Advisory Committee for Students with Disabilities (ACSD)

Recording

September 11 General Meeting Recording (YouTube) 

Transcript and Translations

Disclaimer: Transcripts are generated by YouTube with the help of artificial intelligence and may not be completely accurate.

0:03
Hi everyone, welcome back! We have many returning faces and some new ones as well. First, I’d like to say that although I haven’t done an exact count yet, I’ve counted enough to know we have a forum, so we can call to order, just as we’ve done in previous years.

0:20
I would like to ask for a consent vote on adopting the agenda and the minutes. Before we do that, I have two small changes to make to the agenda. One is that it currently only states "adoption of agenda." We actually need to adopt both the agenda and the minutes from last June. The item being added is a motion under business, which will come after the committee operations report.

0:51
With that said, without objection, the minutes and the agenda are approved as submitted. Seeing no objections, thank you.

1:04
General announcements: First of all, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that it is September 11th. I am the daughter-in-law of an NYPD officer, and I have family and friends who were in the towers and at the Pentagon on that day. I don’t think any of us will forget where we were. Even if we weren’t directly affected, many of us had friends or family in military service. If we could just take a moment to remember the heroes of that day.

1:52
Thank you. Now, moving on, I want to go over a few housekeeping items because this year's committee experience will be structured very differently from what you may remember. That’s why we’ll spend most of the agenda discussing how the committee will operate.

2:21
One of the changes is that we only have Holly and myself; we don’t have additional officers to help carry out the tasks. For that reason, please make sure to sign in at the table over there. If you haven't signed in, please wait five minutes so no one knows it's you, and then sign in.

2:50
It would have been okay if you waited, Susan, but if you don’t sign in, I may not accurately record your attendance, even though I’ll be making notes as the meeting goes on.

3:10
The other thing is to pick up your table tent and ensure that it’s facing front when you place it on the table. If you could angle it so I can see what it says, that would help. Generally, I’ll know who you are, but I can’t be responsible for my actions when I’m not warned.

3:30
In the file box, you will find a folder with your name on it. It may have contents today, and at any given monthly meeting, it will likely include a hard copy of the agenda and handouts we’re using. Please check that as well.

3:51
I’m going to assume everyone has signed in now. I’m looking at you, Hon.

3:56
As a reminder, when you wish to be recognized to make a comment, please put your name card vertically. Lastly, I want to ensure everyone is familiar with mic usage and that you actually use the mic.

4:11
We will have three students on the committee this year, all representing students with disabilities. At various meetings, we will have different accommodations in place, some of which will be audio in nature. So it’s important to use the mics.

4:38
H, would you like to demonstrate the mic usage? This may seem like a lot of information, but as I mentioned during our orientation, everyone needs a reminder at every meeting.

4:57
So, when you’re done speaking, tap the mic. There we go. The next person can’t speak unless you tap out. We’ll do our best to keep track of this.

5:15
With that in mind, it’s time for public comment, which will be handled by my vice chair, H.

5:21
As a reminder for returning members and an explanation for new members, public comments allow anyone who wants to speak to sign up on a form. We have one person here for public comment this evening. The time limit is three minutes.

5:38
To ensure everyone stays on track, we decided to use a kitchen timer. It took three of us to come up with that idea. So, we will strictly adhere to the three-minute limit. This way, everyone will clearly know when the time is up.

5:53
Members of the committee should not outwardly react to public comments, but we are taking note of what is being said. This information will be included in the minutes and the public recording.

6:11
With all that said, our speaker this evening is Lauren.

6:20
Yes, please go ahead, and I'll reset the timer for the recording.

6:26
Good evening, everyone. My name is Lauren M., and I am the parent of twice-exceptional students who have disabilities. Often in FCPS, these students are forced to choose between small class sizes with support or advanced classes without support, which come with large class sizes. This is particularly problematic at our Comprehensive Services site.

7:04
FCPS now has both a neurodiversity specialist and a twice-exceptional specialist. The twice-exceptional handbook has recently been updated, and FCPS leadership is now having weekly meetings with a project manager assigned for twice-exceptional programming.

7:16
This is a critical time for parents of twice-exceptional students. This year, we really need to hear your voices—both in public comments at the school board and through SEPTA, which is the Fairfax County Special Education PTA. This is a countywide PTA for those involved with special education. Their website is fairfaxcountysepta.org, or you can email their advocacy team at [email protected]. Thank you.

8:11
I actually have not heard from Rajna about her attendance, so if she arrives shortly, we’ll bump her back up on the agenda. Rajna is returning as our school board member.

8:23
You heard me mention a moment ago that the reason we decided to include our committee operations update as part of the main meeting is that everything regarding how this committee has run is now changing. The operations manual we discussed throughout last year was finally approved at the end of June by the school board.

9:00
A lot of what the school board is asking all advisory committees to do is something we’ve always done, but there are parameters in place that tighten the scope of our work a little bit. We will talk about that extensively tonight.

9:29
Are you ready to put my slides up? Yes, I will do that.

9:37
This is your main PowerPoint.

9:52
First, we will talk about which parts of the committee operations you are familiar with that are not changing. If I’m not mentioning something, it’s probably changing.

10:03
We still have our state-mandated activities. As you know, our committee exists as part of an obligation for all divisions in Virginia to have a special education advisory committee to their school board. That state mandate has not changed.

10:22
We still have a requirement to review the annual plan, write an annual report to the school board, and we are empowered to advise our school board on issues affecting students with disabilities in the division. That hasn’t changed.

10:36
In many ways, everything else has either already changed or will change this year. This year alone, our committee representation will remain the same as it has been in the past. We have a representative from each school board district, every magisterial district, and three at-large members of the school board.

10:57
We also have representatives from each of the regions.

11:05
We have 10 or 12 different organizations, including some FCPS department appointees, just as we did last year. One of the changes in the advisory committee operations manual is that we decide each year which community representatives will serve on this committee.

11:16
For example, when I was talking to Susan about this over the summer, there’s no guarantee that PO will have a seat next year. While I don’t reasonably anticipate any situation where that would be the case, theoretically, any organization with a seat at this table isn’t guaranteed to return. It depends on the collective decision of the committee at the end of this year.

11:49
This process was supposed to start this year. I spent a couple of weeks over the summer scrambling to secure my appointment back to this committee because if you want me to chair it, I have to be a member. I missed it by that much—just when you think you're out!

12:21
However, the school board passed a stop-gap measure recognizing that the timing of these changes did not allow sufficient time for the advisory committees to implement them. They issued a stop-gap measure whereby we will maintain our current representation at the beginning of the year.

12:41
After we file our annual report, our remaining task will be to decide on our charge and who will represent that charge on this committee. It will always include the magisterial districts, regions, and a teacher, as stipulated by the regulations.

13:07
The committees, however, do not remain static, so we will address that. It will remain true that everyone has the obligation to serve on one of the subcommittees, and attendance is required.

13:19
The virtual attendance policy remains the same: members may request to participate virtually in two meetings or 25% of the meetings, whichever number is greater. For our committee, which has 10 meetings, 25% is 2.5, so technically, we get three meetings for which any of the members can request to participate via Zoom.

13:44
However, your request to participate by Zoom is not guaranteed, as it depends on having a quorum in the room. If you have a sick child and can’t attend, please ask if you can join virtually. If I can’t offer it, no one will drag you to the meeting.

14:05
There are occasions where it’s reasonable to ask to participate virtually. For example, if there’s inclement weather and you’re traveling from far away, or if you’re out of the DC area, those are perfectly valid reasons to request virtual attendance.

14:43
I just can’t guarantee it, as we must have a quorum.

14:56
I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that you just walked in. We’ll wait two minutes, and then I’ll cover.

15:01
Oh, you’re all good being late—no worries! If Rajna joins us late, we will go back to her.

15:06
We were discussing that it’s easier to rule out the things that aren’t changing on the committee than to talk about the things that are. We’ve been going through what isn’t changing.

15:25
All business must be conducted at public meetings. We will discuss that this has a more restricted interpretation than in the past. We no longer have our legal drives and group emails, but if you have ever attended this committee, you’re already aware that we cannot conduct committee business unless it’s announced and published as open to the public.

15:50
All of our meetings must fit that criteria.

15:58
Oh, did I want to... I’m so sorry, you’re right on top of things. You did give me the right time, and I’m just having a chaotic night.

16:07
Oh, do you mind?

16:08
I don’t mind, thank you.

16:16
So, those are the things that are staying the same. Now, let’s move on to what is changing, which is quite a lot.

16:24
As you already know, we started at the end of last year, and we no longer have four officers in the leadership of the committee. It’s just Holly, Mike, and myself. Holly and I, along with Mike, have a bit of leeway regarding public meetings because Mike is not a committee member.

16:31
Holly and Mike and I are able to collaborate, which is a good thing because I’ve never appreciated you, Ally, as much as I do in this meeting.

16:51
So, it’s just me and Holly. If you want to talk to both of us, the best thing to do is send an email to the ACSD chair address. If you need to reach just one of us—whether it’s me, Mike, or Holly—just choose one, depending on your mood that day, and that person will make sure the other two know.

17:03
Please don’t send it to all three of us.

17:08
Oh, okay. Well, that’s not how I understood it.

17:17
You can send an email; you just cannot respond to all. Once you respond, you can only reply to one person.

17:22
This is the rule you've been living with for five years.

17:29
Oh, I’m sorry. So, these rules have been around forever, but essentially, you can email the entire committee, and you can reply back to individuals. However, once you reply to all or more than one person, it is considered a breach of protocol.

17:48
That’s the guidance we’ve received.

17:54
Right. So, you can send your email to all of them or to multiple members, but only reply to the one person.

18:01
That means you’ll have to use BCC, as I don’t trust anyone to avoid replying all when it’s an open CC. It happens every day.

18:20
Just keep that in mind. We’ll cover this more in detail as we get into the nitty-gritty of committee work, but that’s helpful. Thank you, RNA.

18:33
Regarding the annual report, it is pretty carefully prescribed in the operations manual, including the format it must follow. Ours already aligns with this, so it won’t affect us too much. There are a few tweaks here and there, but in general, it’s the committees that were doing more informal reports that will now follow the same structure we've been using for some time.

18:56
Future committee planning is a new task we will undertake towards the end of this year. We’ll discuss this as we decide what community representation will look like, as we’ll send a proposal to the board. Ultimately, it’s the board’s decision, but we’ll go with a recommendation regarding our charge and the specific organizations we believe best align with that charge.

19:21
Our annual report is now due in May. Previously, our bylaws stated April, and we are updating the bylaws to reflect this change. The deadline set by the school board is May, which is good because it gives us an extra month.

19:39
Now, regarding online work, we talked a little about emails, but also about shared Google Drives.

19:56
It’s going to be somewhat problematic if you’re doing substantive committee work, as it needs to be in the context of a public meeting.

20:02
We were specifically told no Google Drives.

20:07
Who was I talking to? Oh, talking to you.

20:14
Okay, no. Now you have to do it quickly. There you go.

20:22
I apologize. So, what we were told is that you can have a shared Google Document. You can edit it and comment on it, but don’t reply to anyone’s comment.

20:30
I don’t trust these people to manage that. I’m just letting you know. I understand these SP rules were not set up for ease, and I believe in transparency and open government. So, I’m not mostly complaining, just stating that these nuances exist.

