Good afternoon. My name is Lauren Chernov, and I am calling this April 8th, 2026 Specialized Programs and Centers Committee meeting to order. I am joined by my colleague, Mr. John Pepper, and Ms. Donahue has notified us that she will be arriving late today, but we are going to proceed regardless. We have no public comments, so we are going to move to item number 3.01, approval of the draft minutes for the March 4th, 2026 meeting. Are there any changes or additions to the minutes? Seeing none, I will move for the minutes from March 4th,
2026 meeting to be approved. May I have a second? I'll second that. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Those minutes are approved. We will now move to item number four, which is our only action item this afternoon, 4.01, Hillsboro Charter Academy 2026-2027 school calendar, and I will pass it over to Ms. Layman, who has joined us, and to give any updates that are necessary. Thank you very much, Chair. You had two questions last month when this was presented. I was able to get clarity on both.
First was August 10th and 11th on the HCA calendar are designated as flexible PD days. I learned from Mr. Vickers at HCA that those days are designated to complete the required county trainings, and staff at HCA have the opportunity to complete those any time prior to those dates, and if they come with them completed those dates, they don't have to work on those two days. If they are not completed, they must be completed on those two days. So that's what flexible means. I asked them to change.
The next question was on, it used to say LCPS planning days. And the reason it said when it was actually the 17th and 18th of August, which are LCPS student days, they were trying to designate that those are the required planning days that teachers need to have, and that's when they were happening at HCA. They start a little bit later than we do. So I said, "Please just reflect what's happening at HCA." And so now it says HCA planning days because that's what those are. So if you have any other questions, I'll try to answer them. I appreciate the update and the answers. Are there any other questions or comments from Mr. Pepper? I was going to say the board members.
All right. I don't have any either. Thank you so much for making those changes, and so I will go ahead and make a motion to send the Hillsboro Charter Academy 2026-2027 school calendar to the full board as an information item. And I second that. All right. It has been properly moved and seconded. All those in favor? Aye. Aye, and that passes unanimously two zero with Ms. Donahue absent for the vote, and that will conclude our action items. So we're moving right along. We have two presentations today
for information. We have a special programs update as well as a career and technical education expansion plan update. So we will go ahead and jump right in with our special programs update. And we have many friends here tonight to present. So I'm actually going to just introduce Ms. Katie Clark, the director of academic programs, and allow her to pass the microphone off as needed. The floor is yours. Awesome. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. We are excited to give you a short update on the program planning and progress for the Academy of Global and Linguistic Studies,
International Baccalaureate, both diploma program at Parkview and the CP program at all three schools, and our expansion to the Army ROTC program. This afternoon, I'm joined by Kelly James, supervisor of world languages and cultures, Danielle Graham, supervisor of social science and global studies, Grant Schaefer, supervisor of academic programs, Rachel Domar, CTE specialist, and Dr. Grubbs, director of career, technical, and adult education. So first, I'm going to turn it over to Kelly and Danielle to give an update
on our planning for the Academy of Global and Linguistic Studies. Thank you. So we are in the midst of our planning year for AGLS. Our wonderful program coordinators spent a lot of time in the fall meeting with all of our middle school students to inform them and recruit students. We had a lot of students who applied for the program, and they are getting notified about their enrollment and they are enrolling in the program. We're in the midst of our hiring season for next year before we get ready to welcome our first cohort of ninth grade students, with 100 ninth graders
anticipated to begin AGLS next year. Great, and we've had a lot going on in the past couple months. So our wonderful AGLS coordinator, Chelsea Northman, I'm going to point her out, is here today with us. And we actually had our third meeting for our AGLS advisory committee. This committee is made up of community members, LCPS staff, students, so it's been really great to have her facilitate conversations and have them give input into the profile of an AGLS graduate, what experiences and curriculum we really want to roll out for our students, and
gathering feedback on a handbook for students that are new to the program, as well as give input into a summer bridge program. In terms of community outreach, we're really in our third round of admissions and have approximately 50% of our program filled at this time. I'm very excited about that. We will continue to offer seats through our weekly rounds until all of those possible seats are filled, and this will continue until the start of the school year. In terms of spring events, we're scheduling visits for admitted students with the coordinator. She's also hosting office hours, parent meetings to review the handbook and program expectations, and a summer engagement
activity for those admitted students. And our course progression, so we have looped in counseling, and started outreach for those upper-level DE courses, particularly in social science and world language. Awesome. Thank you, ladies. Next up is a high-level overview of the authorization process at Parkview High School, where we're at, and then the career-related program that we are beginning the process at Loudoun Valley, Heritage, and Parkview as well. I'm going to turn it over to Grant Schaefer, who works intimately with all three of these schools. Hi. I'll start by just sharing a little bit of what we've done already
here. Last year at this time, one of the main things we did is hire the IB coordinator for Parkview. It's Darcy Malone. She comes to us from Fairfax with extensive experience in IB overall. We also had some trainings there, as you can see, with Dr. Jefferson, the principal, and myself. This year has involved the candidacy phase. Again, we have rising ninth graders who are in the portal right now, and we're going through that lottery process for those out-of-zone students. Teachers have been spending this year doing professional development that's required as part of the process and starting to write their course outlines,
which is required as well. Next year will be the consultation phase and the actual visit. We have a pre-visit scheduled for early June with our consultant that the IB provides for us in this process. We actually have more of the official visit that's going to happen in the fall of next year. And then we're going to have those students through the lottery process now will be enrolling and starting in ninth grade at Parkview and getting them ready for those IB courses
in junior and senior year. So, that's going to be happening, again, for out of zone in ninth and then Parkview only in 10th. One thing that is happening right now is going through and talking to current Parkview ninth graders to make them aware of IB, essentially planting the seed for them to take courses in 11th grade when they are in 11th grade. So they can then choose to do that in the '27-28 school year. They can take courses, just singleton courses, or they can choose to do the full diploma program in the '27-28 school year.
