School Board Work Session

Carolyn PitchesGood evening. It is Monday, September 16th of 2024, and this is the work session of the City of Fairfax School Board. Our first presentation is FCPS dyslexia and twice exceptional students' presentation. And we have Noelle Comenco, a city resident, assistant superintendent of instructional services, Mike Bloom, director of special education, Kristen Maloney, senior manager, advanced academics. NANI. NANI, THANK YOU. AND CAN YOU SAY YOUR LATIME? OKAY, I'M NOT GOING TO TEMPT THAT. TWICE EXCEPTIONAL EDUCATION SPECIALIST, ADVANCED ACADEMICS, AND GINA NORTH, DYSLEXIA EDUCATION SPECIALIST, FOR LANGUAGE ARTS.

Speaker 3WELCOME EVERYONE, THANK YOU FOR COMING.

Carolyn PitchesWE'RE LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS. WE'VE HAD A LOT OF QUESTIONS OVER THE SUMMER AND LAST SPRING Well,

Speaker 3we brought the

Carolyn PitchesA team here.

Speaker 3Apparently. Lots of expertise. And I'm just here to say hi because I'm a city resident, and I just love that you all invite us to come and share, and I never like to miss an opportunity to connect with you all. So I'll turn it over to Kirsten and let them

Kirsten Maloneystaffbegin. Well, thanks for having us. We thought we would start off with working on making sure our definition for 2E is very clear, We have aligned that with the VDOE definition of choice exceptional. And the definition for that means that a student has been identified both for gifted education as well as identified for either an IEP or a 504 for special education. So if both of those things are true, then we are saying that a student is 2E. And we'll talk a little bit later about how we're trying to make that a little bit more apparent to teachers so that they know who the 2E students are. One thing we really like to clarify with this definition is that Fairfax County uses a continuum of services.

So we have Tier 1 access to rigor, which is what everyone gets in terms of access to advanced academic curriculum and access to rigor. But we also have subject specific. So we subject specific, part time and full time. So we like to just at every opportunity we can talk about it, say all of those things are AAP, because sometimes it can have a narrow definition in some people's minds that maybe it's just about centers or something like that. So if a student is identified for subject specific in something like math, and they also have an IEP, that would count as 2E. Perfect. Thank you. So we have a project team, and the folks sitting right down this row are probably 50% of the project team that we meet about twice a week

to talk about progress and our objectives for the project team are to make sure we're removing any barriers that may be in place for 2E students to ensure that they can have dual programming needs met and that they're not having to choose one service over the other service. And then we've been doing a lot of work on just mindsets about neurodiversity beyond 2E and in 2E just to make sure students' experiences are very positive, that they feel welcome in the classes where they feel supported. So those are our two big project group objectives. And through the work, Dr. Oladamiji started, what year was it? January 2023. So she's been here having a lot of impact in a really short amount of time. And the beginning of what she found out in her role was

just that we do have some really positive things going on. It's just not consistent across the whole district. So we want to make it consistent. And other things that we found along the way is we have some gaps in our data systems that make it hard to measure progress, namely being that after elementary, and after elementary, there's open enrollment in honors classes. We have the full-time program that goes up to eighth grade, and then after that, there's no more identification, and we haven't had a need to have data on students' identification at that level, but the side effect of that was we weren't then able to see, at the school level and are they being served or not. So we are working on improving data systems.

We're also doing a lot of capacity building for instructional staff. That goes hand in hand with a lot of the work that is going on in Mike's office with the Enhancement Plan for Students with Disabilities. And there is a big push for Universal Design for Learning, the UDL initiative. So there's a lot of overlap and then diagramming going on between our work. And that capacity building is happening families are essential in all this and understanding students needs so we've been trying to bolster up our ways that we're strengthening family engagement and then lastly the articulation of the continuum of services and that goes in both directions one that AAP needs a lot more than just centers that it means a lot of different profiles of student need and also that

service locations for where students might be getting their special education services also happens on a continuum And just because the student might be in a certain placement doesn't mean that the AAP becomes inaccessible to them. So we've been working on some communication devices to try to articulate that. So we're just going to go into just a couple of quick updates for each one of those five items. The 2E handbook was created in 2017, and it's been on our public website. And we've found with all the turnover that we've had in staff over time, There were a lot of people who maybe needed reminders that that was a that's a resource that's there for them and It also was time for an update so dr. Olami G worked on

across departments and worked on really articulating the team-based approach for Who are all the roles? It's not just the special education teacher. It's not just the classroom teacher It really does take a team approach though So that's a feature that's been added that she did collaboratively across a lot of departments to make sure we all agree these are the roles and let's get them in writing so it can be transparent for everyone. And also did a lot more with now us being one-to-one. Some of the things that maybe used to just be for assistive technology and for some students are now a lot more accessible to a lot of students. Did I capture the big updates in the tweet? So that happened over the summer.

It is, I didn't check today to see if it was posted. take a while to get all the translations done and I ask that we just post the English version with coming soon for while we're waiting on the translations because that has been done but we're trying to get it up on the website along with that the beginning of the year required training that teachers classroom teachers and instructional staff go through we took that handbook and we made a one-pager of like what are the big ideas we know you don't necessarily have time to read the whole band handbook but we want you to know there is a ideas in that so last I checked on that data it was it was almost all the staff that we would expect to be getting that acknowledgement but that was new this

year we haven't had that for the past 10 book and then there have been multiple formats of breakout sessions with school leaders to talk about the continuum that will show in a couple of slides and to just talk about the work that this project team is doing and to elevate the importance of this work and how it So the second one was improving those data systems. I talked a little bit about where that gap area came from. I don't know if you already know that in CIS there is a place where when a roster comes up, teacher C, this is a student who's a young scholar, this is a student who has a IEP or has a 504, we're working on getting an icon in there that would identify this is a student who's got dual

programming needs and so we're working with our technology folks to get that done and that'll also help us bring that historical identification from elementary up into secondary school so that we can get a better count right now we don't even have what we feel is completely accurate baseline data to know how we're doing to be able to set goals we have things we've cobbled together from a lot of different places, but having it more systematically, like this is going to be really important.

Carolyn PitchesDo you guys have like some timing on that? Like how long before

Kirsten Maloneystaffthe goal? Yes. So the SIS team that's helping us with that said that they're going to do it by Thanksgiving. Okay. And then Mike, do you want to talk about that?

Mike BloomstaffYeah. So I wanted to share with you a little bit of information on a dashboard that our data management team in the Department of Special Services has created. It's the LRE or Lease Restrictive Environment dashboard. So state indicator 5. We need to report to the state and then report to the federal government the amount of time that students with disabilities are spending in the general education setting. And the state target for the state of Virginia is a little bit over 72%. And so this indicator tracks the percentage of students who spend 80% or more of their time in general education settings. And for years, at least since I've been an administrator, 10 to 12 years in Fairfax, Fairfax County Public Schools has not met the target, the state target.

And so a couple of years ago, when we had a comprehensive study done the American Institutes of Research on our special education programming in Fairfax County, one of the outcomes found that particularly in Fairfax County, at the secondary level, in our middle and high schools, we have a larger number of students with IEPs who are in self-contained core content classes. So these are typically students with learning disabilities or emotional disabilities, some with autism, who are in these self-contained special education courses for their mathematics, English, science, and social studies. So they're in a smaller group setting and they're getting their individualized needs met, but they're not accessing the general education curriculum. And so what we're

trying to do with this dashboard is we're trying to gather some data to show which secondary schools are having more of their students in these self-contained classrooms and we know a large number of them are also twice exceptional students and so the goal is to be able to work with our staff our teachers our administrators and open up access and opportunity to the general education environment and that takes a lot of training around how to make that happen successfully for kids so a lot of it is about providing access through the use It's teaching staff how to be able to have confidence in their ability to meet the needs of those kids when they're in the general education setting, either with or without support.

Some of them might have an instructional assistant that comes into that setting for a portion of the day. Some may not. But we really want to be able to equip those teachers, the general ed teachers, to meet their needs so that we can, again, have them access more advanced courses, honors courses, AP courses, self-contained courses. We do have some honors sections of some of our self-contained courses, but it's not consistent through all of our schools, our secondary schools within the county. So we're just trying to open up more access. So the dashboard tool is going to give us some data that we'll be able to share with individual schools related to the number of students that they have that aren't meeting this Indicator 5 target,

and it'll disaggregate according to which students are also twice exceptional students. We'll have lots of different data points, but that's sort of the connection to the 2E students. And the data is also going to be available for elementary schools as well, so it's really a pre-K through 12 dashboard. So we're in the final stages of completing that dashboard, so we should be rolling this out soon to our schools. and then starting to work with them to analyze their data and really work toward improving their outcomes for those kids at their individual schools. So we think awareness is going to go a long way in changing some of the practices at the school level and opening up, again, more opportunities

for many of our twice-exceptional kids.

Kirsten MaloneystaffYes.

Mike BloomstaffSo I wanted to share with you some information around some of the ways that we're trying to build the knowledge and capacity of our instructional staff to meet the needs of twice exceptional students. One thing that we've done last year, we started them during COVID where we held principal briefings, and it was a combination of all departments and offices. So we had representatives from instructional services, DSS, facilities, human resources, really everyone was there. And then beginning last year, Fairfax County, they did away with those larger principal briefings for all departments, but we really wanted to maintain and hold on to our Department of Special Services briefings for principals,

and it was well received, and so this year we're continuing once a month to meet with our principals who also invite their assistant principals and their directors of student services, other school-based administrators, where we're able to provide sort of real-time updates and information that's important for them to know as leaders. So as we've developed some of our work around supporting twice-exceptional learners, we've been able to share that throughout our monthly briefings with our principals and administrators. So that's just one way that we've been able to consistently, over time, message some things to our administrators. The other things that we did, the second bullet, we also have some leadership sessions connecting our work to some of our broader district initiatives.

Kirsten mentioned our work around universal design for learning. And so that's a big county-wide initiative that started, you know, really last year and continued into this year. And we'll be expanding out as part of our strategic plan. But we do, at the beginning of the year, have opportunities to provide our administrators and our school-based leaders with some choice sessions during our leadership kickoff week. And so we did have some sessions that we ran that were specific to the work that we're doing around twice exceptional learners and making those connections to universal design for learning. And also a big focus is the area of executive functions. Because, again, a lot of our twice exceptional learners also have some deficits around executive functioning skills.

