Good afternoon. I call to order this April 14th, 2026 Loudoun County School Board meeting. We'll start with our agenda item number two, approval of the consent agenda. Board members, are there any changes to be made to the consent agenda? Seeing none, I would now entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Thank you, Ms. Ricardi. And then, is there a second? Second. Thank you. We have a second by Ms. Labelle. It has been properly moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda. At this time, we'll take a vote. Clerk, please open the vote. Board members, please record your vote.
Clerk, please close and display the vote. That motion passes with eight school board members voting yes, including Ms. Ricardi, Mr. Svendsen, Ms. Chernov, myself, Vice Chair Donahue, Mr. Pepper, Dr. Rashid, and Ms. Labelle, and one member abstaining, Mrs. Griffiths. With that, we'll move on to item number three, our work session for the evening. Tonight's work session will be led by staff from the Department of Student Services and the Department of Teaching and Learning on co-teaching strategies for special education and English language learners.
Good afternoon, Chair Chandler- Good afternoon ... and members of the board. I am excited to introduce a collaborative project that brings together the Office of Special Education and the Division of English Learners focused on co-teaching. This work is grounded in a shared commitment to improving outcomes for students who are both multilingual learners and students with disabilities, students whose needs often intersect but are frequently supported in separate systems. This project aims to create an instructional
environment where multilingual learners and students with disabilities can fully access grade-level content while receiving the targeted support that they need. Our amazing special education supervisors, Margaret Ausbury, Kim Jones, and Ashley Spiegel, along with our EL supervisors, Heather Crawford, Ceylan Tambuloglu, and Gabriella Hash, have been working collaboratively all year on this project. Today, Margaret, Kim, Heather, and Ceylan will be presenting and sharing their experiences, insights, and
learning from this work. With that, I'll turn it over to Nakia Purnell, Director of Special Education, to share a bit more about the vision behind this collaborative opportunity. Good afternoon, board members. We are so happy to be here and share this information with you. So I just wanted to share, obviously, on this screen, you'll see the purpose of our work, deepening the support systems to provide individualized and differentiated support to meet the needs of every child. Our goal that we're attaching this to is to explore increased use of best
practice co-teaching models to maximize a student's time in the classroom, and the deliverable, we will provide all educators with professional development resources. These resources should support enhanced co-teaching practices by embedding strategies and approaches that address the unique needs of students with disabilities and those who are English learners. So tonight, we will begin our focus on something that really is at the very heart of the mission of our division and of our offices together, ensuring that every single student, no
matter their background, ability, or learning style, have access to the support that they need to thrive. What we're presenting is more than an initiative, it's the commitment that all of us should be making to all of our students. A commitment to deepen our support systems so that learning is not one size fits all, which we know that it is not, but truly individualized and differentiated. Because in our classrooms, every child is not just a phrase, it's a promise. So we're setting a clear goal to expand and strengthen the use of
best practice. So again, that's that best practice in not just teaching, but that universal design for learning and all of the things that we've learned, those high leverage practices that work for all students, not just students with disabilities and not just English language learners. And why? Because when educators collaborate effectively, we maximize every moment of instructional time and create richer, more inclusive learning environments for students. We're backing that goal with action, so that's the deliverable that we talked about at the beginning. So through targeted professional development and practical
resources, we will equip all educators with the tools they need to elevate their co-teaching practices. Not just one teach, one observe, some of those old ones that we know, and they worked when they worked, right? But we're past that. Ensuring that they're all intentional, strategic, and responsive to the diverse needs of our students, including all students with disabilities and those who are English learners. This work is about access, it's also about equity, and ultimately, it's about excellence for all students in every classroom in LCPS.
So we're very excited to share this vision and the work that our teams have been doing over the last two? Two. Two years. Yeah. So it's a lot of good work that's happened over the last two years. So I'm going to hand it off to Heather. Are you starting us off? Yes. All right. Good afternoon. So each of us will walk you through one phase of our partnership to provide an update on co-teaching in Loudoun County. Our work began almost two years ago, as mentioned, which started with establishing a shared understanding of co-teaching between our offices. We know that a sense of belonging is vital for all students, but it's critical for
our English learners and our students with disabilities. It's important to note that historically, both offices had provided guidance and professional learning to schools on co-teaching, but we were really charged with aligning that guidance and presenting a unified message to schools. This phase included several meetings, a book study, reviewing teacher feedback survey, and collaborative conversations that allowed the group to identify common misconceptions around co-teaching, and to also come to a consensus on debunking the myth that observers shouldn't be able to tell which teacher is which, and instead honoring the different
expertise that each teacher brings to the classroom to target the needs of their students. This foundational work also included establishing expectations for each component of the co-teaching process. Another important piece to this phase was the alignment of co-teaching models. Through our collaborative conversations, we were able to identify both common co-teaching models that are supported by both of our offices, which are station and parallel teaching, as well as specific models for our populations, with team teaching being the preferred model for English learners and alternative teaching for special education. While there are six co-teaching models,
these four are LCPS-focused, and the other two, which are one teach, one assist and one teach, one observe, are only recommended to be used in very unique and limited situations. After establishing a shared foundation, which included some of those common definitions, expectations, and preferred co-teaching delivery models, the Division of English Learners and the Office of Special Education began developing aligned guidance back in January of 2025. This guidance was intentionally designed for use by a wide range of
stakeholders. On the next slide, you will see a screenshot of our guidance document that includes resources supporting effective co-teaching practices. This slide highlights our aligned co-teaching guidance. The document intentionally reflects the guidance of both offices while also honoring the unique expertise and responsibilities that each brings to the work. This aligned co-teaching guidance is intentionally leveled for elementary and secondary settings and provides an overview of each focus area, really looking at
class placement, teacher scheduling, the distinct roles of co-teachers, co-planning, and instructional strategies. And we felt it important to have leveled guidance so that we really honored the unique experiences across grade levels. This guidance document crossed links previously what I would call kind of siloed resources and learning opportunities, and we worked together to collectively identify areas of need for additional clarity and alignment.
Our aim in developing this aligned guidance is to offer administrators clear direction on how to lead co-teaching within their buildings and provide teachers with concrete, actionable guidance on how to effectively teach using co-teaching models, all under the umbrella of one guiding document. I think it's important to mention that development of this guidance document was supported by our teams of facilitators who contributed that teacher lens, coaching, and ultimate classroom experience to ensure guidance was practical and
relevant to both teachers and then the administrator lens as well. It's also intended to be an iterative document, so it will be updated to reflect school needs and division priorities. After collaborating on our aligned guidance, our next steps were to launch our co-teaching plan and start training administrators and instructional staff. As part of our collaboration, we provided aligned professional development opportunities through both of our offices. We kicked off our aligned professional development at Lead Loudoun and presented to school and central office administrators.
In addition, we presented a turnaround training at the Teaching and Learning Leadership Institute to EL and special education leads. Schools were tasked with providing turnaround training to their instructional staff, and more than 68% of LCPS schools have provided this turnaround training to their instructional staff as of now. In our aligned training, we emphasized share instructional strategies that support both student groups, including dually identified students receiving EL and special education
services. These strategies are aligned to the LCPS instructional framework and are designed to guide both teacher actions and student engagement, promoting consistency in practice and expectations across classrooms. We expect these strategies to be intentionally implemented in co-taught classrooms so that all students have meaningful access to grade-level curriculum and instructional materials. This slide highlights instructional strategies that are tailored to support each group's specific learning needs.
Our guidance and professional development emphasize the critical role of the EL and special education teachers in intentionally embedding these strategies within core instruction. Through targeted scaffolding and differentiation, EL and special education teachers help ensure that all students can access and engage with grade-level content. So this past winter, our team added an additional focus to our co-teaching alignment work, which was a focus on implementation. We've been evaluating the effectiveness of our professional learning throughout the
year as it has been provided, and we really wanted to get some additional information on how this was looking in classrooms through some walkthroughs that we've conducted in schools that completed the training. On the next slide, you can see some trends that are currently emerging from those walkthroughs and our feedback surveys. Both special education teachers and EL teachers noted the need for time to specifically be set aside for co-planning in order to support effective co-teaching. Some additional areas for growth were supporting the co-teaching relationship amongst staff, specifically support with communication tools
with some of the tricky points that come up in co-teaching partnerships. We also saw some clear roles and expectations for staff engaging in co-teaching identified as a need going forward in order to support continued progress. We saw some positive trends, particularly EL received feedback around the positive impact of school administrator support. Both groups, administrator feedback voiced appreciation for clear expectations in our aligned guidance, and both groups also shared an appreciation for the clarity around co-teaching models and the aligned
guidance for effective strategies. As part of our school support meetings, we are analyzing both walkthrough data and student performance data to determine connections between improved co-teaching practice And student outcomes. We continue to monitor the implementation of aligned guidance for co-teaching to continuously check for effective implementation and solicit feedback from staff on current and future needs for continued improvement. As such, we have some areas identified for the next phase of our aligned co-teaching work, both to extend staff learning and maintain engagement with our instructional practices.
As the work continues, we anticipate our aligned co-teaching guidance will continue to evolve, as Kim mentioned. Particularly, teachers requested additional tools for co-planning, and we intend to expand our guidance for more dual-identified learners in what we would call the trio of teachers who support them. Identified areas of growth indicate the need for continued professional development. While we have previously focused heavily with administrators on class placement and scheduling, we are adding a larger focus on co-planning and strategy implementation into our current and future professional learning. To be responsive to the needs of a variety of staff and schools in
LCPS, we're exploring different models of future support, which might include a future cohort model, additional coaching, identifying model co-teaching pairs or trios to share their expertise during county-wide professional development days, and continued accountability through walkthroughs and clarity with administrator expectations. We greatly appreciate your time tonight for letting us share a little bit of an update on our work, and we're curious what input or questions you might have for us as we move forward. Well, thank you so much for being here tonight. And thank you for the presentation. It's very helpful and informative.
And with that, board members, do we have any questions? Mr. Pepper. Thank you, Madam Chair. Excuse me. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank all of you guys so much for this work. This is amazing, and I know that as someone who's lived through the co-teaching relationship, it's so important, and I love some of the things that you guys have said. Perhaps my favorite was breaking down the common misconception that you shouldn't know which teacher is which. Because really truly, you have two teachers that come into the room with extraordinarily different skill sets and different strengths. And so you should know who's the content expert, and you should know who's the differentiation expert, and you
should know who the behavior expert is. So I absolutely love that. The other thing that I really loved is the document that you've created. I'm assuming that that lives online somewhere where it's really accessible. Okay. I have a couple questions on this document. One of them is based off of what you guys had said, is that it could be updated based on school need. So is that a document that an administrator or perhaps a special education lead teacher or a content lead teacher at an individual school can go in and make modifications just for the unique needs of that specific school?
And if so, what does that look like on your end? The intent is that it is used to support school needs, but in terms of changing some of the content, I think that would be further feedback or input for our offices to make sure that the content is meeting the needs of the schools that we serve. That being said, I do believe that schools might take some of that information and then really talk about how does this target our school population and our co-teaching relationships. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify that.
And then a couple other quick things. One of them is... And it really goes to a lot with what was on, I believe it's slide 13 in that middle about the co-teaching relationship. I'm a big believer, and a lot of it is based on experience, that co-teaching, particularly in the four models that we use in LCPS and not the one teach, one assist, or one teach, one observe. That true relationship takes time to develop because it's trust. Knowing that particularly with the ability to find, recruit, and retain special education staff, we have a very fluid employment in special education, not just in LCPS but nationwide.
How can we reconcile really those two things where to get this at its highest level of efficacy, we need that relationship, but we're also limited in that we might not have the time. What are your thoughts on that? So I think one of the things that we've really worked on is where we can keep things stabilized in this ever-changing, right? Whether it's because of turnover, attrition, promotion, right? There's a lot of reasons why staff turnover- Mm-hmm ... at schools. But I do think where we can keep things stabilized, that's step one. I think if we can keep those
partners intact so that they have those years. I too, like you- ... was a part of a co-teaching pair, but had the luxury of being able to stay in that co-teaching pair in the same subject for five years. And so we were able to really solidify and hone in on those practices. So I think the first thing that we ask is that I would say that building staff don't treat the co-taught or the inclusive environment like something that you get by either drawing the shortest stick or last
in, that we keep the pairs intact because that is where they are continuing to build capacity, right? So that's one thing that we could ask. Again, no one here on this panel has the control over that, but the ask would be to stabilize where we can stabilize so that those partners can get into the swing of things to become experts, utilizing all of the resources we've provided. So I know that is one thing, or, and I would say having those experts in the building. So if you do have turnover, but you have a SPED expert who's been there for quite some time, who's well-versed in all of
the resources and the training, and then we have a gen ed teacher who is also, then they could be the models, right? For those buildings. Even if they're not paired together, at least we have one, and then we have our EL teachers who are heavily itinerant, and they are in different places. So typically they are- ... the sole experts that come into those trios and offer that. So I'm thinking if at the beginning of each school year, we take those trios and we provide those turnaround trainings on what the expectations are, what the look fors are, how you create this relationship that is
like a marriage away from home. I think those are the things that we just require from a building level to prioritize, I would say. That's our ask. Okay. So my other follow-up with that is, is this something that we're looking at including in our onboarding process, both for new teachers of EL, new teachers of special ed, and new content teachers, right? Because if we want to maintain these strong relationships, building them, I might lose my co-teacher one year. I might lose my content partner teacher, and the person who's got to step in is in this new void, and we've always done things in way A or way B. So just something to consider, and I'm going to finish with this really quick
thought is I love the idea of exemplar model pairs for PD. When you empower educators to deliver PD, it gets them so invested in their school and so invested in their school division. So I want to implore you to continue with that model, and I thank you. Thank you. Okay. Ms. Chernov. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you so much, all of you, for the presentation. I love even how you're strategically sitting every other EL and sped. I love it. It feels intentional. I really, really appreciate that. I really love some of the ownership here that has been said of as we shift towards this model, talking about it worked at the time,
and differentiation meant something different, and also that it was siloed, owning that, and owning that there's so much power in this collaboration. I think we've seen that over the last year and a half in terms of the professional learning. At least that's what we're starting to hear. I feel extra spoiled because I spent the afternoon at Tuscarora High School in some classrooms that are what I would call professionally co-taught, really exemplar pairs. I know some of you sitting at the table were called out by name for your work, and so I appreciate you being in the schools and in the trenches with our teachers.
And grounding in that instructional framework is something that the learning walk was built on today, and then empowering the pairs to collaborate through that work, and it was really evident. And I will say, actually, the students were heavily engaged in hands-on activities, that the teaching portion had kind of, we'd phased into the activity portion. And when we walked in, I know it's a myth, but you really couldn't tell who was who, and you couldn't tell which students were which because the strategic movement of the teachers around the room. And what I really love is they know all the kids, and
they talk. These are our kids. It's not a separate group of kids. And so our conversation and our debrief afterwards kind of centered on that what was really beautiful about all the work that we saw today with the students is that they were accessing the same activities and projects and content and academic vocabulary, but they were doing it in very differentiated, scaffolded ways. And that really, to me, is the equity piece that you talk about because it's giving access to that high-level engagement for all kids. And so when you leverage that,
you can see it, and the kids are engaged in it together, and they don't see the differences. And so for me, I'm spoiled because I literally just came from there to here. So I want to celebrate that. My question is sort of a selfish one, actually. In terms of some of your departments growing in the next year, how do we envision our numbers growing? What is the commitment from LCPS? What is the dream big here in terms of getting people trained, having that turnaround model,
and making sure that we know what's best for special education kids and English language learners is best for all learners. So how can we push that vision forward with more staff and get more people in? Is that the goal? All right. I'll take that. Thank you for your compliments, by the way, because I think it's really important for our schools to hear and of course, our staff to hear that the supports that they have provided are being recognized at the level. So yes, with the enhanced staffing that we are excited to receive, we do plan on expanding some co-teaching district-wide professional development.
I think we were very intentional this year about leaning on our school staff to really learn about the co-teaching model and then turn that around to their schools. But there is some interest in also having some district-level support as well to support the school-level PD because there's only a limited amount of time when they're able to do such sessions. So we're leaning on that, and we're also leaning on a lot of our instructional facilitators that are working closely in the CLTs and their walkthroughs and those partnerships, and what that information is telling them and the supports that they are needed based on the walkthrough information.
So I think that's some data that we are constantly reviewing and looking at to make any adjustments that's needed to provide guidance to schools. So hopefully, I answered that question. Yeah. That's great. I look forward to further updates on that. And again, I thank you all for being here and for your beautiful work. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Svinton. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the excellent work and presentation. I really appreciate it. I had two questions. First, I was wondering if and when there are triad co-teaching relationships, how that enhances co-teaching when you have English learner, special education, and content specialists all working together, if you could
elaborate on that. And then the second question I had was, I know there are measurable positive impacts that you can see in test scores, for instance, from co-teaching. So if you could elaborate a little bit on the data that's there to support that, that'd be helpful. I'll start with the trio piece, and I'm going to lean on my colleague, Heather, to fact-check me. I will say first, shout out to Forest Grove because they have one of the most powerful trios I've probably ever seen working in, I think it's fifth grade. And I think, Ms. Sharnoff, to your point, it is a case where when I walk in, I
don't necessarily know who is who. It takes me 10 minutes to figure it out. I got there. But you really can see the seamless support of the gen ed teacher, the special ed teacher, the EL teacher, moving around the room and really meeting the needs of the variety of students in that space in a way that is seamless. And it doesn't feel othering, for lack of a better phrase. You really do see the collaboration and the intentional co-planning from that trio of individuals who are bringing that expertise to that classroom. I think what we're really looking for is how can we build on that model trio to expand that to some other teachers who might be newer in that
relationship, as Mr. Pepper referenced. So I think in that instance, you really do see in the trio the needs of all students being met in that classroom by the variety of individuals who are supporting it. And then I'll just lean into the data piece as well. When we're in school support meetings, we are looking at things like map data, of course, but while that's only one data point, we're also looking at what formative classroom assessments are there, how are students doing on what they're doing in class? Are we seeing the evidence of differentiation in getting students to really access and master core content? I know in the special ed lens, we're also looking at how are students progressing in their interventions. Some of that is done in co-taught, some of it is done in
pull-out, so really wanting to see, are we closing the gap? And then how are we doing with accessing core content? As well as looking at other data points like SOL, WIDA access. We look at those big pieces, but I think it's also important to stay small student-focused of where do we see those small wins as well as big wins. And I did have one thing to add because I think Margaret touched on it, but we also touched on it at the beginning of the presentation. So when you talk about utilizing the assessments, right, as another data point, we talked a little bit about common assessments, right? How often they're being used. Are they being used with fidelity across grade
levels, across school levels? And if those common assessments are being used, but we don't have those common planning times or common CLTs for our trios and our pairs, then the voice of EL and SPED are left out of the planning of those common assessments. What might we need to do to scaffold, differentiate, modify, to make these common assessments still common, but accessible for the students who have the various diverse needs? And so I think it's like a cause and effect, right? We have to start at the master scheduling.