So we're starting that now, having those conversations with ninth graders. So moving on to more specifics there. I'll highlight a couple things here. One is, again, the curriculum development piece. That's actually been helpful having Heritage and Valley already. So we can take a lot of that, and we're going to be offering those similar courses. So that has already been done. Professional development, we only have two content areas left that have not received that training yet. So we've done a good job on that
and, again, working with a consultant and the enrollment update of going through the lottery process right now and having those students both be offered seats and accept those seats and starting to understand more about what is life going to be like at Parkview, what does that look like in ninth and 10th grade, to make sure they have their VDOE required courses completed, but they're also ready to jump into that very full load that it takes to do the diploma program in 11th and 12th grade. And so switching over to the career-related program, we
wanted to give you a little bit of background on what is the career-related program. So, this is an aspect of IB, right? So, the way it relates to IB is that students who choose to do the career program would take two IB courses. So let's say, for example, English and History, right? So they can take two of the core, and then they would be focused on the career-related program core, which would be the personal and professional skills course. A teacher is going to be trained in that, and that's a course very unique to the
career program. They're going to take language development, which is essentially we want to make sure that they have a language background, so a language acquisition. The reflective project and service learning go hand-in-hand. It really is about applying their knowledge in career-related learning to service and to tracking that. So it's similar to the IB core, which has a component called Community Activity and Service. It's essentially that, but in the CP component.
So those are things that make the career program unique. A little bit of the timeline here, finishing up a request for candidacy now, and we'll hear back from that hopefully next month. I have that scheduled for later this month. Then the candidacy phase would kick off next school year. We would be doing similar to what I shared earlier that Parkview's doing right now. It would look very similar with teachers getting trained, making sure that our policies are all aligned and that we're ready to offer CP again in the
'27-28 school year. Thank you, Mr. Schaefer. And now we'll transition into an update on our ROTC expansion for the Army branch. Shown here is the process we used in making the host school selection. This is the same process that has guided all of our other academy decisions, ensuring fairness, transparency, and consistency across the division. We held a dedicated session with all high school principals to walk through the Army ROTC program. During that session, we covered the
program goals, expectations, and what hosting would entail.High school principals then received an interest form and had until close of business on February 13th to indicate whether they wished to be considered as a host site. A committee then reviewed all submissions using a clear set of criteria. The goal was to identify the school best positioned to support the academy's success. The school decision was guided by a thorough assessment of four key criteria. Community alignment, ensuring the academy is placed where community
interest and demographic data shows strong support and relevance. Leadership commitment, confirming that school leadership not only expressed interest but demonstrated readiness to champion and sustain the program. Building capacity, verifying that the school has the space, staffing flexibility, and infrastructure to host the academy without compromising existing programs. And then lastly, transportation and accessibility, selecting a location that provides reasonable access for students across the division. With that, we are happy to announce that the school selected
was Stone Bridge High School, and we look forward to working with Principal Dr. Flynn on this journey of bringing this program expansion to LCPS. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mrs. Domer for the next slide. Thank you. So for the JROTC expansion, while it's a valuable opportunity, starting a program is really challenging. It requires federal approval, a large and sustained enrollment, and often requires a multi-year wait due to limited national capacity. A strong alternative is the National Defense Cadet Corps,
or the NDCC. It offers the same focus on leadership, citizenship, and student development, but can be launched locally and much more quickly. The NDCC allows us to begin serving students now while building the foundation for the future of JROTC programs. In short, it's a practical first step that moves us forward without delay. And then over to Dr. Grots. Thank you, Ms. Domer. Just a quick highlight. I'm not going to read through all these bullet points, but for the public, there is no difference. You would not notice any differences between an NDCC program and a JROTC
program. As Ms. Domer mentioned, you can wait upwards of 20, 30, sometimes even 40 years to get a JROTC program. The route that we are sharing, most school systems are not aware that this is an opportunity to either fast-track a JROTC program or to give one a test run. One of the main differences is really the funding mechanism. A cost-sharing opportunity, like a JROTC program, is where you split the bill with the service branch. With an NDCC, it is fully funded by the host school district. What does that mean? It means that we pay 100% of the
instructor salaries. The military still picks up the textbooks and the curriculum, but everything else is largely identical. Students get the same advanced military ranking in terms of cadet benefits. They still participate in competitive events like drill, color guard, marksmanship. One area that we try to navigate is that we are only bringing one instructor on, where if you look at the Navy program at County, there are three instructors. So you want to just pace yourself in terms of enrollment. The hope is, down the road, we would convert this program over to an official Army JROTC program where we would be eligible for a second or even a third
instructor. One of the enrollment criterias for an official JROTC program is 100 cadets or a minimum of 10% of your student population. With an NDCC, we have much more flexibility to maintain and not move into probationary status for being under-enrolled. Next slide, please. Just a quick overview of the timeline, '25, '26 has been a program and budget approval stage. We put in a budget proposal of a little over $300,000 to get the program up and running. '26, '27 will be a planning year. We hope to recruit an instructor, to give that instructor an opportunity to begin
recruitment, meeting with students, meeting with future cadets, and building out their program. '27, '28 would be year one. We would hope to enroll our grade nine students. In '28, '29, we would be welcoming our year two students for matriculation. Next slide, please. That's it. Yep. That concludes, and we have lots of experts here for each program, so we're happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you so much. It is very exciting to see all these things coming to fruition. I appreciate the updates on all of them. I will pass it to my colleague, Mr. Pepper, for his questions and comments first.