And so we're trying to, again, work with our schools to develop tools and resources. Let's give you one example. We're right now piloting at some of our secondary schools, middle schools and high schools, how those schools can take a dedicated section of their student advisory period and really provide a curriculum around executive functioning so that those kids don't have to give up an elective course. Students historically who have struggled with executive functions have had to give up an elective of choice in order to take a course that we call strategies for success. There's another special education elective called personal development and a lot of the content of those courses centers around executive functioning

skills. And so being able to provide this content within their advisory period opens up that second elective to many of these students so that if they've got a passion around the fine arts or computers or whatever their area of interest is and their passion, now they can have access to those elective courses without feeling like they have to give that up. And that was also a lot of the feedback that we received from many parents. They were sitting in IEP meetings and they were lamenting over the fact that yes, I know my son or my daughter does need some extra support with executive functioning, but they really love, you know, the band or drama or, you know, some other elective of choice. And so, really, this was a result of some parent advocacy around this, as well as some

school board advocacy. We've had a few members of our current school board that had a real interest in seeing if we could find ways to open up access to this content without giving up the elective course. So that's really exciting.

Kirsten MaloneystaffAnd then lastly, we've had an academy course on Twice Exceptional specifically for a number of years, and the pattern had been that it was heavily attended by a lot of elementary teachers, but I think with this new focus, Dr. Lamiji taught, was it two sections of it this summer? Summer, yeah. And it was largely filled with secondary teachers, so that was very exciting. She's teaching in two sections, or you and we are getting

Speaker 1something else to do. and then someone else is teaching because it's now packed. We had 40 people on Wakely, so we had to open up another session and have someone else teaching. So there's a lot of excitement from especially secondary teachers wanting to know what it means for them to accommodate kids with learning disability or 504 needs or exactly what does it mean in those higher level courses to meet those needs without having an... Because the kids don't want an aide or someone sitting there. They want to feel as normal as possible. So for those teachers to want to take the class, to want to know themselves, is being a plus. At the session I offered this summer, most of the teachers were from TJ,

West Springfield, and we never used to have those. And they were really excited about it. One of them emailed me and said, this has been a better year for him just for all kids wanting to know what are your strengths and just not rushing into the curriculum without getting to know the kids so it's been positive.

Mike BloomstaffI forgot to add Fairfax High School is one of our high school pilots around the advisor. I completely forgot. Yeah so we're very excited. We love a pilot.

Kirsten MaloneystaffAll right, the fourth one is strengthening the family partnership. So Dr. Olatomiji, people were so excited when we hired her. In the past, we had had one person from special education and then one of the specialists in my office who also had a lot of other responsibilities. They were kind of the power team, and we all kind of divvied it up and shared, but now to have the focused person to be able to talk to families, and Dr. Lallata-Miji is masterful at being able to unpack what's going on in every situation is unique and trying to figure out what's going on and being a really nice bridge and building the relationship between the school and the family and helping both parties to make that a solid relationship. So she does a really nice job with those as needed. And

And then she also has offered multiple webinars through the Family and School Partnerships Office. And we'll continue to offer them this year. They're very well attended. They're recorded. They're posted on the Family Partnership website. What we want to do on the next one, which is these planned updates that we have to our website, is to actually get them on the 2B website so that they're a little bit easier to find. because even when I try to find them sometimes, there's so much that the Family Resource Center puts out that I'm trying to figure out where it is. So we want to make this a little bit more explicit, along with making more explicit all of the things that I think tie to this work that's going on with 2E

and the broader district initiatives, like the Enhancement Plan for Students with Disabilities. And one of the last things I'll show before we talk about dyslexia is last year, our whole focus was on, for our APAC, and thank you all for sending to every year and they were there all the time and very participating strongly in our work last year on 2E. But that report will also be on our website when we get our updates.

Mike BloomstaffSo Kirsten mentioned a little bit earlier about our continuum of services. And one of the things that we're trying to do is we're trying to provide our teachers and our administrators with, again, some training and some knowledge around how we can meet the diverse learning needs of our twice exceptional learners in the way that we program for students in Fairfax County. And one of the things that we do in Fairfax is we've got a continuum of services for students with disabilities that have social, emotional, and behavioral challenges. And these particular sites in our schools are called comprehensive services sites. So we have seven elementary schools, we have four middle schools, and five high schools.

And I can follow up with an email and give you the names of all the schools. But again, they're self-contained programs where you've got small class size, you've got kids that were not able to be successful in their neighborhood school, and so through the IEP process, they are attending one of these comprehensive services sites. Well, similar to our data related to those self-contained classrooms in our secondary schools where we're seeing lots of kids in those settings and not really moving into the general ed setting. That's what we typically find happening at our CSS sites, that they're in these self-contained models with little opportunity to go out into the general education environment as appropriate to be able to take advantage of advanced coursework or higher level coursework.

And so what we're trying to send the message to our schools is around the fact that regardless if you're a student with a disability, it doesn't shut you out of your opportunity to access that rigor and that curriculum and that advanced coursework if it's appropriate for you and your learning profile. And so we've had some opportunities, again, beginning at the end of last school year, and we just met with a group of administrators who oversee all of those CSS sites last week, and we're going to be doing some targeted training with those school administrators this school year. Part of that targeted training will also provide an opportunity for a collaborative team. So we've got a member, a coaching resource teacher from each of those CSS sites that come together monthly with our central office team.

And we're going to dedicate some time to specifically focus on the needs of twice exceptional learners. A lot of it is working with the schools to figure out how they can open up access. Some of it is their challenges with staffing. And they ask the question, well, how

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceare we going to be able to

Mike Bloomstaffdo that with the staff that we have? So we will go in there and walk through with them student schedules and look at their special education staff and how they can utilize their existing staff to provide supports and services. So some of it is just working shoulder to shoulder with those schools to show them that it can be done. And then where there's training that's needed, where there's support that's needed, we'll partner with them to provide that extra training that's needed. So we're going to work toward greater access and opportunity for those kids at those CSS sites.

Kirsten MaloneystaffSo you can see up here, CSS is listed as a specialized, special education setting. I love a visual. I think when we're having conversations with people, it gets very easy. The programs are complicated. Special Ed is complicated. AAP is complicated. So we wanted to come up with a visual that would support families in understanding the two types of programs that they are and that we can marry together honors classes and the team teaching or honors classes and if a student is homebound we have resources that we can provide to a homebound teacher. So we wanted to be able to have something where we could really point out how are we going to take both types of services and marry them and put them together it will take problem-solving it's not like you just

snap your fingers and make it happen but that we do have a responsibility to provide both services simultaneously not one at the expense of the other this was it might look simple but there is so much discussion on coming up with a visual for this because at one point it was like does this need to be a three-dimensional thing that's going on this is what we hope will make sense getting feedback from multiple stakeholder groups, and they seem to say that this will be a good conversation piece when working with staff and when working with families to try to be able to point to some concrete things and have them contextualized. So this also is gonna be one of our web updates to get this on the website and then have the ability

to dig into what does some of this mean and have it more accessible for families to be able to see that information and click on it and find out

Speaker 1more. I'm trying to add that when we say 2E, the advanced course work is based on the child's strength. So not, you know, I want to take this class because my friend said that it's based on their profile, where their strengths are, where we can identify the child's strength and giving that child opportunity to then take their AAP or whatever course in that area of strength so they can start feeling successful and then maybe wanting to add more to it. but it's just that strength-based approach is what we're looking at.

Kirsten MaloneystaffAnd then lastly, I don't know if you all have the chance to see the APAC report from last year, but there were three common themes for Prioritize Next Steps. It's linked at the bottom there. I'm happy to email it, too, if that's easier. But the full report is there. There's some interesting appendices in there, too. One of the things that we included, we try to get voice from staff, from students, voice from families. So there are some good artifacts in the back of the report in terms of interviews that were done with twice exceptional students as a result of being students in Dr. Olaamidji's class, so teachers would interview students and that data was included in there. But the three big areas were develop a common understanding,

build capacity to support the dual programming needs, and engage families and students as to be student-sees. So hopefully you see a lot of alignment between the things that we've been working on and what APAC recommended that we were doing. But I think it was, as always I feel with the charges with APAC, it was I think really helpful to have people coming from different schools and from different parts of the district together and looking at a K through 12 issue and trying to figure out how we can do better. And so that report is there in case you didn't get to see it.

Mike Bloomstaffmentioned that I'm the staff liaison to the ACSD, Advisory Committee for Students with Disabilities. And this has really been a great partnership with Kirsten and APAC and the ACSD. For example, last year I was invited to APAC to meet with their committee and answer questions and present from our perspective, the special education perspective, in supporting twice exceptional learners. And then members of APAC team come to the subcommittees that are working on student achievement and outcomes related to twice exceptional learners and other areas so it really is a nice collaboration between those two school board advisory committees

Gina NorthstaffDo you want to just keep going? Do you want to ask questions? Do

Carolyn Pitchesyou want to ask questions or do you want to wait until the end?

Amit Hickmanby voiceI have

Carolyn Pitchesone

Amit Hickmanby voiceor two now. Okay. Sorry. Okay. Go ahead. First off, thank you. You answered my question. I was going to ask about the comprehensive services sites, and I said thank you for addressing that ahead of time. That's amazing work that you're doing, so thank you for that. and then I did have a question so I do you know obviously IEPs and 504s are and you know not annually I guess right biannually every other year okay has there been conversations about looking at identification for a services past you know elementary school right past that you can opt in or to get tested again at fourth fifth sixth grade but like you were saying kind of in high school years, has that been a conversation? Or is it kind of, once you're identified,

you're identified and it continues on?

Kirsten MaloneystaffSo with the way that we identify according to our state, right, that the student has been identified, I don't know if you're talking about like, is it still a need for advanced academics? Or are you talking about like maybe somebody we missed and then, okay. Yes, that's okay. Yeah, we have touched on it. We haven't come to any decision making on anything to do with that. enrollment once we get into secondary so I think I and everybody else weigh in on this but they have

Speaker 3I mean three through eight we've continued we review yes yeah rising three third graders through eighth grader can go through the screening process once they get to high school you're right there's not really any kind of formalized way to get I need to call it the label but great to get the official indicator that would then trigger or to we right right that's kind I was asking. Yeah, there isn't, and I haven't been part of any conversations about how, what that might look like, but I do know, and it has been a concern that we've all talked about, is that what about the children who parents feel, we feel, people think they're 2E, but they don't have that identification of AAP, like what do we do

with that, right? It's something we're still kind of struggling with. Because sometimes,

Amit Hickmanby voicekids are

Speaker 3amazing, And they have all sorts of strengths and all sorts of abilities, but they don't always have that identification. So we are still trying to figure that out.