20:50
That’s what we’ve been told: you can have a Google Doc, but in terms of open meeting laws, you can’t respond to comments. If someone puts a comment, you can’t reply with something like, “I see that she said this.” That back-and-forth can create confusion.

21:08
The clarity and leadership at the front of this table is just remarkable.

21:18
Okay, I’m starting to give...

21:24
I can’t. So, she’s great. I’m just sharing this to help make your life a little easier.

21:32
I think it will. Yes, but just before we pivot to the next phase, I know that change can be difficult, weird, and uncomfortable. I’ve told Holly and Mike that much of H’s and my job this year will be reminding you to do things the new way and not the old way.

21:52
While I appreciate the institutional memory and wisdom that comes from serving on this committee for several years, everything you thought you understood may potentially be changing.

22:04
So, we ask for your patience as we figure this out together. Some of the frustrations we’ve experienced as volunteers arise when our communications to the board are not responded to in the way we hoped.

22:24
There are many good reasons for that, but what has changed regarding these advisory committees is a clearer understanding of what they want to learn from us.

22:39
Our challenge as volunteers and committee members will be to stay within that framework, as we may be inclined to ask, “But what about this?” or “What about that?” This can lead to a burdensome workload and information that, while valid, may not pertain to our specific charge.

23:11
So, as part of introducing the nature of our annual report this year, I’d like to do a little icebreaker. I want to hear about an embarrassing story from real life—something that’s cringe-worthy.

23:31
Take a moment to think about it.

23:43
Alright, I’m not actually going to make you share those stories. The whole idea behind making you think about this is to illustrate how accepted practices don’t work for everybody. I did a test run of that with my neighbors and family, and...

24:05
Every single one of them responded the way you all did: “What is she going to make me do?” As people active in the disability field, there’s such a difference between lived experience and the observation of that experience. What I hoped to convey is that while many think everything is just fine, it doesn’t work for me. I had to choose something extreme to ensure it resonated, especially since there are always those who want to go first.

24:49
Moving on to our annual charge this year, it’s very simple, succinct, and clear. The Advisory Committee for Students with Disabilities will study and make recommendations for increasing disability-affirming practices in school communities and will encourage a strengths-based approach to educating students with disabilities and learning differences. This charge arose from our conversation in June about focusing on what students do well. It was informed by student feedback expressing that, regardless of their disabilities, they often feel like a burden to teachers simply because they learn differently.

25:46
This charge is remarkably flexible but also somewhat limited. I hope you don’t mind me calling out Jay, but many of us reacted to your comment about how success looks different depending on one’s perspective. It is success nonetheless. I also believe it’s hard to focus on deficits; it’s much easier and more effective to focus on strengths. We must recognize that what constitutes strength can vary.

26:22
Now, I want to give you my actual warm-up icebreaker, and there’s a reason for this. I want you to take a minute to think about your favorite teacher—the best teacher you ever had. We all have one, right? A teacher can take many forms, maybe even a parent or grandparent. Think about someone who comes to mind when you say “best teacher.” I don’t need to know their name, what grade they taught, or the subject. Instead, I’d like you to share what it was about them that made them a good teacher.

26:53
I’ll go first while you think about your favorite teacher. For me, it was a teacher who challenged me to view the world through different eyes—someone who encouraged me to reconsider what I thought was right. They were a lifelong learner themselves, constantly studying, learning, and growing. They were both a student and a teacher.

27:35
Sure, my favorite teacher was from my senior year of high school. We called him Professor because he was also a local college instructor. What made him great was that he had high expectations but treated us like mature individuals. He made learning fun, even bringing a guitar on someone’s birthday to sing. We all learned chemistry in a memorable way.

28:11
I appreciate hearing about these amazing teachers. What made my teacher good was all about relationship building.

28:32
For my teacher, it was also about positive relationships, accountability, and high expectations. He implemented unique activities that no teacher had done before or since, which was phenomenal and provided hands-on experiences.

29:02
The teacher I’m thinking of taught an incredibly complex subject but broke everything down into manageable chunks. His door was always open for extra practice or questions, and even though it was a large subject, he was always approachable.

29:36
For me, it was my secondary teacher who believed I could learn to read when no one else did.

30:06
My teacher was incredibly charismatic, full of energy, and treated us with respect despite our age difference. It resonated with me.

30:27
The teacher I’m thinking of was my sixth-grade teacher. He made learning easy and fun, simplifying complex topics and making them flow well for us.

31:06
In the early '80s, my teacher embraced integration at our school. She encouraged us to challenge conventional thinking.

31:44
My 12th-grade AP History teacher was my favorite. He taught me how to think, write, and organize my thoughts. Much of what he taught me, I still use today in my business and life.

32:15
One of my favorite teachers was a sixth-grade teacher who was always encouraging and supportive. She recognized my potential, which others overlooked, and treated us like kids, fostering a respectful environment.

32:29
The teacher I’m thinking of saw every student for who they were and gave everyone unique opportunities to grow.

32:48
My middle school Spanish teacher had such a passion for her subject. I can still hear her singing verb conjugations. She inspired me to excel.

33:07
I think my favorite teacher saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself and encouraged me to do better.

33:18
In third grade, my teacher was incredibly creative and energizing. I was a kid who moved around a lot, but she made it an amazing year.

33:38
I remember a teacher who was quirky and a bit goofy, openly sharing her challenges. She made it clear that being yourself was okay, welcoming latecomers with kindness.

34:09
I think of a teacher who helped me feel accepted as a very small child who didn’t speak English. She met students where they were and believed in our potential to escape our small town.

34:47
My teacher was approachable and made learning fun, challenging us while keeping it engaging.

35:22
The teacher I’m thinking of had genuine enthusiasm and love for the subject, taking delight in watching students find their voice.

36:02
My favorite teacher was always upbeat, even dancing in the middle of lectures. She treated me like everyone else, seeing my skills, passion, and talent instead of my disability.

36:40
I had a teacher who recognized the challenges of being different in my environment. She assured me that college would be an awesome experience, and I often think back to her encouragement on tough days.

37:15
Rashna mentioned she was debating between two teachers. It’s wonderful to talk about what people are good at instead of focusing on their weaknesses.

37:28
When asked about favorite teachers, many of us may struggle to choose just one, even if we had multiple good teachers. The work we’re doing this year will elevate excellence as a teachable moment rather than fixating on deficits.

38:00
It’s difficult to sit in IEP meetings where the focus is often on what doesn’t work. I've had a few teachers in Fairfax County who spoke about my children’s strengths. It changes everything when someone acknowledges what they excel at while also addressing areas for improvement.

38:51
During my presentation of the annual report in June, I used the metaphor of IEP meetings. It’s tough to be in a room discussing what's wrong. Recognizing strengths doesn’t negate differences in achievement; it changes the conversation entirely.

39:30
This year, we want to encourage conversations about improvement in a positive light. Instead of solely pointing out what’s wrong, we can offer examples of excellence as guidance, focusing on expanding strengths rather than merely addressing weaknesses.

40:01
With that in mind, the new operating manual really focuses our work precisely on our annual charge and the elements of the Strategic Plan. I want to go through how this affects us. You’ve heard a lot about the Strategic Plan; not everyone is comfortable with the specifics, so I’ll give you an accessible version.

40:40
The Strategic Plan is built on four pillars. These pillars act like values; they represent the essential components that must be done well in order to make progress. Completion of these pillars is an ongoing process, and you cannot progress on the goals without these four elements.

41:07
While these pillars are not specific charges to this committee, they serve as a lens we need to apply. If we don’t do this well, we won’t advance on what comes afterward. All of this material is available on the Strategic Plan website.

41:18 We get down into the goals and measurements, which will be more directly relevant to our work this year. The pillars are differentiated and culturally responsive learning environments, vibrant home-school and community partnerships, a diverse, adaptive, and supportive workforce, and a culture of equity, excellence, and accountability.

41:39 These pillars lead to the goals within the period of the Strategic Plan, outlining what should be achieved. These goals will frame our committee's work this year. Our charge is to create a strength-based culture of inclusion at the school level, which aligns with the written goals.

42:14 You'll notice that many of these goals already align with those of previous committees. For example, every student will have access to high-quality academic programming and resources to support their success. This reflects what used to be called student achievement, but our focus remains the same—it's just a change in terminology.

42:45 The reason for this alignment is that our annual report must correspond to these goals. If we frame our recommendations within this structure, we respond directly to what is asked of us in the report. Hence, we will recommend that the committees operate under this new framework.

43:10 We will no longer have a School Board charge committee; instead, all committees will function collectively. There will still be ad hoc and special meeting committees, particularly regarding policy reviews and bylaw changes, but these will be the standing subcommittees everyone must join.

43:44 As we delve into subcommittee work, each goal will have assigned measurements to track our progress. For instance, to measure access to high-quality programming, one measurement is reducing the number of adapted diplomas and ensuring more students achieve standard diplomas. This data-driven approach will serve as a yardstick for measuring success.

44:21 Although our committee doesn't make implementation recommendations, understanding these measurements gives us insight into what the board has tasked staff with doing. For instance, if we discuss adapted diplomas, we can approach it as we always have, but it must align with the direction Fairfax County schools are taking.

44:48 This approach benefits everyone. Often, we find ourselves asking, "What about this issue?" This comprehensive plan should accommodate various experiences, as it was crafted with community feedback. If your concerns seem unique and don’t fit, it may not warrant a strategic-level conversation; perhaps it's better suited for discussion with your School Board representative.

45:50 The essence is that answering the questions asked will foster a more receptive audience. This was evident in various debates; responding to the questions posed is crucial. Our work this year must align with the board's clear directives, and I believe it will be validating to discuss our concerns in a group dedicated to disability issues.

46:27 It may be challenging at times to stay focused on our objectives, but H and I will monitor this as the committees proceed.

47:04 I don't want to add too much; I think you've done a great job explaining this. However, I want to emphasize one reason the school board wanted all committee work to align with the plan. This community-driven initiative reflects a collective decision about the direction of our schools.

47:49 While the superintendent will implement the community plan, we are responsible for policy work, oversight, and governance. We want all our work to be cohesive, hoping that your report at the end of the year will guide us in our governance.

48:08 By tying our efforts to the goals of the system and the Strategic Plan, we aim to generate actionable ideas that can inform our operations. It’s important to move in a unified direction.

48:32 The plan is broad, allowing for flexibility in how we approach it. It's a valuable exercise to consider how our discussions fit within the strategic framework, and I'm confident that there is relevance in the comprehensive nature of the plan.

49:01 I’d like to take a moment to see if anyone has questions or comments. If you don’t, that’s fine.

49:19 As a reminder, because we have assistive technology, please raise your hand if you want to be recognized. Remember, you have one comment until everyone has had the chance to speak. If time allows, you may comment again.

49:41 I know some of you tend to ask two-part questions, but please keep that in mind.

49:57 Is the DSS update just for this meeting, or will that change this year?

50:04 The DSS update is only for this meeting, as this is all an update in itself. I can't promise that all the other standard reports will always remain on the agenda, as we are considering some adjustments to the format, potentially presenting them in writing at future meetings.

50:34 However, I don’t foresee a time when we wouldn’t include it, at least for this meeting.

50:39 Does anyone else have questions? Oh, I'm sorry, Jay, you were hidden behind the microphone.

50:45
One of the thoughts I have is that a recurring theme is the importance of finding examples of things done well. We have a great opportunity to share stories that highlight these successes and draw attention to them.

