Buddy. The September 9 work session is called to order at 01:10PM. Mister Frisch has submitted a written request to attend this morning's meeting virtually due to a personal conflict as he has a work related commitment. He's located in the Providence District in Fairfax. Mister Frisch, can you please check your audio and video? We can see you. Just check your audio, please. Hello. Sorry. There was all those in favor of approving mister Frish's request? That is unanimous with all those at the table. Mister Frish, please check your audio and video. Hello again? If you're we can't hear you.
That's on your end. I'm talking. Can you hear me? I can't hear you. Mister Frish, we have Lanson on working on it, Tim. So Okay. It'll be a second. If If the clerks could let us know when it's ready to test, we'll test them. Mister Frisch, we'll just put you on it later on. Alright. Before we begin, we just certify our closed meetings. So in order to comply with section 2.2 dash three seven one two d of the code of Virginia, it is necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a closed meeting on 09/09/2025 to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted
from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convene the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by the board during the meeting. Do I have a motion? Miss lady, do I have a second? Mister McAlveen, all those in favor? Mister McAlveen, miss lady, doctor Anderson, mister McDaniel, miss Anderson, miss Dixit, miss Saint John Cunningh, mister Moon, and myself, all those opposed abstaining? Miss Marin, did you oh, miss Marin also approved. So that I approved as well.
Mister. Thank you. And mister Frisch. And mister Frisch. Thank you. And mister Frisch as well. So I will now call on doctor Reed. If you'd like to present on a budget communications plan, we do have a quick, slideshow that I would like to do first, if that's okay. Then we'll turn to you just to kind of set the stage for the board. It's a three slides, so it won't take long, but I just wanted to set the stage a little bit for our board as to what the expectations are today. So if we could pull the presentation up. Thank you. So today is our first budget committee work session of the year. We're starting early as per board request from the last work session before our, recess.
The purpose of today's meeting, staff have been working very, very hard on a draft communications plan and, plan for greater collaboration with our stakeholders and our board of supervisors. And so that is what we are looking at today for to give feedback. Next slide, please. Janet, next slide, please. Thank you. Just for an FYI, this is the current budget calendar for this year. It is it's been shared previously, but just as it's here on the slides in case you need it, we can always add to this if we need to, but this is the current budget calendar. Next slide, please. Thank you. So just to frame the conversation, today's discussion points, there is no decision for today.
We're gonna get feedback from the board on the budget communications plan for staff so they can make any tweaks or changes as needed. We'll talk about ideas for collaboration with the board of supervisors, and we can also talk about budget advocacy at state and federal levels, and that will include conversations around the uncertainty at the federal level. So that is all I have. I just wanted to set the stage for today. Doctor Reed, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, Jen. You can remove the slideshow. Thank you. Thank you, miss Sizemore Heizer. And I appreciate that, we're gonna work very hard this year on a a process,
to come in with a budget to continue to support the world class education that we provide here in Fairfax County Public Schools. The team along with, miss Dixit and miss Sizemore Heizer have been working on ways to improve our collaboration and perhaps better tell our success stories, to partner with our community, our PTAs, our educators, our staff, our board of supervisors, and our state delegation. So I'm gonna turn the presentation over to our chief finance officer, Lee Burden, and
our chief engagement and experience officer, Lisa Hall, and they can introduce other staff with them. And, we can review the communications plan. And then, really, what we're hoping is to have a board discussion and include board comments and feedback as we refine the plan moving forward. So appreciate this opportunity. So miss Hall and miss Burton, please. Yeah. Again, I'm Lee Burton, CFO, and I have with me Alice Wigginton, budget director. Good afternoon. I'm Lisa Youngblood Hall, chief experience and engagement officer, and beside me I have executive
director of communications, Beth Bizzioli. Her team did a great deal of, work and research with Lee's team, working on the communications plan. Again, I you know, in echoing doctor Reed, this early start allows us to, educate our community, even earlier to, make sure that our community understands the budget, understands, so much of of what we do to build the budget. So, this communications plan will talk about, how the budget is built, how FCPS prepare
compares to other large organizations, and how all of the FCPS community can benefit whether families have children in the district or not, just how, the work that we do in FCPS can benefit the community. So, I'm going to turn it over to Beth Visioli now to talk a little bit about the communications plan. Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here today, and I appreciate, the collaboration with our budget chair and vice chair on the communications plan. I'm also really excited this year that we are starting this work a little bit
sooner. I think it gives us a better opportunity to ground the conversation, to build up to the point when we're gonna have to make some decisions about the budget. Right now is the time where we spend building that strong foundation. And I think at the beginning of the plan, you'll see that arc of the storytelling because I think we really need to be grounded in an understanding of who we are as an organization, what our budget looks like, how we spend our budget dollars, what are the implications of that. And as we get closer to the budget season and decisions around the budget, then
we have a strong foundation with our community, and understanding around FCPS's budget. And then, you know, once we get more information about what the budget's gonna look like, then we can have those conversations with our community about choices that we may or may not have to make about the budget. So with that, I will turn it back over. Thank you. So board members of the budget communication plan was emailed out last Thursday to the board, and it's also posted on board docs as of last Thursday. So, unless doctor unless you would like us to walk through section by section from
staff, I was thinking we could open up the board conversation to have as much time for board conversation as possible. So if you wanna sort of talk, we'll start with rounds of three minutes and then go to two minutes for go back. So, we'll start with mister Moon. Thank you, madam chair. Just a couple of questions to begin with. Doctor Reed, looking at the current budget calendar, the very first line I see from June to December 2025, FCPS conducts internal program internal program reviews and gather community and
employee feedback. When you say community feedback, what are you referring to? So I think I'll turn that over to our team. And I think, essentially, as we have more information, one of the examples, tomorrow night is our first family vision quad meeting. We had our kickoff, last week, and we have budget on the first round of the family quad vision meetings, which are two parents from every school in the school division. So that will be one group, for example, that'll provide feedback on budget initiatives.
I know our PTA, has asked for, a budget presentation and to be able to provide feedback. I think, whatever the board sort of comes to here also, we may end up have more having more feedback. So I think it's a number of different channels. So are you expecting a board or board members who also provide you with avenues of collecting community feedback, or is that gonna be just your own for your needs
going out and collecting the community feedback? Just wanted to see where where our roles might be in this community feedback. Yes, sir. I think that's what we're talking about firming up as part of the conversation today. This is something we've put in the plan as really, we need to have the feedback by those dates to have input into the budget, because at some point, I actually have to prepare the budget that's Sure. Is the needs based budget required by the statute in Virginia. So, I think that part of today's discussion can inform, how we want to do
that and how we, are connected to that. We had a number of budget sort of town hall meetings that happen later in the spring. I think our feeling was we need to do those earlier. Earlier. And that was, I know, part of our conversation last spring. So I think that that's, you know, how we partner to do that, I think, is still open, and I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts and your colleagues' thoughts about that. Okay. Next next one has to do with I guess, this is our draft plan on
page number eight. Sorry about my voice. Even softer than usual. This one is one, two, three, four, five, fifth bullet point. FCPS schools implement general based budget. Would you explain to us for public how our schools implement general based budgets? I think that I'll turn to miss Burden in terms of our history here in Fairfax, but, obviously, it's looking at priorities and budgeting from the ground up would be a general term for zero based budgeting.
But, miss Burden, perhaps you have the history here in, Fairfax County. Yeah. It's, it's all about the enrollment projections because we don't just roll over all of the staffing at each school location into the next year as their base budget. We recalculate based on all of the projected on the projected enrollment as to how many teachers they need, how many counselors, all of the staffing standard items. So we build that from a zero base every single year when the enrollment projections
are completed, for the next year's upcoming budget proposal. Okay. I think it's, I think that there may be a members in the community who may define a general based budgeting in different way. You know, for example, they may use SOQ as the baseline. And whatever more we do provide for any programs, whether whether we when we do general based budget implementation or program review, we ever look at it that way.
So I think we could probably use the term in multiple ways. Sorry. But I do think you could take it from the very narrow SOQ because I know Fairfax County Public Schools and other divisions, honestly, in the Commonwealth fund more positions in the SOQs. But that certainly is a place we could start and say, if we only did the minimum, right, we only funded the positions allocated, Here's what it would cost. Right? And then because, over time, our collective bargaining agreements, our regulations, our policies, our community
expectations expect these things that adds these costs. So I think that's certainly not a question. Whether you feel it's worth doing that exercise, show the public that why and how we are going above and beyond SOQ. And that is why we are requesting this much of budget trans you know, funding transfer from county and state and etcetera. I think that there that would probably, be an instructive exercise because we actually have
class sizes that generally are better than what the SOQ staffing sizes are. In fact, we have positions the SOQ doesn't even recognize. So I think that could be an instructive practice. K. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Merritt? Yeah. This is fantastic. Thank you to my colleagues and the superintendent and her team. I love seeing the different offices here together at the table because everything we're doing is connected. And so, yes, we need this. We need this tactical plan, and I think it's awesome that our board is looking to do this because we could do a lot of things, but we have to
do the highest leverage things. I think for sure we need to continue to tell the story and build the knowledge and understanding of where we're at and those opportunities, you know, and as I said, what aren't we doing and continuing to highlight what other places are doing and say, well, we want the best in Fairfax as well. I'd like to say that I believe our audience, our number one audience, are is the taxpayers. Those are the people who we are asking time and again to pay taxes and fund this incredible public investment.
They also happen to be voters, who keep us accountable, and I think that, you know, at any given time, since we have only a third of our families with children in the school division, we really do have to be sure that the public understands the great value that they're getting. I mean, just for instance, Western High School, we saved over $200,000,000 of projected cost on that, and we need to show that we are savvy and we are frugal and we are very careful about how we invest, every single dollar. I'd say the next biggest audience are businesses.
We've long said that businesses move here for our public schools. Now we know that capital, real estate has not been as high in occupancy as we'd like. The federal, industry is under a big, into lots of challenges right now. So how do we really are are we sure that businesses are looking to F. C. P. S. As the reason to locate their businesses here? We say that, but is it true? I think we need to understand that and, and I think the board of supervisors could be our partners in that.
I actually think the board of supervisors and our state elected officials are the next most important audience. We I you know, we've we've worked to reopen dialogue and, you know, we've even gotten a little change in the calendar to have our joint budget meeting in December and not two days before Thanksgiving. I'd actually, in another term, when I come back, I'd really like to look at this calendar as a way to how can we build in, just like with this communications plan, more time for very specific work? You know, looking at when the county executive presents the advertised budget, a week later
we're scheduled to adopt ours, And that does not set us up for real working together, especially when we have two new joint committees, one on facility review and one on technology, that aren't going to do their deliverables until March. So there's a lot of stuff coming together, and we also know we have the legislative work. So I would love if we could talk more about how we're gonna put this work forward. I think a lot of the what is here. I think so and and how as well is. But let's expand it out and really communicate more with the board of supervisors how
to make this work. I'll take a go bag. You on the list. Miss Anderson followed by doctor Anderson. I just wanted to start off by saying thank you to staff and to our budget team. This is what I love about this is this is the start towards a blueprint of telling the story of what actually happens in our division. And so I think that it's extremely important that we that we show the things that we're doing and how amazing they are. So I am extremely, excited about about those breadcrumbs throughout.
I do think that this is a very robust plan, which I think is important, but I would be remiss to not focus on JLARC. I think that we are in a pivotal moment right now that we could potentially capitalize, particularly as things change at the state level potentially, that we need to make sure that we're working hard to identify those those things, that have already been tried related to JLARC and not successful under the current governor. But I do think that we are we are in a moment that we must focus on that pretty strongly right now, as we move forward.
So I just wanted to say thank you for all the work. And then I did wanna point out the same thing that my colleague pointed out on page 18, that our joint meeting with the board of supervisors has been moved back a week. So I am grateful for their willingness to work with us on our schedule. So thank you. Thank you. Doctor Anderson? Thank you. I I wanna echo what miss Marin shared regarding our audience. Our audience who are taxpayers are not necessarily parents, so they don't have the regular communication or the regular experience of what takes place in our schools.
And all throughout this document, there are pieces that include the community. And this is not necessarily a question at you, doctor Reed, but I'd love to hear your thinking as well as others. And I'm also thinking, how do we bring in the community into, I can't remember the page right now. I think page nine into our budget priorities. What could that potentially look like? How do we operationalize this? Because up until this point, just to be truthful, the community has shared that they don't understand our budget because it's a big budget.
And it it may not be as transparent to them as we would like it to be, and this is something that I've articulated at the financial planning e l for at least two years. How do we find a place where we can distill down all of these things into chunks that can be accessed by individuals who are looking to be informed? I I think last year, the addition of, I guess, the the hot link feature that is now available with the budget for people to search for different things will
be helpful. But, I just wanna also set the, expectation. What are we looking? How are we going to operationalize getting some input from the community regarding budget priorities, and how will we treat that input? I don't know if that's yet been a discussion of the budget team and staff. I will say that one of the things we've discussed is making sure that we're clear with community members who don't have children currently in the schools. And many community members have children who've graduated from Fairfax.
