely to experience depression and increased risk of suicide.

So our three key recommendations, each recommendation has some sub-recommendations, but each, the first one was addressing the impacts of childhood sleep deprivation on student health and academic performance, develop an intentional and age-appropriate technology use framework, and create a division-wide culture of respect for and awareness of brain health. first one and you can see she looks very very tired and I think that especially right now during our SOL season that a lot of kids aren't sleeping or they're having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep the if you want to skip to the next slide so our first recommendation thank you our first recommendation is that we will collaborate with the Fairfax County Youth

Survey team to obtain data regarding sleep habits for sixth graders because eighth tenth and twelfth graders for sleep so we want we thought it would be helpful to have that information so that we can kind of figure out well why are they experiencing more stress is it because they're struggling with less sleep and then let's see the next next slide is that instructional teams will engaged student groups to develop student-friendly materials the resources are available from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and we were thinking they have lesson plans they have all sorts of really cool stuff that can be incorporated and I do know that FCPS is already doing things because I get text messages I got one from her science teacher and her math

in her reading saying, yes, but saying that, you know, hey, Olivia has an SOL tomorrow morning. Make sure she gets a good night's sleep. Make sure she eats a good breakfast. So I know that they are doing things already, but we're recommending that more things can be conveyed. But having students be part of that process so that they also understand and buy into the fact that they need to have more sleep. Recommendation 1.3 is FCPS will provide families with easily accessible evidence-based healthy sleep strategies. So things that can be given, things like removing devices from bedrooms, setting consistent times to improve sleep hygiene. Recommendation 1.4 that we will work with, FCPS will work with teachers, counselors and coaches.

really very interesting to promote the idea that getting enough sleep is a competitive advantage because everybody is so competitive and achievement focused if we could change the mindset on the importance of sleep and get coaches to tell their their their athletes hey you need to get more sleep because you will recover more quickly you will feel better you will perform better if teachers could link it to hey you won't have you'll have you'll be able to remember things more you'll be able to make connections more counselors connecting that to mental health and stress the other thing we wanted to make sure as long as we're continuing to have standard in daylight savings time obviously there's been a lot there's a lot of accidents that happen right when

the time changes happen and you know if that could be something that is also shared with parents to reiterate you know hey and I know a lot of parents do this with their young children you know they start moving the clock back so that it's not just this big

Speaker 8you

Brenda Silvia-Tormaknow right after it's it's exhausting for for everybody the next one is 1.5 so FCPS will organize activities and discussions perhaps student-led during sleep awareness week which is in March to educate students about the impact and the effects of sleep on self-regulation focus stress management so yeah and again the goal is to have everyone see amount of sleep gives students a competitive advantage so the next slide is just a placeholder for recommendation number two developing an intentional and age-appropriate technology use framework and you'll recognize this from last year because we brought it back to say yes every school you know the this particular model ed tech triangle we wanted to reinforce that we really do

needs to be incorporated into FCPS's technology use guidelines. Can

Speaker 6I speak to that?

Brenda Silvia-TormaOh, good. Okay. So the classroom expectations, if you want to skip to the next one. So these were the things that we were thinking. Laptops, iPads are only available with a targeted educational purpose. And we had conversations about laptop carts and do we really need one iPad or one, you bottom line came if we remove them it would create equity issues and we were like no no we can't we can't we can't do that but if we can make sure that use is intentional then that solves a lot of the problems you know having of the like brain breaks the ones in my school in my school I work in a kindergarten classroom and we use you know the and I did some of them today you know with different you know movements and you're getting the kids up moving around that's

really great if it's one laptop one screen and everyone is focusing on that versus the individual screen when lesson planning prioritizing in-person engagement use of analog paper pencil tasks physical manipulatives and when EDTEC resources are used, consider the EDTEC triangle. And you'll see from the next slide that EDTEC triangle, the two areas that we really want to focus on, transformative and supportive. So transformative, as we said last year, this will be a review, robotics, computer animation, website graphic design, things that really transform your way of thinking and help you grow in lots of different ways. Supportive is things that are not available in print. audiobooks, et cetera.

The restrictive and the disruptive are ones that we don't want. Tech for tech safe. People using technology for choice time or technology for recess. No. And every school is different, but we felt that if they had these guidelines, then each, it wouldn't be a matter of, well, our school does it this way. Everybody would be getting the same type of support. The next recommendation is that staff will disseminate proven technology support strategies through school and classroom newsletters, delay access to algorithmically mediated products where content presented is individualized based on previous access. So where they're manipulating you and tracking your use like Snapchat and YouTube, things that they're going to give you ideas for.