Amit Hickmanby voiceAnd where I'm coming with that is essentially, as students are identified later on with special education needs, that might have actually been masking some of their ability to be able to access that higher level of education. If you're testing a second grader who has not yet been diagnosed with, let's say, ADHD, who is just unable to show the amount of work just because they haven't begun to figure out their tools and techniques and their executive functioning like you were talking about, might show up in high school, kind of have gone through that process and then, you know, might still needs additional help in an AP class, needs that, you know, identification, and then the AP teacher, not AAP, AP, is essentially, you know, unaware.

SO THAT'S WHERE MY QUESTION WAS COMING

Speaker 3FROM. YEAH, AND THERE'S A COUPLE THINGS. I KNOW THE TEAM DID A LOT OF WORK AROUND THE SCREENING PROCESS, ENSURING THAT THE TEACHERS WHO COME IN TO DO THAT SCREENING FOR THE IDENTIFICATION PROCESS FOR GRADES THROUGH 8 REALLY HAD A BROADER LENS, RIGHT? THEY WEREN'T LOOKING FOR THIS ONE TYPE OF STUDENT THAT THEY, AND YOU ALL COULD TALK MORE ABOUT THAT.

Speaker 1AND THAT'S WHY WE, YOU KNOW, THE CONTINUUM IS VERY CRITICAL IN IDENTIFYING KIDS. BECAUSE EVEN IF THE CHILD WASN'T IDENTIFY FOR, LET'S time AAP and the child has subject specific. That's why I kept strength based. Because even when the child hasn't been identified for, you can see the strength. You can see this child is, this is the area of strength. And so we want to foster that area of strength because if you do foster that and give them opportunities in the early years to take, you know, even being advanced academic services in that area, they start seeing that, okay, this is something I really like. And when they get to middle school, high school, that's usually where they tend to take the AP or whatever courses.

So right now, we have two students. One is at Madison and one is at Langley. And wasn't identified, but when I visited him, he came into Fairbanks County in eighth grade. He, you know, you could tell math was his strength. So he took, from ninth grade he took, and then now he's in multivariable calculus. Even though he wasn't identified, he will be labeled as true because of that and because he's always had a 504, which, you know, he's always had a 504. But because he always had that AP classes that he loved, his passion was in physics, we knew right away that, yeah, this child will be if we had that icon and say so.

Amit Hickmanby voiceAnd I appreciate that. And I think I'm looking at those vulnerable populations who's, you know, a lot of it is when you're identified later, oftentimes parent initiated who might not be having that opportunity because they did come here in eighth grade or move to the country in ninth grade or

Kirsten Maloneystaffwhatever it

Amit Hickmanby voiceis.

Kirsten MaloneystaffI think part of the quandary I have with it is I when we have open enrollment I don't want them to have to be labeled as AP to be getting the supports for any advanced course they want so I think that's where I'm like would we open up a whole screening process that would take resources and focus and things like that when we really just want to work on making advanced coursework accessible to

Speaker 1Which is why the high school teachers taking the two E-Courses has been very critical in making sure that, because they're more open to it, like, oh, you know, even in a class when you're taking, I mean, like, I have a kid right now, I think, last year I had a teacher call me to a school and say, I failed some of my ninth graders and I don't want that to happen. So we had scheduled kids that she knew that, you know, were not in her AP class but she said they needed to be there. And so the more we, the awareness for teachers, especially at the high school, has opened up more doors for more kids to, for teachers to even sit down with the kids and say, you can do this, and I have the skill to help you.

So empowering the teachers, not just our special ed teachers, our AP teachers, that's been the best back for our money because they are now saying that, you can be here in my class, I know what to do to accommodate you. So that's the advice we have gathered. Thank you.

Speaker 3And I do think there's a, there historically was a mindset that many of the special ed students could not access an AP or an IB class unless there was a team taught section. And we are not staffed to have extra adults, two adults in every class, in every classroom. So then they often end up in standard level courses. That's why all this work to build the strengths of the gen ed teachers, right, to be ready for kids is so critical because we want kids to have open access and the teachers to be ready.

Carolyn PitchesThank you. Ms. Carlson?

Speaker 7Yeah, I had a couple questions about the dashboard. Who is inputting this stuff in the dashboard? Is it like the director of special ed in the schools or is it

Mike Bloomstaffthe special ed teacher? No, we actually from central office can capture that information that's needed. through our online IEP system, which is called CSTARS. Yeah. So the information we can just capture really continuously. I think it updates overnight, every night into the dashboard.

Speaker 7Oh, okay.

Mike BloomstaffYeah.

Speaker 7Just making sure there wasn't another

Mike Bloomstaffprogram for the special teachers to

Speaker 7do. No, no. I taught special ed, and so I understand how much that program is. Yeah. Okay. And so, but is this like the schools that are doing, that you're doing the dashboard, like once it comes out, Is it, you're gonna test it in a couple schools, like pilot it, or is it jumping full on with everything and the dashboard's good to go?

Mike BloomstaffOnce it's. Once we roll out the dashboard, it's not going to be a pilot. So everybody's in. It'll have full open access to all schools. Yes, yeah.

Speaker 3Any questions?

Carolyn PitchesOkay, so I had heard there have been concerns about counselors not advising students appropriately. So if they had an IEP, they were told, oh, you can't take an AP course because we don't have the supports

Jeff Blackburnstaffnecessary.

Carolyn PitchesSo are you guys, is that part of the, I know you guys mentioned you were working with leadership and administrators and teachers. Are counselors also and the DSS part of

Speaker 1all of that? Yes, so we met with all the DSS's last year academic advising. So all middle school, high school, they were all in the room at the same time. And what that did was this summer there was no kid. There was no school saying, you know, we do not know what to do with a 2E kid. There were some IEPs that took longer because we were trying to figure out, like, where does this child go? And so, because it's individually, you know, scheduling kids to meet their dual programming. It took longer, but I think now nobody, I'm hoping I'm right that nobody will say to a kid or to a parent, no, because we've been saying no. Your IEP, your accommodation goes with you to any setting. The setting does not determine whether you are IEP.

So we've said that over and over. That's why we want the partnership with families and students. If it's happening, to let us know because then we have huge turnovers. So when I am never going to say it's not going to happen, mistakes do happen, that's why we have pencils and erasers. But when it happens, we correct it right away. That's an opportunity to then go to the school, go to the school team and say, this is what this means for you. This is how you can do it. What Mike was saying is, how can we help you with the staff you have meet the child's needs? So that we never have to say to a kid, you can either receive one and not the other. place we don't ever be again.

Mike BloomstaffWe reinforce that same message with our special educators through their department chairs. Every school now has a special education department chair. And so we do message to all of our teachers, because to be honest, not just counselors, but we hear stories of in the IEP meeting where a special education teacher will say that we can't provide that for this particular student.

Carolyn PitchesI think that having the indicator in CIS will help counselors more because I know during the counseling process the student comes in, they pull up their CIS profile and look at what they need to take and so it'll be...

Kirsten MaloneystaffI hope it will help and to your point earlier I also hope that we really treat open enrollment like open enrollment.

Carolyn PitchesRight, exactly.

Speaker 1But it would also help us have questions with students and say, why aren't you taking, you know, because sometimes the mindset of kids also, especially if they've been through trauma and to believe that they can actually do take those courses is a different story. So having that conversation that, do you know what it means to be in this class? Why are you afraid to take it? It will give us the data, because right now we don't know where those kids are sitting. And so if a child decides not to, or parents are free. Like this summer, I've had to cancel three parents and say, no, your child can at least attempt one. Let's start with one through ninth grade and see how, and build the capacity, because parents of two,

they've been through the trauma themselves. They don't want to have to put their child. So, but it's just, let's take the baby step and let's do one. But it gives us enough data to see where are these children or where are they getting their two inmates met. I have a

Amit Hickmanby voicequestion to ask about. Oh, yeah, go ahead. Did I just correct me more on, wasn't that one of Dr. A's initiatives that she talked about at some point of like increasing rate? Yes. Okay, so that is happening here at Fairfax, what they're both saying.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceDefinitely. Okay. No, just talk to her. Yeah, she's done great things so far with making sure that it's accessible to everyone. And I know that's not going to stop. And I think the numbers are in the thousands of additional students who've taken higher level courses who haven't taken, not the student number, but the number of courses that kids have taken.

Carolyn PitchesShe's a great student. Advocate for her. And my last question, what would you say the biggest challenge is? I mean, is it consistency throughout all the schools? Is it the depth or the diversity of, you know, IEP needs? Is it, I mean, what would you say is like, I mean... So

Speaker 1don't chewing kids are like, the chewing kids, it's a big puzzle, right? So chewing kids are the most, very complex. So a child with autism spectrum disorder needs would be totally different from a child with a learning disability or a child with emotional autism.

Carolyn PitchesSo

Speaker 1it's just finding the best match, their strengths and interests, then you begin to at least go from there. Because if you focus on what they can do, then you're just never going to get them past that. Because they themselves already know what they can do. So it's helping us shift that mindset of where are their strengths and where's the child's interest. So we can at least start meeting them from there, using the strengths and interests to mediate their areas of needs, rather than the opposite of let's focus on helping them get their needs met for us before we schedule it. So that's just been, you know, that's, they're all complex, they're very complex.

Mike BloomstaffFrom my perspective, you really hit on it with the word consistency. And that's one thing that AIR report revealed that in Fairfax County, it's very difficult or challenging to get consistency across 200 schools. And so part of this work is making sure that we're sending out a consistent message, consistent expectations, and then really having all of our schools receive the same training by the same people who are delivering the message so that there is some consistency. One of the challenges, to be honest with you, in special education is the ongoing revolving door of teachers and assistants because of the critical staffing shortages. We have a lot of provisionally licensed teachers, a lot of long-term substitutes.

We've got teacher trainees, and so they have very limited experience in special education. So we don't expect, or we can't expect many of them to come into our school division with all of that knowledge around meeting the needs of twice exceptional learners. So it's really being able to educate our staff as they're coming in and continually reinforcing our messaging around what we're trying to do and the expectations we have for how we support our twice exceptional learners. And it's because of the size. It's just a challenge.

