School Board Regular Meeting

Carolyn Pitchesby voicegood evening ladies and gentlemen it is monday march 3rd 2025 and this is the regular meeting of the fairfax city school board please stand for the pledge of allegiance I

Kristina Cecerepledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceThere are no changes in our agenda this evening, and we do not have any other announcements. Our first item is the adoption of the agenda. May I have a motion, please?

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

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceMay I have a second?

Lauren BartelmeI'll second.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceThank you, Ms. Barl-Me. Okay, Ms. Barl-Me seconded. All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Kristina CecereAye. None opposed. Motion passes unanimously.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceOkay, we're going to start with citizen participation, which we have no one signed up for, surprisingly enough. And next we'll move on to the student representative report, Ms. Batra.

StudentHello everyone. I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying that little bit of warm weather that we are finally starting to get. Daniel's Run had an exciting month as they hosted many events. They hosted their international night where students came together to sing, dance, and perform their instruments in order to showcase their culture. Additionally, they held a PTA baskets and bingo event this past Friday, which was a fun way to raise money while engaging the community. Over at Providence, they held their history fair, where students were excited to finally present all of their hard work on different history topics. Providence also held a PTA bingo night this month. Additionally, they had a lot of fun with continued spirit Fridays,

including a walk on your wild side day and different themes for kindness week. Soon on March 13th, they will host a STEAM night, so be on the lookout for more details on this event. KJMS continues to bring the excitement with their after-school programs. Their Appian Board Game Club, Paper Quilling Club, and the Pickleball Club will all hold their second sessions soon or have already begun to hold their second sessions. They also had some amazing wins this past month. 13 students participated in the District Honor Band. place in their competition and are moving on to states and the science olympiad team won the regional championship and is moving on to states as well as both the girls and boys futsal teams

earning victories at their herndon competition furthermore there were two fun field trips this past month one with avid students and the other with the young scholars who went to the national building museum finally they have digital detox days which are to promote creativity and off-screen spirit days such as dress as your favorite app and dress like Steve Jobs day. Fairfax High School had a busy month as they ran a science fair which took the combined effort of staff, volunteers, and students to put together an event with 300 projects and 500 students. They also held many events such as the band, orchestra, and choir pre-assessment concerts as well as the Dance Academy Move to Mend Dance Benefit Concert to raise awareness for eating disorders while

fundraising for Project Heal. They also held a U.S. Service Academy slash ROTC night where members from different military branches came and talked with interested students. Finally, the wrestlers, the swimmers, and the DECA members all have people headed to states, which is very thrilling. Keep working hard, everyone, but make sure to get some fresh air and enjoy being outside for a bit. Thank you.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceThank you, Ms. Patra. It sounds like there's a lot going on. The next item on our agenda is the State of the Schools address from Mr. Chris Smith at Katherine Johnson Middle School. I'd like to welcome our Region 5 Assistant Superintendent, Ms. Becky Boehnig, and Mr. Chad Layman, and Mr. Gordon Stokes. I'm learning everybody's new name. Okay, hello Mr. Smith.

Chris SmithstaffGood evening.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceGood evening.

Chris SmithstaffI feel like I should just take questions because Ms. Botcher did an awesome job with all the great things we're doing, but I do have a presentation. But that was awesome, thanks. Well, it's great to be in front of you again. I was counting in the car on the ride over. This is my seventh presentation. I started out all by myself, I think, on week four, maybe five of the job at Daniel's Run, and then I did it virtually, then I got to partner with Dan and Andrew, now I'm back to myself, so full gamut here, but again, just excited to always talk about our school. I welcome the new board members and certainly invite you at any time over to our school and to visit us, and I appreciate the support from our region office. We got a busy week. We also just finished up a field trip, not

for Model UN over the weekend, so we had administrators there. We got a lot of events culminating with a basketball game Friday, so I'm here flying solo at Katherine Johnson, but not because they don't, my admin team is very busy as well. Thankful for the opportunity to return to Katherine Johnson. If you don't know, I was there for five years as assistant principal, so I love my time at Daniel's Run, but I'm excited to be back at Katherine Johnson. and I like to show lots of pictures and I fill in the blanks hopefully there are some slides that are a little more wordy but I wanted to give you a peek into our school the pictures you're looking at right now we have a pep rally on the left-hand side and then welcoming of students with our Eagle mascot and so I'm

going to give you an overview of our successes our challenges give you a look into some of the tools that we use as administrators. And so that'll be some of the screenshots that you see. So I thought we'd start first with just kind of who we are. These were some numbers that I couldn't find a pretty graph for. So they're just in word form here. So 1172 students actually verified membership today. It's 1179. We've been right around kind of plus or around 1175, five plus or minus five students all year long. We have 35% of our students are AAP level four. We have 181 students, about 15% in our special education program. Communication languages, so you'll see some different stats about students, but this is

what the families choose as the communication language, right? So you see 77% English, Spanish is 16%. after Arabic, but they're all falling below that 1% number. On here, some graphs on ethnicity and English proficiency, which you see with ethnicity, and this is over time, this year and then the last two years, is that has stayed relatively steady. And then the English proficiency you see has increased by about 5% over the last three years. When you do the math, that's about 60 students. in our English proficiency. I see our grade levels are a little bit heavy in eighth grade this year. We anticipate the incoming class is going to be roughly the same size as the class that's leaving. And you see our free and reduced lunch.

This is one where you see a reduction. My hypothesis is that there was a period of time coming out of COVID where we weren't requiring the paperwork and reduced waiver and we're back to pre-COVID times of requiring that which is probably why you see that debt. Next into attendance so these are a couple pictures from our what we call our attendance dashboard that we look at I look at at least weekly so you see our absenteeism rate and this was captured I want to say like last Wednesday or Thursday as I was putting this together. It was 13.3%. Today it's 12.5, so we're a little better. And we are right about the same that it's a, today it's about 0.6% better than at this time last year. So I think the big thing I want to share with you, there's a way for students who are absent

to earn some absences back. So they stay after school for three hours in an academic setting. So those of you might be familiar, like we have a social homework club, that does not count. They need to stay with an academic teacher. And so we have had 411 students make up 1,148 days. So when you do the math, it's about almost three days per kid of that 411. So that's something we've gotten off the ground recently, and our attendance team has done an excellent job encouraging kids. Families have students at our school, some information went home at the end of the quarter. Everyone got an attendance report card. And then we also sent families who fell within a range of absences some information about staying after school with their teacher to make up those days.