Some community members have children yet to go, to Fairfax. Some have grandchildren. Some have nieces, nephews. Some have no children. Right? So one of the things we are doing is I'm speaking I've spoken to a Rotary Club and a Chamber of Commerce in the last two weeks, really about a number of things with regard to Fairfax County Public Schools, but also our budget and JLARC and the funding challenges we've had. And in many of these types of meetings, we have folks who are not, parents.
Right? They're community members or business owners. So I think that we're gonna continue our, attendance at, Chamber and Rotary, and other community meetings. I think there are other, ways in which we're engaging the community that are being contemplated, and that's part of today's conversation. Right? Also to get feedback from you as a board, what, channels, what avenues, are you feeling would be most effective? In that way, that will channel our energy, as a team.
Sure. And just in response to that, I think initially, all of us as board members, we have easy access to the PTAs and the PTOs. Again, that speaks to individuals with kids in our schools. But we also have some access and the board of supervisors to the civic associations, to the homeowners associations. Could we package some sort of presentation so that we can each go out and do this in the different corners of our districts and, of course, with the at large members? Because there are hundreds of such associations in the division in Fairfax County.
That could be a way of getting out the information because for individuals who are on fixed incomes, which a lot of Fairfax County is, or have, suffered the impact of what's happening with the federal government. Whenever they're hearing that the schools are requiring more dollars, they don't want to hear it because it could be for a number of reasons. I won't even go into that. But building kind of some education with that group, I think, would be helpful. So let me just kinda wrap this up in a thought. Could we have some whatever it is that we land on, it could it could
it be a ready made packet of pres of presentation materials that we can then I can just turn around and give to the five associations that that, invite me to their meetings on a very regular basis and maybe be more intentful in terms of seeking out others. Yes, ma'am. I think we can do that. Miss Fisioli, would you I mean, I think we could create what's effectively a toolkit for budget presentations. Do you wanna comment on that, please? Yeah. That's definitely part of the strategy is to take into account the people that aren't
actively engaged day to day with the division, and reaching out to the HOAs and other groups. One of the things that we talked about when we met with the budget chair and vice chair was training the trainer, if you will, making sure that we present to the people who would be bringing that message forward so they understand the materials that we create for them, versus just putting a a toolkit out and saying, go out there and and talk about this. We need to help them understand so that they're going out. Same thing with the PTAs, although I know they're, you know, parent groups.
But the intent is to create some tools, but really engage with them in how they would use those. Other school divisions have created, budget builder tools that you can engage with the community, and it helps them, which we did, back in twenty fifteen, sixteen. We had an online tool, but there are other ways that you can engage the community in understanding how a budget is built by participating in it themselves. So we can create these types of materials for the different organizations within the community to help them.
Yeah. But you wanna go back. Next, we do we have anybody oh, miss Lady? Thank you. Just in light of and thank you for these documents. Thank you to the to staff and, our budget chairs. This is an excellent phase one budget planning strategic communication plan. But what I wanna touch base on is on page four, because there's a reference back to the cuts we had to make last year. And I just wanna remind people that what's named again in here is AARTs and special ed department chairs. What is not named is the other people who lost their jobs.
And and they let me rephrase that. They didn't lose their jobs. Okay? Nobody lost a job because we had enough need in the system that people were employed. But different elementary schools, because we as a board voted to make sure that the ART and the special ed department chairs were were at one point o, that funding had to come from somebody. Point five plus point five is a one. So people lost an additional counselor who was helping triage, you know, truancy. I wouldn't say truancy, but but, chronic absenteeism.
We may have lost an an he and hemert. We may have lost a STEAM classroom. I I bring this up because that particular timing was too late for those folks to advocate. So what we heard was about seven hours of testimony from our community members who loved their AART or their special ed department chair. And meanwhile, these folks, they're not even named anywhere only to find out within ten days, oh, we can't support an EMERT because the school board voted to make sure you had a one point o AART and SPED department chair.
I bring that up because, you know, we're gonna be in difficult fiscal times. We are. We're gonna have to make tough decisions. But part of the reason I believe that doctor Reed brought that to us in the first place was because we have some elementary schools with 400 students in them. And then we have some with 1,100 students. And those are very different, and and even the demographics are very different. So I personally, you know, honestly don't believe we need a one point o of both at every school. I think schools need to evaluate what they're doing, but we're gonna make difficult decisions.
But just because it's noted in here and we didn't name the other positions that were impacted, I just felt the need to uplift that. Because, you know, at the end of the day, I think, you know, some of our bigger high schools like Chantilly lost, like, close to 20 secondtions. Okay? That's four full time teachers, but it doesn't tease out that way because you gotta lose a section of APUSH and a section of, you know, business law and a section of health and PE. Right? So it's hard to observe absorb those things, and it's being felt in the classroom. You know? And I would say to parents, this is the last thing I'd say, is you
might be in a situation where, hypothetically, your kindergartner only has 17 people in their classroom. Well, that's bad math, friends. You can't have, you know, let's say 17 times three. If I do some quick math here, is that like 51? I don't know. I can do math. Is that right? But but, you know, there's not easy dividers. Right? So sometimes you're gonna have kindergarten classes that are much, much larger because you wouldn't add a third one because then you'd they'd be 12 in a class. Right? So people need to understand how this math it it doesn't often work in our in in the favor of all of our schools.
Thanks. Thank Thank you. Would you like to go back? Would you like to go back, miss Lady? Thank you. Mister Frisch, do we know if we have the volume working for mister Frisch? We can find out. Oh, we do. We could hear you. Mister Frisch? Good. I will keep this, as quick as the answer to the question allows. I appreciate the work that's gone into this. Some of this is already done each year, which I think it's nice to see it all in one place kind of gathered together. But I'm curious, beyond carrying the message to various stakeholder groups in, like, a macro sense, what can we be doing better, and what thinking can be given to, improving
communication, between board members and board of supervisors, their counterparts, between the superintendent and, her counterparts of the county, between the superintendent and lawmakers, between board members and lawmakers. I think, many people in the community are quite aware of our need. And so, I think a big chunk of the work to be done is in those dynamics between the leaders who will be deciding these things.
Any thoughts on that? Are you referring to staff, mister Frish? Or Yes. Doctor Reid? So, mister Frish and I had this conversation, actually, and I I have been meeting with, members of our delegation individually, And also with our board of supervisors individually. And I think that one of the things I shared with Mr. Frisch is, likely I need to make a trip to Richmond during the session and meet, with, some of our lawmakers there, join Mr. Malloy in that.
I do think all of us, I think it's a good time to be connected, right? We have a delegation that's strongly supportive of our mission. We have a board of supervisors that's supportive of our mission and, we have to be, I think, in closer relationship as we, work forward on this topic. Thanks. And, you know, I think maybe there's room for each of us as individual board members to think more about what our individual approach is. Obviously, there should be some overlap in what we're doing, but, like, what are the best practices that board members can employ, in their communications throughout the year?
So that's something that'll be front of mind for me. Appreciate the work that went into this. I know that it was, an undertaking to to bring it all together and thank the budget team and, the superintendent's budget our budget chair and vice chair and the superintendent's budget team as well. Thank you. Thank you, mister Frisch. Miss St. John Cunning? I'd also like to thank all the work that has gone into this. And I really don't, you know, have a question, but I do wanna just talk about how as as everyone has said, how important it is to tell the story. And as much as we wanna tell the story about our audience, I think we
have to it's critical that we also tell the the story about who we serve, which is our students, and who is serving to support our students. And we can't lose sight of how important that is, we can't lose sight of how important it is and how these decisions translate down in the trenches when this 1.1 position is created and what that really looks like. I think that, you know, we've gotta tell the story of how Fairfax County Public Schools serves kids from two to 22, including, you know, all the programs that we
have that are are are standard general ed programs, what we have are technical programs, our academies, our dual enrollment, programs, our language immersion programs, our sports, which are fantastic, our, performing arts and visual arts programming, all of that takes not only money, it takes talented teachers that we have to support. So I think that that's very important that we look at that, and the story that we also have to remember is we see many of our students coming back
to be teachers in our system. We see them as our principals or as as our assistant principals. I'm really proud to see a lot of our students come back to be community leaders, to be the health workers in our hospitals, to be the ones that are building our new hospitals. So for those people that don't have students in the school, they are serving our community. So, I just really think that we have to tell the story, and once we tell the story, the investment that we put into this is a no brainer.
I know that we're a big system, there's a lot of programs, I know I shared with the superintendent about our early lit literacy program where we're working with the youngest kids that speak different languages, but I know that what ends up happening with that is the parents end up also learning, and some of them are now working in our schools. This would have never happened with early lit without early lit. So these are the stories we have to communicate to our public, because the fundamental
foundation of how we're gonna move forward as a society is the strength of how educated our students are. Thank you. Seeing no other first time speakers, I'll call on miss Dixit, and then I'll take a turn. We'll go to go backs. So first of all, I want to thank you, the budget team, and the communications office. This is a really well thought plan, and I was privileged to be part of it, with, the better chair. I had the this whole idea of storytelling really resonates with me, and, and people, you know, say, they listen more.
So I was wanted to ask you if there is a plan to create a kind of a booklet with these different chapters or, virtually, probably, or on on a website. We, I think we we talked about having a landing page or, maybe modified the earlier website to do that. So just wanted to know your thoughts on that. So the the chapters within the plan are really metaphorical, not per se chapters of a book, but they are the way that we would parse out the information, again,
with that foundation of talking about the success of FCPS. And, absolutely, that would be a way that we would want to convey that on the website. A lot of our budget content currently on the web is a lot of facts and figures, and there isn't a story there. So definitely part of the the work within here is a strategy to develop, a section of our website that would convey more of the story and those different six chapters that you see, the kind of build up to when we get to the point of, you know, having to make those decisions around the budget.
So definitely. Yeah. And I agree with you, but I also think this, really goes as a chapter well to the story with different topics we're discussing. And I would like to add a topic about our share stakeholders, our students, and the different, programs we offer to them as as one of the, chapters, I guess, too. What's the plan of using, social media, more? Because, you know, everybody has access to phone. People who are students in FCPS are not in FCPS, but we all resident mostly
have a smartphone. So what's our strategy to use more of our Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms? I think it will continue, in the ways that we use it right now where we do tell those stories. It resonated to me when you were talking about our, parents and different family members. We did two amazing stories of current special ed teachers who were parents, who saw the experience and that their children had with FCPS and both, decided to become special education teachers.
So we use the storytelling side of it on social media, But there's also the intent to, chunk out different sections of the way that we build these chapters of the story on social media as well, making it more, again, of telling the story of FCPS versus maybe just putting a fact up there, and there's no context to what that means to the big picture. So we'll definitely be incorporating that aspect of it on social media as well. We use Instagram and Facebook mainly. We don't really use x, for social media.
It's just a different space. But for sure using those spaces to tell different stories and, again, continuing to share the really good news about FCPS. We get great feedback from our teacher Tuesdays and other things that we do, consistently when we're telling those stories of our students, our families, and our staff. Thank you for the answer. And our next question actually is, more to, doctor Reid actually that, were, that we had some shortfalls last year, and then last minute, we were able to come up
with some solutions. And, right now, we're going into a deficit already and with the more federal money impact could could have or could not have. I don't know yet. But can we go to our, students I mean, parents and community earlier with that messaging of these programs or shouldn't say program, but there could be short funding shortfall of funds here, and they should be the voice for us? Because, you know, those are the people directly get impacted is our our our parents
and and the students. So just wanted to know your thoughts on that. Yes, ma'am. I think that, it's important, as I mentioned, to go to the parents in our, family vision group, our PTAs, our community meetings. I have open community conversations coming up this fall. All of those are venues to talk about the budget, and I think the sooner, the better, because I think that a strong public education system is central to the strength of our community. So thank you so so much, and that's my question.
So for now, thanks. Thank you. Seeing other placards up for a first time, I will go ahead and take my turn, and then we'll go to go backs. We and we have the list of go backs so far. But if you wanna speak, please just put your placard up. So first, I just wanna thank the team and my budget vice chair, miss Dixit, for all your hard work. I know we had several meetings and I really appreciate what you've put together. I think this goes very well with what we talked about with, you know, in the spring where we wanted a stronger collaboration partnership with our board of supervisors. Right? Because we really are serving the community and the county together.
I know our board of supervisors are strong supporters of the schools as well. So the earlier that we can work with them, we can talk with them, as well as our stakeholders in the community and help folks understand the realities of our school system and the needs of our school system and what we need not just to maintain, but also maintain our excellence. I think knowledge is power. So this is a big wave of that knowledge of power. As we enter these tough budget times, we wanna make sure we're continuing to not just do our good work around closing gaps and providing enrichment, but talk about our
good work. Right? So often when I go to PTA meetings or community meetings and I start talking about the budget, which I've been doing as my role as budget chair, people are very interested. And they didn't realize sort of I talk about the size of our 40,000 employees and the size of our bus fleet and what it takes to manage all that. They're very, very interested in that. So I think making sure that we continue to talk about that. I think as we listen and partner with the board of supervisors, I I the toolkit idea, and I think we've talked about that in the train the trainer. Right? Having targeted toolkits.
Here's one you can take to the community. Here's one that as you're meeting with the board of supervisors versus and other delegation members. Right? That we can use to sort of help say, hey, here's what's going on with our schools and really listening to what they're saying too and answering their questions early on about what concerns or questions do they have. And, like, we all have the same common goal. We know we all want excellent schools. We know our excellent schools support a strong economy, bring businesses here, bring people here. And it helps us present a united front to the state officials if we have a common basis of knowledge as to what is going on in our school.
