School Board Joint Work Session with FCPS School Board

Carl Frisch24. The best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the media requirements and only such business matters as were identified in the motion leading the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting. We have a motion from a county board member, Ms. Seismore-Hyser, Ms. McAveen seconds. County board members in favor? Ms. Barron, Ms. McAveen, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Lady, Ms. Seismore-Hyser and myself. Opposed? Abstentions? Dr. Anderson? The motion carries. All right we will now be joined by the West Springfield High School ASL group under the direction of Heather Kendrick for the national anthem.

StudentIs the music working? Okay. This isn't too. This isn't too. That's right. Is it okay? Put the mic on. Okay. Yeah, she does. Thank you.

Carl FrischThank you. Thank you very much. All right. We'll go ahead and get started. So, welcome to the County and City Joint Meeting. I'm Carl Frisch, I'm Chair of the County Board and Province District Representative. We're going to take a moment because I don't think everybody knows everybody. We'll do introductions, so we'll start with the County Board Member Introductions with Ms. Nairn. work our way around the table and then share pictures will introduce herself and uh society board members will be able to introduce themselves as well good

Melanie Marronevening i'm melanie marron i represent the hunterville district which is the generally the vienna rest in a little bit of herndon area

Ricardy Andersonricardi anderson i represent the mason district avondale falls church area brown coby has large zini

Speaker 8anderson springfield district and vice chair I'm Michelle Reed, superintendent.

Melanie MarronRobert Lee, Dranesville, which is mostly McLean-Langley at Urban.

Rochelle SizerHi, I'm Rochelle Sizer-I represent the Braddock district. Mostly Woodson, Robbins, and Lake Braddock schools. A little fair thought for the Western field. And a 40% hand in the LA school.

StudentHi, my name is Fanny Swann. I'm student representative to the county board.

Carl FrischChair, please.

Carolyn Pitchesi'm carolyn hitches i am the chair of the city of fairfax school board

Speaker 3hi amine hickman vice chair of this group hi sarah kelsey member of state fairfax school stacy hall

Stacy Hallstacy hall city school board i mean city fairfax school board sorry

Carl FrischWonderful. So we're going to have two presentations, one from the county and one from the city, and then we will open it up to any comment board members before we adjourn and go to dinner. So this is our presentation from the county. I haven't used a clicker before, so I'm going to raise your loss. All right. Some of this will seem like old information, but for the sake of our public and for those who may not be fully aware, for 60 years, the City of Fairfax Schools and FCPS have collaborated under the School Services Agreement, the SSA, which establishes that the City of Fairfax is responsible for the tuition of students, as well as capital improvements in city school buildings. Fairfax contracts and FCPS for instruction, staffing, transportation, and special education services.

Schools that are located in region 5 of FCPS, Fairfax High School, Catherine Johnson Middle School, Daniels Run Elementary, and Providence Elementary. Relationships between the board. The city of Fairfax school superintendent, Mr. Plattenberg, is responsible for the oversight and management of the SSA on their side. City students are educated predominantly in city schools. The city welcomes county students which allow city schools to offer a wider variety of academic and extracurricular opportunities. And I realize I'm doing exactly what we ask people not to which is reading a slide to a room with people looking at a slide but we're going to do it that way today. The City School Board appoints city residents to serve on various Fairbanks County School Board Community Advisory Committees.

The City and County Superintendents consult on topics like boundaries, school closings, selection of principals, citizen participation, special community needs, non-school activities, and complaints. Unfortunately they do not consult on clickers. It was. Okay, the city is responsible for major capital improvements in the school buildings, just approved a bond. The county maintains city school buildings and may make minor improvements. members of the city school board collaborate with the county school board through regular communication participation in regional and state school board meetings we just saw several of our colleagues at the vsba down in williamsburg and the annual city county board joint meeting

which is open to the public like we are tonight the county board appoints a board member liaison to work with the city school board this lady this year for the strategic plan 2023-2030 which is division. It's our North Star and how we ensure excellence, equity, and opportunity for all our students. And it's a result of more than 100,000 feedback survey responses, more than 65 planning teams and community meetings. Fairfax City School Board members of staff were a key part of this process with several on the core planning team and the alignment team as well. You can see the names up there. for community advisory committees in 2024 the fairfax county school board voted to provide a city of fairfax school board member school board uh with the ability to appoint a city residents

to all fairfax county school board community advisory committees uh where representation is allowed in dakota virginia um so there we have the names of current appointees listed on the screen and the ones that will be coming online for representation next school year. Those include ACE, the Adult Community Education Advisory Committee, We are Technical Education Advisory Committee, and Family Life Education Community Advisory Committee will all receive in the city appointed members in the year ahead. Previously, the board that added MSAOC in 2021 as one of the advisory committees that also had a city resident as an appointee from the city school board. In 2021 the board also opened the ability of city

students, students who reside in the city of Fairfax, to seek to represent all other peers in the school system as the student representative on the county school board so they are no longer prohibited from seeking that position as long as they live in the city or the county they are welcome to participate and then this year alone i just wanted to point out that we've done a number of big fcpsy events at our city schools and they've been gracious to post us and you can see the list is quite luminous on the screen. Many of these attended by hundreds of people, some by as many as 500 people. And so we're obviously grateful to use the facilities but also show off how great that working relationship is with our city partners.