Thank you- Assuming you have them ... Madam Chair. Oh, I've got a ton of questions. So I'm going to start with the Academy of Global Linguistic Studies and then work my way through IB and then just match the presentation. So 100 students we're looking at enrollment. How many, just out of curiosity, have applied for the Academy of Global Linguistic Studies? Ooh, we're getting data. I see it. Do you think that could be pulling it up right now? All right. From the expert over here, I was going to pull it up, but 337 have applied. Okay. And we're hoping for up to 150 in each pathway. To enroll. We're approximately 25 in each pathway right now.
We're in round three right now. So can I ask, how are the rounds determined? What constitutes a first round, a second round, and so on? So it is a lottery program, so in the first round, it's just Monday through Thursday, we give that window of time. So it's a window for those students to accept or decline their offer. If they don't accept by that Thursday at 11:59 PM, then their seat expires. Oh, wow. And then the next week, we move on to the next appropriate student on the wait list. So we continue to do that all the way up until the program's filled, or if we have a student move over the summer, then we would fill that seat
as well. Super interesting. And I know that we're still building the profile of a graduate. And I don't know who this is really a question for, but what are you guys thinking in terms of a summer bridge program for this? Because I know that was mentioned. So some of it is community building, so that these students are coming across the county or from all over the county to attend Dominion High School, so it's kind of getting them acclimated to that, introducing them to other students in the program, and building connections. And then getting them excited for what's ahead in terms of introductions to some of the courses and partnerships and
things they'll be doing. So we're not thinking for a lengthy one. We know students have lots of commitments over the summer. So around two days is what we're thinking at this point in time, and also an opportunity for them to meet some of the teachers. We are still in the process of hiring some fabulous teachers or recruiting some within Dominion to run some of these courses. Okay. So I saw that. I was like, "Oh, there's an engagement activity, and there's also a bridge." I was wondering if it was something along the lines of making sure writing skills or language skills, or to make sure that these students who are applying to the program have the skills to be successful in what appears
to be a pretty robust and exciting opportunity for a lot of our students. So, I wasn't sure it was more academic or social, but it appears to be more on the social side, which is fine, but just had some thoughts on that. I know there was some discussion. I think, Kelly, we could speak more about the language piece too, correct? Yeah. I think we're still in the planning process, but getting some students a little bit of exposure, at least to the cultural elements, just an introduction to get them, again, excited about learning that language. But the students, most of them are going to be coming in with zero background knowledge or experience with the language. Okay. Do you want to do this one by one, Ms. Turnoff? Or do you want-
You keep rolling. I'll just keep going with my list. All right. So I'll move on to IB. So I appreciate that. IB, first thing, this is totally an aside, but I want to give a shout-out to my former colleague, Darcie Malone Hood. Who, when I heard her name, I was like, "Oh, you hired somebody awesome who I've actually worked with" which is absolutely fantastic. Questions for the IB program, particularly at Park View. I know you had mentioned that there are students who might attend Park View who are not in the program but want to take a singleton. Maybe a kid is really, really interested in psychology, and they want to take IB Psych. Is that something that any student can
still do? Or is it once the program gets really up and going, is it then just limited to the students in the program? I can start off. We allow students currently at Heritage and Valley, so it'll be the same. They can take a singleton course at those two schools, so it'll be the same at Park View. Okay. That's good to know. How many students is the number that we're looking for at Park View enrolled in the program? So for out of zone, we had allotted 30 seats for this initial- Okay ... to come in from out of zone, and then our in-zone students also applied, but they have access. But it just helps us keep track of
who's interested in the full diploma so that we can ensure we are supporting them throughout the process. And is that going to be geographical, so that, for example, students on the eastern end are, if they want to do IB there at Park View, and then sort of in the middle, they're going to be at Heritage, and then on the western side is Valley? Yeah. So they're zoned. So it's Potomac Falls, Dominion, Riverside, Broad Run, and Park View. Okay. And Stone Bridge. And Stone Bridge. Thank you. So it's Central and then Eastern Mountain that are zoned. Just trying to- Yeah ... geographic map in my head, and it wasn't being totally perfect. And then question on what does the pre-IB, because I know you said we're going to do the
pre-IB. As someone who's dearly familiar with IB, including the CP, what is the pre-IB looking like? I know that, at least in Falls Church, one of the things that we do for pre-IB is that we make sure that our World History 1 course, or World History 2, World History 1 gets shifted down to eighth grade, and then World History 2 gets shifted into ninth grade. I know that you know that. What is that going to look like? Yeah. Well, you know a lot. Yeah. So it's that. It's making sure they have government as well. Mm-hmm. So it's a little bit of a switch for a few of those courses. And really, academically making sure
they're ready to take on the load, as you know- Mm-hmm ... of IB. Another thing that we're doing as we're learning and we're growing IB is making sure that we're developing a cohort type model so that these students can rely on each other and essentially start to build some of those executive functioning skills to make sure that they can be successful- Mm-hmm ... in the diploma program and using the theory of knowledge class when they get to 11th grade as sort of a de facto homeroom.