50:59
I believe it would be beneficial to extract and spread these positive experiences. This mindset fits well with our goals. I want to emphasize that we aren’t limited to what’s already being done in the district.

51:19
For example, when West Springfield High won the F Class Award this year, it was because they figured things out that other parts of the county were still struggling with. We can also look at what other divisions are doing. Personally, I am very interested in affirming neurodiversity and disability. I believe that’s the future of special education, especially when we finally figure out the funding issues.

51:54
Regardless, I think this mindset helps address any concerns we've expressed in the past. It makes our messaging more receivable and allows us to embody the qualities we admire in the teachers we loved. As advisers, we are also teachers to the school board. Don’t we want to be the kind of teacher that leaves them saying, “That was really helpful; I learned so much, and I was challenged to see things in a new way”? Isn’t that the example we want to set?

53:03
I don’t want to overlook what we should be doing everywhere. I see part of our role as helping to flip the narrative for FCPS regarding how we set students up for success. If we only focus on their deficits, we won’t achieve that goal.

53:40
During a school visit today, I was struck by how many times people mentioned all the things that enhanced kids need to demonstrate before they can proceed. It’s concerning that they want these students to sit still for 30 to 45 minutes. If second graders can sit still for that long, why are they still in sessions? It often seems like there is a higher bar set for our kids than for others, and I hope you can help address that.

54:26
Go ahead, Alan.

54:36
Sorry, I just wanted to ask about the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). I like the idea, but we obviously need to respond to the community. However, the subcommittees are stated in our bylaws, right?

54:54
I don’t think any operating manuals supersede the bylaws. They specify new committees, so we need to have a vote to change anything. We have a vote scheduled for tonight.

55:14
That’s not what she’s asking. We have a vote scheduled under new business. I understand that if the school board has something in their manual that covers us, it supersedes our bylaws. However, I don’t think that’s correct for our manual.

55:35
Just to clarify, our bylaws say we have certain subcommittees, and we can't disregard them. The operations manual states we can decide what our subcommittees are. We have a vote scheduled tonight for our subcommittees, and our bylaws are being updated.

56:08
Thank you for that clarification. I appreciate the need for strategic policy development. Through this report, will we still have the opportunity to provide recommendations that are more operational in nature, or are we strictly focusing on strategy?

56:25
Under our state mandate, and also in the operations manual, we have the right to comment on anything within our committee’s mandate, which includes students with disabilities. The answer is yes; we still have that opportunity. However, as your chair, I challenge you to consider whether that operational feedback leads to a policy or procedure that benefits this effort.

57:06
I want to be clear: when we comment on or give recommendations for operational matters, it is necessary for the board to make those changes. We can follow up and ask, “What is being done to address what ACSD said?” but we won’t necessarily direct them.

57:44
We want to focus on operational aspects, but it’s essential to note that we can issue an interim report to the superintendent and the school board, even if it doesn’t fit the mandate of the annual report. That doesn’t mean we can’t communicate those concerns.

58:22
With that in mind, should we pause here? I don't want to miss anything.

58:28
I apologize. Can you please state your name for the record?

58:34
I'm late; I'm Catherine from Region 1. My comment is related to operational feedback.

58:41
I came tonight to discuss some operational differences I've observed within the region. I agree with the earlier comment that it’s important for parents to be aware of what’s happening in our schools.

58:53
The operations manual includes provisions for incorporating public comments into our discussions. We always preserve and document public comments in the annual report we provide to the board. So, even if a comment doesn’t go directly to a subcommittee, it is still included in the informational pipeline.

59:35
The feedback will be preserved and carried forward. While we can discuss operations, decisions ultimately rest with the school board.

1:00:04
I want to clarify that operational feedback will be communicated to the staff, who will decide how to act on it. We continually discuss various issues in our oversight role. I often receive emails about what I observe during school visits.

1:00:46
We’re trying to clarify the recommendations. If recommendations come to the board, we need to ensure we have the necessary information about trends and other operational issues. This is important for our oversight.

1:01:12
We don’t need to have all the answers tonight; this is an ongoing process as the committee works throughout the year. We preserve all public comments that are relevant to our committee's work and often incorporate them directly into our recommendations.

1:01:46
At no time are public comments disregarded; they are always captured and included in our report to the board.

1:01:52
Do we have any updates now?

1:01:59
Thank you. I’m not shy about sharing my opinions. I’m Riser, the school board representative for the Braddock District. This is probably my third, fourth, or fifth time attending the ACSD committee. I used to be on ACSD for eight years, so I think I know most of you. For those who don’t know me, I have two kids who went through FCPS, starting with preschool for my son.

1:02:31
He is now entering his junior year of college. He is twice-exceptional, but he has struggled academically. My daughter graduated in 2017; she was in the 504 program, so I’ve experienced both worlds.

1:03:25
This is my fifth year on the school board. I was an at-large member for four years, representing the entire county, and then switched to Braddock. Supporting disability justice and neurodiversity in special education is my passion.

1:03:42
I have presented on advocacy and am currently working with colleges to develop a broader definition of neurodiversity. I want to hear about operational issues and will follow up with staff on those matters.

1:04:12
I don’t have voting rights, but I’m here to share information with the school board and contribute where I can.

1:04:22
I should also provide an update from the school board. I was the chair of the governance committee, which reviews policies. We recently looked at two policies related to disabilities: Policy 2670, which concerns programs for students with disabilities, and Policy 2671, which addresses multi-agency placements.

1:05:05
I realized these policies had not been presented to ACSD for comment, so I asked the staff to extend the opportunity for feedback before they return for final review.

1:05:28
I will ensure that you all have the chance to comment on these policies before they go to the governance committee. Keep in mind that our policies are broad, while the superintendent issues detailed regulations that correspond to them.

1:05:45
When reviewing the policies, keep in mind that we struggle with this. Our policies are supposed to be broad umbrellas, while the superintendent issues regulations that are much more detailed. There will be corresponding regulations that may or may not be updated based on changes to the policy. It’s similar to how Congress passes laws and the IRS issues regulations.

1:06:09
We are about to start our budget process soon. This year's budget process will be slightly different as we are entering a new phase. Many of the advocacy points I’ve raised to the board regarding conditions and salaries will now be met with “thank you very much.” I look forward to seeing how those comments come back to us.

1:06:32
When discussing special teachers and contracts, I want to clarify that I will be listening but not commenting due to my new role. This creates a change in how we all need to address the budget. I think the budget will be tight again this year. The board of supervisors has indicated that they can't keep raising salaries or property taxes. I'm uncertain what the state will do.

1:07:06
Another important update is that the Board of Education recently released significant changes to school accreditation standards. These changes place a heavier emphasis on test scores and have reduced the ability for students to be classified as “sliders” for on-time graduation. This affects some of your students.

1:07:26
Students with IEPs can stay in FCPS until they’re 22 years old, but both the federal and state governments have made on-time graduation a key component of their accreditation. As a result, this disincentivizes schools from allowing students to stay longer than 18 years. I don’t believe this was intended when those laws were passed.

1:08:09
There is now a six-year leeway for students, but the long and short of it is that there is less room for students who may take longer to graduate. This creates challenges for high schools when discussing options for students who could earn a standard diploma but may need six years to do so.

1:08:38
The advocacy point for you all to consider is that I don’t think the people implementing these rules are adequately considering students with IEPs. This committee can highlight the importance of supporting timely graduation without putting schools in a difficult position. When speaking to your state representatives, keep in mind that these changes are happening quickly.

1:09:29
The schools will be audited based on these changes in the coming school year, so we don’t have much time to raise questions about them.

1:09:40
Additionally, the accreditation changes have made advanced diplomas more accessible for students with communication disorders. Students are now allowed to take two credits of computer science as a substitute for language credits.

1:10:04
I noticed this update a couple of weeks ago and shared it with colleagues. Thank you to the school board for your efforts to communicate these changes.

1:10:31
Next on the agenda is new business.

1:11:25
I’ll hand it over to the chair for the next steps.

1:11:33
Thank you. I move that the ACSD have five subcommittees for this school year, aligning with the five goals of the strategic plan. I won’t read through all the goals.

1:12:00
The school board is restructuring, and our community has made it clear that our focus needs to be on the school board’s charge. It doesn’t make sense to have a separate charge for the subcommittees. The previous structure placed a greater burden on the subcommittees compared to others.

1:12:39
We need to streamline our work toward our unified goal. The structure is already in place; we just need to adapt it.

1:13:13
Is there any discussion?

1:13:18
With no further discussion, I will call for a vote. All in favor of accepting the motion as presented, say "Aye."

1:13:25
All opposed, say "No." Any extensions?

1:13:35
The motion carries. Moving on to member time. Does anyone have anything to share for the good of the order?

1:14:03
I have two things to share. I represent the Special Education PTA for Fairfax County. You can find us at fairfaxcounty.org, and the join us link is at the top.

1:14:29
We are an organization for specialized teachers and families. We will have our first meeting to start the school year strong, featuring executive coaches Wendy Weinberger and Jackie Wyman. The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, September 24th, at 7 PM. We also offer mini-grants.

1:14:51
The deadline for fall mini-grants will be announced soon. Teachers can apply for up to $500 to fund programs that benefit special education students. Additionally, I want to highlight that we will have another ISA event this year, which is incredibly informative for those new to the IEP process.

1:15:25
Thank you. We have a meeting coming up on September 21st, which Mike has graciously coordinated. We will have several representatives from FCPS come and discuss the upcoming school year. The meeting will take place from 10 AM to 1 PM at the Springfield Government Center. If you're interested, please talk to me afterward, and I will share a link with you.

1:16:08
On October 8th, we will host a Zoom presentation from one of our advisors on parental consent. This will be a virtual event.

1:16:22
I hear about various events in the Springfield District related to disability awareness. One upcoming event is the annual haunted house at Valley Elementary School on Saturday, October 26th. They will have a sensory-friendly hour before it opens to everyone else, where the lights are on and jump scares are turned off, making it more family-friendly.

1:17:03
Shifting to a different topic, I wanted to inquire about the ACSD social media. I used to be an admin but won't be this year. There have been significant engagements—40 page engagements in the last 28 days—likely because people are looking for new content. We haven’t created any new content since last year, even though we have 680 followers.

1:17:36
The social media policy from November 2019 states that the chair and vice chair can be administrators, and social media administrators can be appointed from the Family Engagement Committee. I wanted to check if there’s still a plan for managing our social media.

1:18:02
We are navigating this new landscape, and I’ll have an answer for you in October. Thank you for the reminder.

1:18:15
I hope you don’t mind if I share a very short, funny family story. We gathered for a wedding with many nieces and nephews who have various neurodiverse issues. While sitting around the table with food, we coined the term "gastro-divergent."

1:19:03
One of the action steps from our last committee meeting was to discuss the items before our next meeting. If you’ve taken materials out of your file folders, many of you have flash drives that contain all the necessary information, including a calendar of meetings.

1:19:42
I'll check with Melissa to see what she put on there. If not, we can send out an email with all the meeting dates. The meetings will still be held on the second Wednesday of every month. Last year, we had a few changes, but this year there are fewer alterations.

1:20:07
The only change is that the January meeting will be moved to the third Wednesday, the 15th, because we didn't want to hold a meeting on the first day back after the holiday break.