And the reason I started with attendance, right, is they got to be there first, right, in order to achieve academically. So we'll move into the academic parts here. And as you see there, what all of our students have, right, our math teams meet weekly, creating common assessments, working on lessons. We use MathSpace, which is an FCPS-approved platform, and students have access to after-school support. Some students have access to our high-impact tutors. We have numeracy focused learning seminars. A learning seminar is a portion of a small portion of the day that students can get some additional help. As Ms. Batra said, you read off our math competitions that we participate in. Starting in March, I don't have the exact date,

it's either next Monday or the Monday after, Fairfax High School students are going to come over and be available to help tutor our students. And we also have our ML courses to support students. What I wanted to point out, so this is another dashboard that we have access to. So this is our algebra dashboard. So the numbers on the top are Fairfax County, and they are for the coming up year. So in the fine print there, it says 2526. I could not figure out a way once they turned that number into 2526 to get the this year's number. I have it. It's just I wasn't going to figure out a way to display it. So when you're looking at, if you go below there, to Katherine Johnson, you see you have the four years, right?

You have 2526 coming up, and then you have the previous three years. So if you look at this year, 64% of our students are of our eighth graders. Sorry, it gets very particular here. 64% of our eighth graders are enrolled in Algebra I or higher. If you notice, and that's what we are one. If I had the graph for you, the FCPS number is 65%. So we're right there with the county average for this year. this year again the 24 25 number for math 7 honors is 65 percent of our seventh grade students are in math 7 honors and that is about 12 percent higher than the county average again one of the strategic plan goals is that all eighth graders successfully complete algebra leaving eighth grade and so when you look at this year our projection from the budget office is

for 1150 students this this current year we've been running about 50 students higher than last year's projection right so last year's projection was about 1125 we've been around 1175 we're projected for 1150 next year so one thing that we've done is for course selection all current seventh graders if they're not in algebra already the default course is is algebra for eighth grade certainly we will be looking at data communicating with parents probably not every kid is going to go into algebra but that number that you see for this year for us which is 83 percent right is the projection for next year and so talking to mrs. T today even seventh grade or sorry rising seventh graders that may end up making a

decision not to take algebra there'll probably be some rising seventh graders that do right does that make sense so that number we feel like although it may fluctuate a little bit it shouldn't be more than a few percent one way or the other the other thing we did is rising seventh graders the default course is math 7 honors and again this is where things can get a little confusing math 7 honors and math 8 are the same course we also call it pre algebra so it's kind of got three names and again that is the default setting our math team feels pretty strongly I'm not a math teacher but they feel strongly number of things covered in math 7 for instance multi-step equations and equalities covered in math 7 honors slash math 8 slash pre-algebra that are

not covered in the math 7 course so if you're gonna miss something right the rising sixth grader sorry rising seventh graders if they're not in advanced math in order to get to algebra as an eighth grader either need to skip seventh grade math or eighth grade math and so our math department feels strongly that we can cover elements of seventh grade math in that eighth grade math course in math seven honors again math eight pre algebra all the same course it looks like you're shaking your head and you're with me so so anyway it can be a little confusing but that's our and again certainly we want to give supports to students we have algebra readiness which is an elective I think one of the things

that you know anytime you're putting a student in an academic elective they are losing one of the fun electives right so we just want to be mindful of being very careful about the support that they need and whether we can do that during the learning seminar time or if they need a more intensive support so we also don't support both in math and reading right we don't want to take both choice electives away so we find ways of learning seminar to help them so okay

Carolyn Pitchesby voicejust to clarify yes if the student is in math 7 not math 7 honors

Chris Smithstaffas a

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceseventh grader they're gonna default to algebra 1

Chris Smithstaffso a current seventh grader right now will default to algebra 1 for their eighth grade course

Carolyn Pitchesby voicebut parents can make the determination if they would like their child to take MAP-8.

Chris SmithstaffYeah, sure. And that's a conversation that we have through the summer, right? And again, some students we would agree, right? Some other students, we have some new screener. We're giving what's called a MAP assessment this year. It's similar to iReady, but for the math side of it. And we, of course, we'll have, you know, SOL data as well, right, to work with parents, right, on what the best placement is,

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceOkay, and can I just ask one more question

Chris Smithstaffwhile we're still on this?

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceYou can, yep. Geometry numbers for current eighth graders. Good

Chris Smithstaffquestion. I don't. Can I get back? Yeah, yeah. I can email that back to you. Yeah, yeah.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceAnd we don't have any. Do we have any seventh graders in geometry?

Chris SmithstaffYes.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceOkay.

Chris SmithstaffYeah, I'll get back to you. Okay, that's why I just. I know there's two.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceOkay.

Chris SmithstaffAt least.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceSo then follow-up question on that. in geometry as seventh graders, they're going to take Algebra II as eighth graders. How will that work?

Chris SmithstaffThey go to Fairfax.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceThey will go to Fairfax. Yeah. How will they get there?

Chris SmithstaffBus. Okay. Yeah. So that's one of the things, and the reason I'm familiar with, I know there's a couple because I know a couple went to Daniels Run. So we had to work for the same thing in sixth grade to get them to Katherine Johnson for Algebra. Okay. currently have some students at Fairfax taking Algebra 2.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceOkay. Thank you. Sorry, I just wanted to

Chris Smithstaffclarify.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceSo the

Chris Smithstaffnumber of geometry students, right, is what I'm following up on?

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceYeah.

Chris SmithstaffSure.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceAnd actually, you said there's at least two seventh graders in geometry?

Chris SmithstaffAt least two. There may be more. Again, I know there are two just from my previous history.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceOkay. Can we get the numbers for seventh grade Algebra 1 and geometry students?

Chris SmithstaffYeah, the total number? Yeah. Yep. it's on here. So, well, you want, yeah. The number that's on the graph includes algebra and geometry.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceFor seventh grade?