Right? And I know that, providing them information early on also helps them to understand what's going on in our schools and helps us to understand what their challenges are too. We're serving the county together. So I think that is a really and I and they all wanna serve the county together. So I'm really grateful for you putting this together. I think as we do this work, I had a couple of questions around the train the trainer and the and the parent vision groups that you're going to. As you go to these groups to to are you leaving them with anything yet? Do we have takeaways we can leave folks? I think these one pagers, as they're going maybe to talk to their community members,
they have something they can refer to, I think, would be really important. Thank you. So, the community relations team actually builds out the agenda in collaboration with Doctor. Reed on all of the family vision group meetings, and we always have, takeaways for them. And part of that takeaway, in fact, you know, our very first meetings, will be a budget 101 meeting, and we will either have a takeaway because, you know, we're just getting through discussing this plan right now.
We'll have a takeaway then or at our next meetings where they can walk away with with the toolkit. I think that would be great because I think as as we've partnered with the board, right, and we know we need to go and really help our delegation understand the importance of JLARC and and asking for the funding from the chronic underfunding from the state, it's helpful for our community members that we serve to have an understanding of what our school system is, our challenges, and our needs. Right? I think that can just help the entire community reduce their angst.
So having that takeaway as well would be helpful. I mean, I think it's I'll take a go back on this piece, but just the facts and figures alone, I think, open a lot of people's eyes. Thank you. To go back, I will start with miss Marin followed by doctor Anderson. Would you mind skipping me, miss chair? I'll would you mind delaying me just for one round? Oh, sure. Yeah. We can skip we'll talk with doctor Anderson. But mine's not gonna be that long. Couple of things as we're talking about all of these efforts to really educate our population and making sure that there's understanding, again, not just for the individuals who have
access and experiences with our programming, but others as well. I I wonder if we could also rethink how we collect information from them. And looking through the document here, I see the typical cadence of our, public hearings. But we also know, especially from last year, where those public hearings were very, very well attended, not everyone has the capability to come and sit and be number 294 out of 500 people. We have not and correct me if I'm wrong, miss, burden, but I don't think
we have an electronic manner of collecting public not necessary public hearing testimony, but feedback, which is essentially what they are able to give to us in those two minutes electronically. Do we have that anywhere? No. But we have done that before. Like, with the ESSER funding, you know, we were required to go out to the community justice department. Online survey that the community members could access and answer questions, but not very many people did. Right. But, again, we're in a space where people are interested in in knowing what is
it that we're doing with our budget, what are our concerns, how is it going to impact them, whether that be parent employee or just a citizen who wants their grandchild to have the best possible education here. I see a space where we could perhaps develop an electronic means for that feedback in addition to the public hearings because some folks want to come and speak and some folks are not able to come and speak. Or even if they show up, they end up leaving because we go into the wee hours. So that's a wondering that I'd like to throw out into the space when we
do collect that feedback and those two points during our budget process for us to have an electronic component that would make it easier for some folks to participate. And the other one is more of a question, doctor Reed, as we, again, if we're going to engage folks, they're going to learn, they're going to wanna speak back to us, and we're going to need to do something with that information. But we do have certain limitations, in that, especially when it's things that are connected. I'll just finish if that's okay, and I won't need any more go backs.
Go ahead. Things that are connected to to teachers and perhaps collective bargaining. It makes me wonder in all of the education that we're doing, we need to also highlight what are some of those implications that would require a different avenue rather than a public advocacy, lane for us to actually change something in our practices and budget. Any comments from staff before I move on to the next one? It was not necessarily a question, but something that we need to include. Because I I wouldn't want us to go out into the community and say, hey,
give us feedback on all of these things. And then they do, and then we turn around and say, well, these are collective bargaining things, so you can't give feedback on it. We need to be in advance. We need to, make sure that we're going out with those, boundaries. Yes, ma'am. I would agree. We wouldn't wanna go out and ask about amending the collective bargaining agreement, for example. That's not appropriate. Right. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Miss Lady? Okay. The the only thing I was gonna say, and I don't know if it's this is the place to do it or not, but I do think there's possibly potentially budgetary implications. I know some of our elementary schools are doing departmentalization in upper primary grades.
So when I think per my previous remarks about bad numbers, but also, you know, my understanding of appropriately sort of scaffolding education. We definitely have students in elementary school who are very gifted perhaps in humanities but not necessarily as strong in math and science and vice versa. And they're not accessing AAP centers. And so I think the departmentalization allows you to differentiate instruction. So if I've got a high math learner who's not quite reading our grade level,
hypothetically, we can meet those needs. So I I guess I don't I don't know if that potentially can impact, costs, but I just wanna put out an ethos that I do think, from an educational perspective, it makes sense. I think the research indicates that, kids do well, in that sort of environment. And also it allows teachers to loop. You know, I might have fifth and sixth grade humanities and loop with the same kids, which helps build that rapport over two years and and and helps them learn
better. So that's all. Thank you. Miss Merritt? I think we're the ones we've been waiting for. We there are only 22 people in this county of 1,160,000 human beings who have the ability, access, and authority to realize the high quality of public services in Fairfax County that makes people live in Fairfax, this place we call home. We need to be experts in how the money is being used now, and we need to be able to seek solutions with our partners. We can't do that in only three joint meetings with the board of supervisors on December 2, February 24 and April 14.
We have got to work into our our agenda this as a priority. For me, it's all budget all the time. And dovetailing that is the joint facility review committee work and the technology work. Those two committees are charged with saving money. But if we can't sit down with the people who fund us, we can do all this great work in a bubble, and we're gonna be right back where we were. So I think we need to be even bolder, and I think we do need this communications plan for sure. But we are the ones that have to do the work to partner with the
people so they understand that we are doing everything possible to invest every dollar. I think we also need to get really specific about what it means to be the largest employer in Fairfax. How does that shake out? How How many of our employees actually don't live in Fairfax? So how much money are they actually spending here? What does it mean to employ so many people? I mean, we say these very general things, but if we can prove the financial impact of this school division and whether it's how many soccer, you know, clothes and sports things our kids have to buy or how many field trips we take. You know, we need to get real hard numbers and we're getting there.
And you all did a great, you know, handout for the start of school with some amazing data. But, I am gonna commit to this. I am not going I'm not going to I'm going to work so that we do not have to amend the collective bargaining agreement. That cannot happen. And I want us to work so that the supervisors support us keeping our collective bargaining agreement intact because they see the value of it. I just would like to quote my predecessor, Pat Hines, just came to mind. She said, I did not work to be on this school board to serve the
school division and take on the challenges of dismantling the school system. Let's not dismantle our school system. Let's go get the money. Thank you, miss Maron. Seeing no other placards, I'll take a quick go back in terms of what do you just asking staff, you know, I think we've heard some feedback on the plan to date about adding in the sort of the the realities and nuances of collective bargaining as we educate our community on where, you know, we have room for, changing to the budget where we don't have room for changing the budget. I think we've heard some feedback on clarifying a little bit more, you know, making
toolkits, clarifying a little bit more some of the things about zero based budgeting. And, I'm coming up with the timeline of when we're gonna to roll this out. So I I was gonna ask you, are there is there other feedback that you are seeking on this plan? Otherwise, I'd like to sort of ask that we have we still have an hour left. We don't need to take the whole hour, but I'd love to ask my colleagues to if they have additional remarks on additional ways to collaborate with our board of supervisors and work closely together with them as we launch into our budget season, as well as, whether there's anything that we wanna add to this that talks more about
our challenges from state and local funding, especially with the uncertainty in the federal funding. So those are two questions I'd have my colleagues if you'd wanna comment on those going forward. But I think this is excellent. I know you'll still continue to refine it. I would love to see how it's gonna roll out in terms of toolkits, in terms of community meetings, and and takeaways, in terms of train the trainer, as well as the, digital assets. Right? The social media as well as the website. So if you wanna just comment on the next steps for what this plan will go to, we can move on to the next couple questions. Yeah. I think I would just, end with saying that for us, our communications plans are
ever changing. They're always being reviewed and evolved based on whether or not a strategy works if something changes in the environment. So it'll always be evolving in terms of, what strategies and tactics that we have in there. To miss Marin's point, one of the things that we just started looking at that isn't incorporated in here is some of the Baldrige work. There's a team member of mine, Sue Hale, who's on the Baldrige work team and has been looking at how other school divisions, use the Baldrige process to look at
how they can show the value of their budgets, also incorporating, Stephen Fuller's study for those who were a part of the board back in 2016 who did a study about FCPS's impact on the community, and had a lot of information about how much of the spending in the county comes from our employees and comes from the partnerships that we have with the businesses that we do business with. And it was very interesting to go back and look at that, and I would love to see if that's something that we could potentially update for 2025 in terms
of more information. But, you know, certainly, now that we have the feedback, we're gonna back, make these changes, and I'm gonna sit down with my digital and visual design team and start building the products and working, with the budget team to make sure that, you know, everything is appropriate and working with you and MysticSet, to approve everything, and we're gonna start, getting this stuff together. So we're excited. Great. Well, thank you. And I think having that plan of rollout too and and how we're gonna engage the community and to point stakeholders who aren't as engaged with our schools or may
not have direct ties to our schools, I think is important. And I think we on the board as well as I know doctor Reed can also commit to once we have the toolkits of really working hand in hand with our partners on the board of supervisors as we work through this process together. So because at the end of the day, we all wanna keep our schools excellent, our economy strong, and we wanna, do this in partnership together because we face the same challenges and we face the same opportunities. Having said that, I'd like to sort of switch focus for anyone who wants to comment on what they'd like to see in greater collaboration or meetings with the board
of supervisors as well as, if there's other things specifically related to the federal government uncertainty that we'd like to have added into these conversations. So, that's what the next talking points on these. We'll go back to three minutes for those. And if people don't have as much to say, that's okay. That maybe says it's a great job on staff's part. So with that, I will turn I think I see miss Marron's pocket us. We'll start with miss Marron. Okay. So, Miss Berdan, can you refresh us? What are the absolute deadlines in this budget timeline that we have to meet? You know, when when does the county have to set its tax rate?
When do we have to adopt our budget? Like, the absolute cannot move them dates. Well, generally, we can't move any of the county dates. Sure. I just wanna get an understanding. Even ours, like, in the past, like, we used to have the budget being presented very early in January. Now it's a little bit later. So I'm just wondering, again, what are we by code, what do we have to do? And I guess well, I don't wanna use up all my time rephrasing my question, but just I mean, we take their they we ask them for their calendar.
They give it to us, and then we do hours around their calendar just based on what what what they're doing. Okay. I see they have March 17, the advertising the tax rate. You know, what's not on here though and it might not be known are the supervisors' town halls, which are really a big deal. And we usually get invited to those, often there during spring break, which is unfortunate. So I think that's an opportunity. When I look at the public hearing dates, February 10, April 14, and May 14,
we know by April 14, the budget is pretty much done. We know that. And there's not gonna be wiggle room. So can we get really honest about a schedule that's going to if we need to course correct or make changes, we can do that. So my question is, how can we take this time? We have this whole hour and really think about how could this budget be, made more urgent and more open? So, with the Board of Supervisors, what do others think about planning time for joint
budget committee meetings, like monthly with the board of supervisors starting now? And I would love to hear, confirmation if we are gonna have one of our work sessions on in a week from tonight. I know that's a held date of September 16. So perhaps if the chair or vice chair could inform us about that decision, that was something, because we also anticipated that the next topic legislation would need a follow-up. So this is just, you know, keeping keeping it going. I also do wanna get clarity, and I would appreciate board conversation about the roles because although I greatly appreciate doctor Reed's outreach to other elected officials, that is our
job. Those are our counterparts. And so either Doctor. Reed, we've got to work very closely on that, or we have got to really take that on and be doing that work. So when I pull up the board's work agenda for, you know, the months ahead, what can wait? What is more important than making sure we do not get more cuts? So is it a strategic goal report? Is it, you know, I I don't know. Is it whatever it's gonna be, but how do we get more lean so we could focus? And can we actually, right here today, colleagues, do some of this calendaring?
So, you know, can we confirm the Tuesday work meeting next week? Can we get, you know, input on if we wanna ask for joint budget committees? Can we even commit to having the budget on our agenda every single month, on the work session to preserve that time and and figure out what we're doing? I'd love to hear your feedback. Thank you. Thank you. I see no other placards up. So I will take a turn. I think, oh, doctor Anderson, go ahead. Just to one of the components that was just asked by miss Marin. One of the things that we've leaned into quite a bit over the last year
or so is the Baldrige work, which kinda came up as you were speaking. I think we could afford a little bit more transparency on that because we're leaning into that as our opportunity to show our frugality, to show that we are being as strategic as possible with every dollar. I wonder if there's some spaces for updates to be provided. Maybe it's an academic matters, maybe it's in lieu of academic matters, or in lieu of the strategic plan update because it is strategic. It's a strategy that we're utilizing, but it's so behind the scenes. We haven't elevated enough to the public discussion so that we could have that collective
community narrative that, oh my goodness, they are squeezing blood out of a turnip over there. So I I'd like for that to be elevated as part of whatever the regular budget cycle, that miss Marin has, has shared. Having said that, I do wanna say we have a lot of things that are pressing. We've got facilities that we want regular updates on. We have budget that we want and should have regular budget, updates on because it drives all of our work. How do we prioritize? Because we're not going to create more time.