Oh, you might be interested in this kind of thing. You know, again, no tech in bedrooms. One central charging area for all the technology at home. Parental code and code guidance. Bark. My daughter loves Bark. Gizmo Gab. Prioritizing independent, if you want to skip to the next one. independent free play over screen time and you can read the rest of them but but these are just some suggestions promote yeah promote intentional use of lightspeed so they're looking

Speaker 2have that the whole entire year and now she does yes yeah no the whole like a whole entire year until the fourth quarter she didn't use it yeah and it's a game changer okay Oh, okay. Kids were caught vaping in consultation today.

Brenda Silvia-TormaOkay. Sorry. Thank you. So, yeah, and Lightspeed is a game changer because you can track what your kids are doing and how long. And, you know, my teacher will say, you know, so-and-so, I know you're only on this one, you know, SD Math for X number of minutes. So, it's nice that there's those tracking where you're, or you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing kind of things. Yes, you can. Yes, you can, but kids find a way around those blocks, amazingly. The next slide, we suggested that the FCPS will pilot a peer-led initiative support and educate students about strategies to minimize harm from technology to adolescent brains. And one of the examples that I thought was interesting was like a health and wellness

Community sponsor or an advisor and students can come together and brainstorm Problem-solve commit to healthier habits together. There's a couple of other links you guys take a look at Then the third one is creating a division-wide culture of respect for an awareness of brain health so the first first Recommendation is bell-to-bell phone free school days for all grade levels, and I know that they just made this change We submitted a letter on behalf of this, of Shaq, to the school board saying bell to bell. We want bell to bell. We don't want lunch a time. Yes, I know. Oh, your mommy did it. Your mommy did it. So we sent that formal letter.

Speaker 2Was that even in high school?

Brenda Silvia-TormaNo, in high school this is the, yeah, no. We wanted it for all, but that didn't happen. so so if you look at the second yes yes thank you the rationale so again with the rationale addiction social media is intentionally designed to get people hooked to get people to keep scrolling to get those rewards oh I met a new level you know who safety students are safer at school without their phones like if they're not spending time trying to take video of something happening. They're getting to where they need to be and be safe. The mere presence of a smartphone impacts cognition, learning, and decision making. So academic achievement declines. And then phones are experience blockers. So the idea of having them out at lunchtime is disheartening

to me because that's when kids are supposed to be talking and spending time with each other. So, and the quote that I pulled from our report was this one, that the smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, which I think is quite, yeah, it is, because it's 24-7 if you want it to be. So, okay, we'll continue moving along. 3.1, the bell to bell. ensure that classroom learning and social time are free phone experiences from Dr. Vivek Murphy. Murphy. And you can read the rest of that. I don't want to take up too much time. It's pretty basic. Okay, so this was the really interesting thing that Dr. Freed was talking about in his presentation about common sense media. And I use common sense media. I follow them. You know, when Olivia

was eight nine ten years old I would use that for movies for books for whatever you know to give me an idea of what I should be exposing her to what not not exposing her to and he enlightened us and said that common sense media is financially invested in increasing or maintaining kids screen time at home and school which is counter to students health and academic success and so we recommend that they remove the FCPS removes it from its toolbox and replace it with other resources it's a multi-million dollar educational technology lobbying firm they make money from ads on their websites video games apps consumer tech they share content that runs counter to current knowledge and evidence about kids in screen time.

They have an article about five reasons you don't need to worry about kids in social media, but CEO raises own children with strict limits. So it's a do as I say, not as I do kind of situation. And they're also promoting the idea that family conflicts over screen time may be more harmful to a child's mental health than the screen time itself, which is problematic. So So anyway, so you can see in the report why more about why we're saying this the other thing the digital citizenship website on FCPS's website It's really big and it includes links to that curriculum But we found that the home page was only accessed 473 times and when you have a division of 183,000 students that's surprising and

most users access the home page but did not dig deeper into the resource the establishing expectations at home page was only access eight times and the page regarding this digital citizenship and teachers was access only one time and so So what we thought was we could include these new resources and incorporate them into morning meeting, responsive advisory periods, and then, of course, share those resources with families. The next one is incorporating social emotional learning programming in morning meeting and advisory sessions with fidelity in promoting equitable access. So out of a hundred and seventy two elementary and high schools only 39 students schools have an SEL wellness set Goal to support the comprehensive