Carolyn PitchesGreat. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions?

Speaker 7Just by listening and everything, is the focus kind of going more to figuring out, like you've got more closer to consistent in the elementary ages because it's a little bit easier to figure out that twice exceptional that way. Is it the focus now is kind of more the secondary schools trying to figure out how to make that work a little better? Or try to get consistency more with them and try to get the message across to the secondary schools more so? So

Speaker 1in the past, that's where we had the challenge of teachers saying, you can't be in this class because I do not know how to provide both needs or meet both needs. So that's why we're really focusing on the secondary school because in elementary school, it's easy to accommodate kids. When it comes to accommodating kids in AP Physics, AP Water Chemistry, that's where we're truly focusing on. So that's why I have given the capacity of our teachers, it's going to be critical to ensuring that they have an understanding of what it means in those settings to meet the needs of a child who might have a

Speaker 7life.

Speaker 1So

Speaker 7you're trying to get, it's not that you're focused on those secondary teachers and forgetting the elementary, but more, you're trying to get more of the secondary to come into those classes and trainings. And

Mike Bloomstaffto be honest with you, for a number of years, we've had this large, I'm going to call it a bubble, bubble of students with autism who have now worked their way from kindergarten, first grade, to the middle and high school. And so we've created these great programs at the elementary level, like Enhanced Autism, which again, is a self-contained model for students with autism. But we don't have a similar model at the middle and high school. So now these kids graduate elementary school, all of a sudden they're in middle school, and middle school teams say, okay, now what? Now what do we do? And so, again, part of now this education shift from elementary to the secondary is because there are larger numbers of students with those diverse needs

who are twice exceptional that are now hitting middle school and high school. So it's an opportunity, though. We look at it as an opportunity to do all this work with our secondary teachers.

Carolyn PitchesGreat. Thank you. Okay. We can move on.

Gina NorthstaffThank you. Okay, so I'm Gina North. I'm the dyslexia specialist for Fairfax County. I started this job on January 29th, so it's still a little fresh. Some of the things since I've started that I've noticed, kind of our current state as a district, in knowledge about dyslexia among our staff. A great example is a teacher I spoke with today who started out with the students writing letters backwards, which isn't what dyslexia is. Also seeing lots of schools and staff still kind of skeptical about that dyslexia diagnosis. And a lot of people getting hung up on the whole diagnosis, which isn't really the goal ever. The goal is really to identify students early and intervene early. what research says we need to be doing.

Currently we're kind of late still with that. We are identifying them a little bit later when remediation is harder, and often parents are going outside to get private testing to get that diagnosis, which again, isn't really our goal. Our goal is to intervene early so then we don't have kids meeting the criteria for the diagnosis. At the secondary level, there's just lots of gaps in knowledge about reading instruction because they went to school to learn how to teach English, not how to teach kids how to read. So those are just some of the kind of challenges. So since I started, and I put February, since I gave myself two days of, you know. So I did some initial dyslexia trainings. I did them K-12 for the elementary school reading specialists.

They all were exposed to it, just kind of a dyslexia 101. And for middle school and high school, I offered a session on one of the staff development days, was I will say had a really, really high turnout. I was very pleasantly surprised from the secondary teachers. Some special ed and some English. But that training included a dyslexia simulation, which I don't know if you haven't done one, it's incredibly powerful. And it really gave them a lot of insight into what a school day might look like. Because they spent just like 15 minutes doing this simulation and a lot of them gave up. and remind them your students doing this all day, every class, all day long. So that was really powerful and I was glad

I had the opportunity to teach you that. I have created an internal dyslexia handbook. So it goes through signs at different age levels. It goes through the screening data that is available to teachers, things that they can talk about with parents, that kind of thing, so I created an internal one. And I've been making updates to the public dyslexia handbook. I think there's a phone that fell out. So it's been a slow process, but it's at least updated with contact information, and the new Virginia Literacy Act is on there. And then, right, this month, so in the English Language Arts, or Elementary Language Arts Department, we hope have monthly meetings with our literacy leaders, and every other month we have also admin come,

and admin is with us for the month of September, I'm doing a presentation with them about this new dyslexia advisor role that comes with the Virginia Literacy Act. So all of the reading specialists at the elementary level are supposed to be a dyslexia advisor, which really means that they are looking for signs of dyslexia and then working on teachers getting the correct interventions. So I've been doing that. that really what my purpose is for this month's presentation is really reminding everyone why this VLA came into play, why we have dyslexia advisors in our buildings, because all of the research again shows that identify these students early and we have to intervene early. So really been hitting home on that.

And with some great information that's even saying, you know, that if we do that, the number of kids in special education So I'm also on the special education enhancement plan. Before I took this position, I was in the office of special education instruction. So I was already on the enhancement plan for the data collection piece. Some of the things we've done, we're updating the progress report codes on IEPs, but they'll be more in line with what elementary school ones look like. We're also working on progress report codes monitoring data trying to make that more consistent throughout the county as well. I'm also on the MTSS team for the enhancement plan. Obviously I have a 2E project. And I'm doing a lot of support around the language arts team.

We have a small group of us that are really focused on assessment and intervention. So our new screener VALS that we're using K3, I support with that. I'm going to talk about the student, iReady, and the other diagnostic assessments. And my goal going forward is really to have schools and teachers understand how to look at that data. There are red flags all over those screeners for kids who have dyslexia or having read difficulties. Intervention-wise, I support with OG, read 180, and obviously with the new Bazel that came with VLA, I've been supporting that as well. So I'm going to continue the dyslexia trainings for literacy leaders for K-6 and hoping to have that opportunity again with the secondary schools.

We're also getting a new literacy program coming down the pike, so I'm going to be one of the trainers for that as we get that. I'm actually really kind of excited about it. It's a K-12 intervention program. And then again, I'll continue to support with basal assessments, and consulting with them about students that may already have dyslexia or ones that have signs of it and what to do. And then through the literacy leaders that's really supporting the reading specialist with their dyslexia advisor role. Oh, and I forgot which I didn't put on the slide. I have created a micro-credential course

Kirsten Maloneystafffor

Amit Hickmanby voicedyslexia.

Gina NorthstaffSo if you're familiar with micro-credentials, is the PD that's, you know, like, that you're doing PD while you're actually doing your job. So that should be rolling out in January.

Carolyn PitchesDo you have any questions? Of course. Why are you even going to ask? Just say, I have

Amit Hickmanby voicequestions. So, quick question for you. is the SPIRE literacy program the K-12 intervention you were mentioning? Okay. And then, so the rumor has it that the schools are unable to diagnose dyslexia, which is my understanding why parents go outside. Is that the truth or is that just

Gina Northstaffa rumor? We can say a student has characteristics of dyslexia. Like, we can't give the ICD-9 or the DSM-4. Like, we can't, you know, give that code. But again, it's not really about the diagnosis. it's really about identifying those characteristics of dyslexia before we even, you know, so that

Amit Hickmanby voicecan be identified by the school and then if parents choose to continue and do private testing they can, but they can still receive services based on the school recommendations and identifications.

Gina NorthstaffRight, well, what we're looking at is the screener data will identify students who are at high risk for later getting that diagnosis, so that we're catching them before we get there, so we're doing the intervention as soon as we start seeing the signs. Okay, that's great. Thank you.

Carolyn PitchesI just have a question. So at the elementary level, I don't know how you feel about Linda Mubelle or Gordon Gillingham, that training, like having like one special ed person in an elementary school trained in either of those for how to address dyslexia or teach so

Gina Northstaffyes so we um have multiple well i should say it's different at every school but every school has at least one person orton gillingham trained okay we use brain spring and imse we have also been really pushing getting that orton gillingham training to our secondary teachers as well. And we've had some success. I mean, it's a lengthy training. It's pretty intensive, which is why it works. But every elementary school has at least one. And we work closely with special education to get both special ed and gen ed teachers trained.

Carolyn PitchesSo is there a reason I should choose Ornick Gillingham over when to move? I'm just curious. I haven't been trained in either.

Gina NorthstaffI don't know a lot about Linda Mood Val. I mean, I'm Wilson certified. I'm Sound of Syllable certified. I'm OG trained as well. I have not done Linda Mood Val.

Speaker 3Yeah, it happened a while ago. I mean, I know we did the RFP to find.

Carolyn PitchesI know it's expensive.

Speaker 3Well, I mean, Oregon Gilliam is

Carolyn Pitchesabout $1,000

Speaker 3a person. And it's intense as well. We tried to capitalize on ESSER grant vote we don't really have a sustaining fund to train title one uses some of their funds

Gina Northstaffyeah

Speaker 3that's another question I don't know that it is yeah we know all of our for elementary school all our basal programs and our intervention programs are supposed to be out the state list okay but this decision was made a long time ago so to go with or feeling and I don't I don't have any recollection what Okay. I was just curious.

Carolyn PitchesAll right. Anybody have

Amit Hickmanby voiceany of that? Quick Google search says apparently it's not appropriate.

Carolyn PitchesOkay. Berks County determined it was not appropriate. Oh, we said that? That's what it

Amit Hickmanby voicesays? I mean, I don't know how credible my source is here, but, yeah, apparently a program manager of FCPS, a special education curriculum. That's your problem. Yeah, testified and said it is inappropriate. Okay. I'm not sure. And

Mike Bloomstaffagain, I don't know a lot about Linda Moodville, but Orton-Gillingham is not considered like a specialized program. And so Linda Moodville might be like a prescriptive program. So there are some differences, I think. Like, for example, the International Dyslexia Association endorses Orton-Gillingham as a methodology or a way to teach the science of reading. And I'll also say that we're not only teaching our special educators in Orton-Gillingham, we have a number, hundreds, of general education teachers that have also been training in Orton-Gillingham. Because good reading instruction is good reading instruction, and that takes place in the general education setting, Tier 1. So we really feel as a county we're going to try to build everyone's capacity around the science of reading.

And Orton-Gillingham is a good foundation

Carolyn Pitchesfor that work. And that's probably what it is. I do think Linda Mubella is more like prescriptive.

Amit Hickmanby voiceIt's just the emphasis on decoding longer words while comprehension and meaning are not addressed.