Let me give you a couple plugs if I can. First thing that I would love to suggest for you guys, and I shouldn't be doing this, but is when the students, particularly in the sciences, for example, I would recommend that it's not just the IB teachers who experience some of the IB training. It's the pre-IB teachers, right? Because there's a lot of things that students have to learn to speak the language and walk the walk and talk the talk as they get in IB. So even little things like, what does it look like to write an IB-style lab report? Or what does it look like to do an independent assessment, an IA? So that's the big thing.
And then the TOK course, I love the idea of using it as a homeroom. That's brilliant. I would also suggest strongly that the extended essay run through there if it's not already. That's a huge thing. As far as CP goes, so we'll switch little gears to CP. Told you I had a lot of questions. You're good. Those were me, so have at it. I know. As far as CP goes, for language, are we looking at a requirement where the students have to take a language at the school, or is it something where they can just... Because I know it's really just a log of hours.Are they able to do something on their own, like a Duolingo or a Babbel?
I know that in Falls Church, when we introduced the CP program, we allowed them to just log their hours using a Duolingo app. That's a good question. I can take it. I think we're still trying to work some of that out. Okay. And that was one thing I didn't really expand on is that's a logistic that we're working out, as well as the CTE courses that each school wants to offer. So we'll start to work that out through the candidacy phase. But thank you for that. That's helpful. And then the other thing is when you talk about the course, I'm assuming that you're talking about the pathways we're going to offer in the CP program.
Is that where you're... What are the pathways that we're going to offer? Correct. We want to include Dr. Grubbs and the CTE team to make sure that we're both in alignment with what CTE wants, but also looking at, we've already looked at some data of what are the most popular CTE courses. This is also a way to engage some students in IB who may have thought that IB maybe wasn't for them, more accessible. Yeah. No, the CP program is fantastic. And then, so that's actually my last question on the IB program is who are we allowing to enroll? If there's a student who's outside perhaps one of the
three schools, are they going to say, "I'm really interested in this pathway. I think this program might be for me." Is that something we're looking towards, or are we going to just keep it for those students who are already housed at Valley and Heritage and Park View? So I'll start, and Grant can add in. The thought is we would still bring in our IB candidates in ninth grade, and in 11th grade, they would have a choice of continuing on to the CP or going for the full diploma. These are big decisions for our ninth graders coming in. Yeah, they are. And a lot of times, some of our kids get to junior year, and they realize maybe the
full diploma wasn't... So they would have an option there, kind of like Hamsai, where they pick a pathway at that point. So this would be very similar. We would bring them in still within the numbers of seats that we have available, and students would be able to select that pathway. And then students that are zoned for that school would have access to either the CP or the IB- Okay ... full diploma. Finally, I will move on to the JROTC type program, although it's not. I know that we mentioned that we're going to look to hire... First, congratulations to Stonebridge, but look to hiring an instructor.
Is that a challenging position to find someone to fill? Yeah. Great question. So just one step to clarify is that now that we've identified a site, we now submit an official application to the Army. We have had discussions. We feel like we have a really good justification and rationale. They will come out, and they'll do a site visit. The space over there meets the initial requirements of offering a JROTC, so we're not concerned with the space. Once it's approved, then we work very closely with them on hiring an instructor. We chose Army very deliberately because traditionally the other three JROTC pathways are very challenging to
hire. Marine Corps on the East Coast is a really tough program to recruit. I had five Marine Corps programs in my previous system. We had to close three of them down because we couldn't have a senior military instructor. We converted those to NNDCCs, National Navy Defense Cadet Corps, so there's always a backup plan. But Army tends to be the ones that are easier to stand up. Also, in the last year and a half, the JROTC branches have reduced the licensure requirements to be a JROTC instructor. It used to be that you had to be retired military and have 20 years
experience. I think it's down to eight years of experience with the Army or the armed service branch. So we feel very confident that in this region, we should have no issue finding an Army instructor. Great. Thank you very much. And Madam Chair, I think that's everything. Thank you, Mr. Pepper. I had a lot of the same questions about enrollment and about hiring. And in that same vein, my questions really have to do with staffing. So as we're transitioning into this more pathways-based model, and we're starting to overlap some of these programs, I know Ms. Kelly has been at all of my committee meetings talking about the various branches
of different things that are going on, which is very exciting. My question is, and this goes across all of the three that we've talked about today, are we seeing that staffing is an issue? Are we concerned about that? Is there one area more than others? What does that look like in terms of incentivizing our teachers to take on these extra things? And then my last piece of that is what is the communication like to staff in terms of this transition for these schools so that they know it's coming and that those opportunities for
them might exist? So I'll start and then turn it over to Dr. Grubbs or Ms. Clark. In terms of... I thought I had one question, but you snuck in a couple there in there. So in terms of staffing, as we have been developing these special programs, we are learning, and we are being thoughtful about adding some additional staffing, primarily at the start of new programs. So, for example, the AGLS program, we're seeding that program with the FTE for the two language teachers that are going to start next year at Dominion. We'll evaluate that over time in terms of enrollment and the needs of the
school. Similarly, we learned maybe in our second or third year with IB that there were some additional supports that were needed to make sure that schools can run class sizes that initially may be small without having to take a pinch across the rest of their staffing. So as we're developing programs, we're becoming a little bit more thoughtful about seeding some initial staffing when we go to the board with the proposal. And then new ideas may come. So like for example, we've had conversations at for Hamsai about do they need some support as they go to year three and four. Now, in terms of incentives,
we've talked a little bit about this, soThere are, depending on the program need, we do build in some stipends. So for example, when we were initially developing our IB programs, each school system gets an advisor, and they give you different models for what they do. You'll probably have an opinion on the advice we were given, Mr. Pepper, but do you give staffing or do you give stipends for certain roles? And so I'll ask Ms. Clark or Mr. Schaefer to talk a little bit about how we've done stipends for IB. And can you also talk a little bit about some of the curriculum development support we have for IB, for teachers knowing some of the
extra lift that we give, how you work with the coordinators on that? Yeah, absolutely. So, we do have some funding that was part of our initial proposal for professional development and curriculum development for each school. The coordinators are responsible for divvying up those hours amongst their teachers within their school. A lot of times those are just for IB meetings that they might have to hold after hours, after their contract. And then we've worked with each curriculum office as well. They are the ones that really work on the curriculum and for IB courses as well, all courses.