implementation of SEL practices, so We wanted to make sure that people are using SEL and Incorporating them in in an equitable way and also with fidelity The next slide, we suggest, we recommend that FCPS distribute messaging that supports foundational concepts of brain health, such as family and school partnerships are essential to ensure equity access and support. That social media should not be used for school communications, which is from VDOE. Parents should be encouraged to use Lightspeed because this is going to be a potential opt-out, so it's going to be an in which is going to be really amazing for those families that don't access it now to be able to see, oh, this is what my daughter or my son is doing

with their time. I think it's going to be a game changer to help people stay aware of everything. And we also wanted brain health messaging to be presented in existing forms such as back to school nights, kindergarten orientation, Fall festivals things but things like that and hoping that that all of this stuff will help Remove experience blockers creating more in-person type of Interactions the next slide is 3.5. We wanted to add a statement to FCPS as wellness survey about implementation enforcement of technology guidelines and personal device use policy So the school cell phone policy limits the impact of expertly designed products that aims to maximize use and engagement. And so we know that enforcing school phone policies can be difficult.

And so it's important to know how each school enforces it and if they don't enforce it. And I mean, I know from working in different schools, a lot of times they're just trying to keep their heads afloat. And if it's not the squeaky wheel, then we got to move on to something that's more impactful in their minds. But students talk and people know, oh, well, I can't do that in my school. Or, oh, yes, I can do this in my school. And the pilot program that took place with the Yonder pouches, THE PRINCIPLES THAT PARTICIPATED SAID THAT IT WENT REALLY WELL. SO I'M NOT SURE WHAT THE PROCESS IS FOR GETTING THAT TO BE IMPLEMENTED SCHOOL DISTRICT WIDE. BUT I THINK THAT WOULD BE A HELPFUL WAY TO INCORPORATE

ENFORCEMENT BECAUSE THAT'S PRETTY TIGHTLY MONITORED. YOU CAN'T GET YOUR PHONE OUT OF A YONDER PATCH THROUGHOUT THE DAY. 3.6, this is our last recommendation. And we wanted to add technology use and sleep habit questions to the FCPS student experience survey. And so we were talking about thinking about this past month, how close is each statement to what you experience in your classes? My school iPad laptop distracts me from my teacher. My school iPad helps me to learn. that some of the surveys some of the questions that were I don't know if it was in the wellness survey or the student experience survey but some of the questions were like leading you to say good things and instead we want to know

don't guide me to it I want to know what the answer is based on what the person's experiencing. And then for secondary, we talked about the amount of homework I have makes it hard for me to get to bed on time. And on a regular school day, I often use my laptop for things other than schoolwork during class, like games, social media, or online shopping. So we want to see, do people, because we know, I mean, you can see it on Lightspeed, Why are you doing this? We want to know what their perception is of their use. They're working on the proposed charge tonight. Actually, they're meeting at 6.30 today as well. So that will stay tuned. You will hear more from me once the report is done. And then the last slide that I have for you guys is the slide

and our Facebook page. So, and this way, if you want, it shouldn't say 22 to 23, so I must not, I just must have used the old link. But if you go to the shack and FCPS, you'll see everybody's list in all of our minutes if you want to dive into all of that. So, I'm sorry if it was a little long. No,

Carolyn Pitchesno, no, it's always a lot. Yeah. Yeah. In particular, I remember when vaping was new. The report on that was a long one just because it was so new. It had

Speaker 6the prevalence of it went from zero to 60.

Brenda Silvia-TormaIn light. Yeah. Yeah. And the popcorn lungs and all the other. That

Carolyn Pitchesand the use of it in schools.

Brenda Silvia-TormaYes. But actually in

Carolyn Pitchesclassrooms, teachers couldn't tell because you could turn the vape pad down

Brenda Silvia-TormaYeah, well like she was saying a couple of minutes ago about, so. Okay, okay, okay. But that just goes to show you, you know, it's happening in schools and.

Speaker 2Because the girl that was, they beat me all my life. Okay.

Mary Kay CiziunasI went from India to opt out of light speed instead of opting in. Because it's been on my to-do list to check it, install it for forever. you know, and I haven't done it. Yeah. She's like, there's so much to do. And bring in

Brenda Silvia-Tormayour

Mary Kay Ciziunasreminder.