Carolyn PitchesOkay, so there's its weakness. Okay. Now I have to look

Amit Hickmanby voiceit up

Carolyn Pitchesbecause I haven't heard Linda Mubella. I've heard of Morton. We have, at the school that I work at, we have both. We have two reading specialists. One's trained in Linda Moodville, and one's trained in Morton Gilliam. And I guess I probably should spend some time asking them why. Kim is trained in Linda Moodville. She's math, so she does. Okay. All right, does anybody have anything else? Well, we really appreciate you guys coming. Who should we?

Amit Hickmanby voiceMy understanding is we do have a representative, a new representative that will be joining. Yes. Our

Kirsten Maloneystaffcharge this year is around APIB program, so it's not going to be 2E specific. I

Speaker 7was going to say we have a new one for both. We have a new one for both. Yeah.

Kirsten MaloneystaffAll right.

Speaker 3Well, thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you, Noelle. Yep. We'll be back for AI in the weeks. We have to. No one needs to know how to rate. We all have AI. Yes. That's all I love. That's all my part. He wants to tell you. This is how to rate. And the more. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't want to watch. Thank

Carolyn Pitchesyou so much. Thank you. Thank you, Noelle. Absolutely. Good to see you. Thanks. Good to see you. Yep. Thank you. I think he has a question. And did she find her at his neck? So, that's what he has. He has her. He has her. He has her.

Speaker 3Yeah,

Carolyn Pitchesno. Oh, it's

Speaker 1on the

Carolyn Pitchesother side.

Speaker 1He's looking for the trash can. Who is that?

Carolyn PitchesHow's the detail vast? That's the problem with the email. I mean, email. What do they want? I mean, we... Hey, Jeff, where was the school security person today?

Jeff BlackburnstaffI don't know. We'll find out if that's part of the afternoon. I don't know.

Carolyn PitchesThat's a good thing.

Jeff BlackburnstaffI just assume that they said action. I'm

Carolyn Pitchesgetting texts. Yeah, I'm sure you

Jeff Blackburnstaffwould. Why wouldn't you? Sure. I mean, you can imagine. Yeah.

Carolyn PitchesI mean, honestly, I only had two people ask me about it, but still, my first concern was why were they buzzed in?

Jeff BlackburnstaffThe

Carolyn Pitchesthing

Jeff Blackburnstaffis, they're not supposed to be, no matter what. The reality is, everybody's supposed to provide an ID, and they're supposed to go in the main office first. So, what happens, and then you hear a lot of rumors, is that when this person walked right by, the AP, luckily, went out and followed the individual, asking, hey, hey, hey, the whole point. Now, the after action review it, until then, I don't know. Did anybody call school

Carolyn Pitchessecurity at that moment?

Jeff BlackburnstaffI don't think. They called 911. They called 911. I don't think they called school security. Well,

Carolyn PitchesI'm saying the person in the building. Like, did somebody, I don't know how they communicate in the building. They have a lawyer. I think the

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceAP was in the office, and that's when she followed me. I

Carolyn Pitcheswas going to say, I know at Providence, their security has a desk there. We don't know is the answer. Right. Maybe we can find out though. Because I know they have the administrative assistant sitting right

Jeff Blackburnstaffthere. So

Carolyn Pitchesif the AP is going out after, should we consider that one's role is to call 911 and one's is to call the security officer?

Jeff BlackburnstaffI don't

Carolyn Pitchesknow if that happened. And

Jeff Blackburnstaffwhat they did, to your point, right, you're bringing up protocols. What the principal has said to Dan and I is that she, you know, this is an unfortunate situation, to say the least, but it allows her to reestablish, reaffirm a number of things, the security specialists, and her protocols. Now, I don't know whether or not one person immediately called 911 while the other one was trying to get a hold of somebody else. I'm not sure.

Carolyn PitchesI'm just saying, like, maybe that, especially for that school, because we do have a population that can be unpredictable.

Jeff BlackburnstaffWe've had people come up the back

Carolyn Pitchesacross that

Jeff Blackburnstaffpath. You're

Carolyn Pitchescorrect. I mean, it's always that school because of where it's located.

Amit Hickmanby voiceI do think some additional communication later in the week. What I've put a message to you, you can't put specifics of what the changes are, but that changes are going to be made, and actions to people who see it. That when you buzz in, they do not ask why you're there or anything like that. I know at KJ, you buzz in and they say, what are you here for, and there's none of that. So I think even just that little change

Carolyn Pitcheswould

Amit Hickmanby voicebe a

Carolyn Pitchesadvantage.

Amit Hickmanby voiceSo I'm expecting the school to provide these suggestions, but I would think that after, I think this was an initial communication, it was imperative that it happens, but there needs to be a follow-up for the school community to understand that there is additional steps being taken.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceSo the principal would have to go through OCCR to do it. She can't just put it out there without clearing it with them. Totally understand. I think she had already asked security to retrain the staff just based on something that happened last week.

Amit Hickmanby voiceoffice, front office.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceIt is. It is. We're in front office. We're in principal. I

Amit Hickmanby voicemean, the APs are not old. There's no formal

Jeff Blackburnstafftraining.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceShe already had

Jeff Blackburnstaffthat last week.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceThat's

Jeff Blackburnstaffalready been a half.

Amit Hickmanby voiceBut again, it doesn't need to be specifics, but something to say. We have done an action, a follow-up plan. This has happened, and we have learned from this. I think

Jeff Blackburnstaffthat's good advice, especially given what's been going on. And, you know, it's in keeping with what we had said about the communications that were sent out before this one. Because of what has been going on, because of the sense of urgency and the severity, out of an abundance of caution, I think, first of all, it calms people down a little bit more. because it lets them have more information. You know, that, hey, it didn't just happen, and we stuck our head to the table. But

Amit Hickmanby voicewe need to learn from that.

Jeff BlackburnstaffAnd that's the reality of anything we go through, is we take a look at what the good bed did different. The nice thing is, as we said, this principal, when she came in, and you heard from a seasoned front office person who ran the school, sorry, Dan. We don't run the school. But, you know, that there's no training.

Amit Hickmanby voiceThere's no training. I think this has the opportunity to become bigger than we expect it to be, being that I'm getting messages from people who aren't even at the school or in Fairfax City. Like Centerville and those places. So I do think it's worth, and Carrie's on here saying, keeping ahead of it, I will keep my eyes on it, but I have a feeling that this is going to be something that is going to be shared and I wouldn't be surprised if you all get calls from, you know. I haven't

Jeff Blackburnstaffgotten any yet, but I'm sure I will, because I got two from the last thing and one from the one before. However, that being said, please, if you get anything, let Carrie know and CC us on it, because it really helps us know the volume and the intensity, and you don't make great on that. So I'm just reiterating it because... Well, the

Amit Hickmanby voiceemail's making the rounds on Facebook right now, so lots of people are sharing it. And rightly so, it's their communication to share. Absolutely.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceBut

Amit Hickmanby voiceit's a scary thing. And I think it needs to involve that.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceShe's taken it as seriously as she deserves one or two. And I think it might be helpful for my former principal seat to, if you've got something, you can send her, like this is what people were talking about. Or send it to us and we'll send it to her. You know what I mean? I think that might be helpful. She might not have access to the same Facebook page. But

Jeff Blackburnstaffwe'll follow up with her just to make sure

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicewe're

Jeff Blackburnstaffsupporting her.

Amit Hickmanby voiceAbsolutely. She's got

Jeff Blackburnstaffa pretty good altimeter on what's, you know, and the other stuff. She's new to us, but she's not

Carolyn Pitchesnew to principals.

Jeff BlackburnstaffThat's right. Correct.

Carolyn PitchesBut we may, to everyone's point, we may need to look at getting training for office staff.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceWe are, yeah, she's on that, she was on that before this happened today, and it just hadn't happened yet. And again, this just reinforces the message

Jeff Blackburnstaffto everybody like it's serious. Yeah, and it to block people from accessing one way.

Carolyn PitchesYeah, but can I just say something? No. Well, the best of people isn't going to do, I mean,

Jeff Blackburnstaffthey're buzzing. Yeah, they would have kept this individual from going beyond the office. Now, could they have come to the office and done something? Yes. To your point, you're right. It's not the end

Carolyn Pitchesall be all to

Jeff Blackburnstaffyour

Carolyn Pitchespoint. I think that maybe part of it is not just buzzing people in or saying, please come to the office. have some sort of communication with them while they're still outside the building. So you can engage, you can tell to a degree if you're about to let somebody in your building that has no purpose in your building. Oh I'm here to make a delivery. What delivery? For who? From where? I'm here to pick up my student. Who is your student? So we

Jeff Blackburnstaffall agree. The reality is there's huge opportunities here. and the transition from you go to a high school and have somebody with five different down-to-o's pizzas at the door, someone's letting them in.

Amit Hickmanby voiceWell, it might be worth not accepting, right? The high school does not accept food deliveries. There's no reason that the elementary schools and middle schools need to. Clearly, a parent bringing their child lunch is going to be a different story, and that was the understanding, but in general, it could be a standard that food delivery services are not let in because then you are allowing anybody in.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceYeah,

Amit Hickmanby voiceI'm pretty

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicesure that

Carolyn Pitchesmaybe that's a regulation.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceThat's the

Jeff Blackburnstaffproblem with that.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceAnd

Jeff Blackburnstaffto your point, there's a lot of opportunities here. We could sit and dissect it. The clear opportunities I think and the takeaways are there needs to be training in the front office staff for sure. There needs to be a true understanding from a new principal and the supports of what the protocol and the expectations are. And the third one was the communication back up to the community that there are other things being done.

Carolyn PitchesEven a sign like above the buzzer please state your business.

Kirsten MaloneystaffSo they're

Carolyn Pitchessaying that they asked. They

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicedid ask before they came in. But what did they say? I'm bringing food to someone at lunch. And then the idea is you come in the office, you show your idea. It's just like you going to visit your kids. If you bought a Chick-fil-A You go to the office, sign in. It's a challenge to solve. Even outside the door with the kid's name

Carolyn Pitcheson

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceit,

Carolyn Pitcheswe'll

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicecome get it. But it's an open policy to go to

Amit Hickmanby voiceeat lunch with your child. You're allowed to do that.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceBut your ID should match a kid in the building. If the person had gone into the office, they would have

Amit Hickmanby voicechecked in. But they could have

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicealso

Amit Hickmanby voicechecked in on their own reason and identity and gotten a badge and not. Well,

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicethey wouldn't have a kid

Jeff Blackburnstaffregistered, though.

Amit Hickmanby voiceSo do your point about... You don't have to identify yourself with the child.