So they follow their SOP and their guidelines for that. But we do have those extra hours for those extra responsibilities, for working with students on their extended essay. That's very time-consuming and can be assigned for extra hours outside of the contract day. We also have stipends. We have an EE stipend, a CAS stipend, and a, what's the last one? TOK stipend. Those individual stipend positions support the coordinator with really overseeing those three parts of the core. And then, for example, as Mr.
Slevin mentioned, in our CP proposal, there is some staffing that was in that initial proposal that we were asking for that will be part of the budget next school year, going into the following year to support the expansion of CP at all three schools. And then I'll turn it over to Dr. Grubbs to talk about ROTC. Sure. I think your initial question, I think staffing is always on our mind. There's so much happening in a school around enrollment numbers and class sizes, and I think it's something we really need to stay ahead of as a school system. I think in terms of Army and then our expansion plan,
we built into the budget the funding for this instructor. So we were trying to get a little bit ahead of that. If we converted over, we would get support from the Army moving forward. Jumping a little bit ahead to our expansion plan presentation, some of the initial phases, we're really looking at more of program conversions with existing staffing, right? Let's look at your enrollment, year one, year two. You're offering four or five CT courses that are significantly under-enrolled, maybe not a lot of student interest. How do we repurpose those FTEs and bring in a new program?
We have an example. Ms. Alpers and I just spoke to today. We have a program, low enrollment, low interest, that is an FTE that we're not utilizing very deliberately. We have plans to introduce an intro to health sciences program there in the next year or two. That's FTE neutral, and that's where we're looking really for year one and year two. Where I think we need to get ahead of is as we look at year three, year four, year five of our expansion plan, like bringing in an aircraft technology program, we are going to need some additional FTEs because we will have been FTE neutral to that point. And I know Mr.
Sackett will be more than willing to take those FTEs down the road. So does that help? Does that- Yeah, I think that's a very thoughtful answer and a thoughtful approach. I want us to be aligned with the vision, but I also want to make sure we're being mindful of what, especially as board members, what is going to be expected to build in as we expand. Sure. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in the past, there have been some things at the academies that have been not able to go on or have been a struggle to continue because of specialized staffing.
And so I just want to make sure that we're not going to keep having these drop-offs if we can't get the people that we need. Absolutely. And so I'm very appreciative, and Mr. Sackett and I had a long conversation about stretching those FTEs and finding those efficiencies, and so I'm really grateful for that collaboration. And then just back to IB, I am hearing from some teachers, I'll be honest, I put this on Mr. Slevin's radar. Heritage sits in my district, so I do hear from people from time to time that as this program, as they're getting more in-depth with it, they want to do more.
They love the program. That's not the issue. The issue is in order to do that, the sustainability with the workload and pouring into the kids and the curriculum and specializing it for each learner and their different projects and things that they do. It sounds like there's rumblings of needing some more support in terms of incentivizing teachers, and that would be monetarily. They are grateful that they have their PD paid for, and I know there's additional things that they have covered, but I think that as we're getting better,
so to speak, at IB, there is starting to be that, is it worth it? Especially when some are teaching other courses as well as IB courses and having to make that pivot is a little bit of a struggle. So I think it's timely conversation with the stipend review that's going to happen. I would certainly very much like to see some of this CTE expansion and program expansion as part of that stipend conversation because I think we're going to need those incentives down the road. So not necessarily looking for an answer per
se, but just putting that on the radar because there is excitement around the program, and I would hate for us to lose that because staff get burned out. And some of these positions are becoming pretty specialized. So appreciate all of you. Did you have anything else? I do, Madam Chair. I thought you might. I'm just kind of piggybacking off of what you just said about stipends, particularly for our IB instructors. I know that when it comes to internal assessment, that's really the biggest driver of what makes it difficult to teach in the IB program. That and the fact that every person, whether it's your first year or you're
18th year has to get certified every certain number of years to even be qualified and make the school in compliance with IB. So, anything that we could do to incentivize, particularly that little bit of extra work that those IB teachers have to do, is really important. The only other question that I had is when we start the CP program, we're also going to need, obviously, a CP coordinator at each school. So the question is, look, the question is: Is this something that's going to be rolled in either to the duties of the IB coordinator or perhaps added on as a stipend like the EE, and the CAS, and the TOK person,
which Mr. Slevin, I actually do agree with that model. You are right on. So right now in our proposal that we had put forward for CP, it would roll into the current diploma program coordinator's responsibility, and then there's some stipends and things that we will ask for CP, similar to what we asked for DP. Perfect. Thank you so much. And Madam Chair, that is all the questions I have. Thank you, Mr. Pepper, and thank you again, and especially the tight turn on CP, just went through in the budget, and I'm very appreciative of my colleagues for supporting that amendment that was put forward in the 11th
hour. And so I think it's really exciting, I think it's timely, and I think it matches the vision that we are projecting forward for our students as they make meaningful contributions to the world. At least that's still the statement for now. All right, let's move on. Thank you for being here. We will move on to item 5.02, which is an update on CTE expansion plan. And so Dr. Grubbs, am I passing it to you? Yeah. Okay. Just inviting Mr. Sackett to join us as well. Oh, everybody's coming in. I'll let you introduce your team. The floor is yours. Thank you. Just sit here. Yeah. Where are we? Wherever you prefer.