And right now, when I look at the work plan, we have academic matters just about every time. We have strategic plan updates some of the times, and we have ELs, and sometimes we have all three of them. What has to fall off the plate in order for us to reintroduce some of these other things that we continue we continue to outline as essential to our work? I I can't see a space where we're adding more. I see a space where we're substituting for what's a greater priority at current. Thank you. And I think in terms of looking at the calendar, I don't know if there's gonna be enough for budget wise between now and next week to add that to
the work session, but I'll leave it to the chair and vice chair in terms of scheduling the agenda for next week's work session. I think in terms of working more closely with the board of supervisors, we would have to reach out to them on their calendar to see what opportunities they would have before the December meeting or between the November fiscal forecast meeting for additional, you know, collaborate meetings with the entire board. I would recommend until then perhaps individually we can reach out to our counterparts or the at largest can reach out to chairman McKay or anyone else you wish to
reach out to, maybe your own supervisor in your district where you live, which is whichever you prefer and just start having these maybe conversations monthly, weekly as we start building towards that November meeting. There isn't a ton of time between now and November, so that may be a good way to go, but we're happy to take a look and see if there's something on their calendar in between then as well. The other I think in terms of the Baldrige work, I think anything that we can also maybe add to our plan to show what we're doing to increase our efficiencies or to review our budget to ensure that we are being effective and efficient
with it. I don't know. I think having an update to the board where they are in their process of it as well would be helpful. But maybe if we could talk a little more about what they are doing and what we anticipate, you know, receiving from them in terms of deliverables and timelines that might be helpful to add to this. We have a little more information about Baldrige or other things that we are doing to look at our efficiencies and and effectiveness. And that can even include some of the things that that we asked our principals to do after our budget last year because I know our schools and our central offices were asked to reduce staff, but also look at different ways of budgeting.
And we talked about our RAS is working with our principals. So maybe that's some things that we can share as well in this report. So, as far as the scheduling for the work session, I'll leave that to the chair and vice chair. But I appreciate this robust conversation. I you know, with by a little bit of time left, I do wanna say that we recognize that that with the uncertainty with the federal government, there are some, some grants. Most of our federal government funding comes in in the way of grants that are at risk, including grants that we use to help provide meals to students who qualify for free and reduced price meals, grants for special education, grants for teachers of multilingual
students, and many, many more. So I would ask that we, maybe start putting out somewhere to the public some of the specific grants that are at risk in our federal funding. And, you know, I know I can speak for myself, but I think all my colleagues and our staff here share a commitment to those students to ensure that our we continue to serve those students in the way that we need to serve them. But it is gonna be a challenge moving forward. And so maybe having some information how we plan to what the challenge looks like for a community would be helpful as well. I know I get asked that a lot. So having said that, I, I don't see any of the placards up for oh,
sorry. Miss Maram for go back. So I will stop my turn here, and I'll go back to miss Maram for go back. Yeah. Thank you. And I was just looking at our work session, our Tuesday work session time. So and, again, this blends so much with the legislative work. And, again, we're gonna hear about that today, but even on October 7 so we have our legislative breakfast in the morning, and then that day, we're scheduled only to talk about pre k, 12. It was one of the strategic plan goals. So how about we already, you know, just, like, let's get our rhythm. And, of course, we have our boundaries, but we know that that's gonna incur budget
conversations. We have our facilities going on. We know that's gonna incur budget conversations. I think, you know, the more we can weave in all of these critical topics, it it's gonna be better for us and better for the public. And as more data comes out, then we can arm people with that data. But I think until we're having more discussions, that's gonna be tough. One of the things I'm wondering is would anyone like to attend a board of supervisors meeting with me, when they're meeting about the budget, whether it's the committee or on their agenda? I'm thinking we can inform them, you know, let them know we're coming to observe
and learn, and, maybe that also will show that we are trying every which way to understand where they're coming from and then we can reciprocate. And I know this plan has some really good, points about that, and especially when we think about November is take your legislator to school month. I could say legislator slash county supervisor because, certainly, we want to show them all the amazing things and all the challenges. So, you know, for me, as I've been working on the legislative work, thinking about our county board of supervisors are essentially our legislators because they are our funders.
So thinking about, you know, collaborating with them in the way that I know we like to do with our state folks. So, again, we'd love to hear, you know, feedback. And even from the chair, can we get clarification? Are we meeting in one week? And, can anything about the budget be put on there? And then just also how do we get, you know, input from the board to, you know, put on the agenda, whether it's October 7? November 6 is the fiscal forecast. And miss Burton is usually hard pressed, I think, to, you know, give us her magic ball, outlook.
So, again, does that date serve us at this time? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you. Doctor Reed, do you wanna address that question or miss Burden? I think miss Burden, do you well, November early November is not ideal because, you know, we just there's so so many question marks that are still out there that it's, you know, a really early preliminary, estimate as to what our needs might be, in the upcoming year. So it's not ideal, but, you know, we've been doing that for decades, so we
make it work. And we, you know, we fast tracked enrollment, because those projections, usually, we didn't have them in time for the fiscal forecast, and that drives a lot of what we we do in the budget, you know, aside from compensation. But the facilities department has worked with us, and so they fast tracked that projection process so that we do have those numbers earlier so that we're not, you know, guessing with that very first early fiscal forecast meeting. We make it work. Great. Thank you. Well, with that, I see no other placards up, so I will call this part
of the work session to a close. And we'll take a ten minute break. So we'll come back at I have 02:15 on my computer, so I'll say 02:25. Thank you very much for the robust conversation, and thank you so much to this great team for all your hard work on putting this together. And I look forward to continuing our good work as we go through the budget season. Thank you, doctor Reed. A good segue in from the previous conversation where we talked about what our work should entail, how do we get things done when we're not the decision makers of
those activities. So doctor Reed, oh, no. You don't need to introduce yet. Are we just jumping into the first two? So if we could go ahead and put the PowerPoint up, clerks, that would be appreciated. The first couple of slides, miss Baron and I will talk about, and then we'll turn it over to actually, do you wanna do an introduction first before we do the first two slides if you have one? Sure. I I I heard myself. That's alright. Thank you, doctor Anderson. And this is really a great opportunity this afternoon to talk about, the government relations,
agenda. My only introduction is introducing Michael Malloy who's going to represent division staff, and we look forward to a robust conversation. So thank you. Alright. Super. If we could just go to the first slide, we just really want to be clear in terms of what we want to accomplish today. It's up there, so I don't need to read to you. But it's really it's really important as we talked about in the previous conversation. What is our space? What is our role? What are the things that we can impact? And most importantly, what are some of the activities that we could connect to and commit to doing to help advance, the plans for this division.
And mister Frisch actually took those words right out of my mouth with his previous statements. The objectives that are going to be part of this session are as follows, and I will take a little bit of time to go through some of those objectives. Obviously, there's some information that we need to be given. There's been lots of work that has taken place in the journal assembly last year. There's some work that continued, throughout this summer. So we need to all be up to speed in terms of what does that entail. So Michael's going to provide us with that. And all of those activities, including what he's going to share with this kind of
the background setting and education piece, as well as the future look in terms of what the general assembly may be taking up, this fall next, January, February will help us to better understand our role, not only our points of advocacy, but how to have greater visibility with those decision makers. And then three, we're hoping to really outline what are some of those things that we are going to do because we know we have a menu of different things
that are avail available to us as elected officials with one of those things being the legislative program, but it is not the only thing. I we are going to spend some time at the end of this conversation really honing into what are some of those other activities that we can use to leverage the visibility that we need with the decision makers? And, of course, we're going to spend some time looking at the positions because at the end of the day, that's where we have all of our documents. All of our positions of live kind of in its entirety that the board has
committed to. So those are the four outcomes for the meeting today. And then at this point, miss Marron, would you like to say anything? Well, I think similarly to the discussion this morning on budget, we were trying to be reflective of what the board has asked for, which is to really think about the bigger picture. And we all, know that the state legislation is a huge part of this, but there are other aspects as well. So in that vein, again, just trying to go a little bit broader and encourage your discussion and input about what we wanna do this year. And you know what I failed to do? I failed to introduce the positions that you and I have, when it comes to
the legislative work. You know, you talked about the team just a little while ago. Similarly to last year, miss Marin is the state liaison, and I am the federal liaison. And it just kinda falls to those positions, to lead the work a little bit. And mister McElveen is the alternate state liaison. Is that correct? Yes. Alright. So, mister Malloy, please take her away. Alright. Good afternoon, everybody. I do apologize, obviously. It's, it's a little bit late in the afternoon, and you've got a relatively sizable
slide deck in front of you, but I'll try and get through it as quickly as I can. But thought it was important to level set in terms of kind of what's happened during the last general assembly session and what the lay of the land looks like as we go into the next general assembly session. This promises to be one of the more complicated General Assembly sessions that we've had in a while, just given everything that's happening in the political policy environment and all the various different levels of government. One thing I wanted to kind of start the conversation with is kind of this
idea of I'm sure you've heard that the Virginia General Assembly is referred to as a part time legislature, and that's technically true. They only meet for, this upcoming year, they'll meet for sixty days, and then in the the next year, which is the second year of a a budget biennium, they only meet for forty five days. That's kind of a misnomer, though. As you'll see as we go through this this, this conversation and you see with this slide, there are things that are happening all throughout the year, in terms of policy making, in terms of what the general assembly is doing, in terms of what
the state is doing, in terms of decisions being made at the federal level, decisions being made at the local level, all that have a bearing on FCPS operations. So this slide just kind of gives you an idea of in addition to all the things that we do during session, we're working off session, with our delegation. We're working with other organizations. We're working with other school divisions. We're developing, and you talked a little bit about this at your budget work session here just a little bit ago, developing issue briefs just to make, you know, make
sure people are aware of of of different issues and and being able to get that information out. And then we do work in collaboration, with the with the county board of supervisors. They also have a legislative staff, and we work very closely together. So just wanted to kind of set that as the background that we focus a lot on the general assembly because there's a lot of things going on during the session, but there's an awful lot of things that are happening all throughout the year. It's not just a a two months or a a two and a half months endeavor. So the first thing I wanted to walk through, and I promise this will be
short, is just a review of the 2025 session. You've already received some information, right at the end of session and also, right around July when most legislation from the last session went into effect about about the session. But just to give you some context, this was a forty five day session, short session. During those forty five days, the general assembly looked at 3,100 different bills. Now that's I I don't even want to attempt to do the math, but that's
that's, you know, several 100 bills a day in terms of what they're, you know, what they're considering. And obviously, the 3,100 bills, that covers everything. It doesn't just cover education bills, it covers bills across multiple subjects. So just to give you an idea for education, our House Education Committee, 150 bills were referred there, Senate Education Bill and Health Committee, they also had 150 bills. Of the 3,100, we probably paid attention to about 400 plus bills.
So we're looking at issues that go beyond what the education committees look at. We look at things that have to do with transportation. We look at things that have to do with public safety, with the employment law. So there's an awful lot of other areas that we pay attention to in addition to just the education committees. And of all of those bills, 130 of them passed. So there are 130 new laws that came onto the books, most of which went into effect on 07/01/2025. To give you an idea of some of the successes, from this past general assembly
session of those among those 130, and most of these are budget issues, these are some things which dovetailed very nicely with priorities that you all had as a board. So these are things that passed during the general assembly, that were funded during the general assembly session, that really were things that were either on your priority list or were part of your budget asks list. So it's a fairly robust set of successes. The biggest one that's related to the JLARC report obviously is the full funding of
the support cap at current staffing practices, which is something that's been being worked on since 02/2009. So that was a fairly sizable achievement to get that taken care of. A couple of areas I wanted to highlight, these are areas where there was legislation. The legislation itself didn't pass, but the subject of the legislation has started a conversation that's continuing to be ongoing. The first is the concept of native language assessments as part of the SOL program.
There was legislation to try and mandate the use of native language assessments as part of the SOL program. It didn't go forward, but as part of the board as part of the state's work, as they are moving towards a new assessment system for the 'twenty seven, 'twenty eight school year, for the first time, they included getting some pricing options from vendors who might come in and bid on the contract for how to incorporate native language assessment as part of the system. So it's not truly a success because the bill didn't pass, but the conversation continues.
Similar story with solar interconnectivity cost shareings. We have talked about that for several years here in Fairfax, how the cost small scale solar projects has become relatively prohibitive because of the interconnectivity costs of the project linking into the state's power grid. Again, legislation didn't pass, but it was passed on to the State Corporation Commission, and they're going to come up with some hopefully, some rules and some new guidelines on
how interconnectivity costs are shared by 2026. And then one other thing to just highlight. And you've as I said, you've gotten reports on these. But this is just a couple of examples of bills that passed during the general assembly session that had some degree of impact on FCPS. So there were limits on the timing and the frequency of non instructional training. You've had extensive discussions about what they did with cell phone, student cell phone use. There were some tweaks to the overdose notification requirements.