Brenda Silvia-TormaYes. Yes, and honestly, being on the shack committee every month, when I first heard about Lightspeed, I would do the same thing. I would go home and say, I have to do this. And then it was such a process to get Lightspeed that having it be an opt-out kind of thing would make it so much easier. So.

Speaker 6Okay.

Brenda Silvia-TormaAny questions?

Speaker 6Yeah, does Barley do you have a... Well, I love all the issues you guys have in mind. But I was curious regarding sleep. You guys talked at all about the impact of like a high school post-selection on sleep. I know there's a lot of pressure for kids to take orders first load. Yeah. So I was curious if that discussion happened at all on how kids perceived their post-selection.

Brenda Silvia-TormaWe did not talk about that, but that's a good, and that's the key thing. Like I know as a health and PE person, I now have my license in health and PE. One of the things that I heard from a principal was that they might be cutting health and PE teachers because more kids are taking online ninth grade PE. reason why they're doing that is so that they can take more courses more you know so get get rid of this course so that I can take something that I wouldn't have time for otherwise so it's a very good question and like I said the achievement gap or the achievement focus it's just overwhelming which is why sleep as a competitive advantage would definitely be helpful but I will bring that back to

my the committee to see you know if that's something that they can they can work on

Speaker 6whether it be their body size or their athletic

Carolyn Pitchesability to take in a regular environment.

Stacy SomerfieldstaffAnd

Carolyn Pitchesalso for athletes, right, like kids who are already getting that athletic experience and it did either open them time for them to

Speaker 6take a different type of PE course. Like in Fairfax they have like personal training. Yes,

Brenda Silvia-Tormathey

Speaker 6have

Brenda Silvia-Tormamind,

Speaker 6yeah, yoga,

Brenda Silvia-Tormathey've got,

Speaker 6they have a

Brenda Silvia-Tormanew fit. Well

Speaker 6now, as you said, now more and more kids are using it to pay more and more AP for it.

Brenda Silvia-TormaRight. Yeah. Which is, yeah, you're just squeezing in.

Speaker 2My friend's doing that, but she's taking algebra over the summer, and it's like $500.

Brenda Silvia-TormaYeah, and then you're paying. I did, my sister did tell me that the online one is very rigorous. And it's very difficult. Yes, because you have to get your heart rate up. It is really, you can't just say. And you're an athlete.

Carolyn PitchesIt's very

Brenda Silvia-Tormahard. It's very hard. A

Carolyn Pitchesfriend's son who is a swimmer and he tried to bike, he tried to run, he could never get it. And he was getting a D in online PE because of that. That's terrible. Yeah. So there are a lot of, anyway.

Brenda Silvia-TormaYeah. Yeah. I could go on and on. but yes so I will follow up and let them know

Speaker 6okay

Speaker 8no in agreement yes

Brenda Silvia-Tormait

Speaker 8also just in the when they are playing sports after school and they're going to games the game ends at nine and then you have to drive back from whatever as far into the county you're in and then they start homework and shower and then they need to eat their second dinner first and

Brenda Silvia-Tormathey need to have that come down time to go to sleep

Speaker 8so so I felt very connected to what you're saying again focus puzzle involved but some of them it's not there's not much they can do because the schedule is the schedule. Right. Right. SOL seems to happen at the exact same times as districts

Julianna Nelsonand regions. Yeah, AP classes, all the tests at the same time, framed in the same time frame. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 8What a hard time of year when they're all coming to school play. Yeah. It's all together, and then these children are just so...

Brenda Silvia-TormaOverwhelmed and exhausted. Yeah, they are. One of my

Kristina Cecereby voicepost tests is on for the same week as my students. Okay. So the one question I have is thinking about the, I know you mentioned younger pouches as a way of sort of rescaling self-review. Is there any conversation around rethinking the consequences of how many, why sort of structuring it in a way that it's maybe not as restrictive, particularly as the younger pouch, but maybe doing it staggered where it phones away and then if the student repeatedly rings out their phone and it escalates up to maybe a younger pouch. So not every student is a yard of couch, but maybe just a hand to a student sort of repeat. Offenders. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Yeah, I'm just curious. I feel like that would be almost a better approach to meet a lot of needs there.

Yeah. And still get the message across that this is instructional time. I'm just curious if any of the conversations have happened.