Chris SmithstaffYeah. You want seventh grade algebra? Is that what you said? I

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewant seventh grade algebra numbers and then any seventh grade geometry students.

Chris SmithstaffThank

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceyou. Thank you.

Chris SmithstaffSo, bottom line is we like the path that we're on in terms of moving toward the superintendent's goal and supporting realizing that we have to support the students right they're gonna you know miss a year of math right but we think we have a good plan all right on to English right what we test in the SOL world would be reading so again very similar in terms of all Eagles our CLT is again meeting looking at common assessments looking how to help students who might be struggling a little bit looking at how to help students who are achieving well in English Lexia again is another computer program that students can use to help build some basic reading skills after school support we have tutors two tutors working on the math

the English side the reading side just know the funding for that as my understanding right is like a kind of a separate fund from the state of Virginia to Fairfax County so that's how that is funded we have again learning seminar time we do have literacy electives and so some students do miss one of those two choice electives and they're in a literacy elective and again we have some learner or literacy courses sorry for our multilingual learners as well the picture you see at the top there is a book club and this is a picture inside one of our English classrooms and they're putting their book up that they're reading again book clubs right there they're choosing a book and this This is, again, a connection to World War II.

So you see that cross-curricular connection as well. So a couple things that we have access to. So this is some information from the iReady screener. So the biggest thing about the graph at the top is you have our two dots, and you want to be in the far right, top right quadrant if you can. high performance and high growth, which means the students are coming to us performing pretty high, and they're continuing to grow. The next box, and so you see our seventh grade is kind of right in the middle. They're like half into the box on the right and half into the box on the left. So that's our seventh grade. The far right dot is the seventh grade. And then our eighth grade is just to the left of them.

And they're in a box. It's low performance but high growth. So we definitely want to be in the high growth area. Again, we prefer that students be high performing too. We want that. But as a school, we want to make sure that they're growing. So those are encouraging. This is, and we only get this right. We gave it at the beginning of the year, and then we gave it at mid-year. Then we'll give it again in May. And so we'll have another dot to see where we are. The second graph, the bar graph there, The quick summary of that is from beginning of the year to mid-year, right, we want to expand the green and shrink the red. And so if you notice the bolded numbers at the bottom, like where it says from 12 percent,

so our group that was mid or above grade level originally at the beginning of the year was 12 percent. It's now up to 18. So the quick summary is that we have had a 7% increase in the green section and a 7% decrease in the red section. So that's good growth from the beginning of the year. The next result, so it's one thing to look at the overall result. I think one of the biggest learnings I had in elementary was how complicated, for lack of a better word, that reading instruction can be and making sure you're really honing on on what the student needs because just putting them in an intervention for instance if it's not targeted to what they need reading wise right you don't get the results you want so our elementary friends have been doing an

awesome job so at the top you see the fall results and so you have the different categories there and so phonological awareness and phonics you see are the highest scoring ones right so this is for our students in our including our seventh graders and so I think over the years we last few years with the changes in elementary school right we've definitely seen an increase in that green section for all students if you notice the the section one of sections that's lacking right in that top one is that vocabulary section and this is countywide one of the things we learned last year on the elementary side right, because that was the next kind of frontier, right, then that was that bridge to comprehension

was yes, it's important to sure up the phonics, but they also need that vocabulary in order to comprehend. So that was our focus going into start this year at Katherine Johnson. And it's still a focus. It's going to be, it's not something we're going to solve in a year. You can see in that second graph, although there's some slight changes, there's not a whole lot of changes in the vocabulary so this has been a focus of our professional learning you know what's good about vocabulary all teachers teach vocabulary right now I directly supervise PE and our CTE departments and so that's been the heart of our CLT discussions in those departments is what is the vocabulary that they teach students and then how do we teach it I

the big thing that we're trying to work on, right? It's one thing for me to say this is a new word for students to use, but we have to explicitly teach it so that it hangs on in their memory. So we're working on each content, working on 10 essential vocabulary words for each unit. And then at the end of the year, the goal is to see what we have in common and continue to work on explicit teaching methods for vocabulary. So that will be an ongoing focus, and so you'll hear probably about that next year as well when I'm back. You know, a couple supports, a couple more supports that we have on the advanced academic side. We do have an advanced academic resource teacher. We are staffed with a .5, which is a half-time advanced academic resource teacher, and then

we fill in the other .5. so the our advanced academic resource teacher is full-time at our school but that is not something that's normally staffed full-time in most middle schools a lot of words on this one but we'll just tell you you know she works with advanced learners she works with our young scholars program or twice exceptional students and our multi-language learners and one of the things she's working on is enhancing understanding or honors curriculum for framework to make sure that our honors classes are different from our general education classes, collaborating with Portiavita graduate presentations of learning. And she's been a big part of our community. You see the, I'll go through some of the other nights on the later slide, but she's often

at many of these family events and is a great resource to our families. The next one is AVID. via individual determination. This was last weekend at James Madison. They were on the field trip. Right now we have one eighth grade class, two seventh grade classes. They've gone on some college field trips. This starts in the summer with our staff. We were in Baltimore last summer, and that'll be the plan this summer too for professional development. And we also have, on that field trip, we have pyramid collaboration. We were with Fairfax students last weekend field trips to JMU and they have some other partnerships that they do culminating with our signing at the, I don't want to give it away, but Fairfax is having some sort of college signing

celebration and our avid students are invited to that. And we're not just academics, we're electives as well, right? So you know and I want to, I should have said at the beginning, I'm highlighting right lots of things. I apologize to any group at school that I have left out. But I wanted to point out, for instance, our band, it's not just our band room, it's not just the auditorium, but it's experiences they get also beyond that. That's a picture of Mr. Burt's. We are at the Wizards game, and so that's a pretty cool experience. And you don't know how tall those players are until you walk on the court. And I was just a chair holder that night. I had to make sure that a couple of the kids had the chair so they could play their instrument. But pretty cool