Most notably is that they are now codified as opposed to simply be part of a governor's executive order. Inspection requirements related to air quality and then a couple of other areas. But these are just some highlights of areas where legislation passed that had some sort of an impact on FCPS and our operations. This slide highlights four bills, in particular, that passed during the General Assembly session but didn't go into effect immediately. So most legislation goes into effect July 1 of the year of the General Assembly
session. These bills all had delayed enactments, which means that they passed, and in the absence of any other activity, will go into effect in the years that are specified here. But what the delayed enactment does, at least in a couple of these cases, is it does provide an opportunity to come back and have further discussion about some of these bills and some of the policy positions that they staked out prior to them actually going into effect. So during this upcoming General Assembly session, you're going to have an opportunity to revisit
some of the changes and some of the policies where it would be enacted under these bills. Most significantly, I think you've had some discussions about this, are changes to the SOL assessment system, also changes in terms of instructional materials and instructional material procurement and how things are considered to be high quality. And then local policy is going to be required for accelerating for students to be enrolled in accelerated math. This is going to get tied up in some other conversations, which I will get
to here in a minute, but having to do with the changes that are being discussed by the state board in terms of the number of questions that need to be answered correctly or the cut score for SOL assessments. And then the technology accessibility, that's a requirement that's being placed on vendors to ensure that technology that we're procuring has accessibility features to it. So that's the look back. That's the 2025 session. The next few slides focus in on things that are happening literally right now.
So as I said, it's a misnomer to think of the general assembly as a part time legislature because every single one of these committees that I'm gonna talk about here are they have ongoing meetings. So they're meeting in fact, the JLARC meets monthly. The Commission on Youth meets a few times a few times a year. But all of these conversations are happening, and all of these conversations will lead to, usually in November, sets of recommendations for the next general assembly session. So it's important to be aware that they're going on.
The first one, we followed this one very closely last year. It hasn't met yet, but this is the, the joint subcommittee to study elementary and secondary education funding, and it's the committee that's tasked with looking at how to best implement JLARC recommendations. JLARC, the the committee itself, they're gonna put out a report in December on k 12 accountability. They looked at accountability systems across the country, and they may have some recommendations for potential adjustments to Virginia's accountability system or how Virginia's accountability system, matches up with with
other with other areas. The Virginia Commission on Youth just recently released, kind of an initial draft of recommendations for changes, to Virginia's special education dispute resolution process. So they'll come back in October, with a public hearing and then make some final recommendations in in November. The Virginia FOIA Commission, the School Health Services Commission, the Joint Commission on Technology and Science, they're all looking at issues that could lead to legislation, coming up in the,
the upcoming general assembly session. And then these last three, these are more ad hoc committees. They're not the normal standing committees. The first two are focused in on some of the changes that are happening in the federal government and how that might impact how it might impact Virginia, Virginia policy, Virginia budget. As I was saying, these things are happening literally right now. The House Emergency Committee meets this Thursday and may have its first set of recommendations or at least its first set of findings from the meetings that they've been holding
on the impact of federal act. And then before I move on, I also wanted to remind you that it's not just the General Assembly that's meeting and that's taking actions in Richmond. You also have their executive education policy agencies, Virginia Department of Education, Virginia Board of Education and the Secretary of Education. They're also they do work year round. They meet year round. I don't necessarily want to go through this slide, but I wanted to provide it as context for you just so you understand, kind of what each one of these
boards do, who their members are. For the most part, they're all appointed by the governor. For the most part, they're all confirmed by the General Assembly. So there's a nexus between the executive branch and what these agencies do, and their actions obviously have a very, very direct impact on what happens at FCPS, and here are two examples of that. And you have received lots and lots of information about the first, which is the new school performance and support framework, which is the significant changes that are being made
in our school accountability system. That data, then those first school accountability ratings should be coming out in the next month or two. So that will accelerate that conversation because right now, everything about the school performance framework has been hypothetical. That will actually give you the results of your schools are ranked this way, And that I think will lead to some further discussion about that framework. And then other work that the state board is doing is they're adjusting the cut scores for all of the state's SOL assessments.
And that's important because the cut score is the determination of how much a student has to know in order to be considered a pass proficient or pass advanced on an SOL assessment. All indications of those cut scores are going to be elevated, which could have a very direct impact on our students, on our schools, on student graduation rates. So definitely things that we're paying attention to, but just wanted to provide that as background of topics that are being talked about. And then two others, we've actually already covered these as part of past legislation that
had delayed enactments, both high quality materials and the SOL assessment contract. They created work groups. These are not, to be frank, as public as some of the other work groups because these are run by VDOE, but there are conversations going on about the implementation of those two pieces of legislation in these two different forums. All right. So we're past the look back, and now we're at a look ahead. Notwithstanding today's election, which is a federal election, which as a reminder, polls are up
until seven. If you live in the Eleventh District, it's a federal federal election, just to you know, as a public service, you do have the governor's election, and you also have the election of all 100 members of the Virginia House of Delegates this year. That election happens on November 4. No Senate elections. Senate runs on four year terms, and the House is on two year terms. But that that will have an impact, obviously, on the policy conversation going forward. The General Assembly session is scheduled to convene on 01/04/2026.
It's a long session. Long session lasts sixty days, and it's sixty consecutive days, so it goes from January 14 to March 14. But it's the first year of the biennium, and that's important because the 2020 succession discussion will set the state's budget for fiscal year 2027 and fiscal year 2028. In terms of kind of crystal ball and trying to determine what's going to be talked about during the General Assembly session, as I said, the twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty eight budget will be front and center. That will be one of the biggest topics of conversation that is undertaken down during
the General Assembly session. Rebenchmarking, I have a slide on that later, but rebenchmarking is a process by which the state updates all of its education funding formulas to reflect more current costs, and that has an impact on how much money gets sent back to localities. That will be kind of front and center because that's always front and center in the first year of a biennium. And then we mentioned a little bit about JLARC. Some JLARC recommendations have been adopted over the last couple of years, but there are still several that haven't. So there are still some topics that I think are open for discussion as part
of that budget conversation related to some of the JLARC recommendations. Accountability system, as I said, things will become more real here late September, October possibly. There could be some discussion about adjustments in that system. We've just recently implemented the state's wrap back system, which is the continuous monitoring of background information on our employees. But that cost is entirely borne by the school division. The state is not funding that.
So there could be a discussion about the state picking up some of that funding. And then for the last two bullets, we talked a little bit about the possibility of bills resulting from either delayed enactment legislation, probably most likely on assessment and on advanced math, and there could also be bills that are resulting from all of that ongoing off session work that the General Assembly is doing and that the Board of Education is doing. So those those will likely generate legislation for, for the next session.
And then, obviously, every member of the General Assembly will have their own priorities they will bring. The new governor will bring have will, will, bring their priorities, so the likelihood of there being 3,100 or more bills, I think, is fairly high. I mentioned I was going to explain re benchmarking in a little bit more detail but not too much more detail. Rebenchmarking is the process that the state uses to update all of its input figures. So you've got these SOQ formulas that determine how much money the state contributes to
public education. All these factors that are listed here, enrollment, sales tax, support costs, inflation, they're all embedded in those in that cost calculation. But the state, every two years, updates their data, so you get kind of a stair step effect every two years. Nothing in re benchmarking changes policy. It's all the cost of doing business exactly the way as we've been doing it. So nothing about re benchmarking changes policy in the lease bet. JLARC is about changing policy. This isn't about changing policy.
This is just about updating funding. And as I said, it's a stair step. Historically, it has resulted in a relatively decent amount of new funding for public education in the first year of the biennium because of all of those input factors have increased over the last two years. And then this slide could take hours and hours and hours, but just wanted to kind of tee it up for you. The current state outlook in terms of the budget. In August, the governor came out with his year end review. There was some discussion of having a surplus. There's a discussion of having a surplus most years.
Surpluses at the state, there's a bunch of different ways to look at them. Most of the surplus, as they define it, is already kind of statutory allocated or there are very specific rules about how to access those rainy day funds or those surplus funds. So it's not you can't think of it conceptually as it just being a piggy bank sitting out there for the state to be able to go and tap into. There's more there's more to it than that. I'm happy to go into more detail if necessary, but, it's just surpluses are always
a little tricky conversation, because it seems like there's funding just sitting there, and in some ways there isn't, but in other ways there isn't. And then what's true at both the state level and the local level is federal actions are very likely to have an impact on both revenue, so the revenue available to state and local governments, but also, particularly at the state level, spending pressures. So potential cuts at the federal level could lead to spending pressure at the state
level, which would have an impact on the amount of funding that's available for other uses outside of those areas that are cut. So now turning to kind of future looking, your discussion and getting us a little bit closer to the legislative program. This is, again, just to reinforce, things that go on in public education with regard to the budget and with regard to policy happen year round. There's activity happening all the time.
There's activity that we're involved in all the time with other organizations, with other school divisions. And I think Doctor. Anderson may have teed it up, that one component of that program is your actual state and federal legislative program. Next couple of slides, I think, are gonna walk through kind of the program and its background, and then we'll talk a little bit about some recommendations. So you're all familiar with the program. It's the board's position statements that you adopt in an open session on state and
federal legislation policy and regulations. It's critical guidance. It helps because there's so much that goes on and there's so many topics that are discussed during the general assembly session. And outside of the general assembly session, it's a really important resource to be able to see where the board has taken positions on various topics, without having to constantly come back and ask for board positions on topics. One important component of the or at least one important feature of the way the legislative program has been handled in the past and I think has continued to be
handled is that positions carry over from year to year. So it's you think of it as a perpetual document. So unless you all, as a board, take some degree of action to change languages in the program positions, They carry over from 2025 to 2026 in this case. And then in terms of the components of the program, you hold a joint position with the county. You take federal and state priority positions. You identify a subset of positions that you consider to be the most important for
the upcoming year and set those aside as your priorities. But then the bulk of the program is your standing positions in both state and federal level, and that's everything from, you know, where you are on assessments to where you are on the state budget to where you are on, student discipline or student transportation. So those are the components of the program document itself. As I said, County Board of Supervisors, you do have a joint you do hold a joint position with them. It's almost entirely about education funding, the joint work that you all have done, very
heavily JLARC focused in the last couple of years, of course. It's included in both of your legislative programs. So it's included in yours. It's included in the counties. Just as referenced and just in terms of calendaring, the county is not going to finalize their program until all the way in December, December 9. So if you take action on your own program earlier than that, it will come with a bit of a hole in it where the legislative where the federal or where the joint position will go, and you can come back at a future meeting
and amend the program to add the joint position with the county in at that time. So to tee off your discussion because you as a board set both your standing positions, but also you have your priorities. And I'm not going to walk through all these. I'm just going to put them up here for you to take a look at. These are your current priorities. It's a kind of a truncated list, but these are the current topics that are included in your twenty twenty five state board priorities. So these are areas where it would be appropriate for your discussion to determine should
these continue to be our priorities, are there things that we want to add or are there things that we want to subtract? Similarly, same issue on the federal side. These are your current board priorities. Whether they continue to be appropriate is part of the discussion that you'll have about them. Now last couple of slides that I have for you are and there are two documents that are posted as part of your agenda item as well, and they're a strikethrough version of the 2025 program, so it's your current language, with a set of
recommendations that have been generated from staff in terms of how what staff sees as important or necessary changes in the program going forward. There are edits for clarity throughout, so there's a lot of places where, you know, as best as you try language you read language one year and you wonder why a previous board or why you, as director of government relations, may have suggested that particular language. So there's some areas where language is clarified.
There are two places where you're able to drop positions that are no longer kind of issues at the state level anymore. One has to do with actually, there's two components of early childhood program eligibility. One has to do with when we could enroll students into VPI programs. The state has provided additional flexibility for enrollments after the beginning of the school year. And then there's some additional flexibility for localities to determine the appropriate income thresholds where parents and families are eligible to participate in those early childhood programs.
Those both have been achieved in terms of the way the legislative program was written, so those can fall out. And then the other one that can fall out has to do with a position on chronic absenteeism. One of the components of the new accountability system actually addressed a primary concern about how chronic absenteeism was being handled in the current under the current accountability system, which was essentially setting it as a threshold and that if a school was below it, it was virtually impossible for them to be at the highest level of school accountability
ratings. The new system treats chronic absenteeism as a component of a bunch of different factors, so it doesn't have that same threshold effect. So for all intents and purposes, your concern about the chronic absenteeism has been addressed. In terms of new positions, there really it may seem like there are a lot, but there really aren't all that many. There are several relating to multilingual and English learners. Just as a reminder, we continue to use the term English learners within the legislative program because that's the term that the state uses, but it obviously is coincident with
our the language that we use here in Fairfax, which is multilingual learners. Position on expanding the ability for local credit verification as an alternative to having to pass an SOL assessment flexibility for the time frame for including English learners under the accountability system expanded work based learning opportunities specifically for multilingual learners and then resources for interpretation services are some of the four that are being recommended for addition.