When we start at the master scheduling, we have to ensure that there's the common planning time. We have to ensure there's the common CLT time. We have to ensure that these pairs and trios have not just time to work with their peers who are in the same content or grade levels, but with one another. So I know that is a huge lift, right, for schools because master scheduling is one of the hardest things. If you've never done it, please go try and see what happens. It is really difficult. But I think if we're being intentional about moving this work forward and looking at how the outcome impacts the data that we're all looking at, because that is what's really important to us to move our students
along, right, and close those gaps, then we have to ensure that we're creating those environments where we're giving access to the teachers to support them in what they need to do for students. Otherwise, they're having to go into their own time to try to figure out that time to collaborate with one another. And I think we need to be ensuring that that time is available during the school day, like it is for all other subjects and content. Thank you so much, and thanks for helping LCPS be at the cutting edge of this. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Ms. Ricardi? Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I'm really excited about this. When I was at Forest Grove a couple of weeks ago, it was really fun because I'm
not aware of what this looks like in practice. I've seen multiple teachers in many of these classrooms. In fact, I think almost all the ones that we visited. And now when I go back, it's going to be fun to see exactly what kind of model they were using. So thank you guys for this, and I'm really excited about it. I wanted just to ask you, so you had 68% of these teachers participate in the training. Is that what the 68% was? 68% of the schools. Of the schools, okay, great. Did the turnaround training, yes. And how did you guys select those schools, or was it an optional choice for them?
So we required or strongly encouraged priority schools to provide that turnaround training for their instructional staff. Okay, and so what are we going to do to try to close the gap? Because I'm so excited about this idea, and I see it from an adult professional development perspective and being able to co-teach a lot of the things that I do professionally, which is amazing. Not to the same, I think, intricacies that teachers do in the classroom, but I appreciate that. So I'm excited about the model. What are we going to do to really close the gap to make sure that we get as close
to 100% as we can? So I think we need to advertise more and ask schools to provide that training. I think we also need to do a lot of coaching around co-teaching. That's something that our schools and teachers need. Because establishing that co-teaching relationship, making sure that it's working for both parties, that's something that we need to focus on. So I think it's not just one thing that we need to do, it's multiple layers of things that we need to take care of. And making sure that schools understand that this is
valuable, and they have some ownership around that training. So that's why when we first started out, we said, schools will be providing that training. So there's some accountability piece there, and there's also some ownership of the schools to provide this training. So I think it's a multiple-layered initiative, if you will. Can I add to it? Yeah. I will add that I had four more schools reply today So, some of it is just a response rate to our solicitation. So we might have more schools out there who did participate, and we're looking for that confirmation from them. I do also think some of it is when you hear of a good thing, you kind of want to
buy in. And co-teaching's been around for a long time, and I think sometimes people are like, "Oh, we've done that." I think some of it is bringing to light for our schools, to Jaylen's point of advertising, that what we are talking about is a little new, different. It is a different spin. It's not the same old, same old. Hopefully, we're getting traction. I think things like tonight will help us lift that for a larger audience. Yeah. And I think Mr. Pepper might have mentioned this on the recruiting aspect of this, but is it something that we're looking at promoting in the recruiting process, especially in our Title I schools, where we have a pretty huge EL and SPED population?
Yeah, I would say so. In fact, a few principals shared at the Title I schools that this is kind of how they set up their interviews, is setting that expectation for co-teaching. So I would say that there are schools that are really creating that culture, and then whenever they bring in new teachers, that's the expectation, that they are supporting that and kind of joining that co-teaching culture as well. And what's kind of the population amongst the... Of the schools that are participating, what percentage of cl-- I mean, ballpark, because I don't want to put you on the spot for exact numbers, but what percentage of the classrooms in those schools are actually engaging in this? Because I can't think of one school that I've visited in
Sterling over the last three months where I haven't had multiple teachers, but that could be different than this model. Right? So I've seen multiple teachers in a classroom, but I'm not sure that it's necessarily in a co-teaching model. It may just be they've got two in there for headcount purposes or whatever. Yeah. So if you see multiple teachers in the classroom, more than likely that is a co-teaching model that's happening. I think, and we're happy to go back and try to get those numbers for you, just because now I'm interested too. Yeah. Since you asked. Now I'm interested, but I don't know that we have the numbers drilled down to that level. But what I will say is the numbers that we do have
are the percentage of students with disabilities in each building and the percentage of dually identified students in each building, and where we have schools who might have upwards of 20% to 25% of dually identified students in their building, and others who have 10. So I think where you see more sections of those duos and trios is because the percentage of students is higher, and they're sharing the wealth and spreading the students out across more environments. Where you have the schools who have those very low percentages of students with disabilities, some maybe not even in
the double digits. So we do have a good variety across the division. Some upwards, maybe 27% might be the highest, I'm thinking back to our chart, might be the highest percentage of students with disabilities in a building, and 25% dually identified, I think is the highest in one building. So you could imagine with that difference in numbers, how you might see a much larger number of pairs and trios as you walk the building. I'm very impressed that you can pull 27% out just of your head like that. Because I didn't have that question prepared.
I was just curious more than anything. I think the other thing that would be really great, I think, kind of piggybacking off of Mr. Svenson's question about the data, I would love at some point in time for us to look at some longevity data when we can get there. Obviously, we're not in the first or maybe even the second year, but it'd be really great to see the learning outcomes and, unfortunately, the testing outcomes, however you want to define testing. So it could just be a classroom-based assessment, whatever we're doing to figure this out. But really kind of seeing the impact of doing this on the students that are participating in this over
multiple years, if that's possible. Because I think that's really where we're going to see... It'll be really fascinating to see if we can actually even close the gap. And I'm just thinking, of course, of my Sterling schools where the map data, there's in some cases pretty significant gaps. It'd be really great to see if that process helps us close those gaps and speed up the learning and get these kids caught up faster. And if so, moving this model from not just SPED and EL, but out even into the general population of students just to get them up to speed. These are the random thoughts that come- Those are wonderful thoughts.
But no, I think, but I love this program, and I love the design of it. So I'm really excited about it, and I'm really excited that you all are working this. We've got a year under your belt, so now you've got lessons learned and new implementation pieces to it, but it's great. Absolutely. I just wanted to add to what you're sharing. I think we're all in agreement that we want to make sure that this is really effectively utilized in schools in order to really address outcomes. When I think about our English learners in particular, we have for the past five years, really pushed into inclusion, right?
There were times where our EL students were being served in hallways and cafeterias, and they were missing out on that core instruction. And we know how important it is that they are participating with their general education peers, and that their instruction is differentiated and scaffolded so that they can access, very similar to our special education students. So it's so important and the heart of our work, and that is really what's going to close the achievement gap. So I think we meet schools where they are. Our team that is sitting at this table is constantly in school meetings, meeting with schools, going through walkthroughs, providing feedback to schools,
and making recommendations to support this project moving forward. And I would be remiss if I didn't comment based on something that Mr. Pepper said. Incentivizing those pairs when we're talking about that stabilization of staff and minimizing that turnover. I know, and back in another division I won't name, prior to me coming here, at the beginning of my career, when I was co-teaching, I remember they would incentivize those co-teaching pairs. But again, coming from a division that stabilized those pairs, you stayed in those relationships. As long as you were still in the school and in the
same subject, those relationships stayed intact.I remember we received banners, almost like the banners that you might see in a high school gym when they win championships, and we had them going around our classroom. If you got over a certain percentage of SOL pass rates, we happened to be in English 11, so reading and writing, the double whammy year. Right? But it was so exciting to be in the gym, and that banner comes out, and your co-teaching pair is announced. It just creates that culture and community around doing something that is best for kids.
But it incentivizes the adults, not like a bonus check or handing out money because you got a 95%, but just kind of that badge of honor to show we're taking this seriously, and we're dedicated and committed to the students that we serve. And look around the room at these banners, and year after year, I feel like we had four by the time I was able to leave that division. But it was something that I think teachers really attached themselves to. So I do think some of the work that we're doing in
those next steps that you saw on the slide, thinking about incentivizing and what can we do to attract that buy-in again to get to that 100% buy-in for all schools across the division. Vice Chair Donahue. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to all of you for the information in the presentation and for all of the good that you do for our students and our community. I just had a couple of questions. My first question is, if you have multiple lessons going on at the same time, do you have a concern about competing conversations or
background noise and how that may impact the students or the teachers in that environment? That's my first question, and then my second question is, what is the process for pairing up teachers to be in the two or three partnering relationships? I will be honest in terms of competing noise or lessons, I think it just becomes a part of your classroom culture. And students are often not distracted when that is the norm. Everyone is getting what they need when they need it, and there's some intentional co-planning to say, "Hey, here's a time where
I think maybe doing some station teaching would be most effective," versus, "Here's a time where I think teaming back and forth would be most effective." So I would say part of the culture and also just ensuring that you're strategically thinking about the models that you're using as you plan for instruction. Thank you. In terms of how it's paired, it really differs by schools. At some schools, every classroom teacher wants to have the EL students or the students with disabilities in their classes. At some schools, teachers are voluntold by their principals that they'll be supporting these classes. And many times, principals are wanting to really choose the strongest classroom teachers to support these practices.
And the other piece is a lot of times we see co-teaching as building capacity as teachers as well. So in some schools, it may be a new teacher that's paired with an EL or special education teacher. So it does really vary, but a lot of times we want that to be a joint commitment between both of those teacher groups. I will also add that especially with students with disabilities, from year to year, you may see some variation because we are always matching based on what the individual students need. And to the point around co-teaching, some kids really respond. I'm a louder person. Some kids really respond to that. Some kids don't. So I might not be a good match for a student if they're really bothered by that
versus kids who aren't really bothered by that. That might be a match, or I might have to change my style to meet the student. So some of those also vary from year to year or grade to grade based on how we're matching the student needs, but also teacher needs. So it's always a balance of trying to make sure that we're striking the right chord for what a student's going to need. And Paula. I also think it's important to point out at the secondary level, it's important to assign teachers to the content areas that they're comfortable with. We've been sharing with principals to make sure that they
assign teachers to, let's say, if you have a social studies background, keep them in social studies. Or if they taught with a science teacher before, try to assign them to science again the following year so they're developing that expertise. Because most of our EL teachers are not necessarily trained in a content area, so it does take some time to become well-versed in that content. So making sure that you're assigning those teachers to content areas that they're comfortable with and they're growing in.
That's our general guidance. Thank you. That makes sense. I'm glad to hear that you all are proactively thinking about how to put teachers in those positions. I was just curious if there have been any occasions or if you have thought in advance if there were occasions, if occasions were to arise in which either a student is not a great fit with the particular teacher or the teachers who are assigned as a pair, for whatever reason, are just not a great fit together, since I assume we can all agree that our staff is
wonderful, but we don't always get along with every single person we work with and putting both our staff and our students in the best possible learning situation and teaching situation. I was just curious if you had thoughts about how to address situations like that. That does come up from time to time. I will say that's where we do really lean in, especially in our office, on our facilitator team. A lot of the work that they are doing is supporting instruction, but it's also helping to navigate some of those relationships with teachers on How can we mediate through this to get to a place where we can come to a common understanding? How can we support your co-planning efforts so that it is more
productive if we're hitting a barrier or if we have a philosophical difference that we need to work through? I know a lot of our team will work with internal coaches with schools who have those to be able to support that relationship and work through that, because we can't always make a shift in the middle of the year if it's not going to benefit the student. But if us, the staff, aren't getting along, that may not also benefit the student either. So we do work through that pretty consistently, and that is why sometimes you do see shifts from year to year also if it's just not gelling. So that is something that we do anticipate. I do think that's something that we look at continuing to layer into our professional learning, is supporting co-teaching partners with how to navigate
that discussion, because that is a fierce conversation to have with a colleague. And that is a space where I think our staff have identified they would like to see us support them, both with learning and coaching moving forward. So we do intend to look at that as we go into the next phase. Okay. Well, I will speak for myself now. So excited to hear about all these updates and to really hear about the push to move away from some of the older practices and to instill a consistent model that can be applied across the division. Consistency is a really important issue for me, and I
just really applaud the work that you've done here. And I can piggyback on some of the things that my colleagues have said that have really stood out to me, like Ms. Chernoff's comment about how this really is a model that works well for all students. But I'm also so happy to hear that for our English language learners and our students with disabilities, that that integrated piece is really important and being met because we know access to rigor leads to more rigor. So, I really want to celebrate that. In terms of, I had some questions about the progress
chart, too. And I was glad that Ms. Ricardi pulled that out. I was just curious if you have an aspirational goal or something, like a date in mind that you might be looking for to get to that completion number. The completion number of? To have all of the schools really completed in the training. Well, we would've liked to be at all schools and slash programs by the end of this year. I do think because it started off... I think the initiative started off, obviously, as a part
of the superintendent's needs, and then we took it from there and expanded some of that. So it was more of a targeted support, and then it turned into more of an expanded support. So I think if we move from recommended, strongly recommended, I believe Jaylon said, to required, then I think... And we want people, again, you know with anything, buy-in is really important. Mm-hmm. And if you let people come to that decision on their own, typically the buy-in is sustainable.
When it is recommended, sometimes it is not as sustainable because the value and the accountability isn't always there. So we would like to get as many as we can to come on their own, because again, it piques that interest. It shows that accountability and dedication to students, right? And then we can build off of that. But if we do see some stragglers, I think some more intentional communication and outreach is planned, and working alongside our partners and colleagues in the Department of School Leadership, to share out which schools we haven't reached,
and those that are still in process. So maybe reaching out to say, "What do you have planned for the rest of the year?" Because maybe they have it planned, and we just don't know about it, or maybe they haven't reported to us. So we will work on validating our data, ensuring that there are no outliers, in addition to the four that we received, and then possibly doing some of that very intentional direct outreach to those schools so that we can get to 100%. Thank you for that. Of course. I applaud and support that effort, and I will pull it out in the same way that Mr. Pepper did. Just as you mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, that being able to
highlight some of those exemplary model teachers at some professional development might make this spread like wildfire. So we can only hope. Board members- I was going to say, if you don't mind, if I could add, too. I think we all acknowledge that the turnaround training is the first step in building that culture, right? But we all know that one professional development isn't necessarily going to change all of our practices. So it's also how are we going to continue to sustain the effort and get forward momentum. I will say that the guidance document has a lot of additional professional
learning in those five different areas that we are working through with schools, and I know some of my colleagues also highlighted the importance of coaching educators through that professional learning, too. So while we want 100% with the target training, we also want to continue to sustain momentum moving forward. Thank you for that. Thank you. And it resonates with me. Of course, buy-in and having that real fidelity for success is so important. But I do appreciate your talking through this with us. Board members, are there any other questions?
No. Okay. Thank you so much for the presentation. And I know, board members, I'm sure you've heard by now, our agenda looks a little bit different tonight because our SEAC chair requested to appear after dinner because of family obligations. So our work tonight will look a little bit different than it normally does. And with that, we will move on to our information items. We're going to go to item 12.01, Finance and Operations Committee, New Policy 4190, Other Post-Employment Benefits Funding, presented tonight by Mrs. Griffiths Thank you, Madam Chair.
We did have our first meeting today. LCPS currently does not have a formal OPEB funding policy to guide internal practices. This policy is essential for ensuring the long-term sustainability of retiree healthcare benefits. It will align with our financial approach with current practices and set clear objectives and governance standards. Per the meeting today, it focused on investment. It seems that it will have potentially significant financial ramifications for LCPS's ongoing budget, and I think
the finance committee should first understand those ramifications in order to inform the LCPS board. The proposed policy was reviewed by the Finance and Operations Committee on November 4th, 2025, and then on December 9th, 2025. It was further discussed at the school board meetings on January 13th and then January 28th. It was sent back to the Finance and Operations Committee for more clarification to the new Finance and Operations Committee, just for clarity. This policy will ensure that
retiree healthcare contributions are clearly defined, consistently applied, and integrated into the annual budget process. And with that, does anybody have any questions, or that's all I have to say? Well, thank you, Mrs. Griffiths, and I'll ask the board. Are there any questions? Oh, sorry, Ms. LaBelle. I've been asked to read this before I make any comments about the OPEB. As a member of the Loudoun County School Board, I make the following disclosure to the school board and to the general public in connection with the item on tonight's agenda regarding the budget and/or, here it is, health insurance and
related benefits, and any other discussion that may include or affect benefits of LCPS employees. Specifically, as a school board member, I am eligible to receive health insurance and related benefits as an LCPS employee. In addition, as former LCPS employee, I, as well as my spouse, receive Medicare Advantage insurance benefits through LCPS. These benefits, however, affect thousands of employees well in excess of the statutory three employees whose interests may be affected, of which my spouse and I are
included. I can and will participate fairly, objectively, and in the public interest. This disclosure will be reflected in the public records of the clerk of the school board for five years. Ms. LaBelle, I just wanted to thank you for taking the initiative to read that disclosure and state for the school board members that you're asked to do that as a retiree. Yes. And so no one else will need to read their disclosure. It's not just that I'm a retiree, it's also that I'm on the board, and I need to reinstate the idea
that I can and will participate fairly. Thank you for that. I appreciate that. That hasn't been an issue. Okay, and please, we return the floor to you. Thank you. I do have a question. It does say in the policy that OPEB funds shall be financed through contributions from the county premiums paid by retirees, premiums paid by LCPS. Which retirees? Some of them are paying or have paid monthly into this account
and some aren't. So I've been asked to find out which retirees will be expected to pay, and when this is implemented, how soon this will be implemented, because many of our retirees are on static budgets, and so they have to make provisions for this. Thank you. Mrs. Griffiths, should we ask Mrs. Willoughby? Ms. Willoughby. Yes. Thank you. Ms. Willoughby. Thank you. I would like to first start by just providing some clarifying information that this policy is separate
from the provision of retiree benefits, which is covered in a completely separate policy. This policy is solely related to the funding strategy to ensure that funds are available to pay for that retiree benefit in the future. As Mrs. Griffiths stated, the Joint Investment Committee did meet today. It wasn't the first meeting, because we meet regularly. Did meet today, and we did have discussions about the ongoing investment strategy.