Is that it? So that covers the basics there and I will let our city partners...

Carolyn PitchesThank you. So similarly we are going to discuss the SSA, our schools, our boundaries and capacity for city schools. Different from what Mr. Frisch said, we also understand that this student services agreement is a four-way agreement. It's not just between the two boards. It's between the mayor and city council, the city of Fairfax, as well as the board of supervisors for the county. Again, you all provide us with excellent instructional services and programming, as well as transportation. And we manage the contract, and we take care of the four city school buildings. And our two boards work together on any issues that will directly impact both city and county. Okay, so a key proponent of the SSA really is communication.

Superintendents communicate on topics such as boundaries, principal selection, and also other community needs. And our boards collaborate through regular communication. And this is sort of where I'd like to connect some of what Carl shared to our presentation. One of the ways our board communicates is to your board about our residents' concerns and ideas. So building strong relationships between our respective boards is incredibly important for the city because our residents do not live in the county, they do not pay county taxes, so they don't technically have any direct representation on the FCPS board, so we are their voice. and as such our biggest way to advocate is the communications law.

The other, Carl mentioned, are the advisory committees and historically the city of Fairfax school board and the school's office, we vet and appoint any city resident to the advisory committees with the exception of the Boundary Advisory Committee this time, which was a little problematic for us. The reason being is that it's important for us to ensure that whoever is sitting on one of your advisory committees, that they have a thorough understanding of the SSA, that they understand our unique boundaries and our capacity policy in terms of city schools, which is different from the county. So moving forward we would respectfully ask that all city representatives on advisory committees be vetted by the city of Fairfax schools to ensure that we have have an advocate that

can appropriately and adequately represent our community's needs. The city is also responsible for major capital improvements, which we'll talk about the bond. The bond our community just voted for. And also it's important to understand that the city students, they're always educated in city schools. Because they aren't county residents and don't pay county taxes, it's basically we get a tuition bill from you all. And then we welcome your students into our schools as well so that we can all benefit from, you all benefit from our facilities and we benefit from your programming. Okay, so these are our four schools. Fairfax High School, which also has the academy, Catherine Johnson Middle School, Providence Elementary School, and Daniel Durant Elementary School.

and each one of these schools has county students in the schools. But if you notice Fairfax High School and Katherine Johnson are majority county students. They have more than 60% of our student population in those two buildings are county students. Providence is about at a third, about 30 something percent. I think 30, does it say 31? 31.8. and that's a little disappointing. Daniels Run has a tiny percent, I think it's less than 3%, and those students that are from the county typically are people placed there by our teachers who bring their personal children to our buildings, or we also have a preschool off program. So they are typically placed for those reasons. But that is, that school, Daniels Run,

is pretty much entirely city kids. So we have almost 3,000 kids again we are fast approaching over 3,000 and 93% of them stay in our schools and about seven a little over 7% attend county schools for things like IV programs, special ed programs, academies but other than that they remain in our schools. Okay, so the boundaries for Providence Elementary, you can see that where the red circle is, that's where we draw county kids from. So that's typically on the other side of 66. It's a Willow Crescent neighborhood and also Elmendorf between 66 and 123, that whole Flint Hill area. And then Daniels, Ron, you'll see is all city. This is Catherine Johnson. The red areas again are the county and that one blue area off to the right that's the city.

So you see the boundaries are kind of interesting. And of course Fairfax's are similar to interesting. For our opening school report all four of our schools were coming in fairly close capacity or over capacity. with Catherine Johnson at 103% and Fairfax High School coming up on 100%. It's important to really, for the city, to look at Daniels Run and Providence because their capacities are tied together. What happens is, and I guess I should, I'll just change this slide here. Okay, if Daniels Run is at or over capacity, those students cannot get re-boundaried to a county school. they have to go to another city. So then when they shift to Providence, if Providence is already at capacity or that pushes them to capacity or over,

then that means that the county would need to reassign some of their students. Similarly, Katherine Johnson and Fairfax High School, when they're at for over capacity, they would need to be reassigned to right size those schools. And I believe it was 2014 the last time we right-sized Fairfax High School, where the Fairfax Villa neighborhood was boundary to Frostwood. So it's been about 10 years, and we're approaching capacity again. All right, so looking ahead, like we talked about earlier, our constituents passed our bond referendum at a success rate of about 70%, as Ms. Hickman won the bet on that one. It's a $220 million bond to renovate both the elementary schools as well as replace Fairfax High School's roof.