You good? Yeah. You guys all set? All right. Yeah. All right. Good afternoon. We are very excited to give you a short update on the program planning and progress for our CTE expansion plan. I am joined here tonight with my colleagues, Ms. Jen Alpers, our CTE supervisor, and Mr. Ryan Sackett, our principal for The Academies of Loudoun and partner in this work. Next slide, please. I just want to ground us. I often say this is not Mike Grubbs' plan. This is not Jen Alpers' plan. This is not Mr. Sackett's plan. This is really grounded in the work of our community, and our school board, and our superintendent, and our current
strategic plan around goal 1.2, which is expanding opportunities for multiple accessible pathways to success through diverse programming. We have been doing significant amount of work to get to this point. We spent a lot of time last school year revising the programs of study to expand electives and new course offerings, most importantly, not just based on our interests, not just based on workforce demands, but based on our student interests and where our students are looking to matriculate after high school. Next slide.
So if you have been on this journey with us, this is a bit of a refresh. If you are just joining us, we do want to share that our expansion plan really is guided by a clear and structured timeline, and we really began this last year with comprehensive research, and just to make sure that we were being thoughtful and strategic in this work. So this year, '25, '26, which is illustrated in blue, is really our planning year. So this includes presenting our expansion plan to the school board and
continuing engaging through opportunities like our business roundtable event. We look ahead to '26, '27. We'll begin piloting elements of the CTE expansion plan, and updating program applications, which will really help prepare us for the '27, '28 budget. And then we anticipate full implementation of these new pathways to begin in '27, '28. So we will also continue to plan for the future phases of the expansion plan in '27, '28.
Thank you, Ms. Alpers. One thing I want to revisit is that we spent a lot of time last year not talking about the what to expand, but the how. And we really took that work to heart. It is very easy to say, "I want to create a dental program. I want to add an aircraft program." And then you look up in 5 or 10 years, and you have programs that are mismatched around the county. They're not accessible. They're not equitable. And so last school year, I just want to revisit that we really worked closely with our industry partners, our Career and Technical Education Advisory Council, on
how do we expand our programs. And so through surveys, community conversations, we are really focusing our expansion plan on three different areas. Our data indicates that over 73% of our stakeholders believe it is a high priority to align program expansion with high-demand career fields in the region. Secondly, nearly 79% of our respondents agree that we should prioritize offering all of our career clusters somewhere in the school system. One example I often highlight is that we do not
currently have an ag program in this school system, and so that is direct feedback from our community members. Let's make sure that we're focusing there before bringing in brand-new innovative programs. We want to close those clusters that we're not offering in the school system. Furthermore, almost 83% of our participants agreed that we should emphasize the importance of aligning our curriculum and our program expansion around the seven key industries of economic development. Loudoun Economic Development has identified seven key sectors for expanding not only their work in the region, but also our business partners.
And many of the programs we've identified align to those seven key sectors in some way or fashion. Thank you. Next slide. So this slide shows some pictures of active collaboration and engagement at our roundtable event on February 26th. And I think what stands out to me the most about that night is really the level in which our partners showed up, the way that they were really excited to be there and to help us focus on aligning our programs with workforce needs.