It was reported that both organizations are in very healthy positions related to their OPEB funds and their status related to the funded liability. To answer Mrs. LaBelle's concerns, again, the policy is driving the funding and the investment strategy. The funding is coming from a direct contribution from the county. They contribute $12 million annually directly into the OPEB fund. I've shared previously that the OPEB fund is set up as what I would call
as a deposit-only fund at this time. All we are doing is continuing to make contributions into this fund to pay for that future liability. The ongoing current expenses related to retiree care are paid as you go, meaning we pay for those costs from our operating fund as well as-From our premiums that the retirees and the employer, LCPS pays. You are correct that the current structure for retirees,
there is a multi-tier structure related to retiree premiums depending on when you retired, depending on how many years of service. And so there are some retirees that have access to a zero premium plan, and then there are others that do have to pay a premium. That structure of those premiums are not covered in this policy and are covered separately and would be addressed during the annual budget process when we bring any plan changes or premium changes.
So that is something, though, that is being actively looked at to streamline those retiree premium structures. And I could go out on a limb just to give a preview that that is something that you could likely expect to see as part of the FY28 budget. But to circle back to the policy this evening, as Mrs. Griffiths outlined, this has come full circle, so it is back to the school board. I would just add on that we did incorporate the discussion and feedback from the board
when it was at the board level back in January, where we did provide additional clarifying information regarding the membership of the OPEB investment committee that has members from both the county and schools on that committee. Other than that, the policy has returned unchanged. Okay. Thank you for that. So, it off. I'm sorry. So, retirees who are worried about it now who are on a limited budget don't have to worry until we meet again for the
budget funding. Is that what I'm understanding? Any potential changes to the current premium structure would be part of the budget discussion. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Pepper? Thank you, Madam Chair. I just had a question for Ms. Griffiths. I know that the minimal changes to this policy were really about who sits on the board, and they're pretty minor from what we saw with the board previously, having set enough a note. You had mentioned something in your discussion about significant, because you had attended the meeting today, significant financial, I guess, implications to our school board.
Can you expand on that just ever so briefly? Sure. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, it was my first meeting today. And what I learned today is we're going to be taking a look at investments that could go into that OPEB fund. When I say ramifications, we want to make sure that we do put the right investments into that fund so the fund grows. So, it's our job in finance and operations to keep an eye on that, work with Ms. Willoughby, and keep an eye on that, and make sure we
don't have any issues in the future that may affect our retirees. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. But that doesn't have anything to do with the actual policy as written, does it? Oh, no. Sorry. As far as the policy goes, are you asking why it went full circle or... No, I understand why it went full circle. I just want to make sure for clarification purposes for everyone, because- Right ... right now this is just an information item about- Yes ... what's written on the policy, and there were just some extra... And I know you attended the meeting. There was just some extra information in the middle that I wanted to make sure was not directly related to the adoption of this policy as it becomes an action item in the next meeting.
Oh, no. Sorry. Sorry, I went on about that. No. It's fine. No. I just want to make sure everybody is clear on what it is, and I want to thank Ms. LaBelle for also asking her questions that clarify with transparency for the people of Loudoun County and the retirees. But thank you so much for your questions. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Ms. Ricotti. Thank you, Madam Chair. I had a couple questions. And this probably is for Ms. Willoughby as well. So you'd mentioned that the county is contributing, you said $12 million. Is that an annual contribution? It is. It's an annual contribution, and it's included as part of our
operating fund budget. But it is called out separately in the county's appropriation resolution, and then we transfer that out of our operating fund into the OPEB fund. And so for several years, that amount has been $12 million and in line with guidance from our actuary who does an analysis each year on this fund. Okay. And does that amount change periodically? It may not change every year, but does it change and fluctuate at all? It has not changed for several years. It's been around $12 million. We are in a consistent pattern where we
are forecasting from our actuarial consulting firm, that if we continue the trends that have shown more positive activity, that we should be hitting 70% within hopefully the next one or two years, and perhaps being able to reach 100% funding of our liability within about five years. And then, so would the amount of money that the county's contributing change at that point in time? Would they reduce it by chance? That would be once we hit 70%, as prescribed in the policy, we could begin discussions with the county of potentially lowering that.
However, again, the funding for the OPEB fund is the same funding pot as our CIP, our capital projects, as well as our operating fund. So there's a lot of demand on that single revenue stream. So, I think there would be conversations to be had. I would lean towards being more conservative, and while 70% sets a minimum threshold to begin making withdrawals, I would want to see us be well above 70% before reducing any contributions.
Again, to make sure we areHaving the funding available for the retiree benefit in the future. Yeah, just to be clear, I'm 100% with you on that. I'm not asking for less money. I just want to know whether or not it's possible, so the county could make whatever choices they want to make about contributing to that. Do we need to memorialize any of that in the policy itself, that part of the main funding source is coming from the county at all? Or is there ever going to become a time when we may be having to do that without county funding?
I'm trying to think down the road. Obviously, this isn't going to be a thing for the next, hopefully, couple of years, but is there anything in the policy that we might need to adjust about the funding source of this? And that you may not have an answer right now. There is a reference in the funding guidelines. I see where there's reference of coordinating with the county of Loudon. And by virtue of us having this joint committee, the OPEB Investment Committee that Mrs. Griffiths mentioned, met today, coincidentally. I think we do have a very joined-at-the-hip shared vision related to making
sure that both retirees' benefits are secured in the future. At this time, initially, I don't think we would need anything additional, but I would re-read the policy before it comes back for action at the next meeting, just to see if there isn't perhaps somewhere we can maybe slide in a few sentences if that is helpful. Yeah, I just want to make sure that we just don't get into any circumstance where something happens to this fund, and we get ourselves in a pickle. So I'll take a look at the policy as well, but if you all have any recommendations, I'd welcome
that too. Then Mrs. Griffiths, maybe that's something we can take a look at between now and the next meeting. All set. Mrs. Griffiths. Thank you, Madam Chair. At the end of the meeting, it was pointed out, and Ms. Willoughby, you can elaborate on it, investing more in the fund where we don't just do the same old thing we've been doing. Maybe get into more investments that we can put into the fund, so we can grow the fund. Maybe we can discuss that. Also, this came up at the meeting, you will not be on the OPEB as of September,
so there will be an open position on that committee. So I just wanted to point that out as well. But if you can elaborate more for everyone, possible investments that can go into the fund to grow the fund. Because it appeared to, I'm sorry, I can't remember his name. We had somebody there that was an investment person that took a look at it and thought we needed more investment to grow. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? The OPEB Investment Committee has voting representatives of county,
the school board, or the LCPS with a school board member, as well as a community member who you are referencing related to his investment background. In terms of the role of this investment committee, the investment committee is really providing oversight related to the funds that we have invested with the VACO VML, which is the state pool. There are over 50 governmental school organizations that
participate in this pooled OPEB fund. So they have oversight over millions and millions and millions of dollars across the state for the participants. It's that state trust board that provides more direct oversight related to the investment strategy. They provide guidance and oversight with the VACO VML investment companies related to where the investments go. So it's not really at this lower level
with this policy, necessarily with even the OPEB Investment Committee. Those are all additional layers, but the work is really happening at that state board level. What you mentioned that was shared at the meeting today, I am at the end of my official three-year term. I started a previous three-year term in the middle, and I gave notice that I was not going to rerun for that seat. So what was mentioned, because LCPS
and Loudoun County are in a separate portfolio from the rest of the participants at the state level, that it would be wise to have someone else represent, make sure that we had representation. It's that seat that is going to be up at the end of this year at the state trust board level. And so I know I'm trying to still keep it high level. The one other thing I will share that I did mention today, what you heard the discussion is you could have 50 different investment companies, and you're going to hear 50
perhaps different investment strategies. What you hear very vocally expressed during our committee meetings is our community member has a very strong opinion related to investment strategies. What has happened in the past, prior to you joining us on this investment committee, was we had the VACO VML representatives come down to Loudoun County and present information to the investment committeeAgain, I will just candidly share that it really boils down to that there is just a difference of
opinion. I have full confidence in the expertise of the VECO VML investment representatives and their investment strategy, even if it may be different from the one member of our investment committee. I just want to thank you for bearing with me, because it was my first meeting today. So we'll keep an eye on it, and thank you. Thank you. Ms. Labelle. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just wondering, was any consideration given to including a retiree, either from the school board or the county board,
on this committee? This was brought up at the last time that this came to the school board, and we, during that time, obtained additional information that the county is responsible for the makeup of the investment committee. And so at this time, there's really not, I think, a discussion of having any retirees, because again, this really isn't about the retiree benefit. This is really about investments and, again, maybe an offline conversation, I'd be happy to have with you, but it's very much a lot of investment talk. We're talking about discount rates
and the liability and GASB and a whole slew of information that was really about just wanting to make sure that we are maximizing the funds that we have invested, not anything to do with the retiree benefit. Thank you very much. Thank you. Let's see. All right. Well, I was going to ask if we wanted to send this to consent, board members, but I hear some interest in continuing to mull that over. Ms. Ricardi? Yeah. Madam Chair, I'm good. If the rest of the board is. I just wanted to see if you all don't feel like there's any need for us to add any line items in there
about the investment piece of it, then I'm good. Well, why don't we take a temperature check? Mrs. Griffiths? Sorry, Madam Chair. We did have two amendments for the OPEB, and I believe we discussed, and you implemented those two amendments, correct? Correct. It is all set and prepared with- Mm-hmm ... what was voted on at committee, at our FNO committee. So with the red line version that is in board docs today for the school board is inclusive of all those items. And I'm just wondering if we do want to add a line item,
per what you mentioned today. We're okay? Okay. Then we can go to consent. Well, so let's see thumbs up if you're interested in sending this to consent. All right. This will come back next month on consent. Thank you so much. We will move on to item 12.02, the Hillsboro Charter Academy 2026/2027 school calendar, which will be presented tonight by Ms. Chernoff. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just like we did with the Middleburg Charter calendar the last meeting, this is coming for information. This is the Hillsboro Charter Academy calendar, which is also submitted each year to the board for review to ensure that it contains the
appropriate amount of instructional time. This moved to the full board from our committee last meeting. There was one question that was answered last meeting surrounding the idea of flexible days that are listed on the Hillsboro Charter Academy calendar. And basically what that is, is that it's for professional learning. However, if you do decide to do some of that professional learning on your own, you have flexibility those days to not have to attend. So I thank Ms. Lehman for being at our meeting and getting those answers. I will defer to Ms. Mitchell if there are any other questions from the board.
That's all. Thank you, Ms. Chernoff. Board members, are there any questions? All right. I'm seeing no questions. Is there an appetite to send this to consent? All right. Then this item will also come back on the consent agenda next time. And we will move on to item number 12.03, Student Services Committee, new policy 8455, supporting pregnant students, presented tonight by Mr. Pepper. Thank you, Madam Chair. The Student Services Committee has put together draft policy 8455 on supporting pregnant students. This is a new policy.
We currently do not have a policy to explain the rights and the supports available for pregnant students. So the goal with this policy was to create one that provided a comprehensive support and nurturing environments for students, not just who are pregnant, but for those who are suspected to be pregnant or even parenting, to ensure their continued educational success and wellbeing, and ensuring that pregnancy or parenthood is not interrupting their right to a free public education. This came through Student Services, and there were a few small changes, including those supported
by both MSAC and SEAC, but it's a pretty straightforward policy with not any major changes. And I don't know if there's anything I'm missing, Ms. Richardson, if you wanted to elaborate, but she's giving me a thumbs up, so I think that we're good. Thank you so much. School board members, are there any questions? All right. Let's take a temperature check to send this one to consent as well. That's it? Okay. All right. Thank you. This will come back to consent as well. And with that, we'll move on to our last information item for tonight, the Joint Committee of the Loudoun County School Board and the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, revisions to the
2025/2026 work plan, which I will present. On March 23rd, the Joint Committee of the Loudoun County School Board and the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors met andcommitted to this work plan and set the dates for the remainder of the meetings that will occur this year. The revisions that were made at that time included an addition of the winter snow removal in the LCPS walk zones and at the LCPS bus stops. There's some conversation to be had there, although we certainly had a once in a decade storm, with the ice being different
in many ways from what we normally have here. There were some challenges, and it will be good to have a conversation about how all of the different jurisdictions play in to the aspects of snow removal. For example, in some neighborhoods, the community associations are responsible for clearing sidewalks that are part of students' pathways to school. And then we also deleted the Land Matrix Committee activities update. So with that, board members, are there any questions? All right. Is there an appetite to move this item to the consent agenda? All right. Thank you. This item will also be placed on the consent agenda
for our next meeting. And with that, seeing that we have reached the end of the things that we can do at this point, I will call our recess, and we will reconvene at 6:30. The board is now in recess. Good evening, everyone. The board is coming out of recess at this time. We'll continue with item six, the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem. Tonight, in honor of the Month of the Military Child, we will continue the tradition of a formal presentation of colors by members of the Loudoun County High School Navy Junior ROTC unit.
The mission of the NJROTC program is to instill in cadets the values of leadership, character, honor, and service as a foundation for success in life. The cadets here tonight represent over 175 students from every high school in the county who are part of the program. Carrying the American flag is Cadet Sydney Pugh. Carrying the unit flag is Cadet Michael Woolam. The left rifle is Cadet Brianna Currinagura, and the right rifle is Cadet
Madeline Homa. Tonight, the national anthem will be performed by the Potomac Falls High School and the River Bend Middle School guitar quartets. These ensembles represent their school's top performers who dedicate considerable time and effort to developing their musical skills above and beyond classroom expectations. Both groups perform regularly in the community at cluster events, competitions, concerts, and other events. We hope the experience serves as an
inspiration for the middle school students to continue progressing, and for the high schoolers as a valuable experience as musical mentors and leaders. These groups are led by Aaron Kunk and Jan Marie Lawman. Now, please rise and remain standing during the presentation of colors. Forward march. Left, right. Left, right. Left, left, left, right. Mark time. March. Left turn. March. Colors, halt. Present colors.
Please join us in saying the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Right turn, march. Forward march. Left, right. Left, right. Left, left, left, right. Left, right. Left, left, left,
right. Left, right. Left, left. Colors, out. Colors, left. Thank you everyone. That was lovely. And as your Algonkian representative and a former River Bend mom and a Potomac Falls mom, I am so impressed. Thank you for being here tonight. Thank you. All right, everyone. Good evening. We'll move on next to item number 7.01,
the Department of Student Services Special Education Advisory Committee update. This update will be presented tonight by Ms. Tedra Richardson and Ms. Shenaz Khan, the chair of our SEAC committee. Thank you. Okay. Good evening. I was just looking up on the agenda, "When do I come up?" And here I am. Good evening, Chair Chandler, Vice Chair Donahue, members of the school board, and Dr. Spence. I'm Shenaz Khan. I'm the chair of the Special Education Advisory Committee. Thank you for the opportunity for allowing us to share our quarterly report this evening. Next slide, please.
As many of you know, SEAC operates under the Virginia Regulations Governing Special Education Programs for Children with Disabilities. Our role is to advise, review, and help shape priorities so students with disabilities are supported in a way that allows them to succeed. Next slide, please. I'd like to begin by introducing our SEAC leadership. You all know me, and so we have Catherine Moran, Vice Chair of Planning. Tom Ketchum, our Vice Chair of Membership. Erin Rozelle Poe, who's in the audience, Vice Chair of Communications.
Katie Rosenbrook, who is our secretary, and Liz Crotty, who's our past chair, who's also in the audience back there. We are also grateful for the partnership and support of our Special Education Director, Nakia Purnell, our school board liaison, Carrie LaBelle, and our alternate, Chair Chandler. Next slide. Before sharing our updates, I wanted to take a moment to really thank several individuals who have truly made a difference in our work this year. Ms. Nakia Purnell, for her constant support and her
genuine advocacy that she brings to our special education students. Dr. Kim Jones and Kristen Lovell, who keep us organized and make sure everything runs smoothly. They really put so much care into planning our awards ceremony and our meetings, and I really do think I say this year after year that we really could not do it without them. Ms. Tedra Richardson, who has been such a steady source of support and always taking the time to really listen and understand the concerns being shared.