We are going to continue to address the growth in the city. We have a lot of development going on in the city as well as the county has a lot of growth in the Flint Hill sector, which affects our schools. So we're really paying attention to how that's affecting our school capacities. And we're just every year our student membership increases. And then we look forward to continued collaboration between our boards. We really value the partnership. It's very important to the city. So we hope that we can continue that.

Carl FrischThank you very much for that. We will now open the meeting to comments and commentary from board members of either board. for folks who are wondering what that looks like, look at Dr. Anderson right now. If you'd like to speak, go ahead and raise your flag like that, and we will call on you. I've got Dr. Anderson followed by Ms. Maron followed by Dr. Anderson. Sure, very quickly.

Speaker 4Are we going in five minutes? Yeah,

Ricardy Andersonthree minutes.

Speaker 4Thank you.

Melanie MarronWell, thank you for sharing all this great information. I appreciate learning a little bit more every time we meet. understanding about the boundaries piece. So are the Fairfax City boundaries being reviewed as part of FCPS's boundary review process? Perhaps that's a question for our superintendent.

StudentI

Melanie Marronthink all the boundaries within Fairfax County

Carolyn Pitchesare being reviewed. So what's your name? The city. The city boundaries are not flexible. I think what Dr. Reed is saying that yes, the city is within the county boundaries, but our boundaries can't shift. You can't because it's an independent jurisdiction, essentially. It's like somebody took Arlington County and plopped it into the middle of Fairfax County. Got it. Okay,

Melanie Marrongreat. So when you said 2014 was the last time you write sites, is that generally your boundary review? is that when you do that kind of I guess not boundary fields or one language but adjust

Carolyn Pitchesso back then Fairfax County did what they called brown boundary light changes so we advocated to the county we said you know Fairfax High School is that over capacity for a number of years we really need it's really need to reassign students and they looked at specifically what neighborhoods easily and Fairfax Villa which is sort of sandwiched in between the city and the Willow Springs area right Jeff wouldn't you say that that's yeah Brack Road and they the proposal was Woodson wasn't at capacity and neither was Frost so it was a good opportunity it was just enough students to alleviate some of the capacity issues at Fairfax High School. Thank you.

Melanie MarronSo Dr. Reed, as part of SCPS's boundary review process, is our team, our consultant, looking at capacity of Fairfax City Schools because that might trigger some of SCPS students being out of city schools in the future? I believe they are. We have representatives from the Fairfax High School pyramid also on the committee and a representative from Fairfax City Planning but not from your board is that right?

Carolyn PitchesNo but Eric Horman who he's not a city resident but he works in our planning office he's very good in terms of capacity and development within the city so that we're pleased to see that he was included and on the advisory committee the only concern we we had because you know resident having a resident is different than having somebody who works in the city but lives somewhere else on the committee a resident understands the Fairfax City residents are very prideful of the city and their school buildings and they they want to be included in decisions and And because we don't really know yet who the people are that are representing the city, we don't know how much they understand. Not everybody is well-versed in the SSA or where our boundaries are,

what the capacity is in our building or how we deal with capacity issues.

Carl FrischBut we've not cleared any. No. Because it's not a school board advisory committee, right? It's a superintendent advisory. So even our board didn't have to say who was on that. we didn't screen anybody for our own particular issues from here in the pyramid. I do see the chair's point.

Carolyn PitchesThank you. It's just because we are a unique jurisdiction and we have a contract so to speak with the county who we have representing our community is

Melanie Marronimportant to us. One other thing I was wondering about the bond. So is that in the November ballot then? Okay. And do you have, like, what's the cycle of bonds that you usually go for? Like, where, you know, every two years is,

Carolyn Pitcheswhen's it? Does it work? The last, we went to bond in 1997 for the two outcountry schools. You went. Yeah. And then we went again in 2004, I believe, for the middle and the high school. So

Melanie Marronhow do you go about deciding when to go for bond and what's that process like?