Jeff BlackburnstaffSo do your point about the idea of the little camera, too. Again, to the point of the idea of the camera. I mean, have you ever tried looking at the other camera? Yes, it's awful.

Carolyn PitchesHere's the thing. Cameras, everybody's like, oh, we need more cameras. Okay, great. We can put cameras in. You still... You know, they're just...

Jeff BlackburnstaffThey capture an event.

Carolyn PitchesThey capture an event. You can't tell who it

Jeff Blackburnstaffis

Carolyn Pitchesdefinitively. Who's watched it happen. So I think it's human error that a lot of times why this happened. Also

Amit Hickmanby voicehuman trust, right? Like

Carolyn Pitcheswe're built to be

Amit Hickmanby voicetrusting.

Carolyn PitchesEspecially

Amit Hickmanby voicein an elementary school. We need to be left. So I have one other request. It's not exactly related, but it is. Is there a possibility to reach back out to the police department to do additional? But for a while they were doing some drives up Lennon. So there's been a lot more foot traffic. I don't know what's happened in the last two to three weeks, but a lot of foot traffic back and forth from the library to like Home Depot Land Center. And so obviously this is not related to this individual, but...

Jeff BlackburnstaffYeah, and I've seen it also up 50 as well. Yeah, so just a couple more controls. I mean, when I left the football game, this guy that looked like he had been a castaway for a while was... I know, that's what you're talking about.

Amit Hickmanby voiceYeah, without a shirt on?

Jeff BlackburnstaffYeah, yeah, with the shorts and, yeah. I mean, and he was... I

Amit Hickmanby voicejust think a couple more...

Jeff BlackburnstaffRight in front.

Amit Hickmanby voicedrive

Jeff Blackburnstaffby during school time

Amit Hickmanby voiceand visibility, especially

Jeff Blackburnstaffwhen I have a school's letting out. They have been doing more of Glenn, but we can certainly make their request to the chief. I can talk to her again.

Amit Hickmanby voiceYeah,

Carolyn Pitchesit just

Jeff Blackburnstaffslowed down a little in the summer.

Carolyn PitchesI mean, I don't, I mean, to be honest, I mean, how many times have we had a homeless person try to enter the school?

Jeff BlackburnstaffWell, there's one of the homeless persons.

Carolyn PitchesThat's what I'm saying. Yes, we have a lot of homeless. I am a homeless man who lives right by my house. He's lived

Speaker 7there

Carolyn Pitchesfor

Speaker 7over a year. No,

Carolyn Pitchesmy case is going to Catherine John. I think it's

Amit Hickmanby voicemostly. That's why I said it's not related. I'm not saying this

Carolyn Pitchesis. No, I, yes. I'm just saying in general. We, we, because there seems to be. It seems like a lot of people out during the day. I don't know. It didn't used to be.

Jeff BlackburnstaffYeah, I've noticed that too.

Carolyn PitchesRight.

Speaker 7A

Carolyn Pitcheslot of people aren't having to

Speaker 7go back. They're still teleworking. Yeah,

Carolyn PitchesI don't know.

Amit Hickmanby voiceIt's just a lot of traffic. I'm down blind right now. I don't know. I'm not saying that if people are causing harm or anything like that, I just think it's a lot of people

Kirsten Maloneystaffand

Amit Hickmanby voiceso half of your eyes could be

Carolyn Pitchesthat official.

Jeff BlackburnstaffOkay.

Carolyn PitchesOkay, we have to get back on track here. Okay, because we have the CIP. Jeff. Mr. Blackburn.

Jeff BlackburnstaffThank you, Madam Chair. This is your draft

Carolyn PitchesCIP.

Jeff BlackburnstaffYeah, this evening what I'd like to do is provide the initial conversation about our draft of the capital improvement plan. some of the significant things and the one of the things that surprised me about this is that we're talking about the 26 to 30 preliminary person draft with the CIT. There are so many variables that are up in the air. My first slide. Well,

Carolyn Pitchesovercrowding isn't up in the air.

Jeff BlackburnstaffWell, that's where we're headed. This slide here that you'd seen on the opening day and in talking to the principals, is they've had, the enrollment actually has slowed down. Oh, fantastic. However, the enrollment that they got was a lot, as we all know. We're way up, and the county isn't, the county's flat. We have some opportunities there. Georgina had just been talking to me about how her enrollment is rather challenging, and I always say that's in addition to the 1,500 students that show up at this school each and every day that are from academies. And you talk about a security opportunity, that's why she's rerouted the distribution of drop-off, to make sure all of our students come in one space.

The academy has

Carolyn Pitchesalmost doubled in size since 2010.

Jeff BlackburnstaffYeah, and then it was 1,100. But, the point being, we do have that healthy problem called increased ENROLLMENT. AND WE'LL BE TALKING MORE ABOUT THIS WITH THE BUDGET COMING UP NEXT MONTH. SOME OF THE THINGS THAT CHAIR PITCHES AND I TALKED ABOUT, NOT ONLY THE ENROLLMENT AND CHECKING IN WITH THE ENROLLMENT ON A MONTHLY BASIS FOR OUR BUDGETARY REASONS, BUT SOME OTHER THINGS AS WELL.

Carolyn PitchesSO I'M MEETING WITH CARL ON THE 11TH. MR. FIRST? YES. AND SO, KAFERYN JOHNSON AND FAIRROCKS HIGH SCHOOLS, YOU KNOW, CAPACITY ISSUES are like top on my list. I want that to be on the agenda for the joint meeting. Robin Lady is also going to be in the meeting. So since she's our liaison, this will not be a new conversation between Carl and I, only it won't be Providence this time. It'll be Katherine Johnson in Fairfax, which is an old problem that we fixed that has now reared its ugly head again. this also needs to be a conversation between you and the county. I've

Jeff Blackburnstaffgot another meeting scheduled for once you can.

Carolyn PitchesI would say not even just Dr. Reed, but...

Jeff BlackburnstaffPlanning office is wrong.

Carolyn PitchesYeah. Our buildings, I don't care what I've said this for, they can have their buildings at 127 percent. in the city of Fairfax. When it gets to 100%, we're done. That's 100%.

Jeff BlackburnstaffBecause... Yeah, for the edification, that is what you just stated is important to know because Fairfax County looks at it as, oh, well, it's not really a problem until 125%. Yes, because it's

Carolyn Pitchesnot their building. But it's not their building. They don't get to decide capacity on our buildings. And what they don't understand is the wear and tear on our buildings is at a cost to our taxpayers and we don't have billions of dollars in our budget so they're they have to figure out a way to to house whatever some of their students at other buildings we're not saying they all have to go we're just saying just like we did my Fairfax Villa and that neighborhood when it was reboundary nobody was upset We had a couple of families who had kids who had already started Fairfax, and Peter worked to get them grandfathered in. And they were satisfied with that. The same, I know they say they're not doing boundary lights anymore,

or administrative changes. Well, I understand that's their policy with their buildings, but we need to keep reminding them that that's great for your buildings, not for our buildings. and whatever policy they want to use on their buildings is fine, but it's not going to be okay in our buildings. So, and I think that was a struggle for Carl and I years ago, for him to sort of understand. He didn't understand.

Jeff BlackburnstaffI think he definitely does, though, yeah.

Carolyn PitchesYeah, I mean, it takes a while, but so now we have new people.

Jeff BlackburnstaffAnd we've got a new problem.

Carolyn PitchesSo, we've got a new problem.

Jeff Blackburnstaffsignificant. It is.

Amit Hickmanby voiceAnd

Jeff Blackburnstaffthe other thing was that I reached out and just about that conversation because the RFP that was going out and they were trying to make an award on the consultant to do that annual, you know, the plan for an annual division wide boundary adjustment. So we'll keep you posted on where their status is with that. But my articulation was we have growth of 2.8% that's significant and sizable. When you're flat or you have a small road, you may be able to dilute it over a lot of different school facilities. It's not the same for us. And I said, and the bottom line is, if you don't think it's significant, and you talk to Matthew Morton, who's in the staffing, it is significant when we have that much growth that you don't.

And then I mentioned the 200 over 230-some students that you asked for that information. Yeah, 257

Carolyn Pitchesis a lot of kids.

Jeff BlackburnstaffA lot of city kids registered.

Carolyn Pitcheslogs that he gets.

Jeff BlackburnstaffSo the next slide is really just to talk about just some of the general maintenance items that we have, the roofing, paving, painting, HVC, concrete repairs, and carpet and tile replacement. We continue to do those projects, and Dan's been doing an outstanding job and will be, when he gets a facility update, the next one, we'll talk about which schools and how we're phasing it. And I know the questions will come up about that about you know how come it's taken us so long to do all of them and it's really just the phase of the disruption of how much we can get done under the summers and how much we can get done during the school year the next slide really shows what we budget for those items in the top

portion you'll see um america 26 proposed 50 000 for uh unforeseen maintenance because we have had as our facilities aged and as the facility condensation assessment pointed out more and going south. Just

Carolyn Pitchesfor anybody who may listen, you're talking about things like the water heaters. Correct.

Jeff BlackburnstaffOr heaters in general. Or fans in bathrooms. Or fans in rooms like this. That we've all experienced tonight. I didn't plan that, but on the same token, yes. Absolutely correct. And the carpet that's been put down in here was a part of that replacement. They're replacing the squares, much more efficient. The ability that if something gets stained or scarred or ripped, Take one square out. Anyway, same thing with HVAC, painting, paving. Painting has been a huge focus for all of us. I know the chair has, every year, goes around the schools to make sure that the curb appeal is, well, I say that complimentary because that, well, I'm the same person who does the same thing. And I do it really, and you know, the fire marshal requirement on the lanes, fire lanes, outstanding.

I know, that is horrible. It's awful. Did it

Speaker 7change to red?

Jeff BlackburnstaffRed. Red. So red. And everywhere.

Amit Hickmanby voiceI know it's everywhere. It looks

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceridiculous. It's very visible.

Jeff BlackburnstaffI told you I wrote the colors when we talked about the color of the press box. So I'll remain in that vein. I'm okay.

Carolyn PitchesI thought the press box was beautiful.

Jeff BlackburnstaffPress box is beautiful. We've got nothing but compliments about it. It's

Carolyn Pitchestemporary.

Jeff BlackburnstaffIt is temporary.