I also want to recognize our special education supervisors who consistently show up for our subcommittee meetings and play such a vital role in the work we do. They take the time to listen to concerns, engage in thoughtful discussions, and work alongside us to find meaningful solutions. A special thank you to Ms. Carrie LaBelle for her fierce advocacy and her insight and expertise that she consistently brings to special education. And finally, to our school board members, staff, and Dr. Spence, thank you for your continued support
and your commitment to our students and families. Next slide, please. Currently, we are at full membership with 21 voting members. We also have SEAC representation from our PTAs and PTOs across 88 schools, and only 13 schools did not have reps this year. Our executive committee meets monthly, and we also have four working subcommittees: our Policy and Compliance subcommittee, Meaningful Inclusion, Specialized Reading and Math, and our Transition subcommittee. Each of these committees allows us to take a closer look at what students
and families are experiencing and where we can continue to improve. Next slide, please. So this year, we had a wide range of presentations and discussions. From artificial intelligence in education to curriculum updates. We had covered a variety of topics that were important to our community. We also had a wonderful opportunity to engage in a Q&A with Dr. Spence, which was meaningful for our members and also allowed for open and thoughtful discussion. Our last meeting, this past meeting, we had a panel
of students from our CAST program that were asked questions by the director of the I'm Determined Center. If you have an opportunity, please do go back and listen to that presentation. It was really amazing. It was very powerful hearing directly from our students. And we are really looking forward to getting updates at our next month's meeting on the progress that's been made with the VIEW Transition Academy. Next slide. The SEAC survey continues to be an important tool for gathering feedback from families and the community. While we were not able to analyze the most
recent survey in time for this report, we are actively working to ensure both the 24-25 and the 25-26 surveys are reviewed and shared by fall 2026. This feedback helps guide our work and identify where we can support students and families. Next slide, please. The Policy and Compliance subcommittee has been very active this year. They have reviewed and provided feedback on 26 policies, contributed to discussions around the MOU with the SROs, and participated in both budget and annual plan reviews.We also had the opportunity to engage in
a work session for a new policy that is being written, which was really a wonderful experience and very collaborative. I look forward to doing that more in the future. This work plays an important role in shaping how students experience support and consistency across the division. Next slide, please. We've made some really encouraging progress in reading and math. There has been strong coordination around interventions, increased collaboration with our SIFs, who are our specialized instructional facilitators who work with our special ed
teachers, and positive results from programs like SPIRE at the elementary school level. We are also hearing from families that access to reading support is improving, which is great to see. Looking ahead-- Oh, I'm sorry. Next slide, please. Looking ahead, the focus is on building on what is working and continuing to close those gaps. That includes expanding successful approaches in middle and high school, strengthening support across schools by utilizing our SIFs as much as possible, and continuing to improve writing instruction.
We are also focused on identifying specially designed reading curriculum that better meets the needs of our students with the most severe disabilities. Currently, what we have requires constant modification, and that places a heavy burden on our teachers working to meet each student's unique needs. Next slide, please. The transition subcommittee has made a lot of progress this year. So we are excited. We are seeing exciting progress with the VIEW Transition
Academy, expanded independent living labs in all of our high schools, and more training for teachers around transition planning. We also have a transition handbook that we advocated for, and thank you to Jenna Arndt for really spending the summer and hearing our concerns and putting together an amazing handbook, which will be a really helpful resource for parents as they navigate what can be a very complex process. Next slide, please. Moving forward, the focus is on expanding awareness and
access to post-graduation opportunities. This includes growing programs like Start on Success, increasing awareness of vocational pathways, and helping students build self-advocacy skills. At the same time, we want to start building those foundational skills earlier at both the elementary and secondary levels, so that by the time students reach the Transition Academy, they are ready to focus on real-world skills for independent living and employment. The goal is to make sure students leave the school system feeling confident, prepared, and ready for what comes
next. Next slide, please. The Meaningful Inclusion Subcommittee has been working in several important areas. They have begun reviewing the discipline data, creating resources to help families better understand services, and started conversations around meaningful access to specials like PE, art, music, and library. Next slide, please. Looking ahead, the focus is on expanding inclusion in both in and out of the classrooms. This includes access to after-school activities, stronger training for staff, and improving how accommodations are being implemented in the general education
setting. We are also exploring ways to better support executive functioning skills. We want to keep asking: How can we create more opportunities for students to feel like they truly belong? A big part of that is making sure that they are interacting with their peers, and they are included in the school communities as much as possible. Academically, this also means strengthening the co-teaching model at the secondary level and continuing to build out the use of the universal design for learning in general education classrooms. This becomes even more important
as we ensure all instructional materials are accessible to every student. Last week, during the student panel at our SEAC meeting, one of the questions that was asked to the students was, "If you could change one thing about our schools to make it better for students with disabilities, what would it be?" The first student answered, "What I would change is further training for our general education teachers, teacher assistants, and job coaches on how to interact with students with disabilities. It may seem like extra work,
but it will be worth it in the long run because in the end, it's not survival of the fittest. We are not animals. We are humans, and humans help one another, and that's what makes us different from animals you know." That was her quote. The same question was posed to the second student, "If you could change one thing about the schools." She said, "Help make the world a better place for kids with disabilities and make learning fun for them." It reminds us that beyond policies and programs, what matters most is how students experience school every day and whether they feel a true
sense of belonging. Next slide, please. Each year, we're excited to continue one of our most meaningful traditions, the SEAC Award CeremonyThis year we received over 350 nominations, which happened to be exactly the same amount of nominations we received last year. This speaks volumes about the incredible educators, staffs, and students in our community. So we just sent the you've been nominated notification out starting last week, and it's been incredible to read all the responses from the nominees who are genuinely
surprised and touched by their nominations. These awards highlight what inclusion looks like in action and celebrate those who go above and beyond to create supportive environments for our students. We invite you all to please come out on June 3rd at Lightridge High School to help celebrate us. I think it's just one of those moments when you get up there, up on stage, and you're shaking hands with all the recipients, and it's just amazing and an incredible feeling.
And with that, it's actually the next slide, sorry. So, and with that, as I step down as SEAC chair next year, I want to thank you all again for your time and continued partnership. I really enjoy working with each and every one of you. I know SEAC will have an incredible leadership next year, and we look forward to seeing the work that they do. We really appreciate the opportunity to share this work and to continue collaborating on ways to better support our students and families. And with that, I'm happy to take any questions.
Thank you, Ms. Kahn, and it's so easy, I'm delighted to say it has been a real joy to work with you over the last two years. Speaking for myself, and I'm sure the other board members will have plenty to say as well, but it has been very enriching to be able to depend on your expertise and learn from the experiences that not only you bring as a parent, but also the voice that you carry to represent the other parents on SEAC. So thank you for the investment and time that you have made to do this work. Of course.
And with that, board members, do you have any comments or questions? Mrs. Griffiths. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, thank you so much, Shenaz. It's been a pleasure working with you. I hate to ask this, I don't know if I missed it, who was going to take your place? Do we know yet? So we have a slate of our nominations, but we have not taken a vote yet. So as soon as the vote comes out, I'll email everyone and let them know. That was my question. Yeah. I'm going to miss you. Thank you, Dina. Mr. Carty. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for all of the work that you've done this year. It's been really great. I've learned so much over this last
year, year and a half, coming to the meetings and watching what you guys are doing, and you've been an enormous fountain of knowledge and I really do appreciate you so much and all the work that you've done. And I appreciate the fact that your committee is so engaged in not only just the school board process, but engaged in the special education community, and just such huge advocates for our students. So thank you so much for all of your work. Thank you. Appreciate that. Ms. LaBelle. Thank you, Madam Chair. Shenaz, I am going to miss you. I am going to miss
the times we would meet, just the two of us, to talk about policy, what needed to be done, and just throw ideas around for different things we could do. And I want to assure you that I have put the date on my phone. Yay. And for those of you who don't know, she used to send me notices to tell me, "SEAC is tomorrow night, are you coming?" I'm still going to send that to you, Carrie. Oh. So thank you again. Thank you for your energy, thank you for your leadership, and thank you for all your years of work, because I know that this is just the culmination of what you've
been doing, and I look forward to seeing you as past president next year. Thank you, Carrie. Thank you. Any further... Oh, yes, Mr. Pepper. Thank you, Madam Chair. So when I was first elected to the board, the very first email I got was, "You have to meet with SEAC, you got to meet with Shenaz, you got to see what's going on." And so we took that meeting in, I believe it was Pete's Coffee Shop, but I appreciate everything you've done, and I will tell you that when we look at policy, particularly in SSC, student services, I'm always looking to see what SEAC's recommendation is,
because I know that you have the best interests of our students at heart. And so I really appreciate and grateful for your leadership and will say whoever the next person is has very big shoes to fill. Thank you so much. Thank you. Dr. Rashid. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Ms. Kahn. I really appreciate all the wealth and knowledge that you've provided. I'm going to say the same thing I said to MSAC. We've learned so much, and just like what Mr. Pepper said, when we first got elected, you got to meet with the SEAC chair, just like you say you got to meet with the MSAC chair. So it's the same thing, and I really appreciate all the wealth of knowledge and what you do for our students. Thank you. You'll be missed. Thank you so much. Appreciate
all of you, really. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Seeing no further comments or questions, thank you so much for being here tonight. Thank you. And for your presentation. All right. With that, we will move to item number 8.01, our student school board representative's comments. Tonight, our student school board representative is Sushmika Velivi. Pardon me, Veli Veli.Sushmika is a senior at the Academies of Loudoun and Freedom High School. Outside of school, she plays club volleyball and enjoys performing piano for various events across the DNB area.
Within school, she serves as a National Honor Society officer and the president of the American Cancer Society chapter, where she loves connecting with students and meeting new people every day. She is also an executive board member in the Academies Student Council Association and works to help find ways that can unify our diverse student body. As the Academies representative, Sushmika aims to effectively collaborate with the Loudoun County School Board to ensure that all students are being provided with equitable and supportive
LCPS education. Welcome, Sushmika. The floor is yours. Thank you so much. And good evening, members of the school board. I'm so excited to update you all about what Academies of Loudoun has been up to since we were last here. I'd like to first thank our principal, Mr. Sackett, and my amazing SC advisors, Mrs. Whistler and Mrs. Hiltner, for their continued support of both myself and our student body. This year has been especially exciting with the introduction of our new principal, Mr. Sackett. Although we hit the ground running, Mr. Sackett has worked hard to revise our school's mission, placing a strong emphasis on resilience. While we continue to celebrate exploration,
research, collaboration, and innovation, we also strive to celebrate the failure and the resilience that supports each student's endeavors. As an executive member of SCA, we focus on bringing unity across all three programs, AET, AOS, and MADA. This year, we hosted several major events, including our annual Pink Out with the school store, where all proceeds were donated to Loudoun Breast Health Network, and our Halloween Spirit Week, which we hosted a costume competition that both the students and teachers equally loved. We continued the same energy into our November Gaming Month, which is a fan favorite, featuring events like our
pickleball tournament, Tetris tournaments, and trivia competitions during lunch. One of our biggest events was Pi Day, where we partnered with PTSA to celebrate our nerdy school status with pride. We passed out Pi Day mechanical pencils, oatmeal cream pies, and Pi Day stickers. More notably, we had a school-wide pie tasting, which is something our students always look forward to during lunch. We also make it a priority to recognize our amazing faculty by making cards and small goodie bags, with our most recent appreciation event being Assistant Principal and Director Appreciation Week. At its core, SCA aims to give students a break from their rigorous schedules
and create a home away from home. That is why we prioritize events like our upcoming Mental Health May, where we offer activities such as making stress balls during AP season and passing out flowers, which our students really love. Outside of SCA, the Academies of Loudoun continues to thrive with over 60 plus clubs and extracurriculars, where students actively pursue their diverse passions. One major addition this year has been Raptor Time. Since students do not have a traditional study hall at their home school, this weekly 45-minute block gives students the opportunity for academic support, as well as time to do their homework, which has been very instrumental for student
success. We've also seen strong academic and professional achievements across all programs. Students of both the MADA and AOS pathways participated in a white coat ceremony at the beginning of the year, marking the beginning of their science journey. Initiatives such as the first ever campus-wide composting project has been implemented, and partnerships with a variety of organizations such as INNOVA, Loudoun Water, and even with the FBI, have given our students a unique experiential learning environment. Our competitive teams have also had an outstanding year so far. We had 72 projects advance to the regional science fair, with 33 placing, 17 earning special awards, and three
students advancing to the International Science and Engineering Fair. Our HOSA and our first ever DECA chapter, as well as our SkillsUSA chapters, all saw strong participation and recognition at their individual events. And our FIRST Robotics team actually recently won a competition over the weekend and will be advancing to the world championships. Beyond academics, we've continued to build our sense of community through events like our first ever alumni meet and greet, and our student-led initiatives such as the Ramadan Iftar dinner hosted by the Muslim Student Association. I'm happy to say that Academies of Loudoun continues to be a place where students turn their passions into real experiences filled with collaboration, curiosity, and
opportunity. And although I could talk effortlessly and endlessly about the accomplishments and work ethic within the ACL community, as a senior myself graduating in less than two months, I'd like to end on a more personal note. Attending the Academies Advanced AET IT program beginning as a junior has completely changed my high school experience for the better. From the moment I walked in, I remember texting my friend right after school, wondering how there must be something special in the Academies air because everyone was so happy and welcoming, and it kind of freaked me out. Being in an environment that pushes you to actively engage in learning instead of just going through the motions has given me a sense of confidence that I didn't
know I needed, especially as I prepare for college. They say you are what you surround yourself with, and I can happily say that I've been surrounded by driven peers who push me to work harder, and I've worked with teachers with years of experience who inspire me to explore limitless pathways. While my experience may not represent every student, I truly believe that anyone who walks through the Academies of Loudoun leaves even just a little bit better as someone who can act selflessly and think intentionally. Thank you so much for your continued support and encouragement. It does not go unnoticed, and I'm proud to soon call myself as an Academies of Loudoun SDA alum. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing that very meaningful update with
us. It's really lovely to hear. With that, we'll move on to item number 9.01, our superintendent's report, which will be presented by Dr. Aaron Spence. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. As always, it's my pleasure to present good news from around our school division. We'll begin this evening talking about the more than 500 students from 26 schools who came together today at Loudoun Valley High School for the Special Olympics FEAT Meet. Participants rotated through a variety of fun activities while cheering one another on and celebrating every accomplishment. Student leaders from multiple schools played key roles in helping with event
coordination, leading the activities, and providing mentorship. They ensured every athlete felt supported and included. Today's FEAT Meet was one of three to be held across LCPS this spring, with Park View hosting an event last week and Stone Bridge set to host next week. In total, 55 schools are scheduled to participate in one of the three meets, highlighting the division's commitment to inclusion and student engagement.Next, fourth and fifth grade students at Meadowland Elementary welcomed a special guest on Wednesday, March 25th, when NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore visited their school.
Wilmore, a highly decorated astronaut who has spent more than 464 days in space across three missions, spoke with students about his work with NASA, including his unexpected extended stay aboard the International Space Station. Wilmore shared many details about what it's like to train to be an astronaut and to live in space. And he closed his visit with words of encouragement, letting students know that a strong foundation in math and science opens doors to countless opportunities. Recently at JL Simpson Middle School, and just in time for Earth Month, SCA student leaders donned green aprons and gloves for a different kind of lunch duty.
With the support of the LCPS Office of Sustainability and Simpson's Green Team, the students conducted a food waste audit. Throughout the school's three lunch periods, students collected, sorted, and measured all of the food and trash discarded by their classmates. Students at Watson Mountain Middle and Blue Ridge Middle Schools conducted similar audits, giving them a firsthand look at how much food is thrown away, and prompting a reflection on what we can do differently. Backed by the data collected, these students will now develop communication plans to encourage their peers to reduce waste and make their schools greener.
The Office of Sustainability helps coordinate and support hands-on activities such as this through the Green Teams program, which brings together students and staff to promote sustainable practices and lead schoolwide environmental initiatives. Speaking of Blue Ridge Middle School, Blue Ridge has been designated a Virginia Project Adam Heart Safe School. This recognition highlights the school's commitment to health, safety, and the well-being of students, staff, and visitors. Achieving this certification required additional staff training, coordinated emergency planning, and broad community support. The Blue Ridge PTO supported the designation by providing additional funds to
certify 11 staff members, and with support from school personnel, the school installed professional signage to ensure AED locations are clearly marked and easy to access in an emergency. This designation reflects the dedication and teamwork of staff, administrators, and community partners, so many thanks to all involved for their commitment to enhancing school safety. We are pleased to share that LCPS alum Michael Brennan, a 2020 graduate of Chuskurora High School, made an impressive showing at the 2026 Masters Tournament, finishing tied for 24th at two under par in
his debut. Brennan credited his coaching team, led by Adam Harrell, a math teacher at Farmwell Station Middle School, with his success. Now ranked number 47 in the official World Golf Rankings, he continues his professional momentum as he competes in this week's Heritage Tournament in South Carolina, and it's always inspiring to see our LCPS alums succeed and to know our schools and staff supported that success. And then finally, this evening, I'd like to highlight an upcoming opportunity. LCPS and Claude Moore are partnering to host a screening of "Multiple Choice" on Thursday, April the 16th at the Academies of Loudon.
This documentary highlights the Virginia School Division's effort at increasing career and technical education opportunities for its students, and emphasizes the value of this type of education for all of our students. Beginning at 5:00 p.m., LCPS students will showcase their own experiences in career and technical education programs. And during the screening, a panel discussion will provide additional insight into the many career pathways LCPS students can explore while still in high schools. Thank you, Madam Chair. That concludes my report. Thank you, Dr. Spence. That brings us to item number 10, public comment.