Carolyn PitchesOkay, well, I've been known to be very picky. Like four superintendents now. It's basically when we look at our school building, first of all, we don't like them. I was irritated that we got beyond 20 years, but we look to try to renovate every 20 years now. original renovation at the elementary schools the goal was we would not let our buildings go more than 20 years it has been 24 almost 25 years since renovation so that was sort of the driving force our buildings aren't good shape but as you know education evolves and they're the infrastructure and some of the educational spaces don't meet today's standards. Well thank you, appreciate it.

Ricardy AndersonI'm just a little jealous to hear that your renovation cycle is 25 years when we're pushing 42. So it hurts a little bit to hear that. We only have four students. This is true too. And I'm pretty much Miss Barron went and asked some of the questions that I had and I'm glad that we're elevating kind of the island that is city of Fairfax in this work of boundary because in some conversation that I've had in the community there seems to be the understanding that they are up in part of this review and I could not convince folks that they are not because they're an independent entity. these are really loud, that they're an independent entity, so thank you for raising that. A question that I had when you mentioned when you determine when you will need to right size,

which essentially results in removal of county students from your schools, what do you look at? Because I know for Fairfax County, we look at the capacity, you know, over 100%, 130%. What is your threshold?

Carolyn PitchesSo first of all, let me say that it is never our intention or desire to have to reassign county students. And in fact, it's only been done, last time it was 10 years, and I think we only reassigned 300 students total for all four schools. It only affected one neighborhood. and it was a great process with FCPS. People were happy that they were not upset with the woods and frost switch, but we did have families who wanted to stay at Fairfax. They had a sibling and the city allowed that for families to get all the way through our schools. If they had already started, even if they had two kids who hadn't entered into Fairfax, we allowed for the family to finish. So I'll say that. We are actually, in January, starting the process of looking at our capacity policy.

But typically, we have managed to stay under 100% or at 100%. And even when we've gotten to 100%, after a year or two, sort of trickle back down. So right now the thought is that we would look at obviously a hundred percent or higher. So I would say when we get to 101 percent or more, that's when we start tracking it in terms of years. And like I said, we're just starting this work in January, but the thought is that three years we would work with the county you say it's been three consecutive years at you know this much over capacity and give the county two additional years so it's a five-year window basically we would say hey like right now we're telling you we're at 103 capacity at katherine johnson if it remains over capacity next year

we will know if i didn't get hanged still at capacity third year okay it's at capacity still look at reassignment and that's sort of where there's gonna be some work between

Speaker 3the city and the county because

Carolyn Pitcheswhen you guys go through your ground boundary process I don't know what's going to happen with that so whatever you all decide is also going to affect us because we're not as our buildings if we different process than you all do or if your policy is going to we would like to have some saying you know if the policy what the policy wording is for you in terms of the city schools that those would be different those um calculations would be different for how they were approached

Carl Frischthe other thing that i would know because you can look at things that we've talked about in our days before in relation when Miss Hall was head of the PTA at Providence for example there was capacity concerns of significant capacity concerns of Providence and then COVID happened but as part of that they go through the same calculations that we do with the CIP for the capacity things there so they're looking at space utilization and flow of the building and what other things they can do before they do that so all of those things are still in the menu for our relationship.

Carolyn PitchesYes 100% we have I think, well, much to my chagrin, we have enclosed open classroom spaces, learning spaces that was never, when the original building renovation was designed, they were designed a certain way for a reason. And I think actually you were not our superintendent, but you came and visited, and they were, you know, FCPS was going to, spaces and sometimes our board says no we are not going to allow for that building modification if we think that it's important to the instruction and programming in the building. Thank you

Ricardy Andersonand I do remember that conversation regarding Providence and you also kind of gave me a segue into my next point. One of the conversations that is being had with our boundary process is perhaps changing the configuration of the middle schools to be I am wondering how does that fall within what the city's policies are? Are you, if that were to occur with Fairfax County Schools, would you piggyback on that configuration? Or would you remain the same? Or is that just a conversation to be had? Because I don't think we've raised this as a potential plan to you as of yet that may result from this family work.

Carolyn Pitchesconversation but I will just say from personal experience I taught in a 6-7-8 model middle school for 10 years and and I do prefer that model to the 7-8 model that being said most of the buildings in the county were designed as intermediate schools I attended huge middle school and therefore the configuration of the building has to be considered right so if we have to make adjustments if we you know we come to a consensus that yes the city is participating in this change in philosophy for our buildings that we would have to work with the county on how are we going to further fund renovations made possibly to those that building to make you know Katherine Johnson to make could meet the ed specs

Ricardy Andersonfor that model. And thank you for raising that because the three middle schools that I represent that are six, seven, and eight, I don't think there was much consideration to the ed specs. It was just, we're going to put these kids and meet the schools and make it happen. The other wondering that I have, if there is a switch to Katherine Johnson to follow six, seven, eight, that would also impact the number of county kids who can actually attend because then you will have to absorb our sixth graders and so there we need to make sure that we have the conversation providing that impact yes

Carolyn Pitchesbecause it would if you take the sixth graders from both of our elementary schools you're talking about 220 plus students yeah yes so that's in addition what's already in the building and the building's already over right. Thank you.