The feedback that we collected through this event is really what's driving our CTE pathway build-out model, and that model is a continuous feedback cycle, a really great feedback loop, which helps us go from industry input to collaboration to those meaningful curriculum updates that we've been talking about through this expansion plan. And I mentioned right now we're focusing on some of those high-growth areas like health sciences, information technology, manufacturing, and engineering. But I do want to highlight in
agriculture and natural resources, which is another area of high growth for us, that we're leveraging our partnership with the Piedmont Environmental Council, PEC, and they're really helping us to refine both the technical and professional skills that students need to have also helped us in identifying everything from horticulture to equipment mechanics, problem-solving, and adaptability as areas for our consideration as we are building this program or these programs. And they also brought forward industry trends, things that maybe we hadn't already
considered, such as the use of social media in business operations and GIS technology in land management, which we're now working to embed in this pathway. Thank you, Jen. All right. So current progress for phase one, we just want to highlight a few examples of progress that we've made over the course of this school year and even last school year in terms of working towards our expansion plan that we have published. An initial example is Administration of Justice. This is a program that is currently at the Academies of Loudoun, and it is a program that Jen and I have worked very closely with our local high schools in terms of interest in offering that course
or the beginning of that pathway in their home high school. We're pleased to report that Independence High School, who had a strong student interest and students who wanted to become lawyers enter the criminal justice field, we are piloting that course at their high school beginning next school year. There was strong student interest. That is just one example of a program that's been very, very successful at the Academies of Loudoun that we are looking to try to bring into our home high schools. Mr. Sackett will talk about a tiered system on the next slide, and I don't want to get too ahead of myself in terms of the model that we're moving towards. Another area that we are focusing on is commercial kitchen
enhancements. Many of our labs are really that traditional family consumer science model, and we need to do some significant work of enhancing them with commercial-grade equipment. In some of those programs, you might see Lake Ridge High School is a really good example. You walk into that classroom, the same curriculum, the same outcomes are happening all over the school system, but they have an updated lab. They have updated equipment, things that are industry-recognized standards. School store renovations, I'm going to pass that off to Jen. Our school stores are an important opportunity for our community
members to engage with our students on those soft skills, entrepreneurship, marketing. I'm going to pass off to Jen to share a few of the highlights in terms of our school store renovations. Thank you. So really excited to share that we have identified three schools this year for school store enhancements. And the two pictures that you see are from John Champ, which was the very first school to go through this process with us. That first picture sort of captures some of the old casework that was attached to walls. You could not reset the retail space like
they do in other real-world scenarios. We pulled up the carpet. We laid new floors. We really made this aesthetically pleasing to students who are both working the store but also coming in to purchase store items. Throughout the entire process, we were engaged with the students, with the teacher, with their school-based leadership. Ms. Sargent actually helped pick out the floors, so we were really engaged with them. But it was a learning process. It was student-led, that here was the budget.
What did you need to let go of to make other things work in your school store? We are hosting a grand opening on May 4th, so we'll be sure to make sure that's on your calendars. Thank you, Jen. One thing I want to highlight is it's very easy to dream big. It's very easy to say we're going to bring all these new programs in and forget about the existing programming. So what I want to highlight is that while we are thinking big, we are looking at an aircraft technology program, we are bringing in Army, we're not
forgetting about the existing spaces and our teachers in the school system. So while these might not seem like big wins in terms of bringing new things in, they are huge wins for our teachers who are in spaces and labs that haven't been updated in 20 or 30 years. I'm going to skip over Army. I'm going to highlight game design, respiratory technician, mechatronics, and advanced computing. This is a really good example where we're taking some existing pathways, and we're either sunsetting them at the Academies of Loudoun or we're converting them into new programs. All four of those new programs, we met with those teachers last night.
We provided them a stipend for their time. We met with them from 4:00 to 6:00, and we had a roundtable conversation. We debriefed the roundtable. We got their input. We made sure that we are getting synced so that they have a voice at the table for their program expansion. I have mechatronics half-checked because this is a really good exampleThat as you get into the weeds of these programs, you need to consider things like facilities and space. And so we're working really closely with facilities and Mr. Sackett. We have six or seven options in terms of where
that lab goes. And so I want to highlight that we are making really good progress, but every year there's going to be things that come up. You can't simply move a kitchen to the other side of a building, even if the space looks great. There's piping, there's HVAC. And so we're making really great progress, and we have plans to keep mechatronics moving forward, but there's other considerations that come up through this process, like facility needs. I'm going to pass it off to Mr. Sackett to talk about partnering and next steps. Well, hi, everybody. Good afternoon. My name is Ryan Sackett. I'm the principal of the Academies of Loudoun. It's a pleasure to see you again and to meet you, sir.
I don't know how much time I have because I could probably eat about three or four hours. That was hours? Perfect. So one of the things that I've heard kind of consistently throughout the meeting today is the delineation and differentiation between programs to keep things clean. And one of the things I noticed when I started at the Academies was that the identity of MATTA had kind of shifted to a much more introductory approach. And not to use too much time to talk about our schedule, our students show up every other day, all day. They're in the same classroom all day long, every other day for a year for our one-year programs, which is the equivalent of
three credits. And for our two-year programs, they come for two years, for the equivalent of six credits. It's about 900 hours for our two-year programs. The ability to go deep and do exceptional things in our two-year programs is very easy to do. We have the time and scope to really do some exceptional things in our two-year programs. But the shift was made many years ago back to one-year programs because the way that it works out, we only have one teacher. And if we have a two-year program, they can only teach a level one on A day and a level two on B day. So it cuts in half the total number of graduates that can leave the program.
So one of the ideas that Dr. Grubbs and I have kind of partnered on is this idea of a tiered system where if we had students covering some of the foundational content at their home school in some of the programs, maybe not all of them. In programs like culinary, in almost every single high school we have, Dr. Grubbs talked about moving to a culinary kitchen model, has that equipment and can provide that. We already have teachers trained in that content. If we had students coming to the academies with some level of content, we could do a lot more in year one than we are currently doing. So right now, we spend all of first semester teaching kids what knives are,
what different knives do, and all the equipment. Because we get students who come with no knowledge, it is really hard to get to, I think, what could be very exceptional end products of some of our programs. So rather than make all the programs back to two year, one of the ideas could be for certain programs to establish a tiered system where the students cover foundational content at their home school and then come to the academies with some level of knowledge that allows them to start not from scratch, but from the middle point of the road.