always super popular. It's one of the reasons in a way that I came back. I don't need to eat, but it's always when they're making pancakes last week or monkey bread, it always smells delicious and it's a popular class teaching real life skills. You see our robotics classes there, working with the VEX Robotics. Had a wonderful presentation of Dorothy in Wonderland in the fall we have a musical coming up in the spring so lots of ways I think what's important about middle school is they get to experience different things and along with after school I think when they go into high school right they can kind of hone in a little bit on what it is that you know that group or things that they want to do in high school after exploring in elementary school

school middle school first mess up of the night so after school opportunities again you did a great job reading off for us I think what I would emphasize is if you look at and these are pictures again of our after school groups some of our teams so one thing that was new this year although we have the athletic teams of cross-country and now spring track that's starting up soon. Mr. Deho, our after-school specialist, was tasked to experiment with some new sports if we were going to add sports. So we've been in a Western Fairfax league that he has started with the other after-school specialists. It's been basketball, futsal, and now volleyball. And we've done them kind of the offseason for lack

that are playing on the volleyball team can join our team, right, or when we did basketball in the fall, like it's not a high pressure time for basketball athletes. Of course, with volleyball, right, on the male side, it's been added to the high school. We had 40 boys try out for volleyball and 140 girls for volleyball. So the participation, you know, the downside of that, which is different than track, right? Track, we don't cut anybody. These sports, we've had to. one thing that I don't like about it, but so far it's gone pretty well. See our Science Olympiad team won a competition, our Math Counts team won a competition. We hosted a Quiz Bowl competition at our school with 10 other schools there, so that was a

big undertaking, so it's a very busy program. And just to get, kind of give you the visual, right, of what the days look like with after Tuesday is the only day where we don't have late buses, so we still have some activities going on, but it needs to be parent pickup. And then the four other days, again, we're lucky and fortunate that the county funds four days of late buses. We have over 25 unique clubs, and I'm going to come back to them as a challenge, too, at the end of this presentation. And this one I just named Building Community. There's lots of different events. I would say kind of the coolest thing we've had so far is the helicopter coming for career day. And if you look at our webpage, we somehow were able to get the video up, right?

So the helicopter is moving. But kind of chronologically, right, I think the year certainly kicks off with our Eagle Fest, right, which is always a big day, even though kids now don't need to physically come to our school building to get the paper schedule, right? They have it on their phone, but it's still a big turnout and a way to see where your classes are. We had a back-to-school night. coffees I did host parent coffees in September both in English and Spanish we've had a couple what we call parent academies so we did one on towards the end of the first quarter on parent view and Schoology and how to access those as parents and then we also just did one last week on social media so those were

both recorded and and parents can watch that even if they didn't attend career These are the pictures from career day. So we had over 70 presenters, and our counseling team did a great job with that. There was a blue star week in September to honor veterans. So we did a coffee that week, too, and then we are a purple star school. We just did a community connection night with Providence, which was a great partnership. A little bit about transition is set to seventh grade for sixth grade parents. starts in December when we do our field trip over and we do our concerts and tours. We brought back our January curriculum night in person. That was something I believe in previous years was virtual, but that's like an open house style thing where parents come,

families come, and you can go into some different rooms. The elective teachers, right, they're trying to hook kids in, so they do some great stuff that night as well. We're planning a family orientation in May we did that last year and then we'll have our summer programming as well our National Junior Honor Society is heading over to Providence every Wednesday to help tutor students we just completed with the help of the Regent office each team went through an assembly on the power of words and the focus was impact versus intent and also about being an upstander And so we just wrapped those up. The snow caused some rescheduling of those. And you see our chickens, chicks now, soon-to-be chickens up there that we've hatched.

And they've been like therapy chickens as they are carried around the school. But they are part of our raise and grow locally. And so there's a lot of them there that are being donated to a farm. And then our PTA is up and running. Our PTA, at the beginning of the year, we were out of compliance on some PTA paperwork, for lack of a better idea. So our PTA has done a good job of getting A established, getting us back in good standing. And so we've been able to start the last couple of months meet monthly. The picture is up there. One of the far right, our SBITs has started. that's our school-based technology specialist has started interviewing students students interviewing students at lunch and they interview their

principal I'm a sucker for anything with those small right microphone I think that's the coolest thing so they if you get on our Facebook page there are two additions of between bites I did put them in here but then I forgot it's PDF and you can't play videos from PDF so I'll send the links along with the geometry question as we start to conclude and certainly not at all an afterthought this is super important especially as we get into the hiring season here right of course is the support of the city schools right we have the transition counselor I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that position in the next slide we'll have a think of it summer camp which is a camp that focuses on STEAM activities.

I think the biggest thing is the ability as principal to say yes to teachers when it comes to professional learning and staff development, the ability to be able to cover subpay or in the summer, the ability to pay teachers is really important. A couple texts we've been using, I'm happy to pass it around if you'd like to see. But so all of our teachers on their summative evaluation got a copy of teach like a champion again, that's courtesy of the city and they had to pick at least one technique out of here to focus on so we as we've had our visits and evaluations right they've Through our and I was a I forgot on the math. I think back to the math side real quick, right, is I know we talked about this in the

January meeting, right, that we are a designated Project Momentum school for the special ed math scores. And so through our work with Project Momentum, one of the things that came up was building thinking classrooms in mathematics. A number of our teachers were already familiar with this book, but I was able to get the rest of the department the book. Right now they have it. We're not doing anything formal yet, but we hope to start doing something more formal with it. But many of them are familiar with it. They are starting to order whiteboards and materials and things. Again, it's stuff. It's, as a city principal, I say yes to a lot of things, and a lot of that has to do with the support of the city.

And then, of course, our seventh and eighth grade science enhancements, and you guys helped with microscopes and all sorts of, I wrote it down, probe wear. But again, the ability to make staff happy, right, for something that they need, it's really, really important, and I appreciate it. We all appreciate it. great selling point right as we recruit teachers for the new year so and then I didn't have it on here but of course our AVID and Korean classes to write our help fund it by city transition counselor so again we share this position with Fairfax we you know a while ago had it it's back I think it's a really valuable resource you know she basically I left some of the information and Georgina may

may present it right at the beginning of the year her focus is on the ninth graders and she's at our school one day a week now we're about half and half a little bit more towards us as she begins to focus more on the eighth graders transitioning over to Fairfax High School I think one of the things and will also kind of lead this into the next side which is collaboration with Fairfax but they went over in December and took students some young students scholar students, also our multi-language learner students over to connect with students at Fairfax, just to again build that connection and to get them to talk to students, right, which can be more impactful at times than talking to adults. So we're very fortunate for the transition counselor position.