Carl FrischThank you Dr. Anderson. Anyone else? I actually enjoy the conversation around what it means to move sixth grade into middle school because I think focusing on one pyramid shows what we're gonna if that's what happens that's what will happen in every pyramid right those conversations will have to be had about how it impacts the populations of elementary schools, which kids are going to be moved where, so it's not a unique challenge, right? It's a unique challenge in that different jurisdictions, so there's complicating factors, but the same types of measures that would have to be taken in one pyramid are the same types that generally speaking would have to take place in another. Obviously there are other factors like secondary schools

and other things that have to maybe follow a different pattern as well but everything's done it everything has to give and take right like if you move sixth grade into Katherine Johnson then there's not going to be as much room for other students to be there but at the same time there will be more room at the elementary school level so everything has its benefit and its minus I think as long as we're all committed and I think we are to what's best for students will the best path forward. Ms.

Melanie MarronBarrett? Well I just wanted to mention tomorrow night not far from Fairfax City just down 123 we're hosting our final community advisory community community meeting about the boundary process which some of you have looked through the head nods and maybe you know but it's at 630 Madison High School and I will be there and would certainly love to see you there some people leave just another opportunity to listen right

Carl Frischanyone else from either board want to say anything i felt singled out by the maps because you just circled parts of providence district but well it's always nice to look at the breakdown for providence elementary school i know but i will say like the biggest chunk of providence elementary that's not city and so I always look at it's like 30% I'm like yeah but of the county it's like 75% of the county kids that are at Providence Elementary are from. The other thing you know that I would note about Providence is it wasn't just the building right like we also changed the AAP scenarios so that we were no longer, Providence was no longer drawing county kids simply because it had an AAP program that people wanted to be in. So we have, there are lots of things

that we do at every other school to do to solve these problems too and I think as long as we all go walk into these conversations open-eyed as to what the considerations are you know our city partners want what is best for their kids in the same way that we want what is best for all of our kids too and I think we've made a lot of progress in that regard particularly as it relates to representation of the city's perspectives on our different school board advisory committees and while we haven't been elected a city resident as school board member that they may one day come. Anybody else would like to say anything? Oh yes go ahead sorry.

Speaker 3So I just want to appreciate all of you for listening to that and really would ask that if you can provide this information when people do ask because I think it's not common knowledge that you if you live in the city you can only go to city school so I'll say myself, 15 years ago when I moved in, I lived in that sort of Woodson and I was like, oh, this is wonderful. My children go to Woodson High School. It's literally over a fence right next door. Guess what? They didn't because we live in the city. It is not advertised that way. Real estate agents are not aware of this breakdown and unless you're really looking into it, even oftentimes Zillow and Trulia and all these websites, they're putting it in incorrectly.

So just to keep informing people of what that looks like, because as Carolyn says, we don't have the option of changing those boundaries. That is, the city has made those boundaries. You saw the map. It is a bizarre-looking map. It doesn't make much sense. Yes, it looks like it's all about. It's very strange. But providing that knowledge to the community, we believe, is really important. We try to do it as much as possible. I appreciate your collaboration with that.

Melanie MarronSo if a Fairfax City student wanted to attend one of our CareerTech Academies, they cannot?

Carolyn PitchesThey can't,

Melanie Marronas far as the agreement. Because the pie graph is showing the number in your schools, but not necessarily the number in our schools.

Carolyn PitchesWell, 7.4% of our students go to county

Melanie Marronschools.

Carolyn PitchesSo that's typically if they go for IB at Robinson or their special education program. It used to be for AAP centers, it still is for Mosaic, but Katherine Johnson is now an AAP center, so our students there stay in Katherine Johnson. And some other, I'm trying to think of, oh, yeah, academy, but also like language programs. If somebody wants to take a language that's at Oakton, I assume that that's another way way they can attend a county school. Ms. Seismar-Hyser?

Rochelle SizerThank you. I really appreciate the conversation and to the points made, I think as we get into the boundary work, looking at sixth grade, where it belongs, I know I've had conversations with you, but we can't leave behind the secondary school students and there's all these benefits of sixth grade and new middle school, but I think it's so important to think about, people are about communication, right? I don't live walking the city in Fairfax. I used to teach in South-back city. And so I have a lot of friends who live in the city. And when I first said, oh, we'll vote for you. And then they were

Speaker 4very sad.