Brenda Silvia-TormaI don't, we, and I can't remember if it was this year or last year, But I do remember us talking about the concept of You know you have Like you just said a kiddo that is not doing what they're supposed to be doing there They get a phone call home the first time the second time is you know And that's why we want enforcement We want to know how they're enforcing it because if they are doing this type of staggered and it's working for them should find out so that they can emulate that as well. So you're in your thought. Train of thought is where we've thought. But I'll reiterate that to them. Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah KelseyMy only one was you're focused on the cell phones. But like my son doesn't have a cell phone, but he has a smartwatch. Right. And so we need to have, if you're doing a yonder patch, Oh

Brenda Silvia-Tormaabsolutely.

Sarah KelseyAnd that's the thing I think a lot of them don't stress is lock a phone. Well that's fine I'm still carrying my phone so my watch still works I can still text. Right. So that's the other thing we need I think to also address and to think about is what about those other devices that they can use.

Brenda Silvia-TormaYeah.

Speaker 16Oh

Brenda Silvia-Tormayeah.

Speaker 2Oh yeah.

Brenda Silvia-TormaI'm going to do some hard thinking about that. And then like I said, I'm happy because my first dive into it was November of 2019. in March. And then the next two years we all were like in little boxes. So I didn't get to see these people. So there was a lot of on the baptism by fire just running. And so I will be happy even after the person is on the committee. Even if they're like, I don't what's the institutional history of these people or the process? Because that was something that Phyllis Payne, who was the chair for years and then was the co-chair with me, and she opened up a whole, like, turned on the light for, oh, this is why this happens and this is how we do this. And so I'm happy to be like an onboarder for the fall, winter, whatever you guys need.

So, yeah. We

Speaker 8appreciate it.

Brenda Silvia-TormaYeah, you're welcome. But I'm going to miss seeing you guys. But I'm trying to get a health and PE job. And so I know that once I do that as a career switcher, then I have to do more training and so all of this. fingers crossed but thank you thank

Speaker 6you yeah

Brenda Silvia-Tormayes I say it will stay in touch because because I will have opinions and I firmly anticipate that I will be giving commentary for future Shaq now that I know that this committee exists and the purpose, and I can say, one of the things, if I may take one minute of time, one of the things that I would love to do, and I didn't know if I could do it as a committee member, but I have a latex allergy. And the more exposure to latex, the more likely it's going to become anaphylactic. And balloons serve a big problem. I mean, they've gotten rid of gloves in schools, latex balloons the powder stays the powder lingers and if we could balloon arches so if if we could have just mylar balloons Silverbrook because I have a an accommodation and so Silverbrook only

elementary only uses mylar balloons and they love it because they're pretty they're coming different shapes and sizes and they're better. Yes. They do last longer. So that is something that in the coming, I'm going to propose. So keep that in mind is something. Yeah. So thank you guys. Yes. We're going to go get some ice cream.

Julianna NelsonI am sorry I'm missing yours. I'll be ready next time.

Speaker 8Thanks, guys. Thank you.

Speaker 16I'm Mary Ketia Zunas.

Mary Kay CiziunasI was the Republican State Advisory Committee for Students with Disabilities this year. And that is actually what is called the SEA Act. it's a state mandated community I haven't this the first thing and so they talk about the charge and they had a re or the committee a lot as the charge came back so it was quite the thing because I had to redo all the sub-communities that was very different, so I had everybody in a diva. So the annual charge this year was that the ASCD will study and make recommendations for increasing disability affirming practices in the school community and encourage a strength-based approach to educating students with disabilities and learning differences. So that was kind of almost anything, basically.

And then what they were doing about two years ago, I guess, they were tasked with aligning the charge and the goals to the county's so what they did was they used the strategic plan kind of to the goals there to come up with the subcommittees so we had a committee on like a strong start a safe supported and empowered academic growth and excellence equitable access and opportunity and we do for tomorrow's innovation. So the final report just was finalized today literally I got it like a 12-30 because we had the meeting last week to do the voting on it and stuff. And the report is quite a few pages long but I mean it's bigger than it looks because we've included like the public comment is in there,

the questions that were sent to the department of special ed or other divisions that you know we wanted answers for hopefully they put those in as an appendix and so on oh another thing is just coming here and it's ongoing we're hoping to get it decided at the next meeting they have there's now a one thing from the state of how big can

Stacy Somerfieldstaffyou

Mary Kay Ciziunascan be and we're too big we won't lose the city seat at all it's more the appointed things from like various organizations like like the or you know the League of Women Voters and then the other thing is some of those positions have been there forever. But what this also didn't talk about is you could change what some of those were, like the specific charge was in a particular area. Maybe you might want to bring in representatives from different groups for that because, you know, they may provide more insight. Of course, you do that. But you have to decide ahead of time who you're going to invite, and then the problem is if the counties would want to change the charge. So that was a big thing.