Here are the procedures for public comment. Thank you for engaging with the school board through the public comment process. The school board welcomes comments from Loudon County residents and believes that strong community engagement and outreach are important components of a successful school system. Speakers must limit comments to the time allotted. Based on the number of speakers and the agenda this evening, all speakers have been allotted two minutes each for public comment. Please be advised that speakers who miss their time slot will not be called at a later time. Decorum and civility. All audience members shall maintain civility, decorum, and respect for the
functioning and dignity of the school board at all times. Please remain seated unless arriving, departing, speaking at the podium, or during a break. Violations of civility, decorum, and respect include shouting, heckling, jeering, applause, or other noise that disrupts or delays the meeting; obstructing speakers from being able to see the school board and vice versa; interrupting speakers; attempting to speak when not called to do so by the chair; and approaching a speaker or otherwise attempting to intimidate, disparage, or distract a speaker, staff member, or other meeting
attendees. Speakers should refrain from vulgarity, obscenities, defamation, profanity, or other like breaches of respect, nor may speakers target, criticize, or attack individual students and/or individual division employees during public comment. As a reminder, school board Policy 2520 states, "Speakers may not target, criticize, or attack individual students during public comment. Speakers should communicate those concerns to their school principal or an appropriate school official. The school board requests that
comments on an individual student or employee-related matter not be shared at public meetings where the disclosure could violate applicable confidentiality requirements." I do want to take a moment to clarify a few things. As has been explained previously, speakers can personally identify a student or employee without stating a student's or an employee's names. That is, personally identifiable information is any information that a reasonable person can link together to pinpoint an individual student or employee, and where that
individual student or employee is known to others in their school and surrounding community based on the context that is shared.The school board welcomes you to share your concerns, but asks that to the extent you have prepared remarks that target, criticize, or attack any individual students or employees, you generalize such remarks to ensure compliance with board policy. For example, comments that target, criticize, or attack a student or an employee, or a student or an employee from a specific name school, or a student or an
employee with any characteristics where the information would personally identify that student or employee to others in the school or broader LCPS community would violate school board policy. However, comments that discuss general concerns with students or employees at schools and do not target, criticize, or attack an individual identifiable student or employee are permissible. Under school board policy, I as the school board chair, am charged with the responsibility to maintain order during school board meetings. Accordingly, when reasonable, I will warn of breaches of decorum,
civility, and respect and ask speakers to redirect their comments prior to possibly discontinuing individual speaking privileges or taking other actions to preserve the civility, decorum, and orderly conduct of the meeting. Such actions include calling a recess in order to maintain and/or restore order. If speakers fail to comply with board policy regarding public participation, you will receive a warning and request to redirect and generalize your comments. Should you fail to redirect and generalize your comments after that warning, you may be asked to yield the microphone, at which
time you should yield the microphone as well as the floor and take your seat, and I will then call the next speaker. To the extent necessary, I will also warn of breaches of decorum, civility, and respect from attendees prior to taking other actions to preserve the orderly conduct of the meeting. Speakers should face the dais and direct their comments to the school board per school board policy 2520. Members of the school board will not answer questions or respond directly to the public during the public comment period. Violations of decorum or civility by any meeting attendee may
result in the chair directing staff to remove the attendee from the remainder of the meeting. Repeated or persistent violations of decorum or civility by the audience may result in, on the decision of the chair, public comment being tabled until a later point in the meeting's agenda, limiting the number of attendees in the meeting room during public comment for safety reasons, or the public comment period ending for the evening. Distribution of materials to school board members. Copies of materials for board members should be given to the public information
officer in the media box at the back of the boardroom before the start of the meeting. Please provide 12 copies of the materials. Under no circumstance may a speaker approach the dais. The public is reminded that access to school board meetings is available through LCPS-TV on Comcast channel 18 and 1070 HD and Verizon Fios channel 43. The live stream of the meeting may be viewed on the website. We look forward to hearing your comments. We would normally start with virtual public comment, but there are no virtual speakers this evening. The first in-person
speaker is Chris Stevenson, followed by Johanna Kirk. Good to see you all again. Madam Chair, members of the school board, I am Chris Stevenson, LCPS parent and member of Civic Ground, a Loudon-based group challenging the president's assaults on our children's education and future. Thank you, by the way, for your long hours away from loved ones. Recently, the president, in managing a war he has no constitutional power to wage, and with the United States as the aggressor nation, which fact takes one's breath away,
threatened to destroy an entire civilization if he did not get his way, and he expressed no concern for possibilities of committing war crimes. On Easter, a sacred religious holiday for many of your constituents, he shared a profane and vulgar comment on social media, ending it with a sacred phrase of another major world religion strongly represented in Loudoun County, quote, "Praise be to Allah," close quote. On behalf of LCPS students and their deeply concerned parents, will you please issue a statement asking the president to apologize for this,
especially to our children, for this reprehensible behavior that contravenes LCPS values and principles and damages our children's education and their future? I urge you to rise to the moment, mustering your bravery and courage. We desperately need voices from our leaders. Be national leaders of a movement. The America we have and the world has known is falling apart all around the students you serve, the result of a demagogue who has rejected all controls. With as much respect and humility and kindness as I can, and I do
have kindness and respect for you, I challenge you to do something of consequence in this regard. You can do this. I know you can. Thank you. Thank you. Johanna Kirk, followed by Julie Kvachek. Good evening, members of the school board. My name is Johanna Kirk, and I am a full-time substitute school bus driver. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm here respectfully to ask to change the title and description of my job position, and fair adjustment to salary. Currently, we are called an eight-hour
subs, and we receive the same pay as regular driver. However, our role comes with unique challenge that make our job harder and more demanding. Unlike regular drivers, we face a different route and a different group of students every day. Many times, we are called in at the last minute, leaving us with little time to learn about the route, the students, or the specific dynamics of each bus. This lack of preparation increases the difficulty of our job and affects our ability to
ensure a safe and smooth ride for the students. When students see a substitute driver, their behavior changes. They might eat and leave trash and ignore bus rules, things that they wouldn't do with their regular driver. We don't always know if student have assigned seats or if there are special arrangement that need to be followed. When driving student with special needs, driver must be able to accommodate their medical concerns, triggers, and behaviors. These details are often
overlooked, and we have limited time to prepare before the ride, which can lead to stressful and sometimes unsafe situation for both the student and the drivers. Given all these challenges, substitute driver deserve fair compensation that reflect the extra responsibilities and difficulties we face. Thank you. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. The next speaker is Julie Kovach, followed by Lisa McHugh. Good evening, members of the school board. I'm here to discuss the current expectations and compensation
for substitute bus drivers, a topic that greatly impacts both our performance and our well-being. As substitute drivers, we're frequently called upon to demonstrate a high level of flexibility and adaptability. Unlike regular route drivers, we must often cover a wide range of duties on short notice. Many route drivers have acknowledged that the responsibilities we should warrant higher compensation. Our contractual hours are from 5:30 to 9:30, and from 1:30 to 5:30, yet we are often contracted outside these hours for assignments or
other work-related matters, and we do not receive county-issued phones or compensation to manage these communications. The lack of support can make it very challenging to balance availability and personal time. The training required for substitute drivers is more extensive than that for route drivers. We must be proficient in operating various types of buses, including electric, propane, the new C2 model, and the new international. And we also must undergo training in areas such as mant system and
student-specific medication administration. These additional training requirements reflect the zero broader scope of responsibilities we handle. Given these factors, extended availability, comprehensive training, and the demands of the role, it's important that substitute drivers receive fair compensation. We respectfully urge the school board to review and work with administration to adjust the compensation structure to better reflect the critical role we play. Thank you for your attention on this matter. Thank you. Thank you.
Our next speaker is Lisa McHugh, followed by Phuong Pham. Got to get my glasses. Good evening, school board members, Dr. Spence. My name's Lisa McHugh. I'm a substitute bus driver. I've been a driver for six years, a sub for five. I'm here today to speak about the role of substitute school bus drivers and why our current job description and compensation do not reflect the reality of our position. Substitute drivers do far more than simply just fill in when somebody's out.
We're the people who keep the transportation system running when something goes wrong. When a driver is absent, a bus breaks down, or a route must be covered on short notice. We have even been described by transportation leadership as elite drivers. While we share the same title and pay as regular route drivers, the job itself is very different. Regular drivers work with the same students and routes each day. Substitute drivers begin each day with unfamiliar routes, unfamiliar students, and unfamiliar parents.
It's like the first day of school every day. Because we do not have that familiarity, we must be especially vigilant with safety procedures, particularly when releasing young and special needs students. We cannot rely on recognition. We must rely on strict verification, which adds both responsibility and risk, not to mention holding up traffic on Fort Evans Road.We are also routinely asked to step into challenging situations, covering disrupted routes, operating unfamiliar buses, performing multiple pre-trip inspections a
day based on route assignment changes, and transporting students with needs we may be learning in real time. It's not the same job. It's a more unpredictable and more demanding version of a regular route driver job. Despite the added responsibilities, substitute drivers remain classified and compensated at the same rate as route drivers. We respectfully request reclassification- Thank you ... to level nine. Thank you. Phong Pham, followed by Avani Amireddy.
Good evening. My name is Phong Pham. I am a substitute bus driver for Area South. I also worked for the Fairfax County Public School before. In Fairfax County, the substitute bus driver, they have their own title. They call it floater, bus floater. Every area in Fairfax, they have their own floater team. Their duty is the same thing we do in here every day, except their pay is different. Whenever they become the bus floater, they get 10% more for their pay above their driver.
And whenever they cover for the special ed bus with the lift student and equipment, include safety vest, they get $1 more for every hour they work for that day. In Fairfax County, the special ed bus driver, they get paid one more hour for every hour for their route with the indicate, with the route with the special ed, with the lifts and the safety vest. I was shocked when I come here and work for Loudoun County Public School.
I see the special ed bus driver have the same pay as the regular, the general ed bus driver, and also the substitute bus driver have the same pay as the regular bus driver. They work harder. They work way harder for that job. They should have pay better for them for work. They put themselves in the risky situation. Thank you. All right. Avani Amireddy, followed by Ella Stevenson. Good
evening. My name is Avani Amireddy, and I'm a freshman at Lightridge High School in Loudoun County Public Schools. I am here to propose expanding the family life education curriculum to include age-appropriate, medically accurate sexual health education. Currently, the FLE curriculum emphasizes abstinence. For example, students are taught to recognize the benefits of abstaining from premarital sexual intercourse. While this is important, national data shows that many adolescents will still become sexually active during their teenage years. According to public health research, the average age of first sexual intercourse in
the United States is around 17. This suggests that many students begin navigating these experiences during high school, often without sufficient education. There are noticeable gaps in basic understandings of sexual health concepts among high schoolers, and it reflects the broader concern. Students are not receiving clear, factual information about their own bodies and relationships. This proposal is not about encouraging students to become sexually active. In fact, research from CDC shows that comprehensive sexual education can actually delay the
initiation of sexual activity, reduce risky behavior, and increase the use of protection. Additionally, many states across the country have already required some form of sex education. However, in Virginia, the family life education primarily follows an abstinence-focused approach. While families play an important role in these conversations, not all students receive this information at home. Schools can help ensure that all students have access to consistent, accurate, and inclusive information. It is also important to emphasize that this proposal is intended to be appropriate
for a school setting. The goal is not to present graphic content, but to provide medically accurate, age-appropriate education focused on health, safety, consent, and respectful relationships. I respectfully ask the board to review the current FLE curriculum and consider incorporating more comprehensive and medically accurate sexual education to better support students. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Ella Stevenson, followed by Amandeep Kaur. Good evening. First off, I want to thank you all for your hard work and the sacrifices you do to help make this school system run smoothly.
My name is Ella Stevenson, and I am a senior at Loudoun Valley High School. This year, I am taking my school's IB History class. One of our units was studying what contributes to the rise and fall of authoritarian regimes. Through studying Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa, and Mussolini's Italy, a haunting message has stood true for all. Authoritarian power, the power that limits freedom, degrades humanity, and silences diversity, is often acquiesced by citizens too attached to the semblance of normalcy a regime allows in exchange for power.
This message feels extremely applicable as Donald Trump limits our freedoms Degrades our humanity, the humanity of countless minority groups, and silences any differing opinions. Please push back and issue a statement acknowledging the irreparable harm he is causing students today. All students deserve truth, acceptance, and freedom. Thank you. Thank you. Amandeep Kaur, followed by Chris Countryman. Good evening, board members. My name is Amandeep Kaur, and I'm an eight-hour substitute with Loudoun County for last nine years.
When I signed the agreement letter or contract, I fully understood the role as it was originally presented. However, in practice, this position has grown beyond that initial scope. As eight-hour substitute drivers, we are expected to adapt every single day, often with little notice, covering different routes, schools, and wide range of student needs. In case many cases, we also take on attendant responsibilities, which adds an additional level of accountability and care. When assigned, we are required to perform attendant duties as well as with no
option to decline. Additionally, we are frequently contacted outside of our scheduled hours and asked to begin earlier than our assigned shift, sometimes as early as 4:45 or 5:00 a.m., even though our schedule is set for 5:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Similar situation also occur during the afternoon shift. We also have been asked to use our personal vehicles to travel between school without reimbursement, compensation, and protection in the
event of an accident. This is no longer just traditional substitute coverage. We are providing essential operational support that help keep the entire system running when there are gaps. We are not here to challenge the contract. We are simply asking that the contract, the current reality of this role be acknowledged. The responsibilities have expanded, and we believe the job title and pay scale should reflect that. We are committed to doing our jobs well. We are just asking for fair recognition for the work we are already doing today. Thank you.
Thank you. Chris Countryman will be our final speaker this evening. Good evening. I'd like to speak about the role of substitute bus drivers and why it's time we recognize their contributions more accurately. I think by now you get the point that sub drivers' responsibilities are not the same as regular drivers. But I also want to make it clear that they must also apply for that position separately and sign a different contract. Why is it not already classified separately? On behalf of substitute drivers, LEA is requesting a reclassification
to a separate job title, along with a job description that aligns with their job per Policy 7614. So that policy is how the reclassifications happen. We also ask that a pay scale reflect their added responsibilities, including mandatory availability and additional training. Other districts, like Fairfax County, already recognize this with a separate position and higher pay. Bus driver shortages continue to impact school start times, yet substitute drivers who help fill critical gaps face a
23% vacancy rate here in Loudoun. There are only 37 drivers filling the 48 positions, all paid the same as full-time route drivers, despite the increased stress and unpredictability. Without meaningful incentives, recruitment and retention will continue to fall short. This issue was discussed at the March LMC meeting, and I appreciate that it is under review. I urge you to support these drivers by advocating on their behalf for reclassification, which is not part of collective bargaining.
This is not just a short-term fix. It is a long-term investment, and it rights a wrong in a critical part of our transportation system. The petitions provided to you tonight have signatures across transportation titles in support, and were gathered in just one week. Acting now will strengthen recruitment and retention while helping to set LCPS up for success in the '26, '27 school year. Thank you. And thank you all for coming out today and providing us with your public comment. With that, we'll move on to our action items, and starting with item number 11.01, the minutes of the March 5th,
2026 special school board meeting. I'll start by making the motion that the Loudoun County School Board adopt the minutes of the March 5th, 2026 special school board meeting as amended. I'll also speak to the motion. I know this won't surprise you, as we've been working together for some time, but I always like to look through the historical perspective and try to understand not only why processes exist, but how they came to exist in the first place. And to that end, I'd like to ask Dr. Bergen if you could speak to any of the processes that exist
around the minutes and expound on how the clerk has been instructed to record the minutes. Sure, Madam Chair. The recording of the minutes, the practice that is in place, is a process that our current board clerk inherited when she assumed the job in the 2020, '21 school year Over the last several years since she's taken the position, with a prior school board and with a prior administration, she was given direction to record in the minutes, when there were more than two motions to any particular
agenda item, to list them in the chronological order within the minutes, with a heading Order of the Vote. That does not occur very frequently when there are more than two amendments to a base motion. Most of the time, there are no amendments or one or two amendments, in which case she uses the motion and voting feature that is within BoardDocs. So again, the practice of how the minutes are recorded has been in place for at least five years, predates the current clerk, the current board, the current administration.
Be happy to answer any additional questions as they may arise. Thank you. And with that, I will repeat the motion, which is that the Loudoun County School Board adopt the minutes of the March 5th, 2026 special school board meeting as amended. Is there a second? Second. The motion has been seconded by Dr. Rasheed. So just in following up on this issue and trying to better understand how the minutes have been handled in the past, we follow Robert's Rules unless we have an outlined different procedure in our policies. And as I mentioned the last time, our Policy
2450 outlines what should be included in the minutes and states that the minutes shall otherwise be brief and simple as possible. Further, in the past, I don't believe that we've included points of order in the minutes. And I've also checked with some other neighboring divisions, and it is not something that is always customary. The minutes are meant to be a record of what is done and not what is said. It's not a transcript, and the video of the meeting is considered part of the public record. I know, as a smaller board, by definition,
we are not beholden to the extensive formalities of Robert's Rules. But we are a big division, and it's important that we get this right. And it's important that we have consistent processes and that when we make changes, we make them purposefully, and we make them through policy. And with that, I'll open the floor to school board members. Mr. Pepper. Thank you, Madam Chair. Based both on the discussion here and also the research I've done as well, and listening to yourself and Dr. Bergen, I would like to make an amendment to the minutes.
And I'll make the amendment first, then I take a second. If someone will second, I'll speak to it. But my motion is to remove the two points of order from the minutes. So under the Order of the Vote section, there is one point of order in red that says, "Point of order raised by Ms. Ricardi. Immediately following the seconding of Mr. Svenson's motion, Chair Chandler called a recess to obtain a legal opinion regarding the point of order. Following the recess, board counsel rendered an opinion on the point of order. Ms. Ricardi noted her objection to Mr. Svenson's motion." For the record, that's the first removal. And then the second removal is right near the end, there's a line that says,
"Second point of order raised by Ms. Ricardi on the same procedural grounds as her first point of order." So that's the motion. Thank you. Mr. Pepper has made a motion to strike the points of order from the minutes. Is there a second? Second. The motion has been seconded by Vice Chair Donahue. Mr. Pepper, would you like to speak further to your motion? Yes. So as I further read this, and I will say that in the previous meeting that we had on these minutes, I did vote to move this, but it was really more of a procedural piece because there's a middle part where a substitute motion was out of order
with the call to the question. It just was in the wrong place. And so that's what I was going for. When these points of order are added, they don't make sense in this section. The section is called Order of the Vote. Points of order are not part of the vote. They don't make sense. And going back to our history, we continually have not included points of order in a record of what's happening. So it just doesn't make sense to include these here. Thank you. School board members, any discussion? Yes, Dr. Rasheed. Thank you, Chair. Chair Chandler, did you mention that other divisions-- You had mentioned something about other divisions. Can you repeat that again? We checked in with at least one neighboring division, and points of order have not
customarily been included in the minutes in that division. Okay, thank you. Ms. Ricardi. Thank you, Madam Chair. It is actually customary and normal under Robert's Rules of Order to include all points of order in meeting minutes. It's standard and customary. You look at any public body that does it, every point of order is actually an action, and so you have to include it in your meeting minutes as part of Robert's Rules. It's a basic rule within meeting minutes. So I'm not exactly sure. Just because other divisions don't do it locally or a division locally
doesn't do it, doesn't mean that it's not proper and customary to do so. Thank you. As I mentioned in my comments, we have a policy that governs how our board minutes are captured. And according to Policy 2450, it explicitly directs the clerk what information is to be included and what form it's to be included in. And it does state in Section B1 that it should be otherwise as brief and simple as possible.Yes,
Mrs. Griffiths Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to just reiterate this was a special meeting. This wasn't a regular school board meeting, and I think more detail and transparency for the public is important. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Ricardi. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I just also want to say too, besides the fact that it was a special session, one of the whole purposes of Robert's Rules and how you take minutes is to allow for the minority viewpoint to be put on the record.