1:20:20
I’ll ensure a calendar is sent out as part of the follow-up communication. Each of you will receive a Google form where you can indicate your interest in which goal areas you would like a committee to focus on. Since we have fewer people managing administrative tasks, I’ll ask everyone to rank their choices from one to five.

1:20:48
As each area fills up, it will be first-come, first-served. If you feel strongly about your top choice, please respond quickly, as I will move on to the next section once one is claimed.

1:21:06
You will also have the option to indicate whether you are willing to serve on ad hoc committees that may arise, such as social media or policy reviews. This will be a simple yes or no option, and you can decline if you're not interested.

1:21:24
You'll receive more information leading up to the October meeting, where you will have your subcommittees assigned. We will still meet at six o’clock, and your subcommittees will have designated room assignments. Your first order of business will be to choose a subcommittee chair.

1:21:47
We are looking to restructure subcommittee meetings to allow for more substantial work during that time and reduce the tasks that need to be completed as a whole group. We will provide more details during that first committee meeting.

1:22:07
If there are no further questions or comments, we are adjourned. Thank you!

Printable Version of the September Meeting Minutes

Call to Order

The meeting was called to order at 7:02 pm. A quorum of committee members were present in the room, no members were participating virtually.

Minutes

Without objection, the minutes of the previous meeting and the agenda were approved by the committee. The chair made brief announcements, including welcome of new and returning committee members, and a recognition of the event of September 11, 2001. Committee members were reminded that they must sign in at each meeting to have attendance recorded accurately.

Public Comment

Lauren McCaughey: FCPS is moving forward with plans to support twice exceptional students. Members of the public who are interested should be vocal in public forums, including speaking before the School Board.

School Board Liaison Report

Rachna Sizemore-Heizer returns as the School Board Liaison to the ACSD. Her updates included:

1. Ms. Sizemore-Heizer chaired the School Board’s Governance Committee last year, during which time the committee looked at two policies related to students with disabilities. She has asked the current chair to send those policies to the ACSD for comment. 

2. The School Board is starting its budget process for the year.

3. The state has implemented changes to school accreditation standards for schools, which implements punishments for schools for students who do not graduate on time. However, the new standards do not take into account special education students who benefit from continuing with FCPS until the age of 22. 

Committee Operations 2024-2025

The Chair reviewed changes that are being made to the committee’s operations during this program year in response to the School Board’s updated Community Advisory Committee Operating Manual, approved by the School Board on June 27, 2024. The changes to the committee will be to adhere to the operations manual, and to create greater alignment between the recommendations of the Annual Report with the 2024-2025 School Board Charge and the 2023-2030 FCPS Strategic Plan.

New Business

A motion was made by Holly Stearns, seconded by Joanne Walton as follows:

Motion: The Advisory Committee for Students with Disabilities (ACSD) recommends that it have five subcommittees for the 2024-25 school year, and that those subcommittees align with the five goals of FCPS’s Strategic Plan 2023-30. Those five goals are:

1. Strong Start: PreK-12
2. Safe, Supported, Included, and Empowered
3. Academic Growth and Excellence
4. Equitable Access and Opportunity
5. Leading for Tomorrow’s Innovation

The School Board’s recently updated guidance to its advisory committees makes the former subcommittee structure ineffective for aligning with these goals. The Operating Manual permits the committee to determine the structure of its subcommittees each year, in a manner that best supports the work of the committee. 

The ACSD has an update to its bylaws planned for this program year that will incorporate the Operating Manual changes in future years. This motion is necessary to begin this year’s work under the terms of the Operating Manual prior to the planned update to the bylaws.

The motion passed by a vote of 22 in favor, none opposed, one member abstaining.

Member Time

Ally Baldassari introduced herself as the FCPS Special Education PTA (SEPTA) representative to the ACSD:

• Members are encouraged to visit the SEPTA website at www.fairfaxcountysepta.org and to attend the group’s first meeting on September 24 at 7 p.m. 
• SEPTA awards mini-grants to teachers. The fall deadline has passed but another opportunity will be available in the spring. 
• SEPTA will again host its IEPalooza, which provides information to parents who are new to the IEP process. The event will take place in November.

Susan Edgerton introduced herself as a member of the Parents of Autistic Children of Northern Virginia (POAC-NOVA). Members are invited to attend the group’s meeting on September 21, at which FCPS staff would be present to discuss the upcoming school year. 

Amanda Campbell noted that Rolling Valley Elementary School will host a sensory-friendly hour during its haunted house event on October 26.

Closing Remarks

The Chair reminded committee members that they will be receiving an email requesting their preferred subcommittee assignment. Subcommittees will meet prior to the main committee meeting beginning in October, at which time each subcommittee will be tasked with selecting a subcommittee chairperson.

Meeting adjourned at 8:30 pm following a motion of unanimous consent.

Date:  October 9, 2024
Time:  7 p.m.
Location:  8270 Willow Oaks Corporate Drive, Fairfax, Virginia 22031

Next Meeting: Wednesday, November 13, 2024. 

Recording

October 9 General Meeting Recording (YouTube) 

Transcript and Translations

Disclaimer: Transcripts are generated by YouTube with the help of artificial intelligence and may not be completely accurate.

0:04 

Review before we get started. Um, sorry, I'm on decongestants tonight; it may not agree with me.

0:10 

Yes, we have a forum this evening. We have some changes to the minutes and one change to the agenda. If we could please review the minutes. 

0:23 

We have two changes under committee operations: the vote on the motion has two extensions, not one. And under member time, the SEOR rep, Ali, reported that the mini-grants deadline had not passed.

0:39 

So those are two changes. On the agenda, we need to add a discussion of the social media policy, which will come right after the DSS updates. 

0:46 

So, I'm going to ask the committee if there are any other changes to the minutes or the agenda as you review them.

1:00 

None? No objections? Great, those are accepted with the changes incorporated.

1:07 

I want to make a couple of announcements. Some of our individual members who require extra accommodations for the meetings are not here tonight, but out of transparency and deference to their needs when they're present, we need to make an extended effort this year to use the microphones and not speak at the same time as someone else. 

1:28 

When we have translators here for our committee member who has a hearing impairment, they can’t keep up with what's being said, and the student representative missed a lot of the material as a result. 

1:43 

So we need to be very particular about using those microphones and taking turns. 

1:49 

As a reminder, would you like to demonstrate the appropriate use of the microphone, Holly?

1:54 

I would be happy to. So, click once to turn it on; it will light up green. When you’re done speaking, click once again. 

2:05 

Somebody else's microphone cannot activate if yours hasn’t been turned off, so we may have to remind you to turn it off from time to time.

2:16 

For members of the public observing, the same rules apply for public comment. You’ll be given a microphone, and it's the same rules. 

2:24 

When we have a student here or any individual that has a service animal, please do not interact with that service animal without permission. 

2:35 

I thought when a working dog was working, you let the dog work, but evidently, there has been some engagement with adorable Miss Beasley. 

2:52 

I just want to make sure that everyone remembers that unless Delaney has told you that Beasley is released from her responsibility, Beasley's attention is solely on Delaney.

3:05 

Now, I'm going to go through the responses you provided to our Google form for those that would like to take on additional responsibilities. 

3:17 

The Dyslexia Open House is scheduled for Monday, October 28th, from 5 to 7 p.m. The ACSD has been invited to have a table where we will discuss what we do as a committee. 

3:30 

We’ve got all the materials ready; we just need volunteers to help represent us. I’ve done it a few times; Caroline’s done it with me once. 

3:42 

It’s not hard to do, but we need to spread some of the responsibilities around for the tasks that just the three of us up here at the front are doing on an ongoing basis. 

3:53 

So, if anybody is particularly interested in that topic or if they have plans to be at the Dyslexia Open House anyway and can set aside some time to stay at the ACSD table, that would be greatly appreciated. Please find me, and I'm happy to take your name.

4:07 

Um, pardon, you can say yes anytime you want, Brandon. You want to do it?

4:13 

It's on! It is all you. Thank you!

4:20 

As a reminder, don’t forget to sign in on the sign-up sheet at the entrance to the room. We don’t have a recording secretary anymore, so if you don’t sign in, you’ll be marked absent. 

4:32 

We just can't take attendance in real time like we used to, so please don’t forget to sign that sheet. Holly and I will collect it at the end of the meeting, and that's how we know who is here.

4:44 

I’m going to remind you about that every month because it’s easy to forget. One last reminder: if you could please angle your name tag so that I can see it from the front. 

4:51 

Thank you! I really appreciate it, especially when I’m on decongestants. 

5:05 

As a reminder, when you want to be recognized, speak into the microphone.

5:10 

Thank you! Also, I really love the way you all were very coordinated, like you rehearsed it. 

5:15 

I think that's everything. With that, I defer to our Vice Chair, Miss Thus, for public comment.

5:21 

Thank you! We have one email public comment and one person here for public comment. I’ll just remind everyone that commenters have three minutes. 

5:30 

We do not have our kitchen timer this week, but I will set the timer on my phone and raise my hand when three minutes are up. 

5:44 

We do not publicly react to comments, but they are recorded. 

5:49 

With that, I will read the comment that was sent in via email, then I will call on the in-person comment.

6:02 

The first comment is from Patty Parner: 

"I'm reaching out to the ACSD regarding the need to improve support for twice-exceptional students. At the September 2 event in March 2024, Dr. Reed promised to share a plan by the end of the 2023-2024 school year to create the first FCPS 2 Center. 

6:15 

We are still waiting for FCPS to share that plan. The opening of the 2 Center for middle and high school students cannot come soon enough. Every year, twice-exceptional students leave FCPS for better support and understanding of their individual needs. 

6:26 

When will FCPS open a school with teachers and staff trained to support our students? FCPS needs to provide training to general education teachers to support twice-exceptional students, especially autistic students, in the general education setting. 

6:39 

As a parent of a twice-exceptional elementary student, I already see my child struggling with communication differences and sometimes losing his ability to speak when dysregulated. 

6:46 

He experiences sensory overload, miscommunication, and misunderstandings. He struggles in the school environment and is accused of "refusing to work" when he takes the self-directed breaks that have been written into his IEPs. 

7:00 

Every year, we have multiple meetings to share his support needs with his teachers and staff, and every year it becomes more difficult for us to keep our student enrolled in FCPS. 

7:12 

Please require professional development for all general education teachers to support our twice-exceptional students. If teachers are trained to be proactive and meet the needs of our autistic students, they will have more time for instruction. 

7:24 

Our students will experience less burnout and more academic success. We look forward to learning more about the planned opening and budget of our first FCPS 2 Center this school year."

7:36 

Our public speaker is Michelle KES. Please come to the podium, and I’ll pick off and you click on. I will give you a thumbs up when I accept the time, or you give me a thumbs up, and then I’ll give you a thumbs up.

8:00 

I’ll do my best to keep track of the minutes. Can you please make sure your mic is on?

8:39 

My name is Michelle KES, and I'm the parent of three twice-exceptional children. I testified before the ACSD in April of 2018, which was over six years ago, to share problems encountered by all three of my kids. My youngest, my autistic daughter, is now a high school senior. 

8:53 

To my frustration and dismay, overall, there's been little change in the day-to-day systemic problems faced by twice-exceptional students. To paraphrase the expression: same stuff, different year. There are very few teachers who understand twice-exceptional students, and those who do have shown interest or a willingness to learn. 