What do we do? Can we really do that or not? So I'm like, I haven't helped those who have fun that community who have to decide that. Because it's like, okay, you have to divorce the person from this because yes, we know X may have wonderful insides that have sat on this community forever, but maybe we need to make a different group. So I'm like, I'm not on that. So one of the big things was to continue from, that we reiterate, that they reiterate for a prior year was to conduct regular audits of the progress toward the AIR report, which is the American Institute for Research Recommendations to enable further opportunities for innovation and increase transparency across special education. the goal one there were points for goal one which is strong start pk through 12

all schools there's a pilot program of like community schools I forget what three they are which is like kind of more wrap around

Speaker 16services and

Mary Kay Ciziunastalking about spending that maybe to more title one school and that's

Stacy Somerfieldstaffbringing more apparently

Mary Kay Ciziunasis on the outside stuff and

Stacy SomerfieldstaffI

Mary Kay Ciziunasthink our title ones I mean some of that as a title one was not officially because I know general runners no longer I think a title one made that drop. Yeah. So another thing is part of that was the expanded access to inclusive pre-K programs for all eligible students. And then another point that they made on that was they'd like to see ESOL services expanded in title one schools, particularly in pre-K classrooms. It's currently kind of in title one, but not, ESOL's not at that age level all the way across. Another thing there was the partner with colleges and universities to develop programs to recruit and prepare staff to support those initiatives. For goal two, the SAFE supported, included in power was the include enhanced access to like cell stuff, emotional,

behavioral, mental, physical health services, special ed, but you know, include a comprehensive of review of all of that kind of do the weighted formula but what they meant by the weighted formula was kind of knowing how many special ed kids there are like if you've got you're saying x percentage of kids have a mental health problem knowing how much that is of the total percentage of special ed versus the percentage of total number of students that are similar there may be a higher for intensity in the special ed community and we'll be one of these kids. Goal 3 was academic growth and excellence and that was actually the subcommittee that I landed on. And one of our big things was to consider alternative service delivery models for

like special ed services and advanced classes like you know how to get more specialized advanced classes. You know there's kids that have IEPs and stuff that want to take like an AP class and a lot of times it's like well we only have team talk in general so there's some proposals in here to do that like maybe some kind of hybrid model there doing honors work in the team class so that was a big thing you possibly increasing dual enrollment options to help with that. Online self-paced for certain classes, because maybe some kids can do a higher advanced work, but they need more time to do it versus in the class. And you know, they don't want to be staying out there, accommodations, and everybody else knows .

Another big thing we had, Universal Design was a big issue in there, for selected co-curricular activities and looking at you know just looking at the team taught you know the best practices what are good models what works in different places move some stuff in here on that another big thing in that area was to create clear objectives and standardized curriculum for the strategies for success classes that a lot of special ed kids are put in to help with their goal-setting prioritizing time management organization because you hear some schools that do a great job with it then I hear give me hear people complaining so you know that was a big thing that popped up another thing we really thought

was trying to promote teachers with disabilities and I think there's something we're like the county at times of late week outreach efforts like to recruit it like a death or like right in our backyard so that you like them for a success and maybe understand the issues of various kids' issues. You know, focus on like peer mentoring, like peer helper groups and stuff was another idea that was thought of. Also using the FCPS as a grow your own program to get like to try to include staff and using that to possibly bring in students with disabilities to like other structural support positions and I know like I'm not sure if it's at Fairfax but it's a part of the one of the academies I think where it's like a future teacher scene and like where kids go and work

with teachers and classes and they know like I think both of my daughter's teachers have one issue I think one doesn't notice do that he won the students with the teacher which is in the other inclusion class but my youngest daughter was talking about the student teacher that you know you know so if she was a prominent student herself at one point in time so everything's not really good so yeah I

Carolyn Pitchesthink that's

Mary Kay Ciziunaskind of a neat program to go on with that you know also help promote like interdisciplinary learning so students subject deeper understanding helps students to set their like old goals especially as they get older another part of that we talked about was using the parent liaisons to help address like higher levels of equity like to help parents who maybe don't speak English or parents that are new to understand like what services they're the academy is available and you can do that you know not everybody potentially should go to college we need other people you know you need somebody to repair your air conditioner and they're not going to get outsourced overseas so then you know let so people get to know what we actually have

Speaker 6did they ever talk about i know we have added programs but they explored the possibility of having like a an EF coach that goes, you know, you employ an EF coach that goes between the schools who would be a whole nine EF coach in one building, but somebody who could work with students in various roles. I don't think they talked about that one. I was just curious, because I know

Carolyn Pitchesthat they're becoming more prevalent.