That's the whole purpose of Robert's Rules in and of itself, is so that the minority viewpoint is heard and put on the record officially, which is why I had asked for that to be on the record. And I'll also note, the US House and Senate, the Virginia House and Senate regularly have members say, "I want this on the record. Please include this in the record. I'm submitting these notes, these minutes, or whatever to be put on the record." That's being put into the minutes. That happens in every public body. And I'll also add, too, and just as a different point to yours, Policy 2450, Section 1B, that does
state that the minutes should be brief and simple, does not mean that brevity and completeness are mutually exclusive. Right? Being brief is one thing, but not being complete is an issue. They need to be complete. The minutes need to accurately reflect the motions that happened, and a point of order is, in fact, a motion according to Robert's Rules. Therefore, it should be included in the meeting minutes. And again, the purpose of Robert's Rules inherently is to ensure that the minority viewpoint is on the record and heard. Thank you.
We follow Robert's Rules unless we have another outlined different procedure that's encapsulated in our policies. And I will also happily state for the record that everything that happened at the subsequent meeting will be captured in the minutes in fulsome detail. But I think if we're going to change the way that a process has occurred, at least for five years and maybe longer, that we should make the decision to change that through the policy-making process. It would be a divergence from what has been
done at this board level throughout past processes. Yes, Dr. Rasheed. On that note, thank you, Chair. On that note, Chair Chandler, you said to follow the process. So would this be considered, whatever we vote for these minutes, however way it goes, for the future, could this be considered new business at a committee or something to change the policy or to go into adding an additional part like this to a policy? Board members are able to do that through their committee work or through the agenda if they have three members to support it.
It's also something that we can discuss in a work session. The minutes are meant to be a record of what was done and not necessarily what was said. Ms. Ricardi. Then I'll just kind of further clarify with that being said. If we have to go through and create a policy to basically restate Robert's Rules, then why are we even bothering with Robert's Rules? Robert's Rules is there to govern our meetings. I get that we have a policy, but the policy isn't designed to be in replace of Robert's Rules. Robert's Rules is the governing mechanism by which we conduct meetings, and it's customary for meeting minutes to accurately reflect what happened.
And yes, in fact, and sometimes, what was said specifically, if it needs to be said in order for clarity. I would argue that just because we've done it this way, does not necessarily suggest that the way we've been doing it is fulsome. I've read many meeting minutes from the past and have no idea what this body thinks about a wide range of topics, because all it is is just a regurgitation of the agenda items. And by the way, this
is not in any way a criticism of our board clerk because I get that this is how she's been directed to create the meeting minutes in the past, and I get that. But as we move forward, and I would hope starting with this March 5th special session, that we would actually have an accurate reflection of what actually transpired at that meeting with all motions properly identified. Otherwise, by voting for this and it not being an accurate reflection of the meeting minutes, you'd be certifying inaccurate meeting minutes, which has a whole
other set of ramifications. Thank you. Thank you. Is there any further discussion on Mr. Pepper's amendment? Okay. Mr. Pepper has made a motion to strike from the meeting minutes the section that reads, "Point of order raised by Ms. Ricardi immediately following the seconding of Mr. Svendsen's motion. Chair Chandler called a recess to obtain a legal opinion regarding the point of order. Following the recess, board counsel rendered an opinion on the point of order. Ms. Ricardi noted her objection to Mr. Svendsen's motion to record." And also,
"The second point of order raised by Ms. Ricardi on the same procedural grounds as her first point of order." The motion was properly made and seconded. Seeing no further discussion, let's move forward with the vote.Clerk, please close and display the vote. That motion passes with five board members voting yes, including Mr.
Svendsen, myself, Vice Chair Donahue, Mr. Pepper, and Dr. Rasheed, and four school board members voting no, including Ms. Ricardi, Ms. Chernov, Mrs. Griffiths, and Ms. LaBelle. And with that, we'll return to discussion on the base motion to approve the minutes. Is there any further discussion? Ms. Ricardi. Thank you, Madam Chair. So LCPS Policy 2450 Section A sets out what board minutes must contain, and Section A.5 requires a record of each motion placed before the board. Section A.6 requires a summary of the
discussion on matters proposed, deliberated, and decided. Virginia code is cited in Policy 2450's own legal references that requires when a member states a departure from FOIA requirements on the record, that statement must appear in the minutes, which would be those motions that we just removed. The minutes before us do not satisfy those requirements for the substance of the March 5th meeting. Missing from the record is a summary of the substantive discussion, my points of order citing Virginia Code, and the chair's disposition
of that motion, my stated grounds for abstaining on three votes, and my second point of order. And as a point of just information regarding the video recordings, the Virginia Code requires that minutes are in writing, and those audio and visual recordings are completely separate pieces of information. They're additive, they're not interchangeable. Policy 2450 Section B1 also states in the minutes, again like you said, that they should be brief, but again, brevity and completeness are not mutually exclusive. I'm really concerned moving forward that by
continuing this same kind of process, we're actually certifying meeting minutes that don't actually meet the legal threshold for what they need to. There were seven amendments offered that would have righted those minutes, and six of them were not adopted at the last meeting, and now the one that was, was just now removed. So with that said, I cannot vote to certify the May 5th meeting minutes. Thank you. Thank you. Any further discussion? All right. Seeing no further discussion, let's move forward with the vote. Clerk, please open the vote. As amended. All right. A motion was made by me to certify... Or let's see. I'll go back and read them.
That the Loudon County School Board adopt the minutes of the March 5th, 2026 special school board meeting, and we'll be voting on this amendment as it was amended. Clerk, please display the vote. That motion passes, with six school board members voting yes, including Mr. Svendsen, Ms. Chernov, myself, Vice Chair Donahue, Mr. Pepper, and Dr. Rasheed, and three school board members voting no, including Ms. Ricardi, Mrs. Griffiths, and Ms. LaBelle. Thank you very much. With that, we will move on to our next item,
which is 11.02, the creation of a select committee of the school board for the memorandum of understanding between LCPS, LCSO, and LPD. I will start with the motion, which is to approve that the Loudon County School Board create a select committee of the school board to oversee the MOU negotiations between LCPS, LCSO, and LPD. I'll just briefly speak to the motion. Regardless of the conversation that we had earlier this year, I think I would have come forward with this idea because it was very surprising to me when we presented the draft
MOU in the middle of the school year last year, the amount of feedback that we received from parents and families and our parent advisory groups. And I think it's very important that we move forward with this process in a transparent way that allows parents to understand exactly what's going on, especially as we consider adding SROs to the elementary school levels. And to have this conversation in public will provide our community with more transparency and understanding of the
issues and requirements through the MOU and our working process with these law enforcement agencies. And with that, I'll ask school board members if there's any discussion. Second. Yes. Thank you. The motion was made by me and seconded by Vice Chair Donahue. Thank you so much for catching that. Yes, Mrs. Griffith. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just for transparency for the people of Loudon County, I will not be voting against security measures for our students. I am not sure this committee is being created in good faith with an actual plan. There was no plan listed
on board docs. The creation of this committee, I feel like is a delay and will cause security funding to be put off another year. Whereas I don't believe there's a need for this committee when we did have a memorandum of understanding, and it is an 80/20 issue. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Ricardi? Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I have a couple questions. Do we have a plan? I asked two weeks ago at the school board meeting if we'd had a plan, and I emailed you separately last week, and still I didn't see anything posted here.
So do we have... a plan for this committee. Who's planning on being on it? What's the purpose? What's the timeline? What's their goal? What are we doing with this group? Well, thank you for your questions. I don't feel that it's necessary to include any further information, because ultimately we're planning to have a negotiation, and I don't want to create a charter and create rules around a negotiation when the other parties to the negotiation are not included. I also, as school board chair, have, by policy, the ability to
name the committee, and I will, if the board decides to create the committee, I will inform the board of the members before the end of the week. Thanks. But I guess my question is, every other committee that we form has some sort of purpose, guiding principles. Even with the audit committee that we just created, we created a whole policy around that. Not that we have to create a policy for a special committee, but my question is, is this an advisory group to the staff that's negotiating? Is this
just an oversight group? We got to give them some kind of direction other than we're going to put... I think the last time you said there were going to be four people on the board that are going to do this. Do we know who those are going to be, and do they have a charge? I appreciate the fact that you don't want to influence the negotiations. I'm all for that. But I guess my question is, we're putting four people together to do what? So I'd like to just check in with staff briefly to make sure that my recollection is accurate. We had two select committees over the course of the term between '24
and '25. Were there charters for any of those select committees? No. The select committees generally determine the scope of their work and the timing of their work when they meet. Usually, they're given the charges through the recommendation, and then once they've been given that charge, they meet, and then they determine how they're going to proceed with conducting that work, and then the timing of that. Thank you. There has been, I think, in the past, with one select committee, the board time-limited it. Thank you for that clarification. The charge of the committee is to oversee the negotiations. I guess my question is, I just don't understand what that--
That's fine. So how are you defining overseeing the negotiations? Participate in, engage in, have a conversation around, have the negotiation in public. Okay. So who's currently negotiating it now? Just out of curiosity, because I don't know who all's involved in it. Ms. Mitchell? We have members from LCPS to include our director of school administration, Dr. Bergen, our director of safety and security, communications, division counsel. Then we have members from the Loudon County Sheriff's Office and members from the Leesburg Police Department.
And so are these four are going to be in that group negotiating with them, too? Yes. Is that what the plan is? And how far are we in the negotiation process again? I know I asked that last time. I wasn't sure if we got an answer. We met that March, I think it was either the 15th or 16th, and we have not met again, because if this committee is to form, we will finish the work in that committee. So we've not met again since that March meeting. And then is the process then to bring back the contract to the board to approve? Is that- Yes
... the plan? That's absolutely the process. Okay. Yes, Mr. Svendsen? Madam Chair, I just wanted to raise the important point also that by creating the select committee, that we're putting the negotiations in public and able to solicit that public feedback that I think is really important to hear from the parents and the community on this. Because, as you referenced previously, in the prior MOU negotiations, we received a lot of feedback from advisory committees, parents, and other members of the community. So I think this is an important process to put in place so that we can
accurately capture public feedback and put that into practice in terms of negotiating the MOU. Thank you. Ms. Labelle? I have a specific question. I know we have the people that Ms. Mitchell just said were negotiating the MOU. Is this committee going to replace the committee that has been working on it or be added to it? Added to it. And how does that bring out transparency? The negot- Will they be meeting in public as we do?
It will be a public meeting. There will be an availability for public comment, and if we need to go into closed session to discuss something that pertains to maintaining and protecting our safety and security protocols, we will go into closed session. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Mrs. Griffiths? Just for transparency, clarity, if you don't mind, Ms. Mitchell, can you talk about the MOU that came through last year, that I thought was approved? Can you discuss that? Thank you. Yes, I can. Do you have some specific questions, or?
Well, yeah. If you can basically tell us what Was it already decided? We already have an MOU to proceed. Can you elaborate on that? So we do have an MOU, and when it was reviewed previously, for the annual mark, we just had three technical changes, and to be very specific, those changes included two misplaced periods and the addition of another punctuation mark, which was then signed off on. So then this time, it was time to review it thoroughly, and we went through it just like a process of a
policy, where you review it, you add comments, make deletions, things like that. There was some new information that needed to be added to the MOU. And then there were some things based on the feedback from MSAC, from SEAC, and other community members that we needed to meet and consider. So we went through and decided what could be added, what needed to be taken out, what changes needed to be made via code. So this was a more thorough review. And because that MOU is still in process, we are
leaning on the previously agreed upon MOU. Thank you. I was just curious as to why we didn't put the process through already, why we waited a year. Again, I feel like we're delaying funding for these security measures. Thank you. So just to clarify, our agreement is we do it annually, and then biannually is when we go through and do a red line version. So we've been on track with that process. So during this time, it was the time to go through and decide what changes needed to be made to the MOU.
And last question, if we knew this was coming up for the board of supervisors, why didn't we do something beforehand to make sure that we were all on top of the issue? Why didn't we discuss the MOU previously? We knew that the sheriff was going to the board of supervisors to discuss funding for the SROs? No, ma'am. That was not a part of any discussions of our MOU. Thank you. Thank you. Any further discussion? Yes, Ms. Ricardi. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the approach that I've heard. And I guess I have a question and then maybe a
thought on a different approach. But Dr. Spence, I think I'd ask you, this might be a trick question, so if you don't want to answer, you don't need to, but I guess one of my questions is do you all even want four board members in your negotiation process? Because I'm concerned about, just from a governance perspective, us getting into contract negotiations in this kind of active and public way, then do you welcome this? Are you good with it? Yes, ma'am. We serve at the pleasure of the board. Yeah, okay. Thank you. I have real concerns with us deciding to take this approach, and I think there's other ways for us to be able to make this a real public forum,
and be able to provide the public, and get the public's input on this without stepping on the toes and in getting ourselves involved in the business of the administration. We have really highly competent people to manage this. If they get stuck and need to come to us for guidance or whatever, we're certainly here to do that in any kind of way that we need to. But I feel like they can do that negotiation, and then when they bring it to the board for any other thing here, we evaluate it, and we have public comment, and people can look at it and view it. I'm really worried about four of us getting involved in this
because it sets a precedent then to start getting involved in other contract negotiations on other topics that may come up in the future. So I think there's other ways for us to get to the same end goal without directly involving ourselves in the negotiation process while it's still going on. Thanks. Thank you. Any further comments? All right. Seeing no further comments, I made a motion that the Loudoun County School Board create a select committee of the school board to oversee the MOU negotiations between the LCPS, LCSO, and the LPD. It was properly moved and seconded.
Clerk, please open the vote. Board members, please record your vote. Clerk, please close and display the vote. That motion passes with six school board members voting yes, including Mr. Svendsen, Ms. Chernov, myself, Vice Chair Donahue, Mr. Pepper, Dr. Rashid, two board members voting no, including Ms. Ricardi and Ms. Labelle, and one board member abstaining, Mrs. Griffiths. And with that, we'll move on to our last action item of the evening, item 11.03, legislative and policy committee. I'm still struggling with that
name change. New policy 6330, distribution of information and posting within schools, on school grounds, or during school-sponsored events. This item will be presented by Mr. Svendsen. You have the floor. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, so presenting on policy 6330. I won't repeat what I said at the last meeting about the changes we made at the committee level. I think everyone here on the dais has seen this when it came to the board in January and has now seen it at the last board meeting, in terms of the changes that we made. I would highlight that some of
theMore major changes we added involved specifying that the purpose is to relate to non-LCPS students or employees in terms of the materials information that are distributed. There are separate policies that govern students and educators, and those are now referenced directly in the introduction to Policy 6330. And the other major change, as folks are aware, is that we are limiting the distribution of political materials to election days, and revising the policy so that there
is not an exception for back-to-school nights or other activities where there would be political material handed out. It's something that we've heard a lot of feedback from our school staff and our parents that it's not the appropriate forum for that kind of communication, and there are other opportunities for political candidates to engage with the community. And we think that the back-to-school nights, open houses, the LCPS-sponsored activities should be focused on the students and their families, and there are other avenues for folks to engage in politics.
I would, I think, then formally move that the Loudoun County School Board approve the deletion of Policy 865 and the creation of new Policy 6330, and ask for a second. Second. A motion has been made by Mr. Svendsen and seconded by Ms. Chernov. Mr. Svendsen, would you like to speak to your motion? More speak to it further? No, I will defer now to the rest of the board. Thank you so much, Mr. Svendsen. Board members, do you have any comments? Mrs. Griffiths. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, while I appreciated bringing the Policy
6630 back to the Loudoun Policy Committee, I would like to focus specifically on enforcement and consistency. At this time, we cannot ask LCPS employees to enforce 6330. So I feel like this policy is invalid with the current updates and changes. This policy is overly broad. It is too complicated and puts pressure on SSOs and principals to basically police their schools. There are too many questions, and frankly, a double standard.
I'm not a politician. I'm an advocate for all Loudoun County schools. It is disheartening to see political parties are getting into the school without enforcement and no rental fee. On March 14th, Loudoun County Democratic Party took part in an event at Rock Ridge High School. At this event, individuals associated with the LCDC reportedly spoke about the April 21st special election and handed out signs on how to vote. In this situation, they had a table there with the guise of being there for another event. They took their own pictures, and it has gone viral on Facebook and X.
Per regulation 6310, 6310 comes into the picture, the LCDC would be considered a civic group and therefore would be required to pay applicable facility use fees. Now, I know the discussion has been for back-to-school nights, but I am raising this issue to highlight a perceived double standard. Some political organizations appear to be permitted access to school facilities while others are not. Some groups are required to pay facility use fees while others are not.
My question is, how will Policy 6330 be enforced to ensure consistent application, clear accountability, and public confidence that no political group, regardless of affiliation, is receiving preferential access to school facilities or staff? To my knowledge, this is the second time I've heard about this particular event taking place at Rock Ridge High School. My question, maybe for Mr. Svendsen, maybe you can elaborate. You came up with the amendment. How Policy 6330 will be
enforced to ensure consistent application on back-to-school nights, clear accountability, and public confidence that no political group, regardless of affiliation, is receiving preferential access. I am not sure that 6330 is a relevant policy, and it will not be followed by the parties. So do we really want to put that on the shoulders of our employees? Maybe you can elaborate on that. Maybe Mr. Allen can elaborate on that regarding the two policies, 6330 and 6310.