Carolyn PitchesIt is

Jeff Blackburnstafftemporary. Correct. Thanks for the information. Now, once we get down into the other projects, we included the ones that are currently ongoing. The orchestra pit, we've asked for an updated, we've got a revised estimate on it, but we're still working with FCPS on that project. The main basketball stanchions, there was a backorder, some of the parks we're going to be getting those scheduled to be put in. and then what we talked about before, about the back order on those security cameras. Those are more close to being implemented and done than the other two that I just mentioned.

Carolyn PitchesNow, are they, I know like at KJ we have some on the exterior of the building. Are these mainly interior or exterior? Both. Correct. Okay.

Jeff BlackburnstaffThen the other items, the school here had requested all that turfing out there to come back to us and talk to us about the softball field. The softball, prior softball coach had left, they've got a new one in, and that coach says, yes, you'd like to have it turfed in some capacity, however, whatever kind of turf was acceptable.

Carolyn PitchesAnd we are kind of tied to Title IX.

Jeff BlackburnstaffThat is an option of the reality of the situation as well.

Carolyn PitchesRight, I mean, we did it for the baseball field. Yeah.

Jeff BlackburnstaffWhich was a need

Carolyn Pitchesbecause of flooding,

Jeff BlackburnstaffBut again, our intent was never to circumvent Title IX. We looked at it as a parity issue from the beginning and so forth. But anyway, that's the placeholder in there for it. Then we have additional security enhancements because they keep coming up of $80,000. Hallway lighting at KJF, the middle school, because they need to be, the fixtures in there are dim, dull and outdated. Was there

Carolyn Pitchesfrom what, when was the building built? 60 or 61?

Jeff BlackburnstaffYeah.

Carolyn PitchesOr no, it was earlier. It was in the 50s, I believe it was built. Because the city became, it used to be a Fairfax County building.

Jeff BlackburnstaffRight.

Carolyn PitchesNo, they didn't. So if you look at the old part of the building, I don't know if you remember what the old building looked like. No. So I worked in that building when it was the old building. Peter Noonan was principal and Scott Poole was assistant principal. the old hallways where the lockers, the old lockers are, still have the old lighting above the lockers. Instead of having the above lighting.

Jeff BlackburnstaffIt's an opportunity.

Carolyn PitchesIt's pretty

Jeff Blackburnstaffbad.

Carolyn PitchesIt looks awful, but it's

Jeff Blackburnstaffalso

Carolyn Pitchesvery dark.

Jeff BlackburnstaffSo if anybody wants to see what the age, I can't pull it up right now because my internet keeps going around. but the CIP FCPS's CIP in the back appendix lists all of the school facilities the age where the renovations are with the square footage are for those buildings so but yeah it's been a long time yeah I want

Carolyn Pitchesto say it's that building was built in the late 50s because the city became a city in 61

Jeff Blackburnstaff61 62 so

Carolyn Pitcheswe those were Fairfax County schools right and we purchased the building from the county.

Amit Hickmanby voiceMadam Chair? Can I go back to security enhancements? What are we doing there?

Jeff BlackburnstaffWell, we don't have any specific plans for it. Because you take a look at...

Amit Hickmanby voiceIs that the vested pools?

Jeff BlackburnstaffNo. It's for our purposes. For example, after what happened in Georgia, one of the things we were asked to do was we were going to be providing that. I don't think those demands are going to go away. If we can get those... Push the immediately alerts, yes. There are many different types of systems that are out there, whether it's detection systems or so forth. We use an app at my school. And we didn't have any money for any of this, so that's a placeholder for that.

Carolyn PitchesThank you.

Jeff BlackburnstaffAnd then we have restroom entrance enhancements. Is that

Carolyn Pitchesfor the urinals?

Jeff BlackburnstaffNo, that's for, we're doing that currently. And I don't know where we are. We'll verify that update when we...

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceYou're welcome to do an app. We're still waiting for the estimate from the outside folks. It should be good this week. I thought it was coming last week.

Carolyn PitchesSo are we doing it between every urinal or are we just... No, we're doing a couple in each room. Okay. Go to

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicethe very end. Basically on either end. Then the code part about the width is... Right,

Carolyn Pitchesright, right.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceI remember you and I... You

Carolyn Pitchesand I were in the boys' bathroom. Yes, right

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceover here.

Carolyn PitchesAnalyzing urinals. That's right. That's right.

Jeff BlackburnstaffAwesome. Yeah, so anyway, that's what that is. So this is not

Amit Hickmanby voicethat.

Jeff BlackburnstaffNo, this is the entrance of the school here where we tried getting doors, and you heard Dr. A talk about when she's trying to manage control during lunch, for example, she has to put a couple of those fold-up tables in the doorway of a couple that she doesn't want to have students to have access to because they've had some issues with it in the past. We can't just easily go ahead and put a new door on, put the frame that's there, the frame, the shape, the concrete walls kind of go back on one side, set back and forward on the other. So we put a placeholder in there to go ahead and address this.

Amit Hickmanby voiceEnhancements is a little misleading. It makes it sound beautiful. It's really actually a security, it's also another security concern if we

Jeff Blackburnstaffthink about it. Well, actually technically, you know, it's true. Maybe they give a different word other

Carolyn Pitchesthan additions. Find a fancier word for additions or something. A

Amit Hickmanby voicerestroom It's not an enhancement. It's not making it look pretty.

Jeff BlackburnstaffIt's being

Amit Hickmanby voiceused specifically

Carolyn Pitchesfor... How about security updates and restroom entrance updates? Because they're not enhancements. It was not an enhancement.

Jeff BlackburnstaffI

Amit Hickmanby voiceknow I'm being picky, but for those who pull it up on the website, I think would be

Carolyn Pitcheshelpful to... You mean anybody other than us? I was going to say.

Jeff BlackburnstaffYeah, the reason why we used enhancements is because in addition to the doors in here, it was to help with the stadium, restaurants.

Amit Hickmanby voiceI was going to ask that that's part of this project. It

Jeff Blackburnstaffis, yeah. So, and that's why I said enhancements. But update's fine.

Carolyn PitchesUpdates. Yeah,

Jeff Blackburnstaffgot it.

Carolyn PitchesWhile we're on the concession stand, so today was, you know, yes, what was today the day there was a speed on or yesterday? Sunday was 15. Yeah, Sunday was the 15th, so today. I don't know if you

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicedrove out there today, but it's

Jeff Blackburnstaffpretty much all cleaned up. They're still punchless. But yeah, to the point, they have to have the inspection. But the

Carolyn Pitchesproject is technically complete.

Jeff BlackburnstaffI'll wait until the inspection.

Carolyn PitchesOkay, but they're not actively working on

Jeff Blackburnstaffit. They're waiting for the inspection. There were people that were inside, and I presume they were trying to preclude the amount of punchless items they would have. For example, there was an electrician. She came out of there. I'd seen her working in there before. And I don't think she was just in there looking around. I don't know what she was doing. There were people in

Amit Hickmanby voicethere all weekend.

Jeff BlackburnstaffYeah, we knew that was going to happen.

Amit Hickmanby voiceAnd today's the guy.

Carolyn PitchesAnd the old concession stand.

Jeff BlackburnstaffYeah, that's the...

Carolyn PitchesThat is

Jeff Blackburnstaffalso included in the restroom enhancements. So,

Carolyn Pitchesyeah, $40,000 isn't going to get a squat on that concession stand restroom. So,

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicethis is just to move the door to the other part. It's not a renovation of the building. It's just to move the view or so you don't walk around the later. To the back.

Carolyn PitchesSo, they're just going to extend, like, make a little hallway that goes like this. Now, okay. But those restrooms?

Jeff BlackburnstaffYeah, if you want a renovation of those restrooms, that's the purpose of

Carolyn Pitchesthis building. We just don't have leaking toilets. I mean, poor stall. Yeah, like where I sit and my head is like, hey, how about that?

Jeff BlackburnstaffSo if you would prefer, and frankly, we can go off on a men's bathroom there.

Carolyn PitchesI just, $40,000 wouldn't renovate my bathroom. I thought this

Jeff Blackburnstaffwas already

Carolyn Pitchesin the conversation.

Amit Hickmanby voiceThis is a long ways off. This is FY26. I thought it was actually something we've already... It keeps saying like waiting on something.

Jeff BlackburnstaffWell, that waiting on was just to do the entrance because of the safety around the back. It was not ever to renovate the entire lower area. Well,

Carolyn Pitchesthe original idea was that that was going to be renovated. There

Jeff Blackburnstaffwas no money for it, but that's nice that we... But what I'll do is I'll go ahead and revise the amount to include a renovation. And I think it'll probably be a general school renovation now costs about $160,000 for a main group bathroom.

Carolyn PitchesOkay. Is it possible to replace the toilets? Okay. And the... Stalls. Thank you. The stalls. I'm

Amit Hickmanby voicealso a little concerned about the safety of a long hallway walking back. I don't know that that's going to relieve our safety concerns.

Carolyn PitchesI have no idea. What we need to do, no offense to all of you that boys, I said this before, we need to reverse and we need to put the girls in the boys bathroom.

Jeff BlackburnstaffWith boys,

Carolyn Pitchesyes, but I hate

Jeff Blackburnstaffto do that. What I hear is we need to design a renovation for the bathroom. That's what I'm hearing.

Amit Hickmanby voiceWe need a safer

Jeff Blackburnstaffbecause we need this, we need that, we need this, we need that. We need to sit down and have an architect hear exactly what we want to do so we can develop an estimate for what it will cost. I can put an approximation in here, but that's what we need to do.

Amit Hickmanby voiceSo is it worth waiting to see how much foot traffic it alleviates to open once this concession up here is open? Because I'm not sure that

Jeff Blackburnstaffit's going

Amit Hickmanby voiceto alleviate all the

Jeff Blackburnstaffrest. I think based upon what I heard, it needs to be done concurrently, no matter what we're going to need to do. When you mentioned stalls, when you mentioned the urinals. Is there a way to

Carolyn Pitchesbust through that wall that separates the boys and the girls? Okay.

Jeff BlackburnstaffI'm sorry. Easy life expression. No,

Carolyn PitchesI'm not saying have the boys and the girls go on the same

Jeff Blackburnstaffbathroom. But

Carolyn Pitcheswe did get, and we still have another single one. Okay. single

Amit Hickmanby voice-use.

Carolyn PitchesWhy don't

Jeff Blackburnstaffwe get... Yeah,

Carolyn PitchesI mean is there a way, Dan?