9:07 

But overall, as a system, FCPS general education teachers—ranging from electives to standard to advanced courses—are not where they need to be with their knowledge and mindset. This year, my daughter elected to take a specialized hands-on elective class that could absolutely support her future career plans in the museum industry. 

9:32 

The teacher recently requested an IEP meeting to discuss safety concerns. The teacher needed my autistic daughter to employ more two-way communication skills. She physically cannot communicate when she is anxious, unsure, or dysregulated. 

9:46 

She shared that in an introductory letter to all her teachers before the start of the year. She's had IEP goals on communication for years. The teacher's demand that my daughter display this skill is not going to magically make it develop, but the teacher's demand has left my daughter feeling demoralized and invalidated. 

10:05 

The teacher cited my daughter's introductory letter, saying that many of the points highlighted were "red flags." Inclusion is not working for my child. At the end of the meeting, my daughter was in tears, I was in tears, and the special ed team was furious. 

10:24 

My daughter said the meeting brought back that familiar knot in her belly that she feels at meeting after meeting, where general education teachers make harmful comments and show a lack of understanding about twice-exceptional students. One meeting like that is a traumatic event, but multiple meetings like that over several years have led to symptoms of complex PTSD for my child and for me. 

10:53 

We can send FCPS therapy bills, but that's not going to change the damage that has been done, nor will it change the system. FCPS programming for twice-exceptional students does not work for many of them, especially those who are autistic; they cannot access advanced curriculum. 

11:06 

There is clearly a lack of awareness about twice-exceptional students and the teaching practices needed for them to be successful. Stop focusing on what has been shown not to work. Listen to your students and their families; create a program that meets their needs. 

11:23 

Twice-exceptional students are a large portion of the homebound population, and that's not inclusion either. They are depressed and anxious, experiencing school refusal, and some are even suicidal. 

11:36 

By the way, at the end of this story, my daughter dropped the class. She doesn't need it for graduation, and she doesn’t have the physical or emotional energy to handle another year in a class with a general education teacher who doesn’t understand her. 

11:49 

Instead of trying to please and comply with staff to stay in class, I am proud of her decision to set personal limits and say, "No, enough is enough." It’s time for FCPS to do the same thing. 

12:03 

Thank you.

12:13 

Thank you, Michelle.

Here’s the cleaned-up version of the transcript with timestamps retained:

12:21 

Moving on, next on the agenda is Dr. Shannon Anderson, the new manager of the Family Resource Center, to introduce herself.

12:27 

Sure, okay. You do need a mic because we’re recording. 

12:39 

Your voice might carry, but the mic will help. 

12:46 

You probably have to move it closer to you to pick up. 

12:52 

If it's green, that’s good. 

12:58 

Oh no, it's not green. Just push it in and out quickly. 

13:06 

Okay, there we go. Hi everyone, I’m Shannon Anderson. I started my position as manager of the Family Resource Center on August 1. I’m here to go over the update I sent regarding our October webinars and our Family Academy.

13:18 

I’m thrilled to be part of the Family Resource Center and our partnerships. I sent you all an update on what’s been going on in September and October. We've had a great number of webinars take place. 

13:35 

Some of them are listed, but I can go through many of them. We had "Seven Simple Strategies for Sibling Support," the "Back to School Toolkit: Improvement Strategies for Saving and Organizing," and "Overcoming Procrastination" with author Ann Dolan. 

14:02 

We also introduced the new alternative assessment program presented by internal FCPS staff, which helped inform families about this decision-making tool. 

14:16 

Additionally, we had a session on "Setting Limits and Dealing with Dramatic Resistance" by Rachel Bailey, a well-known author. Authors often come because we have about 30,000 people on our email list, and they usually attract a great audience. 

14:54 

We also held a webinar on "Understanding Adolescent Development: The Physical and Emotional Changes." Just last night and this morning, we had a session on "Benchmark Advance," explaining that process.

15:21 

We have external presenters as well as internal staff to fill in gaps in information, ensuring families understand changes in curriculum and other developments.

15:34 

On October 18, we have "Math is Everywhere: Talking to Your Children About Mathematics," and on October 25, we have "Trans Confidence," collaborating with the Department for Aging and Rehabilitation Services.

16:00 

There are QR codes on these and our Family Academy materials for registration. You can attend live or receive a recording, and we also offer interpretation services.

16:28 

We continue our eBook checkout service. Our Padlet is linked here and includes many resources. We’ve noticed some recurring inquiries, such as questions about tutoring, so we plan to hold a webinar on navigating tutoring options.

17:01 

This will be extremely helpful for families to understand available resources. 

17:07 

Our November webinars include topics such as "Escalating Nuclear Meltdown," "Stopping the Shame Cycle," "Reading to Kids with Disabilities," and "Building Resilience: Helping Teens Develop Confidence and Emotional Intelligence."

17:35 

We’ll also start a reading series in November called "Magical Moments Together" at the Family Resource Center. We'll begin with our early literacy and HIPPY groups, hosting a "Brown Bear" activity and eventually opening it up to others who want to bring their children for story time. 

18:08 

We plan to start quarterly and then increase the frequency as we develop it.

18:14 

All the links are included in the materials provided. The recordings of previous webinars are also available; if a link is not hyperlinked, it means the recording isn't available yet.

18:48 

We continue to offer consultations and webinars weekly, along with all the services provided.

19:03 

Great, thank you, Dr. Anderson. I'm wondering, since this is your first opportunity to meet members of the committee, if you could take a few minutes to talk about your career background and what led you to your current role with the Family Resource Center.

19:14 

Oh, I'm sorry, you're going to have to turn your microphone on.

19:25 

Okay, now it’s on. So, I’ve been in education for 28 years. I started as an administrator of an alternative school for grades 6 to 12, working with students who were out of school.

19:34 

I also served as an assistant principal and then opened two charter schools in D.C. with the same organization before moving to Fairfax as an assistant of support at Justice and then Stewart. 

20:21 

I then joined Family School Partnerships as a specialist, focusing on early learning programs. After three years, I became the coordinator for conduct and was later called back to Family School Partnerships after Mary Beth retired. 

20:55 

I had the opportunity to interview for this position, and now I’m back with Family School Partnerships.

21:06 

[Music]

21:17 

You mentioned the Family Academy. Can you explain what it is?

21:24 

Absolutely. The Family Academy is our new online platform that houses all resources related to families. It’s not just for Family and School Partnerships; it includes everything across the school system that touches families. 

21:32 

For example, if you want to learn about the new curriculum, you can search for it in the Family Academy. You might find videos or contact information for further questions. It also includes organizations you can reach out to.

22:06 

Our goal is to create a one-stop shop for anything that services your child and family. The site launched on August 1, and we’re still working to make it user-friendly.

22:31 

While I didn’t build it myself, the curator in my office is dedicated to troubleshooting and ensuring that everything is logically organized.

22:44 

We encourage you to explore the QR codes available. There’s a lot of valuable information that may have been scattered in different locations before, now consolidated in one place for easier access.

23:11 

I also want to highlight that we're looking to partner with the Family Academy. There's a section dedicated to supporting families with students with disabilities in Fairfax County. 

23:30 

As Dr. Anderson mentioned, we’re working on streamlining this information so that it’s not spread across multiple web pages on the FCPS main site.

24:01 

We plan to consolidate and move information previously located in different areas to the Family Academy website, including additional resources related to twice-exceptional learners.

24:28 

Regarding our library, we have many resources available for checkout. You can also access our online library and request books to be sent to your nearest school. 

25:11 

One of our goals this year is to review all the books and resources we have to ensure they are up to date and relevant, and to remove anything outdated.

25:34 

Thank you. Any other questions?

25:40 

Dr. Anderson, you're going to have to turn your mic off. There we go. I was just going to ask about the special ed conference that was held for 18 years before last year. I understand that last year it was changed to have more of a family mental health focus. I’m wondering if we can count on that having more of a special ed flavor this year and if it will be done again next year.

26:12 

I forgot I have the number two mic now. I can only connect when they are disconnected. Dr. Anderson, I can provide some information related to that. This year, I'm happy to announce we are planning a large-scale in-person event similar to our past special education conferences. 

26:40 

It will still be called the Family Summit, but we are going to have a number of dedicated workshops for parents of students with disabilities. This will not be similar to the Family Summit that was piloted last year, which was much smaller in scope with a limited number of workshops. 

27:05 

We have a planning committee coming together, and we will be asking a member of the ACSD to participate on that committee. We’re looking forward to it and will also have a keynote speaker, which we haven't had in quite a few years. 

27:30 

We’re excited to bring back the old format of our special education conference, and it will still be the Family Summit. We have a tentative date of Saturday, March 15, which is about 99% confirmed. 

27:48 

We initially scheduled it for another date but realized it conflicted with the countywide science fairs, so we changed it to March 15. More information will come soon.

28:21 

Did you have a comment?

28:27 

I just wanted to say I'm a huge fan of your library and your staff. You have saved me hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars. If there are books about ADHD, autism, dyslexia, or any topics that you feel you should buy, you can visit the Family Resource Center. 

28:46 

They have many of these books, and if there’s one you really want that they don’t have yet, if you talk to their staff, they will order it for you and let you check it out. Huge fan—thank you! Great job!

29:18 

And we are about to order more books. 

29:25 

I’ve had my eye on a book that costs $88; many people could benefit from it.

30:28 

[Inaudible response]

30:44 

So, there’s that. 

30:58 

Yes, that’s correct.

31:35 

In the interest of time, if there are additional questions, you still have the ability to send us questions for the record, which we will forward to Dr. Anderson after the meeting. Thank you and welcome again. We look forward to…

31:49 

Thank you. Moving on, we do not have our school board liaison here. If she arrives later, we can bring her back in, but in her absence, we’ll move on to the DSS update.

32:08 

Okay, great. Thank you, Liz. I am going to share my screen to present a brief PowerPoint with some updates that we wanted to share. I also wanted to let you know that Don Schaefer, our Director of the Office of Special Education Procedural Support, has joined us on our Zoom call. She will also be presenting some updates.

32:27 

Let me share my screen, and we can go ahead and get started. One second... Here we go.

32:46 

I wanted to start by sharing some updates related to the Virginia Literacy Act. For quite a few months, we have been preparing as a county to implement some components of the Virginia Literacy Act in Fairfax County Public Schools. 

33:05 

I just want to preface this by saying that I am not the expert on all things related to the Virginia Literacy Act, so I received some of this information from my program manager, who is working closely with instructional services. If you have any follow-up questions related to this information I’m presenting, please write them on your cards here, and I'll get them to the right people who can answer those questions.

33:28 

I fear that if I get a lot of very specific questions, I'm probably not the one to have that information tonight. But in general, the curriculum for all classrooms in Fairfax County, grades kindergarten through eight, will be using a state-approved curriculum as a basal resource called Benchmark Advance. This is for students accessing the general education curriculum.

34:03 

The Virginia Literacy Act applies to students in grades K through three, but Fairfax County has decided to implement the basal resource for kindergarten through eighth grade. 

34:13 

We also have a curriculum for students on an adapted curriculum, specifically those with significant cognitive disabilities who may take the Virginia Alternative Assessment Program (VAAP). We’ve ensured that this adapted curriculum is aligned with the science of reading. We have a vendor called Attainment, and I can provide the specific grade-level curriculum names as a supplement to this.