We can get much deeper and do fun, more crazy things. Three minutes. That was great. Thank you, Mr. Sackett. I will keep this to 30 seconds or less. So just quickly, next steps. As I mentioned, we are focusing on developing course pathways for some of those programs that we're bringing out of the gate, like game design, mechatronics. We're meeting with those teachers. We're including the business partners to keep that work moving forward. Some of this requires professional learning, like a teacher who is teaching computer digital animation, moving to game design. They need to learn C++. How are we working with them to upskill them, right? We're also partnering with Educational Strategy Group.
We're going to try to do some AI resilience in some of our pathways. We're starting that work in terms of how resilient are some of these pathways moving forward in terms of AI resiliency. And so that work is-- I'm just starting to plant the seeds in some of that. That's more to come. And then lastly, there's still research that we have to do. For example, we're going to be doing some site visits to Aviation High School in New York. That program is four, five, or six years out. This is not new work nationally. Let's go learn from some of the models that are happening. And so May 1st, myself, Mr. Slevin, a few school board members, and some additional staff members, we're going
to be going to Aviation High School to do some additional research for some of our new pathways moving forward. So I will open it up for Q&A. Thank you for the time to share updates, and we're looking forward to any feedback or questions that you have. Thank you so much. I find this incredibly impressive, I have to admit. Sometimes I get very overwhelmed by this CT expansion. I found this presentation to really help dig into some of the very nuts and bolts specifics and sort of give us those updates, and I'm just really appreciative of that. I love the idea of the tiered model.
I know we spoke at length about that at our visit, and it makes a lot of sense. One thing that I'm noodling on, which I will save for another time because I think it'll be a long answer, and Mr. Slevin, this may be more C&I, but I'm really curious about how this intersects with course planner. Because as we start thinking about prereqs or tiered approach and all of those things down the line, and I've heard some talk a little bit about we're starting to see what kids are interested in through course planner. We have that as a tool now. And then the bigger picture of course planner is how do we educate our families
that this stuff is available? And then how do we fill more seats down the line? Because I think there's going to be a lot of interest as we continue to grow. But it's very exciting. My one question is, and then I'll pass it to Mr. Pepper, and we can call it a night because we do have an important 5:00 meeting for some board members. With the piloting... next year, is that going to only be offered at those schools to students that are zoned for that school and then eventually morph into a more program-based model where
you'll take out-of-zone students, or is it going to be that program is for those kids at that zone forever? That's a great question. I'm going to keep this really short, and I'm going to give two really quick examples. So for the example for administration of justice, we're looking to pilot that at a few schools over the next few years regionally, where it's for those zoned students. Another example, and I'm really going to commend Jen Alpers on this, and this connects really well to the tiered system that Mr. Sackett spoke to, introduction to health sciences. That is our number one area of interest from our students right now, health science fields. That is a program that we would love to have an introductory-level course
at every single high school. And so we're making some small steps in that direction. But what I want to note here is that our expansion plan really has two areas, special program expansion at the Academies at Loudoun and then home high school expansion. So we're trying to balance, to your point, not bringing in too many special programs, but also trying to balance bringing more things to students within their ZIP code. So I hope that answered. I wanted to keep it brief. Yeah. I think what you're saying is it's going to depend
on the need and the desire and where all that evolves, so I appreciate that. You know as well as I do that we have a bit of a web that we've created with special permission, and I know that that's an ongoing conversation. And so I'm really wanting to lean into this as more of our avenue for those kinds of things, really purpose-driven selection of schools versus just going to any school you want. So that's my own personal belief. I'm speaking for myself. So I'm just curious about how all that's going to coincide and align.
But again, it's amazing. Mr. Pepper? Thank you, Madam Chair, and I'll keep this super brief because I know that we are in a time crunch. A couple of things. Maybe this is just, and I'm thinking along the same lines as Ms. Chernov here. As we go to these pilot programs, just the thought on staffing, and Mr. Sackett, you have a great example of the culinary that we're talking about. I'm actually a certified FACS instructor in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Oh. Yeah. And I know that the first two things you do in a foods class is knife skills and safety.
Safety and sanitation, right? So making sure that our instructors in our home schools, finding those instructors, making sure that they know the expectations, and linking the curriculum together. There might be a C&I conversation. That's a big thing. So just thinking about staffing for these tierings is going to be a big undertaking, and I wish you the best of luck. And then the ag program. I guess this is a relic of not being a rural county anymore. I'm shocked to hear that we don't have an ag program here in Loudoun County and would love to see where we can go with that, and maybe even periods, because it's hard to get into our academies, and our kids want to go there.
So I'm excited to visit, Mr. Sackett, so I will put it on the block. All right. So thank you guys so much. Could I clarify just one? Just for the record- Yeah ... Mr. Sackett looked at me, and we made eye contact. We had a thought bubble. When I said that we don't have an ag program in the school system, I mean we do not have a traditional agricultural program available to our home high schools. And so at the Academies at Loudoun, we technically have two, three programs that align to the ag cluster. So we have environmental science, we have biotech, and we have vet science. Yeah. I was thinking FFA, like animal husbandry.
Correct. I come from Clark County High School. I know what's going on over there. That's what we're really talking about in terms of Western Loudoun. I just wanted to clarify what I meant by that. So thank you. Makes sense. Thank you, guys, so much. Appreciate your time, appreciate all the work that you're doing and the continued work. We're excited to continue to get updates. With that, we will move to item number six. Is there any new business? With that, I will adjourn this April 8, 2026, Specialized Programs and Centers Committee meeting. Have a great evening. Bye.