Mary Kay Ciziunasyou very much very much and then go for with equitable access and opportunity that was the focus implement data tracking regarding students that were exempt literacy to identify exemption patterns across the first student groups they want to develop a vision-wide method there should be a vision-wide methods and modern literacy progress ensuring accountability through alternate methods consider exemption data when selecting locations early of housing inclusion programs. They also talked about concussion baseline testing vendors. Oh, the other thing that was really kind of good in that part was to provide training for staff and families along updates to CSTARs so that the necessary accommodations

for student participation in extracurricular activities are also included in the IEP. And they're also hoping as an inclusion college to provide targeted professional development parent resources focused on best practices that promote a mindset of presumed confidence and increased time spent in general education settings for students that were replaced in more restrictive environments for the majority of their students. One thing I think that was really interesting that probably goes along with that, the parent, resource center it's now the family resource center the director of that came to a lot of me who's presenting like what webinars were upcoming out there is a lot of resources available

online and families there um family can go in and get help with you know get information on different things they also have some like online they're like online things with links to provide out different things of books that's kind of like a dynamic document reminds me I mean I'm a librarian by trade reminds me what we call pathfinder that makes sense

Speaker 6yeah

Mary Kay Ciziunasso they have those so there's there's a lot of material there I believe they can even say like if you can't get over there and you want to borrow a book they can put the book over to your school to pick it which is pretty cool and I'm like because like at first I didn't run them like oh my kind of diagnosis like dyslexia so I'm like I could have saved myself a lot of money you think well so that goal five was leading for tomorrow's innovation and one of the points that was used the career transition services staff and employment transition represents collect and identify best practices continue to use multiple methods of communication to keep students and families informed making sure to include information about post-fcps transition

services as early as middle school those were like the big the big with this year there's more detail out of there one thing I thought that they did was really good and they've talked about trying to maybe do more of it people can come and testify begin of each meeting and make public comment on stuff and in January we had a thing I think Christine and Lauren came and unfortunately I couldn't attend that meeting because it was a night of the and it was a town hall type format and they had

Speaker 6quite a good turnout and

Mary Kay CiziunasI think that's where a lot of the public comments and most of those came from that night we had a few other people you know we might get there were nights we had three window ready but I think that that was a really good idea when they came up with that I know they're hoping to do it at least once next year maybe twice and can get worked out and we did this we did photo the charge for next year next year's charge is going to be related I know it sounds right yeah yeah the

Kristina Cecereby voicewe

Mary Kay Ciziunasconsidered a number of different topics we had a chance to propose what we thought would be then we had a vote when they were like about five choices there and then we came back then they came back to like the top two and how everybody go to get we did all that online so the collaborative charges and then the following recommendations of 25 26 charges with it during the 25 26 program year ASCD will examine the current practices within FCPS regarding data collection of progress monitoring for students with disabilities and learning differences in the division using evidence-based and research-based models the ASCD will make improving measurable outcomes systems but understand the source data collected and

used by staff to recommend programs and services monitoring progress of multi year special education improvement projects and empowering families and students engaged more effectively in educational planning using data transparency and interpretation so you know there's a number of ways that they think they could eventually take that because like one of the other things the the second place topic was working more of like community engagement family liaison under you know under certain folks so but that some of that can be pulled in there some of those folks maybe really it's so much for me even I that was quite interesting Thank

Speaker 6you. I have two comments and one question. My first comment was, I agree with the town hall with us. It was really powerful and it was the same story over and over and over again.