So we've mentioned collaboration with Fairfax. I think that was one of our goals when I came aboard. I put principles because I think it starts with us, right? I don't know, maybe Georgina will come and say that she doesn't like me. But I really like Georgina and has made me grow professionally. Just being around her stretches my – I'm enthusiastic, but then there's Georgina. I don't have glitter. I still don't have a glitter game, but she has – it's been awesome. addition certainly to the city into our pyramid and so we've had it we text and talk quite frequently I think one of the biggest things on our agenda was math right and this idea our students leaving our school prepare right for what for

that next math course and that's it we hosted a number of our teacher math teacher leaders along with their math teacher leaders one of the things that there's new standards right so we're kind of all adapting to that but we hope in the future that first off we have a common understanding I will say last year our algebra students passed the pass rate was 98 percent 96 percent was the initial pass rate so it's not like 50 percent was the pass rate and another 45 did it on a second chance right I mean a large portion almost 100 percent of the kids that passed the algebra did it that first attempt, right? I know, I think we're the, we're getting into some of the challenges now, some of the, I don't know if it's a controversy, seems like a strong word, I think is that calculator,

right? And how dependent students can be on that Desmos calculator and versus knowing how to solve the math problem without the calculator, right? And I think that's one of the things that came up in that meeting. we again want to have a shared understanding of what success means right does if it doesn't mean more than just passing the SOL well then what does that mean right and what you know

Plattenbergstaffcoming up with some agreement on

Chris Smithstaffthat so we certainly want our students prepared for upper level math so we've had that those meetings our pyramid has had meetings with special ed teachers and with English language learners again just to learn together to see what's working in our schools these are both groups of students who tend to perform lower on SOL results and so and we see that pretty much throughout our pyramid so pulling those groups together at well on deck is a meeting with some of our staff to talk about 504 accommodations right and again that transition over to maybe a bit more fun one is we're planning a Special Olympics basketball game between our Special Olympics team and Fairfax's Special Olympics team. So that should be coming up very soon

I think there's an email today about buses and I haven't had a chance to look at it, but it's coming up. So so I you know I love The collaboration with Fairfax I think the only downside is being further away when I was at Daniel's run it was a lot closer to Fairfax, but we enjoy their time Facilities update the vegetable almost done except for two plain panes of glass in the door leading from the office to the lobby But for the most part it's done. So That's good. Then the other picture there is the outdoor classroom that's being built Started over winter break you see the concrete is down. I believe the timeline is sometime before the end of May It'll get fully wrapped up But again, we're grateful

for these two projects and on the horizon talked a little bit about math so grading policy there is a Fairfax County Public Schools Committee working on grading policy there are surveys that are going to be sent out soon to staff and students and families you know my understanding right I think there's an expectation that there may be a decision county-wide about a rolling grade book versus a traditional grade book so I think this one is moving rather quick so I think before the end of the school year there should be some information about that after school program so information only but the Fairfax County if you don't know if every county board of supervisors outside of the normal transfer they give Fairfax County public schools gives a separate transfer of

money for after-school programming it's almost four million dollars that is they have a list of I think 60 million that they're trying to cut from the Fairfax County budget right not necessarily the school budget and the after-school program is on that so just so you know that that's on there start times is another thing we've gotten some some questions about right again my understanding is as of now we certainly narrowed down a couple of the choices I think there's a C1 and a C2 and then I think it's like the three choices each of the principals associations have given their input as to what they think and my understanding is it's not going to be for next year there's not a decision yet and times will not change for 25 26 if anything changes it will

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceI heard Ms. Banighe might be able to answer this also, that they might start with a pilot program with a certain start times that they might do it with one region. I don't have any. I know there's been a lot of conversation about it with the boundary. Did you have boundary study at the same time? Somebody had mentioned that.

Chris SmithstaffI heard it in passing, but I have not seen anything concrete about that. anything written and I would think at this point we would hopefully right parents need to prepare right and so does that so that's it I'm excited to be back again thank you for the opportunity to share the glows and grows of our school and questions okay

Lauren BartelmeLauren do you have any questions hi thank you so much information about the potential budget cuts to the after-school programs what percentage of the after-school programs would that affect

Chris Smithstaffare you asking I just want to make sure I understand are you asking how much of the format like what percentage of the four million like is that half of their yeah

Lauren Bartelmelike if if Fairfax County cuts that money yeah how much of an impact would it have on the

Chris Smithstaffwould be gone. We would not have an after-school program.

Lauren BartelmeThank you. Ms.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceKelsey?

Sarah KelseyMine kind of piggybacks on that a little bit. I just wonder, do you have kind of like numbers on, because I know you guys also offer office hours after school for teachers. Do you have like a number, I'm sure Mr. Dejo does, at how many kids attend the after-school stuff academic-wise, like to go get that support versus sports or the other activities?

Chris SmithstaffYes, he could get that for us and that's part of we have to do that I mentioned that it's called IP fit don't ask me what it stands for but that's the buyback basically of attendance days and so we have to keep okay right again we can't give credit because the kids stayed after for basketball or even social homework club so I can get that for you and

Sarah Kelseythen my well and also kind of what that is I'm wondering I know there's less things but just overall percentage average-wise, is there less kids that attend because there is no bus on Tuesday versus... Yes, and

Chris Smithstaffwhat I would say also about Tuesday is that is a day that we typically have our after-school meetings. So today's Monday. Tomorrow is a staff meeting. Next week we meet with our teacher leaders, right? So there's kind of a couple things that play there on Tuesdays. But yes, it is definitely less attendant I was going to try, I have one stat that might be relevant. Give me a second here.