A few other positions that are just kind of stand alones, one is that the state provides fully funded VPI early childhood slots, including for students that are enrolled after the beginning of school. There's a fairly steep drop off in terms of how much funding we receive from the state if we enroll after, the very beginning of school, and we're looking for more flexibility with that. The issue of solar in or connectivity, your program actually already covers it generically, but thought it was important given how much it's being talked about at the state level,
do you have a very specific mention of addressing the cost issues with solar interconnectivity? Asking for some resources for FOIA compliance. As you're very well aware, FOIA has continued to be an administrative burden on the school division. And then as part of our safety and security positions, asking the state to provide some resources for weapons detection technologies, which we have in place at a lot of our schools, but that's entirely being funded at the local level. And then this slide, because so much has happened with accountability at the state level
and because a lot has happened with bills that have passed about assessments, there are several areas where we wanted to be a little bit more explicit within your program about some of the changes at the state level and some of the changes you might want to see going forward as we move on to implementation of the system. One thing that's important is that right now, this position is referred to as standards of accreditation and standards of learning. We wanna rename it so that the accredit or so that the accreditation or, so
the accountability piece of it is, is reflected because under the new system, you will continue to have the term standards of accreditation, but it will not mean school accountability. So it's just important to have that, that distinction in the position just to make it clear what we're talking about. I don't know if you want me to go through each one of these. They're in your document. I will highlight a couple, advocating for the elimination of the Virginia growth assessment. If you remember, a couple years ago, the General Assembly adopted a change in the
SOLs so that there is an early year kind of a beginning of the year SOL test, a midyear SOL test and end of year SOL test. We in Fairfax don't actually do that. We have a waiver which allows us to use a different tool to determine student growth. That waiver is expiring this year. So the conversation at the General Assembly level will need to be either an extension of that waiver so that we can do continue to do what we're doing with
a different growth measure or an elimination of the Virginia growth assessment itself. And the reason to advocate for an elimination of the system is it was put in place intending to be a measure of growth. When the state presented it to the federal government as a measure of growth, the federal government said, no, this actually doesn't measure student growth. You can't use it for that purpose. So from our perspective, we're already measuring growth with a different tool, but there are a lot of school divisions that are taking the Virginia growth assessment but not getting
any really kind of useful information from that system. It would probably be better if the state went back to the drawing board as part of their new assessment accountability system, But because the Virginia growth assessment is specifically delineated in code, you'd have to go in and change code in order for that to go by the wayside. And then I think the last two that I'll highlight have to do with the changes that were made in the delayed enactment bill dealing with assessments and just asking
for additional flexibility, both in assessment administration and in timing and also flexibility because there is a provision in those that legislation that SOL tests are going to inform classroom grades. So that is the sum of the staff recommendations for your legislative program on the state side. There are a few changes that we're recommending on the federal side. One is there were some positions that can drop out because of the new accountability
system, more closely aligned state and federal accountability systems. So some of the asks in your legislative program were that there be closer alignment. Those have been achieved. And then the final positions just deal primarily with some funding issues and some programs that I think you want to be explicit about supporting the funding for those. Having said all that, that document that what's posted, those are staff recommendations. At the end of the day, it's the board's legislative program. So you can accept or reject any of those recommendations.
And then obviously, you have the ability as board members to discuss other things and other issues that may not have been covered or other issues that need to go by the wayside. I think that's the intent of some of the discussion today is to do that. I have had the chance to meet with some of you. I have not had the chance to meet with all of you to talk about a few things. But just to remind you that at the end of the day, staff recommendations are staff recommendations. It's the board's legislative program, and you all are the final arbiters of what goes
into the program. With that, I think I am turning the microphone back to my meeting managers to walk through the last couple of slides we have here. Alrighty. Thank you. If we can just go to the next slide, please. These are the areas for discussion for today, and I'm hoping that we can chunk it a little bit just so we can organize our work a little bit more, efficiently. We wanna start with any kind of questions or clarifications or some general comments that you may have to the documents that, rather to the content that mister Molloy has
just presented. And then after that, we're going to take some time to really speak to what are some new positions that the board has. As mister Malloy shared, this is the board's program. This is the board's agenda, and staff has, provided some recommendations. It will be very helpful if you could speak to those recommendations and that second line of comments or start to talk about some of other positions that you may have or revision that you've been thinking about. And today's not going to be the last time. It's just going to be the introduction just so we could be thinking about what
is, emerging as important to the board. And then we will also take some time to talk about how do we now move into the priority positions because those one pagers, you know, in the past have been lauded as super important because when they go in front of, lawmakers, they know that these are high priority to Fairfax County. Obviously, everything in the book is important, but those priority positions have been elevated as the most crucial. And lastly, speaking to what we talked about earlier in the conversation regarding budget and
in the discussion before that, how are we going to actualize the work that only the people in this room can actually do? And what do you need to help you to, support you in doing that? So madam clerk, we will start with three minutes for number one, and we are asking for your, for your grace and just kinda helping us walk through this, setup a little bit. So right now, we'll take any questions, clarifications, or comments on what Michael talked about,
maybe some of the positions he did not raise, so we will start there. And I think the first speaker to that is mister Frisch. Just to clarify before time begins, we're talking about each of these ones that are numbered number one? We're just talking about number one right now. We just wanted They're all number number one. They're all labeled number one. Number one? Why are they all numbered number one? They're They're all important. Type typographical error. Oh, okay. My copy does not have all of them as number one. We're talking So we're gonna have four rounds of comments.
We're talking about the first section, questions and clarifications and comments on the presented materials, any areas in which you need more information from what Michael just talked about. So the real number one. But to clarify, we're then having an individual conversation about each of the other number ones? We may we may cluster the others, but we're going to separate those discussions a little bit. Right now, it's just to make sure we have full understanding of what was presented or any thoughts that we have about what was presented before we get into the
what are the new things you want to introduce as a board member, what are the things that we think should be elevated as priorities, what are the resources and activities that you will engage in. We're going to chunk this a little bit. So I hope that helps. Right now, we're only going to talk about the first number one. Alright. Well, I don't want this to count as my time. I needed a clarification. Sure. Sure. It is not your time. We haven't started it. It. Well, I'm not speaking to the first one. Okay. I'm speaking to another number one. Why are they all number ones? Mine are not like that here.
So this is, curious. At any rate, any board member seeking to speak to the number one, I think, is that miss, is that who's that that's up? Thank you. I can't tell whether it's yours or mister McElveen's. Thank you. That helps. Miss Sizemore Heizer. Thank you. I have most of my comments are to the fourth number one. So I will prob I don't I'm so I are we gonna do three minutes on each one of these? I'm afraid we'll run out of time. So that's why I'm confused as to what you want us to talk about. Are you pausing my time?
Okay. We weren't trying to confuse anyone. If anyone has any clarifying questions, please let's just get them out of the way first because it will help your discussion and then please go ahead with everything you'd ever wanna say about this topic. Is that okay? And we'll do three minutes each time. So, miss Heiser, does that clarify? Are we gonna continue? That's fine. Yeah. That's fine. I've yeah. I guess the thing I guess clarifying in terms of the priorities, you know, we're looking down at slide 27, 28. I guess, just twenty twenty five priorities and then twenty twenty six. So I guess it's more thirty and thirty one priorities.
I'm kinda my my clarification question is that it would be helpful if we had some prioritization within these priorities. Right? Like, the 2026 session is starting in January. It it's probably too late for us to really do a lot of advocacy on any of these priorities at this point. Right? Because, really, to do that, we have to work with our legislators during the summer, give them impact statements on how why we wanna do this, and then give them potentially suggested language. So I think it would have been helpful perhaps to have so I my question
is, are there priorities within these priorities that do you think we should be focusing on? And, you know, I'm a little confused. Some of the ones from 2025 seemed to carry over into 2026, potentially. So it would have been helpful on the 2025 at this summary to say this is what was still leftover or not because it's just kind of a lot of different stuff listed in here. So so to be clear, the two slides that so slide twenty eight and twenty
nine are the board's current priorities. There are not a parallel set of 2026 priorities No. I understand that. This year. Yeah. The positions that are being discussed, those are changes to your standing positions, not to your priorities. It's the board's discussion to determine whether or not the 2025 priorities continue forward to 2026 and then whether or not the content of them should change. Okay. I I get that. Maybe I wasn't clear on my question. What I was trying to get at is it would be I see that you
have staff recommendations, right, of twenty twenty six priorities. But they're not priorities. That that I think that's that's where I'm trying to think of those. Those are just standing positions. Some of them may end up being your priorities, but they're that I guess what I'm trying to say is was actually as priorities. On the okay. I will make sure I make you clear. Priorities versus positions, but maybe definitions would have been helpful on that section too to so that we knew what you were thinking of when you meant priorities versus positions because when they're in that slide together. But I guess what I'm trying to get at is what's listed in twenty twenty
five priorities. It would be helpful if we knew what of those were already addressed or started to be addressed or perhaps had bills had bills that may have been put out but failed. So we kinda knew where in the process addressing those priorities are because it's hard to know what priorities to focus on if we for next year or positions to focus on. Right? I'm I'm guessing what you're trying to say is to take our positions that your staff is recommending and create priorities out of them for the board. But it's hard to know what new priorities to create out of staff recommended positions
without knowing what the the previous priorities have been addressed and to what extent and what's left. And so that's where I'm finding it difficult to give feedback on that piece without knowing really a tie. And I know you've sent reports in the spring of different bills, but having it laid out of these were the board's priorities in 2025, this is what was addressed and what wasn't addressed. Here's what's still outstanding. Out of those, these are our recommended positions, which just kinda helps. That's the clarification I'm asking. So my question is, in the 2025 priorities that are listed, which of those are
then mapped into the staff recommending positions? Which of those had bills that perhaps addressed those priorities or didn't address those priority or partially address those priorities? Which of those bills created additional problems? And what of those do you recommend that we have as positions and or priorities? Those are my questions. So part of the answer actually is on slide seven Okay. Which I think was not slide seven identified some of the changes that were were
adopted during the general assembly session. This past general assembly session, which spoke to some of the priorities and also some of your standing positions as well, right? So in terms of the slide that's up on the screen right now with the increased state funding for JLARC, support cap is one that's been, for the most part, addressed. There's some nuance to it, but the support cap was funded. So that may or may not continue to be a priority. There's a reason for it to continue to be a priority is to ensure that the funding stays.
But for the most part, the bulk of the funding that you would expect to get out of the support cap recommendation from JLARC, that's been achieved. So that's included on that. I think some of the accountability pieces tie into you know, your FairSchool accountability system. But that you slide seven is the most direct reflection of what you're asking for, but it's not I guess I as explicit as what you're asking. I guess I would just ask for a mapping. Right? So then it's easy for us to look and say, okay. These were addressed. These were partially addressed, and these were not addressed.
Or these had bills that tried to address them, but those bills failed. Like, that mapping would be helpful. I know my time is up. I'll take another round. But Absolutely. And I think since we do have another work session on this before we collate everything, I think this is gonna be one of those things that perhaps, mister Malloy can bring back because That's fine. It will be helpful to know how do we reprioritize. Exactly. Mister McDaniel. McDaniel. I do have clarification and technical questions. So I'm in the actual legislative package, the long document.
On page six, under the VRS, section, item five has been marked through and edited. And it now says the school board supports state resources for local school divisions too, and the rest remains unchanged. That's just a technical edit to to kinda clean up the clunky wording, or was there a legislative okay. That was it. Yeah. That that was just intended, to to clarify what the ask was. Okay. And then I I have two similar areas, on page up on page two. The item four under early childhood, same I'm sorry, on page two, bullet point three
under early childhood that kind of spills over into page three, the early that early childhood the with the strike through, specifically, the school board supports allowing Fairfax County to increase VPI. Again, just a technical edit there to clarify. So actually, no. So those two changes were the ones that were identified on the slide about staff recommendations of issues that have been addressed. Okay. So those two are changes. A document that will help is, in addition to the to the large document, there's
a second document that's been posted that is actually a table of all the changes. Okay. And it it walks through and it describes, is it just a is it just a wording change? Is it a substantive change. So we try and map out between yes. So we map out between so you can kind of translate what the strike through on the document means by looking at that table. Perfect. And last one was on page 14, under safety, item 11.
Yes. That is Simply calling out teachers That is teachers That's clarification. That's a clarifying of of unclear language, I think, is Okay. Alright. That's fine. Best way to conceptualize that. Thank you. Carl doesn't have any clarification questions, but I know miss, Sizemoreheiser did wanna go back. Are there any other clarification questions? Okay. Now we're going to move and we'll have miss Sizemoreheiser have a turn when she returns. Now we have numbers two, three, and four where we want to talk about what is of interest to the board in terms of there's the legislative agenda piece, folks,
and there's also our work. And one of the major goals of this component, and I will invite miss Marin to also share, is how do we see our role in terms of impacting legislation? It's not just handing over the, handing over the program and then calling it a day. So what else could we do? You know, we talked a little bit earlier about the budget, about that communication plan, about expanding into spaces that we may not have may not have been thinking about before or activities that each of you may have done individually.