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceIs

Carolyn Pitchesthere a way?

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceThere's a way.

Carolyn PitchesI know there's a way. There's a will,

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicethere's a way.

Carolyn PitchesBecause ultimately people who are sitting on the visitors, I know we're not building these things for visitors, but people who are sitting on the visitor's side have to walk around the track and up. So we should think, you know, We are alleviating some of the safety issues for our kids, but at the same time, I'm just going to say it, that's a very, that bathroom, I'm going to go back to when I was in high school. If I was going to do something, where am I going? I'm going to the girls' bathroom that's around the back that nobody can see.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceSo this plan closes off that back hallway and it makes the entrance on the side between where the power lines are. Right, I get that. you'd be entering from the field side and you'd go in a door right there. So you wouldn't go to the back of the building at all. We need to renovate the whole space.

Carolyn PitchesRight. I'm just saying there's got to be a way to if we're going to build a hallway, like can't we just...

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceWe wouldn't be building a hallway, it's just changing the door.

Carolyn PitchesLet's just ask an architect to look at it and see if there's a somewhat easy fix to our problem? Well we have

Jeff Blackburnstaffdone that with

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceour counterparts. That's what we're waiting for. Our support team from FCPS. And then this other contractor team also. So we're going to get

Amit Hickmanby voicesome information. Maybe some questions about lighting because it gets very dark and I don't believe that I think the upper concession stand is going to be used by the parents and the lower, the children love hanging out down there. Yeah we definitely

Carolyn Pitchesneed lighting.

Amit Hickmanby voiceWe're apparently now on the turf fields. That's the new place people are.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceSo we know the cost of one of those concession stand restrooms. Yes, we do. So it depends on how many you want here. I know.

Carolyn PitchesI think ultimately lighting is necessary down there. I mean a lot of lighting. Those are things

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicethat we've talked about.

Carolyn PitchesBelow that place up, like you're not going back there to hide and do another thing. Sure, yeah.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceIf we close off the back gate altogether though it becomes less of an issue. Yeah,

Carolyn Pitchesbut you can't close off the back gate because we use that for handicap entrance.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceI think the handicap entrance would be on the same

Carolyn Pitchesside. You

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicego in, I think it would serve us better to look at it than to talk about it I think.

Carolyn PitchesYeah, let's do that. If you enter

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicefrom the field side and you wouldn't have to

Carolyn Pitchesgo to the back gate. Let's do that. We'll just be underneath the bleachers.

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceSo what

Jeff Blackburnstaffwe're going to do if you

Carolyn Pitchespurpose is... I'll meet you over there at one point. Let's do that. Okay. Let's go

Dan Phillipsstaffby voicewith the journals.

Jeff BlackburnstaffWe'll pick

Dan Phillipsstaffby voiceanother

Jeff Blackburnstaffvisit to the journals. I

Speaker 7want to go. I've never been in the short stall.

Jeff BlackburnstaffSo the purpose of the CIP, we'll put a placeholder in there that will be for new journals, new fixtures, partitions, lighting. We've already got something planned for the door, and that was the 2000 or whatever that was. Okay, and

Carolyn Pitcheslighting. lighting, right?

Jeff BlackburnstaffYou got that? Right. So what I'll do is I'll revise this number and it'll be up beyond $325,000 just so you know as my placeholder. Is

Carolyn Pitchesthere somewhere else we can take it for?

Jeff BlackburnstaffI was going to say that.

Carolyn PitchesActually my question

Amit Hickmanby voicerelates to that. So roof, quarantine, and prepare. So I'm concerned about this timeline because let's say the bond doesn't pass. We probably have other priorities that we're going to need to put in right we have to look at those things at the elementary schools that were that were on the critical priority needs so to prove a cip on november 4th makes me real nervous

Carolyn Pitcheswith

Amit Hickmanby voicethe november 5th election so i don't think that's great timing and vice versa the bond passes the need for the addition you know the 260,000

Carolyn Pitchesthat's really the warranties and for

Amit Hickmanby voicerepairs it might be but if we're going to be replacing the That might happen.

Carolyn PitchesThat's not, Catherine Johnson has the same warranties. This

Amit Hickmanby voiceis just warranties.

Jeff BlackburnstaffAnd

Carolyn PitchesI don't

Jeff Blackburnstaffknow. It's repair based upon what's needed to maintain the warranty. So, but to your point, Ms. Hickman, to your point, the timing of this, and if you take a look at these needs, the debt financing component may impact our CIP. So I'm trying to thread a needle again, and I was looking at the amount of $3 million being potentially too much for our colleagues at the city. Meaning, I would have to go ahead and take the softball field, and we had a consideration of this, and bifurcate it from 26 and 27. Because it may take me two years. The city isn't

Carolyn Pitchesgoing to see our CIP until after the election.

Jeff BlackburnstaffExactly.

Amit Hickmanby voiceI think we should wait to approve the CIP until we have the election.

Jeff BlackburnstaffWhen,

Carolyn Pitcheswell, it would be the day before the election.

Amit Hickmanby voiceIt's very bad timing is what I'm trying to say.

Carolyn PitchesWe could reschedule that meeting.

Speaker 3Or

Carolyn Pitchesinstead of having. Reschedule the November

Speaker 3meeting? We don't have to say it yet.

Carolyn PitchesWe'd already talk. Instead of having it Monday, yeah. Before election. Before the election. We've always had, I mean, the funny thing is we've always had a meeting the day before an election. We're asked by other board members to do it. But in the spirit of the CIV, maybe it would be better if we could switch it to the first and third to the second and third Mondays. I think the second is better. It's Veterans Day. Isn't it? No, on Tuesday? Veterans Day is on Monday? Monday, November 11th. Will we do Tuesday?

Speaker 3I think I have to check for space and such.

Amit Hickmanby voiceWe can have it in high school. I just think it would be better for us to see what the results are before we say yes. Because that will give

Speaker 3us a week to

Carolyn Pitchesreadjust. So normally

Speaker 3it's the 4th. So now we would do the 12th.

Carolyn PitchesBecause next Monday is the election day.

Jeff BlackburnstaffI have too many board member checkers.

Carolyn PitchesI won't

Speaker 7be

Carolyn Pitchesthere.

Jeff BlackburnstaffThe two I have, I know won't be there. It's not

Speaker 7just you. I know, right. You're right.

Jeff BlackburnstaffYou don't know how

Speaker 7many times

Jeff BlackburnstaffI've received that. You accepted that one. I didn't

Carolyn Pitcheshave a job.

Jeff BlackburnstaffThere we go.

Carolyn PitchesAll right.

Jeff BlackburnstaffSharing the love now. So we're

Carolyn Pitchesgoing to look at that.

Jeff BlackburnstaffYeah.

Carolyn PitchesSo I think that I've.

Jeff BlackburnstaffBut it's an excellent point to the point of the body. The timing of this is, and that's why I was mentioning it may totally be good. So since this

Carolyn Pitchesis a draft, we can put all this information down.

Jeff BlackburnstaffAnd the feedback's been good about the bathrooms, et cetera.

Carolyn PitchesYeah,

Jeff Blackburnstaffbut the

Carolyn Pitchesbathroom's down there.

Jeff BlackburnstaffYeah.

Carolyn PitchesSo it also has. Nothing else.

Jeff BlackburnstaffI did not know. I have not been in the woman's. It's

Carolyn Pitchesfantastic.

Jeff BlackburnstaffLuxurious. The men's is less than well. I know well. I mean, I'm

Carolyn Pitchesnot saying this. Oh, you haven't been in that

Amit Hickmanby voicewoman's

Carolyn Pitchesbathroom? Let's put it this way. I can see over the

Jeff Blackburnstaffstalls. That's what it is.

Carolyn PitchesSo the best in every time the graduation and all the FCPS people come, the women go in there. Becky's face this year was low. Becky's like,

Speaker 3oh. Like,

Carolyn Pitchesyeah, welcome. She had

Amit Hickmanby voicethis look of pure terror on her face. Because if you're standing up and they're like, you could be like, hey. Yeah,

Carolyn Pitchesbut the sinks were like, you can be for low.

Speaker 7It's like maybe. I don't know if you made it. I was going to say

Carolyn Pitchesthe

Speaker 7toilets are low, too, yes.

Carolyn PitchesIt's literally a first graders bachelor's. It's hilarious. I don't know what happens. It's like this is for high school kids.

Speaker 3No.

Jeff BlackburnstaffWell, I guess that was the intent was to disrupt the visitors that would come and play against us to give us the extra added advantage. Really? Anyhow.

Carolyn PitchesSo moving into the

Speaker 312th, you think that's enough time? Because that will give us a week from

Jeff Blackburnstaffthe election. Well, public hearings, there's things that we also have had.

Speaker 3Well, yeah, I mean, we can extend that. Because

Carolyn Pitcheswhen do we go? Is it December we go to council with it? Or is it January?

Jeff Blackburnstaffcommission and the council's inviting but that's uh when

Carolyn Pitchesis it i

Jeff Blackburnstaffdid but i don't have any connection

Carolyn Pitchesi think it's sharper i have i tried every which way i

Jeff Blackburnstaffhave nothing

Carolyn Pitchesbetween

Jeff Blackburnstaffthat and the heat

Carolyn Pitcheswhat's going on

Jeff Blackburnstaffmy germanized why is

Carolyn Pitchesit hot in

Jeff Blackburnstaffhere well that's believe me So there's two things. Well.

Carolyn PitchesOkay, anyway. We

Jeff Blackburnstaffhave

Carolyn Pitchestwo of them on. I got a team. Yeah, let's go. It just has fun. Yeah,

Jeff Blackburnstaffso we will go ahead and make those revisions as you send them the last slide. And then we'll look at the calendar as well.

Carolyn PitchesAnd

Jeff Blackburnstaffthen the last slide really just says, you know, the timing. Right, we all know this. We know this slide. So that, Madam Chairman, concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Carolyn PitchesThank you for telling

Jeff Blackburnstaffyou to

Carolyn Pitchesgo back to the drawing board.

Jeff BlackburnstaffWhich is fun, and I think it'll happen a couple times, especially if, yeah, given one of its mentioned.

Carolyn PitchesOkay. There's nothing else before the board. I will, okay, I'm going to adjourn the meeting in April. All right. Do

Speaker 7we do the budget in December or January?

Jeff BlackburnstaffDecember, but January becomes the...

Speaker 7I'm trying to put that in my head.