Julianna NelsonThere

Speaker 6was just a huge repetition of themes and it was very interesting. And then my second comment is regarding your recommendation about teachers say that my dyslexic daughter has a disability teacher and it's everything um and it's just how she feels about and how she feels about that future um and then i guess my question was about what is happening with universal design i know there's a lot of talk about it but i guess i'm curious what's actually happening yet

Mary Kay Ciziunasbit of a personal story but my oldest has gone to middle school and she's being placed in some smaller group classes she does better in small groups well she is not happy about that you know a lot of peer pressure you know i'm thinking if they could figure out more of a way to do that do things like that but make it less nervous you

Speaker 6know

Mary Kay Ciziunasthere's there's definitely it's working and one thing is like they were talking about it like FCPS is such a big ship trying to turn with that ship do anything it's just it's so I mean

Speaker 6it's

Mary Kay Ciziunasit's

Speaker 6true it years ago we were doing so

Mary Kay Ciziunasthe fact

Speaker 6that like it's a

Mary Kay Ciziunasconversation something else that came up is that at the very

Speaker 16people were really upset at the last thing because the

Mary Kay Ciziunasspecial ed department chairs you know a number of members of the community testified you know how

Stacy Somerfieldstaffmuch you know

Mary Kay CiziunasI didn't realize

Stacy Somerfieldstaffhow much they helped with my teachers

Mary Kay Ciziunasand paperwork and like there's somebody there is not fully licensed they have to step in or you know it helps that the principal wanted the system because we often do something else and not necessarily my community. You know, and I know, like, and a person like the one in the province was helpful in one of my meetings.

Stacy SomerfieldstaffWe had a young teacher. She was a two, three, but she's a second year. So,

Mary Kay Ciziunasyou know, she's still learning, you know, the FCPS kind of lingo of wording things in C-Stars and stuff. So, you know, so the representative was really helpful there, you know.

Speaker 6the chairs yeah

Mary Kay Ciziunasvery you know I need useful baby you know they can help that

Speaker 8was actually gonna be my question is that had come up

Mary Kay Ciziunasyeah

Speaker 8but I'm

Mary Kay Ciziunastowards like the report was already basically read more

Speaker 8yeah because they would end

Mary Kay Ciziunasup with like a double of a piece though they were still in school but we cut it past the half time they could have a hard time phone

Speaker 6there has been a lot of communication from the community to the county board on that because

Mary Kay Ciziunasthey were

Speaker 6probably what they received the most

Mary Kay Ciziunasyeah because i was able to watch a little bit of that meeting and then i had something else and i watched some of the and there was a lot of the public comment like the first hour

Speaker 8yeah yeah oh

Carolyn Pitchesyeah they're getting it

Mary Kay Ciziunascan work like the saving of the master's program yeah I mean I was I get this back thing playing well you know we paid this basically also blaming the state why don't we get so little back and I'm like well yeah we all know that's always been that way so give me something better

Kristina Cecereby voiceyeah and but the one the one thing I do wonder conversation for years not sure but thinking about the training for staff particularly in the sort of vice exceptional where you have a student with the dance and how's that but I didn't like is there

Mary Kay Ciziunasa little bit of like trying to figure out pushing toward the classes like advanced they were both put me in a discussion like you know the thousand were things did come up you know that that was good you know like okay if you're gonna do that you're gonna have to have like team taught algebra one you need team taught you know honors seven years of pre-algebra class um so that did come up i don't think that made it all the way to the report there but yeah the algebra one thing was brought up it was interesting it's interesting that they're really pushing that because i'm like i don't know yeah

Kristina Cecereby voicepoint even to add like the you know Well, I definitely want to make sure we get students to work. Yeah, they

Mary Kay Ciziunasdefinitely do, but there was a little something in the air about, you know, having differentiating and honors and coming up with something for, like, being able to help advance. I think the tween language didn't really end up in the book there, but I know there was, like, stuff brought up about it and stuff that, you know, something has to be done there, too.

Kristina Cecereby voiceis so it's more definitely staff awareness of how like once we're in this conference how do we support those kids just serving up once we give it to them

Mary Kay CiziunasI think some of that might be you know I think some people were definitely thinking along those lines of like with the data collection yeah okay it's better data can be selected what's going on this

Speaker 6person no

Sarah KelseyI'm good

Speaker 6very good thank you I know again yours is

Carolyn Pitchesanother committee that there's a lot of information yeah it seems

Speaker 6to broaden every year it is

Mary Kay Ciziunasit also like a student there's a region it took me a while to even figure out what world they make up here because they weird they do a weird thing where you have like green signs for some things little signs for certain others maybe and then there is a board member who's like a point is a liaison right right right she did have like her director person we

Speaker 6had

Mary Kay Ciziunasone virtual meeting because they had a meeting canceled by snow so they just getting permission to do a virtual so she

Carolyn Pitchesphysically

Mary Kay CiziunasThank

Speaker 16you. Thank you.

Speaker 6Thank you. Thank you.

Carolyn PitchesThank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.