Rochelle SizerAnd they couldn't. And they were very sad. But they didn't feel like they had representation even more. So I think it's really important to have these conversations. I think as we're doing the boundary work, it's important to let the county residents know that, hey, by the way, we're not going to be touching this set of boundaries balance the house to get schools because those are the city boundaries right and that's why that's going to stay the same and we're going to work around that for our county students i think that's part of the communication around our government work and i would be curious i know fairfax in high school has one of our academy programs in the high school i'm curious if there's

any agreements around placing the certain programs within fairfax city schools from the county or not like you mentioned aap center this was some we did bring over the years but special education programs.

Ricardy AndersonYes.

Rochelle SizerI've never done anything enough to know what exactly is.

Carolyn PitchesIt's similar. We have county kids who attend our preschool autism programs and we also have obviously some county kids that come to Fairbanks for the Academy and change it as their base school because they need to take dance and it's three hours long and so we do and language is part of our academy so we have a lot of American Sign Language, Korean, Arabic, we have a lot of languages in our books so yes they come for other things. I

Rochelle Sizerbring that up because I think it's important as much as these kids can go to Fairfax County Schools if they want to access certain programs in the city state of the yellow around. County schools can be people placed at a city school and there's a particular program there. And then as we're looking at expanding programs, I think it's also important to be equitable with city schools to make sure that if your kids need a particular program that they don't always have to leave. Like when it's AAP or special ed, there's certain programs that our students choose to have that are the programs that they need to have. And I think it's important as we're looking at that placement to ensure that your kids don't necessarily need

to get around the heat. So I just wanted to bring that up to some conversations and maybe there's some more joint work we can do, especially if you're going down the down the road. Yes,

Carolyn Pitchesthank you. Chair, questions? So have you guys discussed at all the secondary school model and you decide to move to a six, seven, eight middle model?

Carl FrischWe have consults that are working on all of it, all of the above at the moment. and I know that Ms. Exmoheiser and others have raised the question about secondary schools and it's pertained to this history of conversation. So TBD on that front. Dr. Ayers.

Ricardy AndersonJust one last final question. You talked about Dr. Johnson implementing an AEP center.

Carolyn PitchesWhen did

Ricardy Andersonthat occur?

Carolyn PitchesSo that happened in 2017, I want to say. In 2014, we started advocating to have local level four at the two elementary schools, partially to alleviate some of the overcapacity issues at Mosaic at the time. Because we had 200 students from the city, sometimes over 200, who attended Mosaic. And this was pre-renovation. So once we did that, then we started moving towards, let's make Katherine Johnson. We were losing a lot of kids out of Katherine Johnson to Rocky Run, who wanted to leave to go to the center. So I think Dr. Noonan was our superintendent at that time. And it was when Aaron Lennart was. So I'm trying to get a time frame in my head. 2017 to 2019 and we grant it was basically a grandfather and we changed it to a center

but we didn't force people who to choose it or stay at Katherine Johnson as the center if we gave them like it it was like a two-year thing like so if you were at Rocky Rocky Run as a rising eighth grader or you're coming in as a rising seventh grader you could continue on that path and then it was like sorry now you have to go to Katherine Johnson Center. Okay

Ricardy Andersonthank you. Was that effort led by FCPS or the city?

Carolyn PitchesIt was a collaborative effort. We basically advocated for it with FCPS at the time and it was a pretty easy collaboration. There was both sides. It served its purpose. It helped with capacity issues at Mosaic in terms of the elementary schools and also Rocky Run at the time was at capacity. These are all pre-renovation for those buildings of yours. So basically, I mean, ICPS was not too happy, just they were great, you know, it'll be some issues for us

Ricardy Andersonas well. Do you recall any of the impact on the staff? Were teachers required to have additional classes, certification, did you experience a big attrition of teachers who may not have been able to meet the new requirements? No,

Carolyn Pitchesin terms of the center, Katherine Johnson, yes teachers have to go through the certification process it was never brought to us as an issue thank you

Carl Frischanyone else miss anderson the

Speaker 8only question that i had for you is what preschool services the city already providing because I know that for us a large part of the push to potentially move kiddos to sixth to eighth grade although I also went to a secondary school so I'm very sensitive to those issues but I I know that a large push on our side is to ensure that we have room in our schools to provide preschool opportunities for kids and so I was just wondering if you guys can