34:59 

We have the curriculum broken down into specific grade levels, K through eight. Again, I will share additional details regarding that. I won’t be able to go into specifics tonight. So, we have two different basal resources: one for students on the general curriculum and another for those on the adapted curriculum.

35:32 

As for the assessments required by the Virginia Literacy Act, all students in kindergarten through grade two will receive the Virginia Language and Literacy Screening System, or the VLS assessment. For students in grades three through eight, they will take the I-Ready screener, which we’ve had in place here in Fairfax County for several years.

35:49 

Some students in grade three may also participate in the VLS assessment if they score at the 15th percentile or lower on the I-Ready. This is to inform decision-making around intervention.

36:13 

As a result of these assessments, all students in kindergarten through grade eight who may need extra support or intervention due to being at risk will receive additional support through intervention. A reading plan will be developed for them, which will provide an additional 30 minutes a day, five days a week, of intervention time.

36:48 

You will receive a copy of this PowerPoint, which includes a link to a resource page where you can access various resources provided to support literacy for families.

37:01 

The next part of our updates relates to special education staffing, recruitment, and retention. Last year, we provided numerous updates as we went through the school year, and again this year we recognize that special education positions are a critical area of need.

37:15 

We have hired a dedicated recruitment administrator for special services within our Human Resources Department, Peter Choy. He started in August of this year and has been a great addition, focusing solely on recruitment for special educators across all disciplines. 

37:42 

He’s interested in recruiting not just special education teachers but also instructional assistants. If we have significant vacancies for speech and language pathologists or other critical areas, he can support recruitment and hiring in those areas.

38:02 

Peter will be starting some monthly information sessions for potential candidates. We have pathways for instructional assistants and teachers who may not be special education endorsed to obtain their endorsements in special education. 

38:23 

Peter is available to help navigate staff members through some of our cohorts with universities like George Mason, James Madison, and VCU. We have partnerships with these universities to provide these opportunities, including discounted tuition for participation in these cohorts.

38:50 

We’re trying to provide opportunities to recruit and incentivize our teachers and instructional assistants to receive their endorsements in special education. We are providing information on the public web and sharing additional information through Human Resources newsletters.

39:08 

He’s also offering individual career counseling and connections for recruitment. We're excited that this school year, the CC Conference for Exceptional Children will be in Baltimore. This provides a great opportunity for us. In years past, we have had a booth in the exhibit hall dedicated to recruitment. 

39:41 

The last few conferences have been in the Midwest or western part of the country, where foot traffic hasn't been as strong from the Northern Virginia and DC area. So, we’re really excited that the conference will be in Baltimore this year.

39:58 

We’re hopeful that we will attract a number of potential candidates—people interested in attending universities here locally and individuals looking for a career change—to participate in that conference. We will have a booth ready and available with a team to provide information about all our different critical need areas.

40:17 

The nice thing about the conference is that we're able to conduct on-site interviews and provide contracts the same day if we have the appropriate process in place. This allows us to engage in early hiring, and we've received permission from Human Resources to proceed with this process. 

40:37 

We want to ensure that we’re recruiting qualified teachers early, especially since there's a lot of competition from local divisions for our educators. Again, we’re doing all we can to keep our good teachers here.

41:01 

Regarding our new recruitment administrator, we are also continuing to support our teachers through our induction program, which in Fairfax we call "Great Beginnings." We had a summer institute that provided three full days of professional development for our new special educators and general educators. 

41:19 

Specifically, we have nine special education cohorts differentiated by teaching assignment level, involving roughly 325 novice teachers in special education. They are now meeting monthly for professional development and are connected to the central office supports available in instruction and behavior.

41:46 

Our ABA team also has a cohort dedicated to new speech and language pathologists. We’re really trying to provide monthly touchpoints to support our new educators as part of our efforts to retain them and help them navigate the challenges of being first-year teachers, which can be stressful.

42:05 

We aim to make this experience less stressful, and we will continue providing monthly professional development. 

42:23 

Lastly, we have targeted support for positions called "teacher trainees." These are individuals who have even less experience than provisionally licensed special education teachers; they are taking their introductory courses while teaching in the classroom.

42:48 

This pathway allows someone interested in becoming a licensed, endorsed special education teacher to receive additional support while they work through this process. Teacher trainees help fill some of the critical vacancies we have at the start of the school year.

43:08 

This year, we did not have as many vacancies at the beginning of the school year as in the last two years. If you recall, last school year, I mentioned that we had to deploy about 25 or 26 central office staff members into classrooms. This year, that number was about five or six, and all were back in their central office positions within two weeks.

43:39 

Schools were able to secure long-term substitutes, teacher trainees, or they were in the process of hiring certified licensed teachers and just needed to complete the onboarding with Human Resources. It was a positive change that we weren't in as critical a situation regarding staffing deployments as last year.

44:06 

I wanted to provide quick updates on the special education enhancement plan and some initiatives we are implementing this year. Without going into too much detail, one of our key focuses is working more closely with our special education department chairs located at every school—elementary, middle, and high school.

44:29 

In the last couple of years, many of our department chairs were asked to fill vacancies at their schools. When we developed this position at the elementary level—a special education department chair—it was meant to support teachers within the school, allowing that person to provide coaching around behavior, instruction, and assessment.

44:54 

However, many of those chairs were assigned to classrooms and couldn’t fulfill their intended role. This year, we are in a much better place. Almost all department chairs are now in dedicated positions, not filling classrooms. While a few are still classroom teachers, we want to build their capacity for coaching to provide literacy and math support to their special education staff.

45:34 

We will be implementing an inclusive education framework with guiding principles for academic and social models of inclusion. We’re working with a consultant to assess and improve our inclusive practices in Fairfax County as part of the enhancement plan.

46:04 

We are providing professional development and resources to teachers of advanced courses who instruct twice-exceptional learners. Our twoe specialist, Dr. O, who was here last year, is continuing her work to develop professional development with our team.

46:24 

Now, I will turn things over to Don Schaefer.

46:33 

She’s going to cover some updates to the enhancement plan, focusing on the last four bullets on our screen.

46:43 

Don: Good evening, everybody. Mike, I don't know if Rachel has a copy of the presentation, but what's projected on Zoom is just the cover page for the recording.

46:57 

I'm talking pretty loudly here at my house, so I hope you can hear me. Let me see if turning this up helps.

47:11 

[Music] 

47:18 

Don: Is it showing on the screen now? 

47:25 

Yes, thanks.

47:30 

So, we’re also doing some additional work around transitions—not just our post-secondary transition, but also from pre-K to kindergarten, elementary to middle school, middle to high school, and obviously post-secondary. We are developing division-wide expectations for these transitions.

47:53 

Along with that, we have revised the transition toolkit that our CTS office has put together. We would love your feedback. Elizabeth, I can send you that link or to whomever you’d like. We’d appreciate your insights and feedback as a committee.

48:17 

One of the recommendations from the AIR report a few years ago was to update our IEP progress report. That will likely happen for deployment in the fall of 2025 due to other priorities in the development queue. It makes sense to do this at the beginning of the school year.

48:45 

Regarding translations, we have what's called the Google Translation Hub, which provides machine translation for many materials. We still have human translators in the office, but this is helping with turnaround times and availability of additional languages for our families.

49:27 

We are currently working to securely translate IEPs and 504 plans within SEARS, and we will provide training to staff on that soon. We should have something to test internally very shortly. Our vendor is finalizing the last pieces of that development.

49:57 

Along those same lines, we’ve also updated the parent/guardian input form for special education. I’ll send that to you, Elizabeth, for dissemination and feedback. We've incorporated quite a bit of feedback and made several changes. Our hope is that it's more user-friendly and loads properly on the FCPS website.

50:36 

The questions and prompts are designed to be more accessible, allowing families to share their input in a more meaningful way. We’ll be sending you these materials for your input and thoughts.

50:49 

Mike, do you want me to share the compensatory education update as well? I know you're interested in ABA.

51:05 

The COVID-19 compensatory education is going quite well. We have shifted from focusing on completion of meetings and reimbursements for past expenses during the pandemic to providing services to students whose teams indicated they required those services. That’s our big push right now.

51:35 

If you look at the yellow part of the chart, there’s a section for future reimbursements, which are ongoing—either reimbursements to families or direct payments to private providers for services determined necessary by those teams. 

51:57 

We are offering a variety of options for those services, including Saturday school, which starts on November 16th, as well as services with FCPS teachers, Varsity Tutor Services, and private provider services. 

52:29 

Our hope is to deliver these services to the students in need. Thanks, everybody. It’s great to see you.

52:35 

Mike: Great, thank you, Don. I’ll share this last slide quickly to give you updates on our classrooms and the growth we've seen. 

52:41 

This year, as part of our ABA programs, we opened 35 new preschool autism classrooms and 18 new enhanced autism classrooms in our elementary schools. 

53:00 

Over the summer, we trained 71 new preschool autism classroom staff through Hands-On training, which allows staff to interact with children brought in by their parents during the summer. 

53:19 

This hands-on experience helps staff learn new skills while working with students with autism. It's very beneficial. All of our ABA coaches are engaged in this training opportunity, modeling skills and working alongside our instructional assistants and teachers to build their skills before the new school year.

53:48 

We also trained 100 secondary and elementary staff in our August Hands-On training. Additionally, we provide Hands-On training for teachers in our intellectual disability and severe intellectual disability classrooms.

54:01 

There’s a hands-on experience for those teachers as well. That’s all I have to update on the slides, but I see there are a number of questions.

54:10 

I want to share something pretty amazing that happened when you mentioned CCEP. 

54:19 

It reminded me that the state of Virginia decided to... 

54:51 

Anyway, I just thought that was pretty amazing. 

55:00 

[Music]

55:05 

I was just wondering how parents will be notified about the reading plans. Will they be contacted?

55:20 

Yes, I’m glad you mentioned that. Parents will have access to view their child’s reading plan through Parent View. I believe the first reports are going to be sent out at the end of October. I was told today that it would be the end of October.

55:38 

I’m not exactly sure what the communication process will be, but you can expect parents will receive information soon as those reports or reading plans become available in Parent View. 

55:49 

I was also told that if a parent does not have access to Parent View, schools will be able to provide a printed hard copy of their child’s reading plan.

56:02 

Amanda, you may not be able to answer this tonight, and I totally understand, but could it be brought back to the committee next month? I appreciate it.

56:21 

You mentioned the adaptive curriculum for literacy from the Attainment Company. If the adapted curriculum classrooms are using a completely separate curriculum from what is used in general education, how does that impact the ability of the students in those classrooms to mainstream for core instruction in literacy and increase inclusion opportunities?

56:54 

Thank you. I won’t provide an answer now, but as you said, we’ll make sure to have an answer next month or provide it in written form.

57:05 

Can I mention one more thing? Since Amanda mentioned literacy, I forgot to mention that we had an opportunity last month to present to the POAK leadership team and membership at their back-to-school meeting in September. 

57:22 

There were a lot of questions about enhanced autism classrooms and what the implementation of the basal resources would look like in those multi-grade classrooms. 

57:29 

I wanted to share that we do have materials provided to all those multi-age classrooms, both the Benchmark Advanced Materials and some adapted curriculum materials. Some classrooms may have a mix of students on adapted or general curriculum.

57:58 

We’ve also started a specific cohort, a collaborative team we call CTS (Collaborative Teams), specifically for multi-grade classroom teachers. We had our first meeting this week with about 50 teachers in attendance. 