Whoever wants to elaborate on that. Thank you. Mr. Svendsen? Thank you, Madam Chair. I will address a piece of it, and maybe I see Vice Chair Donahue wants to say a few words, and maybe Mr. Allen can speak too, and maybe Ms. Mitchell as well from the school leadership perspective. But just, Ms. Griffiths, to the first part of your remarks about enforcement and potential confusion, I actually think this policy is a lot clearer and easier to enforce than the existing policy because there were little intricacies in the old policy like you have to be 40 feet away, you can't do this,
you can't do that. Now it's very clear you're not allowed to distribute political materials at back-to-school nights, open houses, et cetera. So it's a Bright line rule, easy for folks to know whether or not they're abiding by the rule, easy for school staff to know whether someone's abiding by the rule. They're not going to be out there police. They don't need to go out there and say, "Hey, you need to stay behind this 40-foot line." So in terms of enforcement, I think that this policy 6330 as amended, is a major improvement over the current policy in terms of the ability of our school staff to enforce the
rules. And it's a lot clearer to the political parties or political candidates, what the rules are. They know they're not supposed to come and be there on a back-to-school night, for instance, as opposed to, they could be there before and have to follow some very specific rules. So, I just wanted to speak to that enforcement piece. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Chair Donahue. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to correct some of Mrs. Griffiths' factual assertions. The event was the Rise 2 Summit, which was located at Rock Ridge High
School, but it was not an LCPS event. A group paid for the use of the space to host an event and invited different organizations within the community to be part of that event. It was not sponsored by LCPS. It just happened to be at an LCPS building for which the group that put on the event had paid to use the space. So it is true that a political group was there. The Loudoun Abused Women's Shelter was also there, Equality Loudoun was there. A number of other community organizations were there at the invitation
of the event organizer. It was not a political party that rented out the space, and it was not an LCPS event. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to ask staff if anybody could clarify for us the difference between a school-sponsored event and a community-sponsored event, and perhaps share some other examples of ways that our buildings are used when they're not being used for schools. And I believe there are even church services that occur in school buildings on the weekend. Mr. Trainer? Yes, ma'am, and I don't remember offhand exactly with the facility use
policy, but we do have, by policy, and then by regulation, multiple groups that are able to use our facilities. As you noted, churches do use the facilities on the weekends. We have multiple sites where the churches use the facility. They pay rent to use the facility. We have other civic groups that are able to schedule events in our facilities. Depending on the type of group, depends on whether they pay or not. Local elected leaders have the ability to use our schools for town hall events, listening events, stuff
that-- Not political campaign events, and they have use of those facilities without charges. For anything related to a campaign event, it is supposed to be a charged event. Thank you so much. Yes, Mrs. Griffiths. It is my understanding that it was being researched. I was told the group did not pay, and it was being researched, and no one has gotten back to me. It's been several weeks. So I'm going to assume they did not pay to use the facilities. So I'm going to correct the
record there that, unless I see a contract, I was told that they did not pay to use the facilities. But my whole thing with the 6330 and the 6310 is that it's not enforceable. Political groups are still getting in the schools, and you're still going to have at back-to-school nights, you will still have people outside, especially candidates, that would like to speak to their potential constituents. So I don't know
that it can be enforced. And when I say that, I would rather not see SSOs or principals coming out to police it. In regards to the having a table at that event, that's another issue that we should probably discuss offline. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Chernov. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to propose an amendment which I had posted on BoardDocs ahead of time. It's more of a little bit of a reorganization, and just a little structural shift. So I'm going to go ahead and read that, and then I'll speak to it. So in the red line version of this policy, I
move to strike the last sentence of Section B2 on lines 99 through 101, which reads, "This policy shall not be construed to prohibit the discussion or use of political or issue-oriented materials as part of classroom discussion, project, or school-recognized political clubs," and instead add similar language to the first paragraph of the policy as a new final sentence of the paragraph at line eight, which reads, "Furthermore, this policy does not relate to the discussion or
use of political or issue-oriented materials as part of instruction and curriculum, which continues to be governed by Policy 5420 and its accompanying regulation and Policy 5420 is controversial and sensitive curriculum standards." Second. Thank you. Ms. Chernov has made a motion, and it has been properly seconded by Vice Chair Donahue. Ms. Chernov, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes. Chair Chandler, thank you so much. Really, this is kind of nitpicky, but just listening back to the meeting, I actually agree with Mr. Svenson's point about-This not
relating to the teaching that happens in our classrooms, and extensive work was done with Policy 5420, Controversial and Sensitive Curriculum Standards, and particularly the regulation has, I think, served our LCPS community of schools very well in the last few years. So following the addition of those cross-references, I would like to add this statement to the intro paragraph, so it applies not just to the back-to-school night section, but to everything, so that it is not interfering with what we teach in our schools that is related to these things,
which has, like I said, been worked out through Policy 5420. Thank you. Mr. Svenson? Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate Ms. Chernov's amendment. I think it fits very well with the intent of having those cross-references at the beginning and ensuring that the policy's not construed to affect that teaching and learning or student expression. So I just wanted to make that note. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Chair Donahue. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate Ms. Chernov putting forward this amendment. I am going to propose a friendly amendment to the amendment.
I agree that lines 99 to 101 should be deleted as Ms. Chernov proposed, and I also agree that lines five through eight, the current language should be replaced with alternative language. My proposal is more of a transplant of the language from lines 99 to 101, while encompassing the policy that Ms. Chernov flagged and the others that are currently in that space. So I am proposing at lines five through eight, we strike the sentence there and add instead, "This
policy shall not be construed to prohibit the discussion or use of political or issue-oriented materials as part of classroom discussion, project, or school recognized clubs as governed by Policy 5420, Controversial and Sensitive Curriculum Standards, or otherwise affect the rights of students or employees as set forth respectively in Policy 8273, Student Expression, and Policy 7524, Employee Participation in Political Activities." Thank you. Vice Chair Donahue has made a motion. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Svenson.
Vice Chair Donahue, do you have any further comments on your motion? No, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Board members, any comments on the motion that Vice Chair Donahue has made? Mr. Pepper? Thank you, Madam Chair. As this is a friendly amendment, I would like to know Ms. Chernov's feelings on switching this to the friendly amendment. Thank you, Mr. Pepper. I actually prefer my own language. I think it's a little bit softer, and I think it stays within the governance standards dictated by Policy 5420 because that policy specifically relates to the curriculum and instruction. Not necessarily, in my opinion, all the other things that are mentioned. So I would request that Ms. Donahue would make a formal recommendation
as an amendment. Thank you. Ms. Labelle. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question, and it could pertain to Ms. Chernov's or Mrs. Donahue's amendments. How does this policy control or direct or approve of, no matter which way it goes, the use of political speakers coming in, invited by teachers, or organizations like the League of Women Voters who are coming in and handing out voter applications to all the students?
Last year, we had a lot of problem with that. We have an election office that has an entire instructional section where they can come in to schools, talk about why we vote, why it's important, how it works, what candidates are running, and actually help students that are eligible to vote to sign up for voting. So do either of these amendments or even the policy itself address any of that? Because that was a big problem several years ago.
From my perspective, this policy would govern something that's not related specifically to those things, and some of those things- It does. It says classroom issue- Ms. Labelle, please- ... issues ... I'm trying to respond. Please don't interrupt. And then I will be happy to ask staff if they would like to chime in at all. Those are all separate issues, and many cases, they're governed by other policies. And I'd like to ask if staff would like to chime in here. I'm happy to weigh in briefly, and certainly Wes can jump in if he'd like to offer any additional interpretation to the policy.
I do think the amendment referencing Policy 5420 actually covers that, because 5420 does talk about discussion of political issues and how those should be handled. The issue that you're talking about with regards to folks who are coming in and talking to students about registering to vote, I'm aware of those concerns. We addressed them at the time in terms of the forms themselves being collected. But state laws explicitly permits organizations to encourage students to register to vote while they're in high school, and so we do work with both the elections board, and we have worked with other organizations
to do that. We don't collect their information. That came out of that conversation. We just tell them how to go about doing that. AndI think just broadly, between this policy and Policy 5420, I do think, and I would speak on behalf of our principals, it does offer clarity, and it does allow us to say, if there's a school-sponsored event and there's campaigning happening at that event that that shouldn't happen, we should be addressing that. And that if it is a non-school-sponsored event, that that has to be dealt with through facilities, and then specific other times that
are addressed clearly in this policy, which would allow a principal to be able to go out and say, "That's not appropriate. Our policies don't allow for this. You need to leave the property." Okay. Thank you. The reason I asked the question was I felt like it wasn't perfectly clear there that this could still happen, that we could have speakers, that we could have a group come in and talk about elections. I wanted to make sure that it was still in there, not try to keep it out. Yeah. And frankly, I think that's probably why Ms. Chernov put her amendment in. I'm not speaking for her, but I do think it links
back to that policy where that is clear. Mm-hmm. And so that is still allowable. We have members of our delegation who come in and talk about that. What we don't allow for is campaigning. Yes. And we have had situations, you are correct, and this crosses all sides of the political aisle, where folks have come in and campaigned. Mm-hmm. And we've had to remind them that that's not allowable under our policies and try to put an end to that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We're on the amendments. So actually, we would need to take a vote on Ms. Donahue's amendment. So, Ms. Donahue, would you like to state your amendment for the record? Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair.
So my motion to amend Ms. Chernov's amendment is to insert at lines five through eight of the red line of Policy 6330, the following language: "This policy shall not be construed to prohibit the discussion or use of political or issue-oriented materials as part of a classroom discussion, project or school recognized clubs, as governed by Policy 5420, Controversial and Sensitive Curriculum Standards, or otherwise affect the rights of students or employees as set forth respectively in Policy 8273, Student Expression, and
Policy 7524, Employee Participation in Political Activities." The motion has been properly moved and seconded. Let's move forward with the vote. Clerk, please open the vote. Board members, please record your vote. Clerk, please close and display the vote. That motion passes, with six school board members voting yes, including Mr. Svenson, myself, Vice Chair Donahue, Mr. Pepper, Dr. Rashid, and Ms. LaBelle, and three school board members voting no, including Ms. Ricardi, Ms. Chernov, and Mrs. Griffiths. All right. With that- Can you state the motion? Yes, Ms. Chernov. Thank you, Chair Chandler. I do not believe that Ms.
Donahue's amendment moved to strike the section from lines 99 to 101. I believe that was her original intention as part of the friendly. Do we need to go ahead and do that as well, so that they're combined? Ms. Donahue, would you like to speak to that? Sure. Yes, my amendment was to amend Ms. Chernov's amendment, and my intent was to, yes, to strike lines 99 to 101. I did not include that because I was not proposing any change to that portion of her proposal. So, and I'll defer to Mr. Allen, but I would guess at this point, we
would move back to Ms. Chernov's amendment as amended. Thank you, Chair Chandler. That's one way of doing it, or you could for clarity of the record, go back to Ms. Donahue's amendment to the amendment with that understanding and inclusion that that was part of the motion, just for clarity, that it was to strike those line numbers as well, the 99 to 101. Great. Thank you. Ms. Chernov, I think we'll go back to Ms. Chernov's amendment as amended. Ms. Chernov, would you read your version?
Sure. So the only part that would be changing, so Ms. Donahue's just was added in lines five through eight, I believe she added. So now we also, just for redundancy sake, to clean it up, my amendment now that we would be voting on would include Ms. Donahue's added, so mine would be amended, and then we would strike the last sentence of Section B2 on lines 99 through 101, which reads, "The policy shall not be construed to prohibit the discussion or use of political or issue-oriented materials as part of classroom discussion, projects, or school recognized political clubs," which would just clear up the redundancy.
Thank you. Thank you. Let's take another second. Second. Thank you, Mr. Svenson. Is there any discussion? All right, board members, let's proceed with the vote. Please record your vote. Clerk, please close and display the vote. All right. That motion passes, with eight school board members voting yes, including Mr. Svenson, Ms. Chernov, myself, Vice Chair Donahue, Mrs. Griffiths-Mr. Pepper, Dr. Rashid, and Ms. LaBelle, and Ms. Ricardi voting no. And with that, we return to the original motion made by Mr. Svendsen. Is there any further discussion?
Yes, Ms. Ricardi. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I really appreciate what we're trying to do here, and I understand the load on our principals and security staff and whatnot. And having been at all of my back-to-school nights last year, some of them were pretty hectic. There were a lot of candidates moving in and out, and candidate delegates, and volunteers, and all kinds of people from all different kinds of things. I totally understand. A lot of paper getting handed out and a lot of trash, I'm sure, all over the campuses when things were said and done. Can totally appreciate that.
I think that there's a couple things. Having raised a whole gaggle of boys, I always look for all the loopholes in everything, because they will find them if I don't. So I'm worried about this from some perspective, mostly because I've already, in my head, found a couple of loopholes that we definitely need to shore up. But I think the bigger problem here is there's just not a way to consistently enforce the policy. It's going to depend on a principal's time in being able to manage what's going on in the building versus what's happening out of the building.
I think people are going to show up on campuses regardless to hand out stuff, because it's what's been always done. I think we're going to have issues now that we're eliminating the 40-foot rule. I'm really worried about the enforcement mechanism of this on a bunch of different levels. I think we've also missed a group of potential candidates in the list of people that are getting excluded from this, being the constitutional officers, because there's those five races coming up in 2027 that aren't mentioned in here. And I'm also just really concerned about
you could be a parent who has a child at a back-to-school night at a school, and you go to the back-to-school night event and could start talking to people in the building about the fact that you're running for school board, as an example, or any other office. And unless you have somebody kind of policing that, you're not going to be able to catch that kind of stuff. Like I said, I've already worked through this down the rabbit hole, and it's going to be kind of crazy. I think I'll just end with this. Back-to-school nights, especially in Sterling Park schools, is probably one of maybe two opportunities where you see parents in large
numbers on our campuses. Because parents are working, in many cases, multiple jobs. And it was the one time where we actually saw lots of parent activity at the schools. It's an opportunity for political candidates to meet potential voters. I'm also not super big on all the paper that gets thrown around in that process, so I can understand not wanting to do that. And I could also understand not wanting to have a ton of people out there. But I think a more moderate approach to this and kind of a middle ground might be something along the lines of having just the candidates,
and just the candidates, but not handing out material, just out there meeting and greeting people. And I think that's just a way to kind of soften the situation so it's not so aggressive with just so many people outside doing the paper passing thing. And again, I'm really worried about this. I'm fully expecting every candidate that's running to show up to back-to-school nights, because no matter how much we tell them not to, it's been the way it's always been done for so long that I would really think that it's going to be really difficult to enforce this. And it puts now our principals and our security staff having to
manage yet another aspect of things and actually actively getting people off of campus instead of just letting things be the way they were, but altered in some way. So I just want to share that with you. You may want to add that other group of candidates in your list of people who can't be out there campaigning. I don't know if you want to do that or not. But I'm really worried about the fact that we've got a lot of candidates coming up every single year with this being an every year election cycle. August and September, when these back-to-school nights happen, are the opportunity. And to be honest with you, again, in Sterling Park, we don't have
candidate forums in Sterling. I don't know the last time we had one. I can't remember one off the top of my head that was held at a school. We had one in a house of worship a couple of years ago, but it wasn't necessarily fully public, I don't think. So I'm worried about the fact that voters in Sterling, in particular, won't even have access to their candidates if we remove back-to-school nights as well. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Svendsen. Thank you, Madam Chair. Can I ask Ms. Ricardi to clarify what you mean about the other constitutional officers? Because the no campaigning or distributing political materials applies to any political candidate.
So I just wanted to ask for clarification on that. Thank you. Yeah. So I think I see it in A6B. So we have advocates for and against, and you list the school board, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, the Virginia General Assembly, and the US Congress, but there's no... So to clarify, so subpart one of that, so it's A6B1, you cannot advocate for or against the election or defeat of any political candidate. And then section three, where you're reading from, relates to the passage or defeat of any matter. So that's related to a matter that's pending
before those bodies. So that part three is not related to the political candidate's election. Okay, I misread that. Thank you for that clarification. So we have all candidates covered in here? Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. I misread that. Thank you. And Madam Chair, if I may, because we've spent a lot of time focusing on the political materials part, I meant to at the beginning just say that this also applies to materials generally and outside organizations generally, and so part A kind of lays out the process. So I just want to note that for folks that this is not just about political material, political content, it's about
any kind of distribution or posting of materials that's coming from outside the school system. Thank you. All right. Seeing no further discussion, let's move back to Mr. Svendsen's original motion as amended. Clerk, please open the vote. Board members, please register your vote. I'll wait. Sorry. Clerk, please close and display the vote. That motion passes with seven school board members voting yes, including Mr. Svendsen, Ms. Chernov, myself, Vice Chair Donahue, Mr. Pepper, Dr. Rashid, and Ms. LaBelle, and two school board members voting no,
including Ms. Ricardi and Mrs. Griffiths. And with that, we have the ability now to move on to our school board member comments. So, let's start with Ms. LaBelle. Again? Did we last time? Yeah. Yeah, I thought we started over here last time. It was the first time. First time? Okay. Well, thank you for clarifying that for me, friends. Ms. Ricardi, you're welcome to start. Thank you guys so much. Oh, I can't find where I put my list. I got you. We'll start down here. No, that's all right. Are you going to go? Yeah, sure. Okay. Well, we go. All right.
That's fair. So, as the chair of the Performance Monitoring Committee this month, our focus was on VALS and MTSS data and the continuous improvement process across all four strategic goals. In addition, we're exploring ways to track data through a series of data roadmaps, and I'm looking forward to our working session on data dashboards, which is going to be on Cinco de Mayo, might add. We might have to have some margaritas in that process or somewhere afterwards. At 6:00 PM. Yeah, there you go. Since we didn't have board comments last time, just a really quick update from Sterling. I set a goal in the first 90 days to get to all 10 of the
schools, and we did that. The last visits were at Forest Grove, Rosalie Carter on tornado day, Parkview High School, and Sully Elementary. Beyond the school visits, I had a chance to go to the Forest Grove PTA meeting, toured the LCPS Eastern Welcome Center, and I'm looking forward to the ribbon-cutting there on April 29th. In addition, on Thursday, Mrs. Griffiths and I are going to do a hard hat tour of the new Parkview facility. I'm really excited and I cannot wait. For our Sterling district residents, I want to make sure that you all know about the town hall that I'm hosting on Thursday from 7:00 to 8:30 at
Sterling Middle School. And for those in Loudoun Valley Estates who I know are concerned about the power lines issue, we are in the process of scheduling a town hall here in the next couple of weeks, and we'll have more information on our social media. Before I end, Madam Chair, I wanted just to take a little moment of personal privilege. And for those of you who don't know, I was really blessed to be able to grow up in Houston, Texas, and next door to the Johnson Space Center, where my dad had the opportunity to train astronauts at NASA. The success of the Artemis II mission this week was nothing short of absolutely inspiring.