Carolyn Pitchesspeak to that a little bit I will say that the city has long advocated to have universal pre-k. We do have obviously Head Start and we have some special ed preschool programs that Daniel is on. We have in the city, we have Main Street, which is a preschool program that's housed in Green Acres Elementary, which the school board owns. It's no longer operating. It was one of the six original elementary schools in the city. So that building is half utilized for the senior center and half for Main Street preschool. It's on a sliding scale. We work with them to, I think we've provided resources for them in the past. But yes, in terms of our renovations, the hope is to add, you know, in thinking, you know,

and we're trying to think towards the future that this is a possibility that eventually, you know, we will have universal pre-K. So the plan for now is to add four additional classrooms to each of the elementary schools. Oh, so your renovation doesn't include capacity

Speaker 8increase? Yes, it does. Okay, and I know that it was just bonding, but what's your timeline, roughly? Roughly, I know, I have a horrible question to ask.

Carolyn PitchesWell, my timeline is always different from what Mr. Plattenberg tells me six years. Right. Okay, well, I'm going to six. Well, you're four.

Melanie MarronMiss Mary. Yes, so our board is going to be looking at our capital improvement program. I'm sorry, Mr. Plannenberg, at the start of the year. And I'm furiously scrolling through it right now to remind myself if RCIP includes, it must, right? So I'm wondering, as you went to bond, though, did you give more area to go for more sustainable options? And I think about, I know I certainly heard about the instructional program, Daniel's run, and it's award-winning environmental ed. So when you were bonding, are you able to do more sustainably than perhaps we can? Yes,

Carolyn Pitchesthat's on the table. We haven't done the design yet but there's been talk of like at the high school, the roof, since we're replacing the roof, what are our options in terms of looking at sustainability? And same with all of our schools really have won I've won Virginia all sorts of awards. Virginia, naturally, obviously, Gaynor's won as one for a number of years. Katherine Johnson has also won an Eco Green. There's Ben Seckle. We have Carrie

Melanie MarronBrown. I think from what my, I didn't know as much though, is it because of the instructional program, not per se, the facility. And so again, just wondering if your bond, you know, would, but yeah, the roof sounds like a great opportunity, but if you were planning other things, thinking about net zero, and that's what we're striving for, very far on the horizon. So we just welcome your thoughts or updates on that. Sure. We'd be happy to

Carolyn Pitchesonce we, yeah, when we start that process.

Carl FrischI'm going to take a turn really quick. One thing that I have mentioned to a few of our city colleagues is how eager I am to partner on even bigger ideas. I know that there are, one of the good things about having a few of our city colleagues joining the city council is that there are more opportunities to partner with the city as a whole with an eye towards education. And I would love to see another elementary school in the city of Fairfax. and there are ways to do it in a way that are mutually beneficial to the county and the city, both in terms of the benefits but also the responsibilities, because we're not going to see a slowdown of the growth in that corridor. You know, I live a block inside of county boundaries from the city,

and there is a project being approved or opening, it seems like, every other month. and so at some point, maybe not in the near future, but in the future at some point, we're going to have to have conversations about how do we address that together. As we've always addressed it at the schools that we have, I know that the city will not green light new schools unless there is a capacity crunch at all of them based on city populations, but that doesn't mean that that's how it has to be right especially if we have some forward thinking about what could happen in order to get us the table around a new elementary school or other services particularly as we think about how do we solve the preschool issue together because we all have the same

goal of getting as many students in the preschool as possible.

Carolyn PitchesYeah Carl and I have talked about this actually the county owns the work yard that's right next to Providence Park which years ago the council wanted green acres for something we were trying to figure out we need a site in case we need to build another elementary school and I had one in Providence because it was Providence Park area because it was right in between Daniels Run and Providence and it was close to the county side sort of the Braddock Road area so you guys actually own a piece of property is why I couldn't get that that is part of my advocacy but yes and you all I believe there is something in planning for this at the Brookholder Center, which is right down the street from that. The county owns also a piece of property right across from the post office in the city.

Right now there's a proposal to put housing there. Which is interesting because my question was, where are they going to go to school?

Speaker 3Okay. I just want to piggyback on what you were saying because I think we are also in a unique position with the George Mason campus right there on the city in the property line right next to it. to be able to have those conversations of what benefit is there that we can realize for the National Association community, that their education is going to know that CCPS has a really strong partnership with Mason. We can see them at the RELY meetings. But what could be coming down in the future, I agree that more of an innovative in use of collaboration between all three. Dr. Andrews.

Ricardy AndersonYes, she's giving me the answer to this question. I was just curious in terms of what is the communication between your board and your city council when it comes to, and the mayor, when it comes to new development? Because we have lots of new development, and as I just mentioned a little bit a while ago, the question is always where are they going to go to school? and I don't think we have as planful and strategic of an approach as I would like because very often we have multi-family homes and spaces where the schools are already overcrowded and the proffers are not what they have been in other places where you've been in Fairfax County in years past where you have these big communities there's a school that comes with it.