Sarah KelseyAnd I mean, you can send it to me later if you can't find

Chris Smithstaffit. Yeah, I was going to tell you that the average weekly attendance is over a thousand. Now that is, that's not a thousand unique students, right? So it can be duplicated if someone stays three days, they count as three. But it's a pretty it's a very high number. We have one of the highest in the county percentages of students who participate so all right, so numbers of

Sarah KelseyAcademic versus

Chris Smithstaffacademic versus the other

Sarah Kelseyclub the other

Chris Smithstafffun stuff. Yeah,

Sarah Kelseyyeah And I do want to say thank you because I'm talking with other parents that are other middle schools They are shocked by how many After school things that we have to offer even sports wise that we play other middle schools because some of them have been like we have track and cross-country and I'm like oh we have this so I do applaud you for that and I know part of it is mr. day how that

Chris SmithstaffI'll take all the credit but mr. day how and I will say this mr. you know he this is just an example right of you know I think when I know when I was there the first time he was winner of the Fairfax County support employee of the year but he right so we've partnered basically with four or five other middle schools so his plan next year he's like that groups up and running like they don't need us anymore they're gonna continue we're gonna then adopt basically four or five other schools in the county that don't have that opportunity you got right and try to help them right I

Sarah Kelseylove that idea just don't let area region five know about it or anybody else because they may try to steal him to do this for like the whole district and we need to keep him over at KJ.

Chris SmithstaffThey have his wife helping out centrally. Okay,

Sarah Kelseythat's fine.

Chris SmithstaffThey can have her. We just

Sarah Kelseykeep him.

Chris SmithstaffThat's fine.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceMs. Hickman.

Amit HickmanFirst off, Between Bites, the cutest thing I've ever seen. I loved it. They were really pushing for some big, hard-hitting answers.

Chris SmithstaffThey wanted me to choose what my favorite grade was. They really did wanted you to choose.

Amit HickmanSmart choice, not choosing. My only question is for, and I brought this up when we talked about Algebra 1 back in January, with the default being that all students coming from 6th grade will go into honors math, has there been conversations on how that will look for the teachers who need to differentiate the learning much wider than they're used to? Because they're used to the students having that math 7 as they come into it. What will that look like?

Chris SmithstaffThe good news is many of our math teachers already teach multiple subjects, right? Like some of the teachers I'm thinking about already teach Math 7 and then teach the pre-algebra course, right, or teach the pre-algebra or the algebra. But that's certainly, right, as the students are filling in some of that background knowledge, right? So some of the discussions we've had in CLTs this year, right, is being more strategic about the warm-ups that we start a lesson with or the exit tickets that we give kids, right? Because we're not going to be able to teach all of Math 7 in the math, in the pre-algebra class. So a lot of it is that, like, how can we, in smaller chunks, right, review and give them the time that they need.

I think the learning seminar will be another place, right, that we have a learning seminar committee this year on some possible changes for next year that we hope will free up, I think, some time for math as well during learning seminar. But certainly one of the things, it's not just the students, right? As you said, it's the teachers also having some, maybe a wider variety of students than you've heard in the past.

Amit HickmanOkay. That was my question that I'm looking forward to hearing kind of how that goes and maybe if there could be more collaboration within the elementary schools and they can help you Maybe you can meet in the middle with Math 7 and teach half, you teach half or something like that. All right. Thank you. Ms. Sessori.

Kristina CecereThank you. Ms. Hickman stole my praise for Between Bites. I absolutely love that, too.

Chris SmithstaffI'll

Kristina Cecerelet Kelsey know. Also, I just wanted to say thank you for FACTS. That's been my now ninth grader. You did that in eighth grade and is now in charge of one night a week for cooking. It's fantastic. Hopefully

Chris Smithstaffcleaning the dishes as well. One step.

Kristina CecereLearning. Learning. I have two questions if I may absenteeism 13% seems a little high I know I'm more familiar with it wanting to be below 10% It's

Carolyn Pitchesby voice12.5 right today

Lauren BartelmeIt's 12.5

Kristina CecereThank you very much for clarifying So can you maybe highlight why what are some common reasons that maybe students are not making it to school that that number is high?

Chris SmithstaffYeah, and I would say right I remember Dan probably remembers that I felt like once we got back, I was like, I never want to talk about COVID again. So I don't want to use it as a crutch, but I do think it's kind of a tipping or turning point. I think we have not, even within most of our pyramid schools, historically, were in the single digits before COVID. And we have all been in double digits for the most part afterwards. right so although it's come down right I don't have the numbers in front of me but I want to say two years ago I think at Katherine Johnson I think we were 18 maybe 19 percent right so I would say one I think there's just that more awareness which is good like if you have a fever stay home and I think for more

people are likely to do that after COVID right we certainly have a group of students who may travel at times that are not always lined up with our breaks, right? I would like to get some hard numbers on that because that was an issue before COVID-2. I mean, I remember we had conversations with parents of taking off the last four weeks of school to go overseas. We certainly understand why, but it can impact their learning, right? And attendance is very individual many of the students that we talk with right may have it you know they may miss some days because something's going on at school but it may take some days for that to come out right it starts out as being sick at home but eventually the they tell their mom or dad or caregiver what's going on

and then we dig into that right sometimes it's a bigger issue of school avoidance or anxiety in general right so it's it's very individual it's labor intensive in terms of digging into the students but those would be my couple of my hypothesis

Kristina Cecereand then going to your your comment kind of piggybacking up again Miss Hickman with the opt-out enrollment with algebra one that's essentially what or what it is, is opt-out enrollment. Yeah, correct. That philosophy there. I know that a lot of the research around there sort of solidifies around having sort of an objective qualifier that automatically enrolls students. So I'm just curious, as the, you know, looking at your 25-26 enrollment, you have all the students in there. At what point do you approach a student and say, maybe this is not the right course for you, and then how do those conversations occur? like what is there is there a qualifier that meets that point and again I just want to stress like I'm all for increasing opportunities for students I

just also want to make sure that they're in a place that they're they're supported well supported yeah

Chris Smithstaffand successful right

Kristina Cecereexactly yeah

Chris Smithstaffso I think certainly you know the SOL certainly is one data point right I think what is nice about the map data and I'm just not as familiar yet with the map database as I am with iReady, right, so we'll be able to share some similar graphs in terms of growth as we did with iReady, but we're also going to have that specific information, right, and so because if the map data is saying hey they're on a grade level, right, it might just be, right, it might be a test issue, it might be they just, right, it was just a bad day, right, maybe something happened at home, right, so we don't want to put all of our eggs in the SOL basket but trying to get as many of those data sources of data right I think

those two are really good and I think having that screener which is we've been lacking in middle school on the math side in previous years right giving us some some good data right and we've already created some learning seminar groups the conversations are with can be with a teacher right I know in fact to one of our teachers today about, again, I was like, remind, help me again, why the math seven honors? And she was like, oh, let me just print out an email that I just sent a parent, right, who had a question, right? And so we certainly do it in collaboration with the parents. We're going to have some parents that want them in algebra and we might feel differently. And so again, just explaining to them our reasons why.