58:16 

Dr. Agrawal reported that a number of them were teachers of enhanced autism classrooms. We want to do these monthly CTS meetings to provide extra support and learning.

58:37 

Another thing mentioned in the POAK meeting was some supplemental materials to support multilingual learners called Benchmark Express. We’re meeting with the ESL team next week because some components of the Benchmark Express materials are really good supports for all students, specifically students with disabilities.

59:03 

We’ll be working to provide guidance to our special educators on how they might access and use the Benchmark Express materials they already have but may not know they can use to supplement their classroom activities.

59:17 

Additionally, Benchmark Advance has many built-in scaffolds that teachers can access to support students with disabilities. These are just a few extra ways we’re trying to support our teachers.

59:43 

I remember there weren’t as many opportunities for transitions to private school levels. There just weren't enough spots with providers.

1:00:03 

May I...? 

1:00:18 

Don, were you able to hear that question?

1:00:23 

I had to turn on close captioning, and my computer also died, so it’s been a lovely evening. 

1:00:30 

Thank you for that. We are working on tackling that issue from a couple of different angles.

1:00:44 

One of our approaches is finding additional providers, which requires us to reach further into Maryland, west, and south. We have had some success in adding more private day providers.

1:01:06 

Thank you to the Policy and Regulation Subcommittee of the ACSD for working with us in the spring to update our restraint and seclusion policy. This update clarifies that we can place students in private day schools that use prone restraints, not supine restraints. 

1:01:31 

This will provide us with additional private day school options. To be clear, these are schools that were options prior to our restraint and seclusion policy, and we would be bringing them back as options for our students. 

1:01:51 

We still have students in those schools, but they are there at their parents' request, so to speak. This policy should go before the school board sometime this fall. We're still waiting for confirmation. 

1:02:17 

Mike, I don’t know if you’ve seen anything regarding a date, but we’ve been in touch to get that in front of the board for consideration and approval. Thanks for your question; it’s certainly an issue impacting many of our programs.

1:02:53 

[Music] 

1:02:58 

I wonder if you could provide some hard numbers, both total numbers and percentages, on how many special education teachers left last year. There’s some concern about a large exodus, as well as the current numbers of teacher trainees, provisional teachers, long-term subs, and short-term subs.

1:03:19 

Sure, I can definitely get that information. If you put that on the 4x6 card, then I can easily get that information. We were able to gather that data last year for the committee, and I'm sure we can do it again this year. 

1:03:46 

One data point I’m unsure we received last year was the number of special educators who left Fairfax County Public Schools, but I’ll check to see if we can get that information this year. The other numbers related to provisionally licensed teachers, trainees, long-term subs, we can definitely obtain.

1:04:10 

Any other questions? 

1:04:16 

Go ahead, Brandon. 

1:04:36 

What efforts are in place to ensure that kids...?

1:05:07 

Thanks, Brandon. I know that question has come up a few times. For example, in our hearing and vision program, we have staff members who themselves have visual or hearing impairments. We do employ individuals with disabilities in Fairfax County Public Schools. 

1:05:42 

A person who applies for a position does not have to disclose whether they have a disability, but our hiring practices are such that if you're a qualified individual and go through our processes, you can be hired regardless of disability status.

1:06:17 

We also have programs at the high school level where students with disabilities support various roles throughout the county. For instance, in my office of special education instruction, we've partnered with a high school to have two students come into our office one day a week. 

1:06:35 

They perform various office tasks, gaining experience in an office environment, as well as developing interpersonal skills. This is part of their program of studies to gain those experiences. 

1:07:05 

We have positions in the county beyond teaching or instructional roles, where we’re always looking to hire qualified people. We also try to partner with high schools to support individuals in those programs, including our STEP program, Davis Center, Pulley Center, and other career and transition programs.

1:07:31 

I see Don has her hand raised. Thanks, Mike.

1:07:36 

Brandon, I really appreciate your question.

1:07:44 

As part of the transition planning process and the work being done through the enhancement plan and the strategic plan, there is a specific focus on job training for our students as they transition out of K-12 eligibility. This is particularly important in my office right now.

1:08:13 

We have hired at least one person with a disability to work with us, and we are supporting that person to transition from an hourly role to a full-time position. This commitment starts small, person by person, while also developing larger-scale programs.

1:08:56 

Thank you for your question. Go ahead, Mar, and anyone else interested can let me know if you have another comment or question.

1:09:10 

The follow-up question for you is: Is a plan being developed to systematically employ large numbers of FCPS graduates following their graduation?

1:09:24 

That is the goal. This is very much a Career Transition Services project that dovetails with the enhancement plan. The portion of the enhancement plan I oversee involves process improvements.

1:09:46 

It's in the works. Lauren, I think you asked the question, and if you have thoughts, we would certainly welcome them as we begin to pull this together in a larger way.

1:10:01 

Thank you, Mike. Does anyone have any other follow-up questions? As Mike pointed out, we have the 4x6 cards to track questions for the record. 

1:10:24 

I think your mic is turned off. They gave me mic number one, and I already don’t know how to use it! I haven't earned it yet. Thank you, Don.

1:10:45 

All right, moving on to the next item, I have a couple of organizational items to review. For the second part of this agenda, I want to workshop collaboratively what this might look like this year. 

1:10:58 

First and foremost, I understand the mass confusion that exists. I want to share that I feel it too. I didn’t know this was how we were going to operate until shortly before the first committee meeting of the year.

1:11:28 

As I mentioned to one of the subcommittees earlier today, if I seem like I know what I’m doing, then I’m faking it well. I am the duck paddling under the water.

1:11:49 

In the school board's attempt to make advisory committees easier, they have successfully made it harder. This happens when a government entity is tasked with finding a solution.

1:12:01 

I understand the confusion; I'm feeling it too. Culturally, we need to feel free to push back. The school board works for us; we don’t work for them. Staff excluded, of course, as you work for the superintendent, and the superintendent works for the school board. 

1:12:25 

The school board works for the voters and citizens in their constituency. I’m perfectly okay with us collaboratively telling the school board that we are not going to do it their way; we will do it our way.

1:12:44 

We are the volunteers, and we get to decide how we find meaning and appropriate work from this experience. That being said, I believe they have told us what they value, and to the degree that we can align with that, it's in all our interests to do so. 

1:13:07 

This helps them receive information in the way they’ve asked. Where I separate from their guidance is that, as a state-mandated committee, we are to advise on matters affecting students with disabilities within the division.

1:13:24 

If we decide there’s something we value that isn’t listed in the strategic plan, I’m not going to tell you not to pursue it. That’s what we’re supposed to do. 

1:13:43 

We don’t have to capitulate to their rules if they don’t work for us. We are the volunteers who care deeply about what’s happening. 

1:14:02 

I want to acknowledge that not everything fits into neat little boxes. This is all new, and we’re figuring it out, and we might mess up.

1:14:18 

The only thing I can offer is that I want these meetings to be workshop-like, where anyone can provide guidance to others working on something. 

1:14:26 

I expect everyone to be receptive to that guidance. Just because someone offers advice doesn’t mean you have to take it, but we all have valuable experiences to contribute.

1:14:45 

That being said, some logistical elements of what we hope to do this year involve ideas that Mike, Holly, and I have been discussing. I offer these for your consideration.

1:15:02 Lengthening the time period that the subcommittees meet and shortening the time that the main committee meets, with the expectation that very specific and specialized speakers will come to your subcommittee rather than to the main meeting. It doesn't exclude speakers from the main meeting, but many of us have felt that the general nature of the information offered didn’t necessarily enhance our work. It was interesting and helpful in its own way, but not specialized enough. Some subcommittees have wanted specific speakers for their topics. I’m not sure that 45 minutes is enough for that, but having an intimate conversation with an expert around a table with only four or five people, instead of a speaker at the front of the room talking to 30 people, could yield more valuable information. I’d like to offer this idea to the committee for their thoughts on this logistical aspect of how we run.

1:16:19 I'm seeing a lot of nodding, but it's not on the recording. If you're nodding, go ahead. Amanda?

1:16:25 This is my first year on ACS, and I agree that subcommittee time has always been short for the amount of work we need to accomplish. Given that’s the only time we can meet unless we call a special meeting, my concern about lengthening the subcommittee time is ensuring we have time for things like the DSS updates or larger committee conversations about policy that also need to happen. That ability for us all to be in a room and ask questions is valuable too, so I don't want to lose that entirely.

1:17:01 To be more specific, we talked about subcommittees starting at 6:00 PM and going until 7:15 PM, with the main committee starting at 7:30 PM and going until 9:00 PM. This would not eliminate or shorten our standard agenda items, but it would more frequently allocate a special speaker to the subcommittee level. It’s an idea, not a decision.

1:18:00 Jay, you're next.

1:18:07 Since we’re all flexible, I wanted to point out that we don’t have to do exactly the same thing every month. For example, if we have a particularly interesting topic or speaker, we could adjust accordingly. I like the idea in general. The only thing we’d have to do is ensure that all the subcommittees use the same amount of time. If you had a speaker scheduled, and then we had something interesting for the main meeting, that could be a challenge. But I agree, it doesn’t have to be the same every month.

1:18:51 I like the idea of extending the time for more guest speakers in our subcommittees. We should provide a readout after our subcommittee meetings so that the larger committee can benefit from what we discussed.

1:19:11 That’s something we’ve been talking about. Ali?

1:19:17 I was just going to say I like Jay’s idea on flexibility. We need to ensure some meetings have a speaker for the main meeting, not only to fulfill our state mandate but also to assist the local school division in interpreting plans for the community. It’s important for the public to see the committee and for people to attend our meetings when there’s a speaker. I think that’s crucial for our outreach and aligns with our mandate.

1:20:32 Brandon, you're welcome to chime in.

1:20:38 I’d be happy to defer the chairpersonship to you as I go home and sleep. I hear you. I had a profound thought, but while listening to Ally, it slipped away. It will come back. 

1:21:00 Oh, I know! I agree with you. One of my goals this year is to elevate public comment. I proposed to Holly and Mike that we set aside one or two meetings to solicit public input—Town Hall style—so that members of the public can tell us their concerns. This could serve as a conduit to the school board, as we preserve those comments and include them in our annual report. I’m thinking maybe December or January for this.

1:21:58 We discussed limiting public comment time in earlier drafts of the advisory manual, and we felt that it was important not to limit public comments, as our work is informed by them. So, I’d like to solicit and have meetings where we invite constituent groups to share their insights, as we represent only a small fraction of the community.

1:22:43 Many families with students with disabilities want to feel heard. Lauren?

1:23:19 I just wanted to add that if we do Town Halls, they should be live and virtual, as many families can’t make it in person. If they can participate online, more will engage.

1:23:37 I agree. For this to work, we’d have to allow video comments. We can work out the details if the committee agrees to pursue this.

1:23:49 Ally?

1:23:56 You may have already thought of this, but inviting more staff to those meetings could encourage public comments. It would help to have staff present to hear concerns, even if they don’t respond on the spot. It could be a meet-and-greet atmosphere where the public can speak, and staff can introduce themselves.

1:24:51 I like the idea of having this type of meeting twice a year, perhaps in May or June after our heavy lift is done. 

1:25:02 I planned to talk about meeting timing, but it segues nicely from what you said about having meeting speakers. Joanne?