I know my dad was watching from heaven, for sure, with amazing excitement. He had a chance to work at Mission Control for his entire career. He worked on every shuttle mission, the last one being Challenger, which is what brought us up here to the DC area. And in his retirement, he had every single launch of any kind on his cell phone and watched every single one with childlike wonder and passion. I had the chance to judge the Loudoun Youth Incorporated an event last week, and these children in Loudoun County are truly blessings. They do amazing things. We have so many students who hope and want to explore and be explorers.
We have some that want to be astronauts and actively engage in our space program, and whether it's a watcher of launches or following their passion for space flight and exploration, we need today's children to lead our space exploration of the future, and it's a truly amazing community, and I just want to say that I'm really so excited to see what we do in space over the next several decades, and I really look forward to our children being able to lead that effort. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Svendsen? Thank you, Madam Chair. I, as the chair of the Legislative and Policy Committee, wanted to share a bit about our legislative update that we had this
past week. We had three members of our General Assembly delegation join us to talk about the work that they've been doing in Richmond to support our public schools here in Loudoun County. We are really lucky in Loudoun to have such a strong partnership with our elected representatives who are able to advocate for us at the state level. The budget, there's set to be a special session at the end of this month to approve the budget, and we discussed that, and we also discussed some of the bills that have
been signed by the governor or are on the governor's desk or were on the governor's desk at that time. We discussed workforce housing bills that will help us retain and recruit teachers here in Loudoun County. And we also discussed some other really important safety bills affecting students in our schools, but it was a pretty wide-ranging conversation. We even talked about helmet safety in our neighborhood. So really appreciated the time of our elected officials to join us at that committee meeting. I wanted to also say thank you toTo
Principal Joseph at Dominion Trail Elementary School for hosting me on a school visit since our last opportunity to give board comments. It was a nice rounding out of my nostalgia tour to go to schools that I previously attended. So I went to kindergarten at Dominion Trail before Hillside was built. So it was fun to visit a kindergarten classroom, actually, and speak with them. And it was a full circle moment. And I also wanted to say I really enjoyed joining Dr. Spence last week at the Public School Leadership Network at the SHAR School at George Mason,
to join other school divisions in a meeting with the Secretary of Education and the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and provide feedback from our Northern Virginia divisions. And particularly, some important issues that are unique to Northern Virginia, we were able to share. So, thank you all, and I will pass it on to Ms. Chernov. Thank you, Mr. Chernov. Sounded like a newscaster there. As the chair of the Specialized Programs and Centers Committee, we met last week. We got an update on several of our special programs. The presentation provided a comprehensive update on the development and progress of
the Academy of Global and Linguistic Studies, which is scheduled to launch in the '26, '27 school year. They also shared the current status of the IB Diploma Program authorization process at Park View High School and the newly approved IB Career Program authorization efforts at all three sites, Loudoun Valley, Heritage, and Park View. This add-on to the IB offerings was one of the budget amendments this cycle, and it's exciting to see the planning in full swing for its implementation. Finally, we were presented an update on the host site selection
process for the potential expansion of the ROTC program to include the Army branch, and Stone Bridge High School has been selected for the program, so congratulations to them. Next, we got an update on the career and technical education expansion. LCPS's impressive and ambitious CTE Pathway Expansion Program is aligned to high-wage, high-skill, and high-demand industries. These expansion efforts are driven by regional and national workforce needs, in addition to current student interest. The team presented on upcoming pilot programs to include gaming, commercial
kitchen enhancements, school store renovations, mechatronics, which Dr. Spence graciously explained to me what that is, advanced computing, administration of justice, and health and science respiratory technicians. These are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the next five years will look like with these pathway expansions, and I look forward to seeing that continue to unfold. Last week, I also had a chance to catch up with Principal Diehl at Gum Spring Middle School, and it was such a warm welcome to see all the new branding and upgrades as part of their renaming process. The community has really rallied around that change, and I'm grateful for the
leadership for making it so positive for everyone. And this morning, I attended the Feet Meet, as outlined in Dr. Spence's update, sponsored by the Special Olympics. It was an inspiring event with several clusters, including Leesburg, for our special education students and their peers. And so it was great to not only celebrate inclusion perseverance in the community, it was also great to play alongside of them. I mentioned earlier tonight, I participated in Instructional Framework Learning Walk focused on intended student outcomes at Tuscarora High School. We got to see strong instruction and engaging activities, and the
data of these ongoing learning walks was presented at PMC, but seeing how the data is gathered, grounded in the real work of teachers in our classrooms, was extremely valuable, and I'm grateful I had the opportunity. And the rest of the week, we'll round out with visits to both of our dual language enrollment programs at Potomac Elementary and Sanders Corner Elementary. Very excited for the Annual Business Partnership Awards breakfast on Thursday, and the closing ceremony for the International Summit at Dominion High School. Thank you. Thank you. Well, the most exciting thing that happened for me, well, last week, was traveling
with Ms. Allen and Ms. Boyes to-- I know. That was my time. Sorry. It's okay. I won't go the whole time, I promise. Traveling to San Antonio to take part in the National School Board Association conference. I was very pleased to be able to join in presenting about our amazing family and community engagement framework. We were on the pre-conference day, so it was one of the very first sessions that we had, and it's possible that not everybody had actually fully arrived and registered yet, and we were in a
location that was super far away from the registration. And I could tell you a story about how tough it was to get there, but that's for another time and place. But ultimately, it was so incredibly enriching to have about 70 people come to hear about the impactful and incredible work that our family and community engagement framework has made possible. And there's absolutely a nation-- I wish I had counted how many states and
territories were there. It was really 70 people from all across the country, and there's absolutely an appetite for learning about ways to better serve our communities, and really was so proud to showcase the work that Ms. Allen's department has done in terms of centralizing this effort and making sure that not every family liaison in every school is on their own to solve problems. I think we're really doing some incredible work, and we're doing it with our school business partners and, like Ms.
Chernov, I'm looking forward to celebrating them this week, and also attending the end of the International Summit. The opening ceremonies of the International Summit was one of my favorite events last year, and I was very sad not to be able to go this week, but I'm looking forward to going to the closing. And with that, I will ask you to clear the clock and move it on to Vice Chair Donahue. Thank you, Madam Chair. No pressure. So it's been a great couple of weeks full of school board activities. Right before spring break, I attended the International Art and Culture Night at Evergreen Mill Elementary School and saw lots of artwork and
dance routines performed by the students, inspired by the cultures of different countries represented among the student population, which was a real treat. Last week, we had the second meeting of our brand-new audit committee. Mr. Woods is working on the risk assessment, which is the survey that he uses to put together our audit universe and then build our audit plan. So I anticipate he will be presenting us with the audit universe or at least the risk assessment at our next meeting.
He also mentioned that his office, the Office of the Auditor General, is going to start putting together a newsletter that may include fun facts, which I'm very excited to hear what fun facts from the Office of the Auditor General are going to be. In addition, I had office hours over the weekend. I had some great conversations with some constituents, members of the community. I was glad to have those opportunities to connect. I'm also looking forward to the School Breakfast Partnership meeting that is coming up later this week. The Equity Council is off to a great start this year, working on evaluating student achievement data, and their
next meeting is May 7th. I am looking forward to getting together to continue the work of that group. That's all I have for now. Thank you. Thank you. We'll clear the clock. There we go. We're on it. Okay, Mrs. Griffiths. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to say yay to the Artemis too. I'm obsessed with that. I love space exploration. I had it all over my Facebook. So thank you to your dad, Ms. Ricardi, for all his hard work. Shifting gears into the Finance and Operations Committee, we continued our review of contracts and discussed working on ways to
improve how we view the budget in the future. We will submit these suggestions at future meetings. My thoughts are one budget with investments and one without. And as you heard tonight, we had the first PEB meeting as well. Shifting gears again, I look forward to seeing "Matilda" this weekend at Belmont Ridge Middle. "Little Shop of Horrors" at Broad Run High School is also this weekend and next. Also this month, "The Sound of Music" at Stone Bridge High School and "Anastasia" at Riverside High School. I also heard that "Matilda" at
Trailside was a hit. I didn't get to see that one, but a lot of exciting shows going on. And with that, I say why not make it a date night? I feel like we have Broadway in our backyard. That's the honest truth there. But anyway. Oh, my computer slid a little bit. Sorry, guys. Hold on, hold on. Oh, I'm losing time here. Shoot, shoot, shoot. Well, also for Stone Bridge, our Future Business Leaders of America, FBLA, chapter celebrated two exceptional students, Lulu Tosanian and Katherine Vu, for earning first
place in the graphic design event at the FBLA regional conference. Their achievement qualifies them to compete at the FBLA State Leadership Conference in Reston this month. For their award-winning project, they partnered to rebrand the logo for Simply Be Coffee in Leesburg, a community-centered coffee house that proudly employs individuals with disabilities, helping them grow and contribute and showcase their unique strengths. So thank you to those young ladies. Stone Bridge also hosted transportation awards. I was able to attend that lovely event for Sharon
Brent. She will be here on April 28th for our next board meeting. And lastly, I attended the Holocaust talks at Stone Bridge, where descendants of Holocaust survivors shared their families' powerful stories. Their messages were deeply moving and serve as a vital reminder of importance of education, empathy, and historical understanding. I know other schools host similar programs, and I strongly encourage all of our high schools to offer these educational opportunities for students. I understand the school set up these talks, and thank you to Stone Bridge. Thank you to Principal Flynn,
librarians Laura Channing, Erin Curry, Beth Glow, and the Stone Bridge staff for all your assistance in the library. Last note. The previous one wasn't last. I continue to advocate for Loudoun County schools, and I am consistently meeting with teachers, staff, and parents, and will continue throughout the year. This gives everyone an opportunity to share their events and concerns. Thank you. Mr. Pepper. Thank you, Madam Chair. So it's been a busy month in the Student Services Committee. At our last meeting, I believe that was-- I can't keep track of the order of things. It's been so long since we've had one of these public comments.
But we had a meeting, and the majority of the discussion was actually focused on a new policy on protection of extreme heat. I know that LCPS currently follows the Stringer Institute, but this is a little bit more advanced, and we learned all about how we keep our athletes, and not just our athletes, but our marching band members and anyone who's out there working in the dog days of August, safe. And so I'm really excited to see this policy go forward at SSC. The other policies we looked at were really just kind of cleaning up a few things for legal, but nothing super major in student services. But we did have a student services work session where we looked at Policy
5340. And for those of you who don't know, Policy 5340 is on the safe and supportive removal of students from the educational setting. So members of MSAC and SEAC and GEAC and our special education staff and student services staff and school members, we got together, and we're really kind of going piece by piece to make this policy as robust as possible. And we have another meeting, our second work session on this a week from Thursday, as well as student services later in the week. Where we'll look at a couple more policies in detail. I also had the opportunity to attend the
GIAC meeting. I believe that was also after the last comment, it's been a while, where we learned... Mrs. Waterfall from Waterford and Hamilton is the gifted advisory teacher, the fusion teacher. But these kids were doing amazing things planning the school courtyard, and it was really super cool. And we also had a nice, robust discussion about what AI looks like in schools. A couple of congratulations are in order, not just for schools in the Dulles district, but for schools in all of Loudoun County. I once again was cajoled/had the opportunity to judge Odyssey of the
Mind. And several teams, not only from Loudoun County, won the state tournament or finished second and are going to Worlds, and they include Hovatter Elementary, Pine Brook Elementary, that's the one that I get a special shout-out for because I have a child in that one. Goshen Post Elementary. I'm going through the whole list here. Smarts Mill Elementary in Leesburg, Stuart-Weller Elementary, and Willard Middle School all be going to Iowa. Super fun. Ames, Iowa in June. And then finally, a big, super big shout-out to Freedom High School, has their first year of FIRST
Robotics, and they qualified for the world championship, which is really hard to do. And they're the only program in Loudoun, apparently, besides the academy. So a major shout-out to Freedom High School. And with that, I will yield the remainder of my time. Thank you, Mr. Pepper. Dr. Rasheed. Thank you, Chair. It's always hard to go after Mr. Pepper. It's always hard to do that because he sets the bar so high. But yeah, it's been a busy time here on my side of the fence. So at the April Curriculum and Instruction Committee meeting, we received updates from the Office of World Languages and Cultures and the Office of Visual and
Performing Arts. Both presentations featured enrollment data, factors shaping participation, and initiatives to support and strengthening programming. So it was interesting to learn that LCPS is working to support not just most popular world languages or fine arts opportunities. When possible, the division looks for creative solutions to sustain smaller programs as well. So the next MSAC general body meeting is tomorrow at 6:00 p.m., so right here in this room. So in just a few weeks, on May 9th, get your calendars out, they'll
also hold their annual EquiTea Awards. It's a really great time. They have awesome tea. I think there's a whole dress up that we also do. It's tea time. It's really great, and we have some keynote speakers. So visit MSAC on social media for more details. Also, last week, I was able to visit with the HAMP-PSY students at Tuscarora High School to discuss new legislation for dental assistants. The role of certified dental assistants is to be expanded to help address the dental hygiene shortage in Virginia.
The students were interested in how long the certification program takes, as well as the potential for higher earnings in the field. So I'm grateful to the HAMP-PSY Huskies who shared their day with me. And finally, yesterday, I visited a political science class lecture at the Loudoun Campus of Northern Virginia Community College. I spoke about campaigning in Virginia, and I attended the International Summit opening ceremony at Woodgrove High School, which was an inspiring event to celebrate cross-cultural education. Thank you. Thank you. And I broke everyone's record. I was the shortest.
Ms. Lavelle. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to add something that Dr. Rasheed forgot to add. We both attended the opening yesterday, was it only yesterday? Of the International Summit. It was awesome. We had students from 21 countries, I believe it was. Over 50 students in our school, and 21 teachers, I'm sorry. And after being here in Loudoun for the entire week, obviously, we'll have our closing ceremony in Dominion. They will be going on to visit Washington, DC and New York
City. I was especially tickled because a former student from Woodgrove who was very close to me, and she wasn't a special ed student, I've got to say that right off. But she was a student who developed a relationship with me through her Spanish class. She has gone to Duke University, and now she is an executive assistant to Mike Turner on the Board of Supervisors. She was our guest speaker because she was one of the people who initiated and held and grew the
International Summit. Her name is Miriam Kahn, and she is very special. A really wonderful woman now, and I knew her as a student, but I can see the difference. Also, we had our first work session, as Mr. Pepper discussed, with our student services committee. On March 23rd, the Student Behavior and Accountability Committee reviewed Policy 8210: Introduction to Student Discipline, and it's to break down and review the student code of conduct.
So we think it needs a good look. The next thing that's coming up, and I need to give a shout-out to both Mr. Pepper and Mr. Svendsen, and anyone else who might have something to say, we are also, at our next meeting, going to start a discussion on the dress code. Yes, I see you, Ms. Chernoff. If you have anything you would like me to know about the dress code, please send me a note, talk to me, whatever. What dress code? What dress code? Right. Okay. On March 26th, it was my pleasure, and this is a biggie, to visit
Blue Ridge Middle School, firsthand see their FLEX program. It was awesome. And I would like to know, and this is addressed to the administration and their staff, how we can haveMr. Bell, Principal Bell, come in and present how they run the Flex program. It was just awesome. Every room we went into, science. I know Ms. Chernov saw it as well. So I would love to have them come. Thank you. And with that, we'll move on to our next item, which is new business.
Board members, is there any new business? All right. Seeing no new business, we'll move on to our closed meeting. Vice Chair Donahue, do you have a motion? Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the Loudoun County School Board recess this public meeting and enter into a closed meeting pursuant to Section 2.2-3712 of the Code of Virginia for the following: consultation with legal counsel employed or retained by a public body, and briefings by staff members pertaining to actual litigation where such consultation or briefing in open meeting would adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the public body and requiring the provision of legal advice by such
counsel as authorized by Sections 2.2-3711 (7) and 2.2-3711 (8) of the Code of Virginia. And discussion and consideration of the performance of a specific public employee in consultation with legal counsel employed or retained by a public body regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel as authorized by Sections 2.2-3711 (1) and 2.2-3711 (8) of the Code of Virginia. Vice Chair Donahue has made a motion. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Ms. Chernov. I have a second by Ms. Chernov.
It has been properly moved and seconded that the Loudoun County School Board go into closed session. Is there any discussion? Seeing no discussion, clerk, please open the vote. Board members, please record your vote. Clerk, please close and display the vote. That motion passes unanimously with all nine school board members present. We are now in closed session.Is
now coming out of closed. Vice Chair Donahue, do you have a motion? Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the closed meeting be adjourned, that the Loudoun County School Board reconvene this public meeting, and that the minutes of the public meeting reflect that no formal action was taken in the closed meeting. Thank you. Vice Chair Donahue has made a motion. Do I have a second? Second. I have a second by Mr. Svendsen. It has been properly moved and seconded that the Loudoun County School Board adjourn the closed session. Is there any discussion? I'm seeing none. Clerk, please open the vote. Board members, please record your vote. I was first. I beat you.
All right. Thank you. Clerk, please close and display the vote. That motion passes unanimously with all nine school board members present. Vice Chair Donahue, do you have another motion? Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the following resolution certifying the closed meeting be adopted and reflected in the minutes of this public meeting, Resolution Number 36-25/26. Whereas the Loudoun County School Board has convened a closed meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, and whereas Section 2.2-3712 sub D of the Code of Virginia requires a
certification by the school board that such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with Virginia law. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Loudoun County School Board hereby certifies that, to the best of each member's knowledge, one, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification applies. And two, only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed or considered by the Loudoun County School Board. Thank you. Vice Chair Donahue has made a motion. Do I have a second?
Second. I have a second by Ms. Labelle. It has been properly moved and seconded that the Loudoun County School Board certify the closed meeting. Is there any discussion? Seeing none. Clerk, please open the vote. Board members, please record your vote. Clerk, please close and display the vote. That motion passes unanimously with all nine school board members present. All right. Now, Vice Chair Donahue, do you have a motion? Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the school board authorize the school board chair and/or counsel for the school board to take the action as discussed in the closed session. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Svendsen. The motion has been properly made and seconded.
Is there any discussion? Clerk, please open the vote. School board members, please record your vote. It's out of control. All right. Clerk, please close and display the vote. That motion passes unanimously with all nine school board members present. The April 14th, 2026 school board meeting is adjourned. Thank you, and please drive home safely.