And maybe the reverse, right? Maybe we think they should be and the parents worried about their success, right? and so thinking about some other ways that we can also support them if they go in there and usually in my experience previously rarely was there disagreement once we talked right so does that help yeah I

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewas just wondering in terms of the teaching vocabulary I don't know if you have this information but how like

Lauren Bartelmewhat are teachers doing

Carolyn Pitchesby voicedifferently to address the the vocabulary component so

Chris Smithstafffirst i think we have to recognize what the what we have said is try to hone in on um 10 words per unit right realizing there might be for some students there might be 25 words that are new in that unit right? But we have to, I think, we really believe we got to hone in on some keywords, right, per unit. And then we did one round of professional learning of explicitly teaching it, right? So are you using something visual, right? Putting in a sentence, right? Defining the word, right? But it's, you have to have a number, right? There's sometimes you use like the non-example of a word versus an example. And I think that's where our biggest work is, right? It's one thing for me as a teacher to say, imperialization, right, is a U.S.

history word, right? But just because I've asked you to define it doesn't mean I've really explicitly taught it, right? And so honing in on those explicit vocabulary practices, right, of how to teach it is where I think we need to continue our work.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceOkay, and that you mentioned literacy elective courses. What are some of the of

Chris Smithstaffthose. Give me a second. I do have my notes on that. Sorry, it's

Carolyn Pitchesby voicebeen a long time since I had a kid.

Chris SmithstaffYeah, and these are for students who are at least a couple grade levels below in reading. Mm

Carolyn Pitchesby voice-hmm.

Chris SmithstaffSo we have, it's called LAP now. And as I tried to ask around today, we weren't quite sure what it stands for. But it's READ 180 is the program. Probably literacy. Yeah, I'm assuming the L is literacy. That's a year-long elective. Okay. We have Literacy 7 and Literacy 8, which are specifically to support our special education students and their reading goals. That's year-long as well. We have an English language development course for both beginning and developing ESOL students. And we have an academic language class for students, for our English language learners who are in a general ed English class but need some additional support. Okay,

Carolyn Pitchesby voicelast thing.

Chris SmithstaffYes.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceYou said the parent coffees, how's the turnout?

Chris SmithstaffYeah, not good. That's what I was going to say. Early in the morning. I mean, really, I think the, in my opinion, I think the biggest bang for our buck at Daniel's Run was when we combined PTA meetings with something, right? So it just hasn't lined up. Like, even in March, like, I wanted to have a presentation from our drug and alcohol specialist, right? but for some things on that we have a in-person meeting scheduled in a couple weeks with for our PTA but just things aren't able to line up on that side so it it hasn't sunk up as much as I wanted to this year but that's what my previous experience is right you have the parent coffee and it's good right for the just like having a practice like I'd have a practice and four kids would show up I'm

like at least those four kids got better right but it wasn't really great for for the whole team. So the numbers are low, but that would be my preference to try to have things attached to the PTA meetings so we get boost our PTA attendance and also, you know, besides PTA business, right, something else that parents want to know about.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceYeah, I met with Dustin. I guess you've wrangled him into being here. Yes, he's

Chris Smithstaffour secretary.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceI'm glad that the PTA is starting to sort of regenerate itself.

Chris SmithstaffYeah, and I think there are some inherent challenges in middle school. It's two years. Nobody in sixth grade right now is thinking about Calvin Johnson's PTA. I understand that. But you are. Thank you. Very few are. Let me rephrase that. But that's the challenges. We know that. right I think it's

Carolyn Pitchesby voicealways been that way for middle schools because they're there and then they're gone yeah so okay this Kelsey if we go back

Sarah Kelseyyeah sorry just one more question the funding for the after school programs does that include the office hours or is that part of their contract day

Chris Smithstaffoffice hours are for the teachers you're talking about yes if it is the academic part that is an expectation that we have

Sarah Kelseyso that's part of their contract and their salary already it's

Chris Smithstaffnot there's a new contract I'm not sure if it's part of the contract it's an expectation we have gotcha okay thank you you're welcome

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceanybody have any other go backs

Lauren Bartelmemr. Pottenberg did you want to

Carolyn Pitchesby voicesay anything

Plattenbergstaffthank you so much Chris for your presentation and the region representatives here thank you madam chair for just having the opportunity to have him articulate all the great things going on that Katherine Johnson for our community for all of us have a deeper understanding. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Plattberg.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceMr. Phillips, do you have anything? You don't have to. No,

Chris SmithstaffI missed the opportunity to

Carolyn Pitchesby voicepresent with Chris. I know. I was going to say, usually... He's going to be on the side of it. Last year I was sitting here crying. You could have stood up there and supported him, Mr.

Lauren BartelmePhillips.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceAnyway, thank you, Mr. Smith. And thank you to Region 5 for coming and supporting Catherine Johnson.

Chris SmithstaffAnd I'll get those answers. Oh, yeah.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceNo rush.

Chris SmithstaffNo rush.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceOkay. We do not have any public hearings this evening, so we'll move on to action items. Our first action item is the approval of the February 3, 2025 meeting minutes. Clerk has provided the minutes. Is there a motion?

Amit HickmanMadam Chair.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceMs. Hickman. I

Amit Hickmanmove that the City of Fairfax School Board approve the minutes of the February 3rd, 2025 School Board regular meeting as printed and distributed.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceSecond. I'll second. Ms. Hickman moved. Ms. Sessori seconded. The City of Fairfax School Board approved the minutes from the February 3rd, 2025 meeting regular school board meeting as printed and distributed. Are there any changes, additions, modifications? Okay. being none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye I know members are opposed so the motion passes unanimously okay our next action item is the approval of the donation of the all-night graduation celebration may I have a motion please madam

Kristina Cecerechair miss Sussary I move that the city of Fairfax School Board approve a donation to Fairfax High School all night grad all night graduation celebration in the amount of $2,000.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceMay I have a second?