We would love for you to raise that here so we can duplicate some of those, some of that work. So not only do we wanna speak about these are the positions, we wanna we also wanna talk about how do we achieve visibility on these positions through our work with, lawmakers. And I'll turn it over to miss Marin. Yeah. Just to say so, you know, actively proposing bill language is something the board has not done a lot of. Perhaps individually, some of us have advocated and been involved, but having the board ask
Michael and, you know, guide us through that is something, that we could do. There's also the whole budget amendment approach, which is a whole another opportunity to impact legislation. So to kick off talking about what kind of specific legislation, you know, people are interested in, mister, Frisch, why don't you go ahead, please? Thank you for waiting. My pleasure, and thank you for the work that's gone into this and for constantly trying to think of ways to to get at this because I know it's time consuming. So I have three areas, two federal, one state that I will likely bring for
an amendment or what have you. The first concerns, federal supports for our neediest students, specifically support for, restoring funding to Medicaid, SNAP benefits, McKinney Vento, and opposing the the removal of title three, which is currently under consideration in Washington. Additionally, I want to include something about rolling back the changes that have happened at FAFSA that limit income based repayment plans, public service loan forgiveness, and, largely eliminate grant
plus loans. These limit we set our our students up for great success here in FCPS, and these changes to FAFSA greatly limit their ability to succeed in the future. And then on the state level, I know that some lawmakers are talking about, finding a way to bring greater stability to the membership of the Virginia Board of Education and the boards of visitors for various universities in the Commonwealth, so that it doesn't have such dramatic swings from administration to administration and that we can constantly center the
needs of our students, in that conversation. So I would like some broad language in there that allows us to be supportive of efforts that would bring stability and, a student centered approach to those changes, that maintain the constitutional independence of local school boards and the role the legislature has, in, you know, properly approving, of appointees.
So I look forward to talking to colleagues about these three specific areas that I'd like to see us flesh out a little bit, but keeping it broad so that we can be responsive. And in terms of other ways that we can engage in the work, I think being in Richmond matters a great deal, but also taking advantage of opportunities to meet with legislators when they are in district to not only take your legislator to to school month, but also going to their town halls when they are having, town halls in their communities, bringing them to other school events.
I think these are all ways to continue to build those relationships. And and I think the superintendent is a tremendous asset there as well. And while we may have a unique, role here, I think the superintendent also has a unique role, as an ambassador for our system. So I think we need to employ all of us in that work. That's it for me. I appreciate the work that's been done thus far. Thank you. Thank you, mister Frisch. Miss Leidy? Yeah. I just wanna say, 100% spot on to my colleague. Every one of those things is, incredibly important, and, I just would echo everything he
just shared in terms of, priorities. So that's all I had right now. Mister McDaniel. An area that I I do think we need to flesh out more, and and maybe it's a standalone section, but it's gonna be the rise of artificial intelligence in our k 12 system, both, you know, how the students use it, how we use it internally, how teachers use it, how that's gonna be injected into SOQs going forward. There's just not been a lot of work done at the DOE, at the state, federal levels, and I feel like we're getting behind, not just in Fairfax, but across school divisions.
And that needs legislative attention. I don't know whether that's laws or JLARC studies. But I'll share some documents that I've kinda pulled together on that. But I do think focusing and getting more attention on the rise of artificial intelligence, is really important going forward. Alright. So in terms of going into some of the questions, the thing I really wanted to talk a little bit about was timing because I I feel that, well, two things. One, I was surprised to see in the recommended positions that we have that there
wasn't a recommendation. There's a recommendation additional SOL assessment administration timing flexibility. I'm sorry? Sorry. What's slide 31? But I don't I guess what I'm let me I'm trying to follow my thoughts here. I think what I'm trying to get at is I think the timing of this is difficult because when I talk to when I meet with my state delegation folks and when I talk to them, what they say they find most helpful is if we can present to them our position or our priority, suggested language. Right? So it's not just here, we believe in this or we we support this, but
here's suggested language either to change current, you know, law or to have a new bill and then an impact statement of or a why. Right? Why do we suggest this? And some of these positions, when I, when I look at the 2026 recommended strike through document, some of them have a little bit of a why, and some just say we support this. And there's so many of them that I think it it's so detailed and that's great. But even when you pick our priorities, we need to have an easy document.
They have sixty days in session, and that sixty days does not give them a lot of time to read this. Think about what our position is. Think about how what building might change or what they might bring. So if we could my recommendation would be in the spring, maybe a month after the session is done, we have a due out report. Here's what your priorities were for this year. Here's what the mapping to here's the bills that came through. Here's what priorities were addressed. Here's what were not addressed. Here's some changes that happened that you might wanna address next year, for example, the
SOL bill or some of these other things that came through. Here are potential impact statements of the changes. And we, at that point in the spring, say, okay. And here's some suggested priorities or positions for next year. And in spring, we say these are our priorities. So then we have over the summer to draft a mapping of board priority, suggested language, or suggested bill lang you know, whatever it may be, impact statement. So then our legislators can take that and say, oh, okay.
Here's what they want. Here's how I can draft it, and here's why it's important. And then we in the fall, that document is presented to us in September you know, or in the summer. And that is because by this time, they're already in the process of drafting their legislation. If we're adopting this in the next month without any impact statements or suggested language, it's it's difficult for them just this is just how they function. Right? So we gotta fit in the way how they function. It's difficult for them to make any of these changes. And then in the later of the fall, if I could just finish my sentence
or end of the session, we can start flagging the bills that they're filing for us to advocate on either for or against, or we may be just neutral. But this needs I think this whole process needs to be rejiggered if we're gonna actually have the time to put in legislation of things that we are our positions or priorities. My 2¢. Well, thank you. And, you know, this was one reason why we had sought to have even a work session just next week on that held space because, the timeline is not ideal, but we're getting there earlier. And also, remember, we have the October 7 legislative breakfast.
And last year, it was very successful and well received by our state elected colleagues because because they liked that we did not just run through our usual, here's all our priorities, but we were like, hey. It's JLARC. This is, you know, how it's impacting us. This is where we wanna go. And that was really helpful for them. So, like, digging down, like, you know, drilling down, like miss Heizer said, is really valuable. So one of the things we're wondering about is what do we wanna prepare for October 7? Do we want to, you know, try to set that up? But knowing that we still have the election in November, right, so that's gonna change things, you know, or can we say, like, here's the ideas of legislation that we're
interested in. Can you tell us how can you know, is this helpful? Does it align with what you want? Right. Like maybe this year's breakfast is, you know, also about how can we help you do what you're trying to do for us? Right. Just given where we're at and everything happening. So we need to flesh that out more. And I do like the idea, though, of the state priorities piece being more than just the list, but the rationale. And I do like what mister Frisch suggested for the content in the, program.
I would support those things. Just one more thing. Oops. Just one more thing that I wanna add. Some of the activities that we have not done before, which is the submission of a budget amendment, which frankly, I did not know that we could do. I certainly knew that we could submit bills we could submit bills. We have never done this before as a board. It would be fantastic for us to get to that space because it's all encompassing. It has all of the data around the things that we are that we find the most important. And it cannot be on everything. It just has to be on the top few things.
So we did ask, Michael to also get together a one pager for us in terms of what is that protocol to submit a bill? What is that protocol to submit a budget amendment? Because these are tools that are in our arsenal that we have yet used, and these are things that we will dig a little bit deeper in during the next work session, and, hopefully, those one pagers will be available for us to go through those priorities and maybe even enumerate within that group what are the ones that are most important to take to those two next steps.
So thank you for teeing that up a little bit, miss, Sizemore Heizer. Before we go to the next round, I do want to well, there's the housekeeping that staff asked us to talk about, the clerks. Just to note that the next steps email and link has been sent to you all for this portion and the budget comms plan, and those will be due on Friday by 5PM for you to enter the next steps and for you to show support by the seventeenth, which is the following Wednesday.
But if we could go back to, the slides and perhaps go to the next work step slide, if we can move to the next one. Again, talking about our future work session, the timeline, and the timing, which is also important. Board member recommendations, we will also gather that language so we can all have it, with whatever else may come to you all after you leave this room and and have a little bit more time to digest what's been offered here, and then any board activity that we may be interested in.
These will be the next parts of the conversation for the sixteenth once you've had a chance to talk about this a little bit more. We do want to go through the next slide, the on the horizon slide as well, which outlays some of the timeline for filing. And, again, if we're finding that it's important for us to have bills that are submitted, we will need to make sure that we are equipping our, legislators with this information in a timely manner, as well as the next slide, which are the key
policy and budget dates. The and then there's two slides of that, starting with October and ending through May. And we will take under consideration, Michael, what's been shared here regarding the setting up the calendar for next time. Miss Marin, we would like to talk about the timeline at this point of the legislative agenda. As you we've re as we've just talked about, we have the breakfast on the seventh. We have a joint position that is typically surrounding the education issues which we put
forth with the board of supervisors. The board of supervisors typically do not complete their, their their program until December. This year, you mentioned it is the ninth. So what we are proposing is that we get ourselves prepared and we could talk about what we would like to see a little bit more, specifically during the October 7, legislative breakfast, but we are proposing moving the adoption of the program a little bit later to be, better in alignment with what the board of supervisors have so
we don't need to have an additional addendum. It doesn't mean that internally we can't come to some planning around some of these positions. And I think the dates that were being floated are November, thirteenth and to vote on December 4, kind of five days away from the board of supervisors. Would love to hear if there are any objections to that move or any feedback here. That, miss Mary, would you like to add any? Well, I just, am wondering, you know, we talked today about budget timeline. We're talking about legislative timeline.
We all have the boundary review timeline on our minds in the Western High School high high school. You know, I'm just wondering if we should have, you know, at our meetings something that's showing all the things that are in our queue, with deadlines, you know, the dates because we've got a lot of stuff moving here. And if people wanna be involved, you know, we have to know what's happening. So, you know, that's something for people to consider. I actually have created one on a spreadsheet because, you know, I love spreadsheets. So, if you wanna take a look at that, let me know. But yeah.
So thoughts on October 7. What shall we, you know, share with our few dozens of state elected representatives who will be here? Thoughts? Miss Eisemore Heizer? So I think, you know, our positions and I think our priorities need to be shared, but I think we need, as a board, before then, whether it's today or or next time, decide what those priorities are, but and also figure out what from the previous session might be more urgent to be addressed or what what of our
priorities are more urgent to be addressed. I'm gonna just yeah. I've talked to mister Malloy about this at at length is our so the SOL bill that was passed. That SOL bill has some significant impact on our ability to hold graduations. It has an impact on our military connected students. It has an impact on students who need retakes to grad or graduating seniors who might need retakes to graduate. It has significant impact on our school system. And I would say that's a priority to be addressed because we we can't I mean, our graduating seniors can't graduate.
If you have a graduation two weeks before the, if you have graduation two weeks before the end of the school year, you can't take and you need an SOL to graduate. You can't take that SOL, and so that means you can't walk. I don't so I was hoping we'd have a little more of that, and I don't this is not for you. I mean, this is I think it would be helpful from our government relations staff to have a little more guidance on things that are important. I mean, a list is greater positions, but which of those are urgent and which
of those are nice to haves and which of those are whatever it may be. Right? But if we're gonna have the legislative breakfast on October 7, I think it's vital to at least lift up the ones that are problematic for our school system that have to be fixed this year at minimum. And that is one I'd probably put at the top of the list. You know, like one for example, one of the things that SOL bill says is that if a class is given an SOL or if a student in a class is given an SOL, every student in that class must take that SOL. So if you have a military connected student who moves here and doesn't take, let's
say, the biology SOL for their science credit and instead is gonna take us the, chemistry one because that's the year that they came in here. Now that entire class has to take the chemistry SOL even if they didn't need to because this one Student needs who's a military connected student. That is one example of what this bill does. I I know it's all well intentioned. I understand to try to, you know, decrease the timeline. It was a well intentioned bill, but there are major implications for many of our students, our multilingual students or special education students, and those might need more, retakes.
What are we gonna do to that? So I would put for our next session leading up to October 7, what are the priorities that must be addressed? What is the and each of those are mapped to what was done last year or if anything, an impact statement, suggested language for a fix or suggested language for a bill. Because that's our opportunity to talk to all of them at once and in enough potential time to do some legislation. Thank you, miss Sizemore Heizer. Miss Anderson And then miss St. John Cunningham. I apologize.
I think I had it back. I just wanna confirm since I'm trying to ensure that we have the correct calendar. What is the date that you're proposing for the because I expected to receive these over email. So November 13 for new business and December 4 for a vote. But as miss Heizer suggested, the opportunity is October 7 to speak with our delegation, which is why we asked for the work session next Tuesday. I'm aware of service. It's all in flux. There was no final dates until this conversation or suggested dates.
Well, but we did come to this with the expectation that we were gonna push off the legislative package. So Yeah. That is the the so dates would have been helpful to understand. She just announced them a tiny bit ago. Thank you. I was I didn't hear it in the conversation. So, the other question that I had is that, again, I'm gonna hit hard that we would be remiss to not talk about JLARC and talk about what we're actually asking for the legislators to do related to JLARC this year. I agree completely with moving the package until after the discussion.