I'm very curious to see how does the process work for the city of Fairfax.

Carolyn Pitchesalways going to struggle but i'm hopeful because i have two school board members who are moving to the council so um it it is long been the argument because um all the city development tends to be on the providence side of the city um and it's it's incredibly problematic because a lot of the county development isn't on that affects that end of the city so unfortunately I'll just be blunt with money talks so in past the council has while we try to explain to them the impact it has not only on our we try to put it in terms of money right the wear and tear on the buildings having to pay the county more money and tuition but ultimately they have been historically in the last I would say four to six years have been improving a lot of high density and they

tried to tell us that they're not going to get a lot of students out of that but we all know that housing choices have changed no longer is a single-family home or a townhouse the only place you're going to get children we have who are moving into these new condominiums that are more like one level townhouses. And we have so many of them and they're new and they're more affordable than buying a single family home. So it's a struggle. It is a conversation, but it's more of a one-on-one. Each school board member is assigned a council member. and it's that board member's responsibility to communicate with that council member and sort of get it across that, you know, if you approve this, you know,

250 unit housing development, it's going to bring this many kids, which is this many classrooms, and this is what that's going to do to the tuition bill. Usually money is the only way you can sort of make it. make them see the impact. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Carl FrischOne good nugget of information for that conversation is that the county had to adjust the way that it calculates projections because we were no longer being as accurate as we could be because we were assuming much lower student yields out of condos and apartments than we should have been. And we are more accurate today having adjusted that than we were previously because it has changed. great schools that people are moving to go put their kids in. So, Ms. Marilyn.

Melanie MarronYeah, so I have been very interested in the capital piece and the development piece and representing, especially in Vienna, the town of Vienna, how that has changed over, you know, the 20 years that I lived there and now. And so I appreciate knowing what development patterns kind of looking like in Fairfax City. I do think that the next big thing on the horizon and for us is really facilities and funding of that. I have met with the superintendent and our chief of facilities and took a deep dive in how we are projecting, because there would be times when I'm like, hey, did we know that that townhouse unit was going up right across from an elementary school? And I've seen over the years that there has been improvement,

but I really sat down and tried to understand. So I do think that we're trying to project, and as well as it might be, like birth rate is still reliable factor, which is hard to believe in our community where there's so much, you know, influx and outflux or staying and going. So I do wonder, you know, I hope that our projections are just as accurate, you know, everywhere in the county and certainly for the city. They seem to be holding true. I was told that they would look back and see and sure enough, the projections were pretty much on. So, but if we're not seeing that on the ground in reality, then I think we really need to make sure whatever we're doing is accurate. So I just want to share that.

Carolyn PitchesIn the city, Eric Foreman, who is on the Boundary Advisory Committee, he's the one who does our projections, and he works closely with the county. A number of years ago, there was an affordable housing complex, and we had about 57 students out of there, and they were replacing it. It was being redeveloped, and it was condominium buildings, and two over twos and then several townhouses and they said, oh, you're not gonna get, we're not gonna get very many students out of that. We're actually gonna be better off than what was there before, which did not hold true at all. So I think Mr. Foreman also has sort of seen the tides turn over the last four to five years that we are essentially, we're getting the yields out of condominiums and apartment complexes is increasing.

And I think everybody is sort of coming to that realization that it's not a phenomenon, it's from here on out. I mean, as long as Northern Virginia is this expensive, you know, and we don't have a lot of affordable housing, that's the how that's the next affordable housing. Ms. Hall.

Stacy HallJust to kind of piggyback on that, I know that the county overall has been flat as far as your numbers have gone, but the city has actually increased 7%, which is a very large number. And I just want to make sure that we are aware, obviously, of the things that are coming and going, but just the city we're only going to get bigger and i know that the county side of it as well but we can only do so much within our buildings so it would ask that you just try to be cognizant of that and i do not envy your jobs with the community overall i know it's going to be a big big conversation and people are not going to want to move their kids for a variety of reasons but i just want to thank you in advance for doing very hard work with us

Carl FrischThank you. Anyone else? Alright, it is 640. We have a little time until we reconvene for some food, but we will adjourn.

Speaker 4in terms of dinner we've been able to move it up a little bit early so if you look at the map on where you need to go we're going to marshall high school it's actually around back is where you'll enter for the dinner so if you can look for uh fairfax county school board members i just sent the map to your invites. We can forward it to the city too. You guys can have it as well. But make sure you go around the back for it and for our returning school board members as well as last year.