Lauren BartelmeI second. Okay.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceMs. Barlney.

Lauren BartelmeAnd Ms.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceSesteri moved. Ms. Barlney seconded. The City of Fairfax School Board approved the donation to all night graduation at Fairfax High School in the amount of $2,000. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. None opposed. So the motion passes unanimously. Okay. Now we'll move on to superintendent matters. Mr. Plattenberg.

Plattenbergstaffvery much, Madam Chair, and happy National Reading Month. This is an exciting time. Today, we kicked off the Read Across America Week, and I know many of you who had the opportunity were imparting, impart of that, and, you know, celebrating reading as we open the doors to the possibilities, the endless possibilities that they provide, sparking imagination and building that fundamental foundation for lifelong learning. So I join my colleagues in celebrating. I know at Providence this morning and we were Katherine Johnson celebrating the joy of books and the power of storytelling today and each and every day I'm also thrilled to share that we've received the final electrical approval for the new

press box at the high school really making yet another milestone in our ongoing efforts to enhance our facilities this achievement really is part of a series of significant improvements that the school board and And the staff have concluded, including many enhanced security options, artificial turf in a new band practice field with lights, new turf baseball field with updating dugouts, addressing all the drainage issues that we used to have by those dugouts when actually flooded when it rained. Renovated field house concession stands, state of the art sound system in the high school auditorium, which many are able to enjoy now with the current productions that are going on. outdoor learning areas that you heard about tonight from the principal of

Katherine Johnson and Chris and anyway these upgrades reflect our ongoing commitment not only to providing top-tier facilities our students our community and really our faculties not only for the students for the athletes for the musicians our facilities our community buildings so everybody's benefiting from So thank you everyone who played a role in making these enhancements a reality. And today, as I said, I mentioned I was at Catherine Johnson Middle School with the Rotary Club. I had the joy of joining the mayor, city council member Amos, city council member McQuillan, former city council member Ross, and passing out copies of the Constitution to a number of eighth grade students and actually just having the opportunity to introduce ourselves and talk about lifelong

service and service to the community and that the Constitution, what I said to the students was the Constitution is really the user manual for America. It provides us with the framework and the rights that we are entitled to, freedom of speech, the right to vote, and so forth, and to take advantage of it. And also, don't hesitate and let the old people that were sitting up on the stage intimidate you because we were all eighth grade students at one time. and always remember to give back to your community tomorrow night madam chair we have of course the city council meeting where we'll be presenting the budget and we invite everybody to join us and support our schools but that's all I have for this week madam chair

Carolyn Pitchesby voicethank you mr. Plattenberg we'll move on to board matters sure

Lauren BartelmeI've been getting involved with the rotary club representing the starting this week to look at an essay contest from students at Katherine Johnson Middle School, and we're going to be judging that within the next week and presenting some winners. Great.

Sarah KelseyMs. Kelsey. I would actually like to say that I'm kind of looking forward to the annual competition that is back between Providence and Daniel's Run. I know I look at Miss Hickman because you know it's always fun when we have that little competition that this year they have a volleyball game coming up on the fourth yeah it's it's before our next regular meeting that's kind of why I was thinking about it and so I do support everybody and I hope this year there are no injuries but I will say I hope the Panthers win again and looking forward to all the other events that are coming up there was way too many I think to name them all

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceokay miss Hickman

Amit Hickmansorry I put in the date down so I could be there to support both schools. So I just wanted to really quickly say I had an absolutely amazing time listening to and watching the concert present I don't know if it's concert the event at Daniel's Run for International Night. They have so many amazingly talented students there and then I lost the second thing that I was going to

Studentsay. Sorry, give me one second.

Amit HickmanOh, I had a blast reading to Providence fifth grade students today there was one familiar face in the crowd and I got to read them a book about Katherine Johnson which really resonated with them because most of them did not realize that who the middle schools named after and it was really great to see that look of joy in their faces when they realized what an important person she is in our history

Carolyn Pitchesby voicethank you miss Hickman necessary yeah

Kristina CecereI was also at Providence today reading to a group of first graders and I just love their questions as you're reading. I forget what the book was about. Are you eating candy without me? So it was just really cute. I want to just piggyback off something our student rep shared. It was the first annual history fair at Providence. Really phenomenal events. I got to walk around with my youngest and see all the amazing presentations from all age of age groups, just seeing everything from Mickey Mouse history to did you know that rat bombs were a thing in World War II? I did not, but a student researched that and told me all about it. It was very fascinating. So I can't wait for next year's history fair.

And let's imagine all that came from a student idea, and it's great that Mr. Pratt really grew that and helped support that. So along with the parent volunteers and teachers too. And also looking forward to STEAM night on the 13th. So just going to give a little plug to that.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceon the 13th you said okay okay yeah okay I actually have a question for the superintendent for my board matters can since we were talking about the middle school like the after-school programming it just sort of reminded me can we are we gonna see if we can get Lee to come okay so she'll figure it out okay yeah

Plattenbergstaffgreat question madam chair you had asked before saying we need to know what the impacts gonna be as was articulated about the concerns this evening she's

Carolyn Pitchesby voicetalking about for I mean it the the middle school after school programming sort of triggered it for me but it doesn't necessarily just just any of the cuts yes

Plattenbergstaffma'am and in fact the madam chair of what she stated is that right Right now it's premature, but she'll keep us posted and then she'll be happy to come at an appropriate time when she knows more. She said not only would that be devastating, but some of the pending legislation for the changes of free and reduced, increasing from 40 to 60 percent would damage and severely impact us as well as some other grants. But yes, she said she'd be happy to

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceas

Plattenbergstaffsoon as she has additional information. Great.

Carolyn Pitchesby voicePerfect. Okay. So now I've used my time. Okay. Okay, if there is nothing else before the board, I will adjourn us at 7.40.30. Thank you.