I actually would advocate for us having another work session on this or a portion of a work session after the election so that we have an indicator of what direction the administration is gonna go because I think our package looks extremely different depending on who's in office. And so right now, I And so right now, I would advocate for us having another portion of a work session on, the November 6 because that would be enough time that we could we could have the conversation that we would need to have. That does not leave a a significant amount of turnaround to have something done by
the thirteenth. But I don't think that our advocacy is gonna change. I just think it may strengthen what we're actually requesting. So it could be that as we move forward towards the thirteenth, that we would need a path that would be here's here's what it's gonna look like if we go one way, here's what it's gonna look like if we go another. So as we're moving forward with this, I would guess that the path that's currently existing in our package is probably close to where we would stay if things stay status quo. However, if we move forward and actually have a change in the administration, then it
could be that we strengthen some of our statements to to be firmer about what we're it is that we're looking for. So that's one thing that I would advocate for. I also think that we should go back and look at what the bills were that happened after JLARC was originally put forward in in 2023 and determine what didn't pass that should have and how we can actually look at that to move forward if we have a different climate. So I think that these are the opportunities that would be helpful. Thank you. And just kind of just to share what we looked up, those next dates, if
we were to adopt at the December, which would be after the board of supervisors completes their program on the ninth, it would be the date of the eighteenth. And I I I think that makes a lot of sense. But before we get too far out, and I know more people want to speak, I want to reiterate, I wanna be sure that we can come to a conclusion here regarding that date before we leave this meeting because it will set us up for the next two. Miss, Saint John Cunning. So I just wanted to echo about looking at the bills that are problematic because
although well intentioned and even with us that work within the school board, it's in the operationalizing of some of this that really has an impact. And so I think that's something we really need to focus on on October 7. And again, piggybacking on the JLARC, I think what we have to also and it's sad that it's sad that several times the statements have been made here depending on who's gonna be elected, because it should not depend on who's gonna be elected, how
our schools are funded, and how our students are supported. And it's sad that that's even a consideration that we have to take, but that is the reality we live in today. And so because that is a reality that we live in today, I think we also have to talk to our state partners and say we've gotta look at the federal funding and the shortfalls that may or may not exist. And I think that we also, you know, does that is that does that coincide with JLARC? Does it not? Is it something different? Because the reality is that those federal impacts will those federal dollars, if we don't
get them, will negatively impact our students and our families. And so we're going to have to readjust how we get funding from the state and from our other funders, from our county funders, and I think that's an important consideration. Thank you, Miss St. John Conning. Miss Marin? Yeah. So I wanted to share, you know, that I do I appreciate miss Sizemore Heizer, you helping us figure out what is gonna be most effective for the legislative breakfast. You know, for me, I definitely want us to, advocate for this SOL.
We got to fix that. And, you know, that was one of our own delegation members who who proposed that. So definitely, you know, for Doctor. Reid's team to come in and say, like, why it's a problem, what it looks like, you know, to arm us with that information, give them a real world example. And like you said, what the legislation should look like. You know, what's interesting about JLARC, you know, I'm always ready to go on JLARC, but there hasn't been much chatter yet. So I've been talking to other school board members, and, there are some ideas, but we were so surprised that last year it was even addressed that, you know, it's
hard to shoot for the moon again, but I'm all for it. But so that could be. And also we could ask them, what are you hearing? Because that's our chance to understand from them and get our arrows in a row. I would also like to go back to delegate Helmer and Senator Surabel's indoor air quality bill because we have, a bit of current information that could inform why we need funding, to update, to maintain our facilities. And so these unfunded mandates that they love to give us, well, let's say, you
know, can you put a price tag on that? And maybe that's a budget amendment. And then finally, I do agree about elevating the federal advocacy, the kinds of legislation that mister Frisch stated. So, I mean, so those are four things that, you know, my my ideas, I've captured some others. That could be a good starting point, you know, perhaps for next week. What can we ask the superintendent and her team to return with to flesh out? Because then that's it. We're not meeting again until October 7. So we're really gonna have to do that work separately and and and in pairs to be, ready for that.
So, that's it. Yep. Thank you, miss Marron. I do not see any other placards up, so I want to take a stab at, summarizing what was shared in the room just to give us some better opportunities to be prepared for the next work session, which is coming up next week on the sixteenth. One, mister Maloy, you heard the ask for mapping of the priorities in terms of what occurred before and where are those now because that will give us some information in terms of how to continue in that prioritization list.
Two will also be information regarding JLARC since introduced in 2023. What has happened? What has and I know we've had a couple of successes, but where are the other areas? Are they still the rigor, so to speak, or is it passe because we know very often well, I'll just leave it there. So that's two. Three, what we will do, and I do hear that mister Frisch will be shopping around some of his thoughts. But we would like to start to gather whatever the priorities are that we have
and, so I'll be reaching out to each of you just to do similarly that we did last year. What are the revisions once you've had a chance to absorb this a little bit more, and what are some of the new positions that you would like to, you would like to prior that you would like to present? I also had very similar thoughts with mister Malloy during my individual meeting regarding the SOL and the timing. Not having been as, educate informed about how it impacts our military connected students, but
definitely with our seniors and graduation. So I also had had some language that I will be shopping with you all about that. So those are the tasks, I think, mister Malloy, that you will need to come back to us on the sixteenth. And at that time, we will also take a little bit more time to flesh out the October 7 breakfast, which is going to be super high level on the things that are the most important to us. And also on the sixteenth, we will go over the protocols for submitting bills and budget amendments just so we have that tool available to us because it has not
been one that we've utilized in the past. And then subsequently after the seventh, I have some, information here that I think we do need to engage our legislators on, which is what is most helpful to them. Because I know individually we each have these conversations, but what if the legislator that I work with wants something very different than the legislator that, that Marcia works with? We need to kinda have a collective conversation is how can we be the most helpful, the most efficient to that group and so we can make sure that we
are equipping them with that information. And then I did not hear any objections. Actually, some advocacy for even pushing back the, the let the adoption of the legislative agenda. So I did not hear any objections from anyone going once. Okay. Done. And what's that? Nope. You got once. And so I think I think I have my marching orders as a partner to Melanie in this work and to mister Malloy. And I do wanna say before I wrap up, just my last comments is thank
you, mister Malloy, for your work on this, and thank you to Alex. I think he's back there. We spent quite a bit of time trying to make sure that we have the most impactful and helpful product for you and into this in this session. And, of course, we don't wanna let go of some of those other activities, which is take your legislators to work month in month in making sure we can have those conversations. So I do wanna put in the room what other resources will be helpful for
you all for us to do our work. This is the opportunity to raise those needs. Is it communication? Is it particular documents? Whatever those are, let's collect that data now so that we can be preparing them for all of those menu of options that we have listed on one of these slides for us to do our best work on this effort. And so just so a a few things. One of them so next step or future steps are so we are gonna have part of this on the work session that's held, and I just checked the calendar.
So that's at 05:00 a week from tonight. So I'm gonna I guess, we'll get that finalized. And if there's anything else going on that agenda, I don't know. But, and then the November 6 work session, there was a request to put legislative program and government relations work on that meeting. And then I also wanted to mention, so for take your legislator to school month, those activities and this again blends into the budget work. You know, Michael, we mister Malloy, we'd like to ask your office to coordinate that because you know who the, you know, invites to the magisterial district.
You know, do certain ones of us wanna partner with others and you knowing where all the magisterial lines would be helpful, so that kind of coordination. So I did just wanna confirm that, as much as we can. So, yeah, miss Lady. I'm sorry. Are you asking Michael to coordinate all of our take your legislator to school days? I That seems like a heavy lift. Well, it depends. If we coordinate together and team up, it doesn't have to be. Well, that's I'm just going with what I did last year because that's what I did. Like, I reached out to another board member and I reached out to legislators and
we picked specific schools. Okay. I mean I mean, it it's just really I'm just saying it's very difficult even for, you know, Jacob and Wendy, hypothetically, and and the two of us to coordinate a calendar with legislators. What what I found was that then if you have a legislator who has multiple like, let's take Senator Saleem, who's got, like, half the board, then he's got six people trying to organize with him. And then what if we're not in sync? Right? So we wanna be as coordinated as we can. So that just requires us talking more.
I didn't see that happening as much last year, which is why I'm suggesting it this year. So I think we talked about this in the two by two was potentially at the lunch breakfast, putting something out and allowing the, legislators to indicate what school they'd like to see or schools. And then we would use that information, I think. Am I remembering this correctly? I I don't know. What I can say is, again, and I see, mister Frisch, you know, if we are gonna also look to the advice of that budget comms plan, we can certainly accommodate their request.
But there might be things that we want them to see, right, that they're not aware of. So, again, like, how do maybe the better question is how we be strategic about this and whether individuals want to do it on their own or Michael wants to do it again. How are we working as one board to put forth that story of what's happening? So, yeah, Mr. Frisch. My experience is that if I don't start doing this planning in August or even earlier, that I don't get the take your legislators scheduled in a way that gets them to attend with me.
So I started many, many weeks ago on scheduling my, take your legislators to to school sessions. I also think that, you know, I don't know that having two or, I guess, it wouldn't be more board members because of the stupid law that we should have in the legislative program, that that is a better use of our time with a legislator when they could have the message compounded in in subsequent meetings.
So I admire the attempt to streamline. I just don't know that it in terms of the things that we want out of Michael, this is not something that would be on my list of things that I need from Michael. But if the board wants to do it that way, that's the prerogative of the board. I've just proceeded as I've always proceeded. Miss Sizemore Heizer? Yeah. Mister Fisch's comments made me think I do think we need to add the the sunshine the rules around the fact that we can only talk to one other board
member because, you know, and perhaps because in other boards that are five member boards and I know, miss Marion, you've done a lot of work on this in the past. Five member boards, it's two people. 12 member boards, it's two people. And it makes our work and then even how it applies to our electronic work, which is all subject to FOIA anyway. So I think this is maybe something to talk about. I think it in having conversations with some of our legislature, I think there's a renewed interest in this as some of the legislatures have been trying to set up community meetings with us and realizing that they have to set up six community meetings to have one of their constituents be able to speak to the entire board.
And the statement was, well, that's insane. Why can't we just do it's not a policy making meeting. Right? But they have to do six community six separate meetings for their constituent to meet with us. So I just think that maybe we should keep that on our legislative positions, priorities. I don't know which one right now, but one of those somewhere in there. We should we should put that in there. And, again, that's where the impact statement would be really helpful because when I talk to legislators, they're not they're unaware of how that implies to email, which, again, is subject to FOIA anyway, so it's it's available. They're unaware of how it applies to Google Doc.
They're unaware we can't reply all to colleagues. So I think that impact statement would be really helpful because otherwise, it's hard to understand why this matters. But when you understand the way the level to which it stymies our work in an era we where, the public rightfully expects us to be able to work nimbly and and quickly, And I don't think some of these rules have been at least if they could give us more clarity around electronic communications, which I know there's been some effort to do, that would be helpful. So I think putting this in, again, position priority, don't know where, but somewhere in
there with an impact statement. In general, those impact I can't say more about these impact statements. Our legislatures are understandably busy with a lot of different things they're juggling. So as easy as we can make it for them to understand the impact of all the things we're asking for, the better it is. I want all of our, to be transparent, but I also want don't wanna make our community not be able to meet with us or have to do six hours of meetings in order to get their message to all of us. So there's gotta be a balance in there. Thank you. So, gosh, out of all things I've said today, I didn't expect that suggesting that
Michael's schedule all of our meetings would be the one to get the most attention. So that's fine. I was just going off the the experience last year where I did ask people to be communicative about scheduling meetings and that didn't happen. And then, you know, it's kind of embarrassing when you reach out to someone and someone else is already meeting and you know? So it it gets back to, again, this communications idea that are we gonna be, you know, united in our efforts or are we each gonna do our own thing and leave everyone, you know, to flail? So that's what I'm getting at. But what I hear miss Sizemore Heizer saying is adding in the sunshine law. I was aware one member had brought it up.
I know I have data about it. Kathleen Murphy presented it as a bill years ago. So, I've captured notes. Doctor Andrews has captured notes. I'm happy to share them, but we will have something for September 16. But before we wrap up, if we can go to the last slide, we do have one more. And this is just to ensure that we know who all the players are on the key committees. You know, these are the things that matter to us the most, the education committee members and the money committee members. And so knowing who those players are and how many of them we have access
to already and the ones that we need to cultivate access to, because they're not necessarily Fairfax County representatives, but it doesn't mean we can't strike up a conversation upon visiting Richmond, because they're on the committee. Their voices matter. They need to hear how whatever it is that they're working on is impacting us even though it may not be something even though they may not be the ones who represent us, but they are a vote. So I wanted to really elevate, this slide as well.
And unless there are any other questions or comments, which we will do at two minutes at this point oh, she's putting it down, and mister Frisch's hand is not up. Oh, is it up? Oh, he his literal hand is up. Mister Frisch, please go ahead. Two minutes. This committee slide is is a great reminder. And one thing that we may also wanna put on our radar, you know, the staffing for our delegates and senators, many of them have the same, senior person with
them consistently year over year. Some of them have a new person every couple years, but they all tend to have young people who move through their office just for session. Right? They're session aids. So, I think it's important that when we encounter one of these new people that we share their contact information with Michael, and with our, liaisons to ensure that we're keeping track of those things. We can't assume that, the session aid that's been hired in the last week, that
everybody's already aware of who those people are. And the more entry points we have for each office, the more dexterity we have when we need to reach a member on the floor or when we need to make sure that they're getting the message about a bill that we've just found out about. So just food for thought. Very good. Very much appreciated. And that's act that's actually a list that we should probably call as soon as possible so that we all have access to it because they're easily more easily reached when we're in session when they're in session than the legislators.
Okay. Any final thoughts or words, mister Malloy? No. I just appreciate the discussion and, look forward to the work as we go forward. And with and with that said, four zero seven, we're adjourned.