1:25:20 I’m not sure how many were on the committee before, but we used to have powerful Town Halls that yielded great feedback. I’d love to see those return, as some of the best work came from those comments. One concern raised in subcommittees was how to get more responsiveness from school board members. Showing the number of people involved can encourage responsiveness from public officials.

1:26:22 I agree. We should keep the public comment process open and ensure we listen to the community. 

1:26:36 Harry, do you have a final thought?

1:27:05 Yes, I think having a more subcommittee-focused approach with speakers is positive. However, I want to caution that when meetings extended late, we faced challenges in recruiting new members, especially those with disabilities. If we extend subcommittee time for speakers, we might need to streamline the main meeting that month. 

1:28:41 It's important for member recruitment and maintaining a consistent quorum to avoid overloading individual members. 

1:29:02 Al, do you have something to add?

1:29:09 I hope that subcommittee reports during main meetings become more interactive. Each subcommittee could have ideas that align with others, benefiting the whole committee. Last year, we only did quick updates; this year, I’d like to expand that.

1:29:51 Before we move on, I want to confirm the subcommittee chairs. I know one subcommittee only had one attendee, and I told Mimi that means she gets to assign the absent person. 

1:30:04 Goal one, who is your chair?

1:30:17 I absolutely did choose—it's our wonderful chair.

1:30:22 Anything else you want to share from your committee time?

1:30:29 No, we really just spent time getting to know each other.

1:30:35 Next subcommittee?

1:30:42 Two? I drew the straw again. Oh, thank God.

1:30:54 

I am the committee chair, and we actually looked at the measures. Several of us worked together last year, and we’re going to focus primarily on Measure C. We felt that C connects to really all the other measures, focusing on student access for emotional, behavioral, mental, and physical health, as well as engagement in school. You may find that a lot of people want to join this committee; it was the second most popular one. Interestingly, it was the same group that worked together last year. You may find people from other subcommittees adding some things to that.

1:31:42 

[Music]

1:32:09 

I almost—oh, that is grand.

1:32:24 

Grand! You had one job! No, that’s fine; you can email me.

1:33:07 

If you have any issues, feel free to reach out and say, “Hey, I'm trying to do this, and I’m having a hard time.”

1:33:17 

I remember a time when one advisory committee decided not to do an annual report because they were frustrated with how their previous report was received. I respect that because we hold the power. Yes, we’ve agreed to a job, and yes, there are state regulations, but they work for us. I can't stress that enough. If something doesn’t fit within this framework but you all decide it’s important, we can just state that in the report—that it didn’t fit into the framework. But that’s on us for not considering it when we were doing the strategic plan.

1:34:21 

With the remaining time for this segment of the committee, we wanted to discuss how we get started—how we validate our claims, research, gather data, make data requests to staff, and pose good questions. Jay, I hope you don’t mind me putting you on the spot, but you had some great comments about this. In fact, you raised the issue last year about the need for guidance on how to ask better questions. 

1:34:58 

We need to be aware that if we don’t get the answer we want, it might not be because the question was wrong. We may need to follow up, and we’ve built into our calendar that we will ask for data requests a month early. This gives us some time for back and forth. If the question isn’t clear to staff, we won’t just get a yes or no; we’ll receive something meaningful.

1:35:24 

We don’t know what those deadlines are yet, but we will provide that information. With that being said, Jay, if you wouldn’t mind sharing some of the comments you shared with me and Holly separately.

1:35:39 

Just put a hand up if I’m rambling too long. Last year was my first year, and I looked back over the questions we asked. There was a wide range of responses. We had a few questions that received detailed answers, and then we had very specific questions that got simple yes or no responses. I tried to dissect those questions and analyze what worked and what didn’t.

1:36:30 

I realized it wasn’t all about the question itself, but here are a couple of guidelines: Some answers indicated that we should do a little research to see if we can find answers ourselves. If we get an answer that isn’t good enough, we can improve our question by saying, “In this publicly available information, we learned X, but we’re wondering why.”

1:37:10 

Another thing to remember is that the purpose of our questions is to gather information to make better recommendations. For instance, if we suggest implementing a policy to ensure more uniform application of discipline, we should first ask what is already being done. 

1:37:36  

An example from last year was asking, “What outcomes do you expect from out-of-school suspension compared to other forms of discipline?” While it was a clear question, the answer was framed in terms of equity rather than the impacts on students and families. I had all that context in mind when I asked the question, so I almost wish we had framed it differently.

1:38:14 

I think there needs to be a mechanism for follow-up because even if we ask the perfect question, maybe the right person didn’t see it, or it wasn’t understood. I hope we have more opportunities for follow-up conversations rather than just a one-month turnaround. 

1:39:03 

To clarify, we’re not asking the questions earlier; we actually have our report due a month later, which opens up some time for us. You don’t have to have your questions ready in November, but I agree that a first pass where we brainstorm could be helpful. I’m preparing some notes to go out in November with examples of questions that generated good responses versus those that didn’t.

1:40:35 

One important point is to establish guidelines on what kinds of questions can be answered. If we asked something like, “What data do you have about X?” and the response is, “We don’t have data on that,” we should clarify what data is available.

1:41:08 

With the new structure aligned to the goals, I can look at the goals and measures to identify which central office departments might be able to provide answers. Expanding subcommittee time could also facilitate live interactions with central office staff, similar to how the policy and regulations committee handled the restraint and seclusion policy. That created a great dialogue.

1:42:29 

It would be helpful if we could pull data from the WorkX system into a centralized webpage for ACSD use. Having a repository of staff responses from previous ACSD reports, restraint and seclusion data, and other resources would save us time and effort.

1:43:15 

I also think there are publicly accessible resources that many of us may not know about. I’m planning to send each of your subcommittees the baseline data report received by the school board, as well as links to statistical data on the BOE website. 

1:44:11 

Additionally, looking at past committee reports can provide insights into recurring issues, which could inform our discussions going forward.

1:45:01 

Lastly, I want to echo that I understand the confusion and the enormity of this change. I completely validate those feelings because I’m feeling it too. If I appear to know what’s going on, I’m just a really good actress—there’s been a lot of work behind the scenes.

1:46:18 

A lot of other questions, Amanda?

1:46:24 

So moving on... oh, I’m sorry, on your computer I can’t see it.

1:46:29 

Oh yeah, I’m sorry, that’s my fault. Okay, so just if I understand: I know that the school board has asked that their work always align with the strategic plan. Did we change our subcommittees to align with the strategic plan because that’s what they want? Any advice they give has to align, so what comes from their advisory committees has to align. Is that correct?

1:46:54 

The new operating manual states that every recommendation an advisory committee makes must be aligned with the strategic plan. So that made you feel the necessity of changing the subcommittees?

1:47:01 

Okay, just the reason I mentioned this is because it’s been on my mind since that vote last week. I felt like our old subcommittee structure aligned better with the state mandate. If we’re all reporting around the school board charge just through the lines of the strategic plan, we’re basically telling them what their priority is. Our priority is to inform them, but part of our state mandate is for us to communicate the unmet needs of special education students. 

1:47:51 

The old subcommittee structure, which aligned with the mandate, included community engagement, policy review, etc. I feel like our state mandate was used to choose those subcommittees, and now it seems like our entire report is just us reiterating what the school board told us. They said they want to hear from us, but our mandate clearly indicates we should help them identify unmet needs and priorities.

1:48:39 

I share your frustration. Two things I think are relevant: one is that in the state regulation, it’s deliberately vague, allowing local divisions to interpret what they find useful. Secondly, it’s in our interest to deliver our recommendations in the format they’ve requested. This removes any plausible deniability about whether the recommendation was one they were willing to hear. 

1:49:25 

That being said, I’m open to revisiting this topic. We decide how we operate, so if we collectively agree it doesn’t work, I’m ready to discuss it.

1:49:38 

I also understand the frustration regarding the late notice of the motion. That was largely due to late information about how everything was supposed to look and work. I, too, have a full-time job, and it was challenging to get everything together sooner. 

1:50:02 

However, anyone can make motions at any time; there’s no requirement under Robert’s Rules to get motions in advance. It’s designed to allow anyone who wants to make a motion to do so. If you think it doesn’t work for you, bring it up for conversation.

1:50:28 

I would be thrilled to see greater participation in this process because honestly, I can’t take on the whole burden of decision-making. It’s too much for me and for Holly. The board aimed to make things easier for smaller committees, but for us, it’s made it more difficult. If you want to do it differently, just tell me, and I’ll support this group with anyone on the board who disagrees.

1:51:21 

Just be aware they might fire me, and one of you will have to step in.

1:51:29 

[Music] I have a related procedural question. We need to look at draft policies and offer feedback before they’re presented. Don mentioned the restraint inclusion policy is being updated. In prior years, the chair would assign it to a subcommittee, probably policy R, and we had a process for that. 

1:51:49 

What I envision is ad hoc work groups, as the operating manual allows us to do that. For example, for First Class Awards or restraint policies, I’ve asked a few people if they want to work on a proposal to bring to the whole committee for discussion. 

1:52:23 

I don’t mean we all go through it line by line for an hour, but one of the challenges with policy and regulations is that they have their own section of the report while doing additional work. I hope we can figure this out as we go along; I’m still learning about the process since this was new to me too. 

1:53:01 

We should ask about the policies we were promised in the September meeting. I haven’t received anything yet. Remember, we have a mandate with our elected officials. Those of you who represent school board members should communicate that all of us are voters and constituents in Fairfax County. 

1:53:32 

Ask your elected official why they aren’t following the rules. 

1:53:57 

Does anyone have anything else they want to add? I want to express my gratitude for this conversation. I want people to engage, and I recognize not everyone wants to speak up. That’s fine; you all have my email address. Please reach out to me directly or through an anonymous comment if you prefer.

1:54:30 

Anything else? Moving on to new business.

1:54:45 

PS social media—oh yeah, sorry.

1:55:03 

Ali mentioned during member time last month that our social media policy is based on an old ACSD structure. I promised to follow up on that this month. So, I have a motion to make: the current social media policy states that social media administrators include the four people who used to be members of the executive committee. We only have two members now. 

1:55:50 

The motion is that the ACSD recommends a revision to the social media policy to allow an additional committee member to be appointed as an administrator of the existing social media accounts. This returns us to the previous structure, which allows someone else to help share the workload.

1:56:17 

I’d like to point out that the rest of the social media policy remains intact, so there are tight parameters around what can be posted. Whoever volunteers or is appointed will work alongside Holly and me; they won’t be going rogue unless they choose to.

1:56:34 

We need a second for the motion. 

1:56:41 

Any questions or discussion?

1:57:14 

Go ahead.

1:57:22 

So, this would be appointed by the full committee, and it would require a vote?

1:57:27 

Yes, thank you. That’s a good question. All additional roles outside of committee work require committee agreement.

1:57:34 

I think we need to decide the role before we proceed with that.

1:57:55 

As the steward of Robert's Rules, I can’t do that, but we’ll get there. So, I call the vote: all those in favor of the motion as presented, say “aye.” All those opposed, say “no.” Any abstentions?

1:58:23 

Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Would anyone like to make a motion for who the volunteer should be?

1:58:34 

I move that Nita be appointed as our social media rep. Do we have a second?

1:58:53 

Hold on, I’m just keeping up with my notes. Who would like to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of appointing Nita?

1:59:05 

Anyone? I hereby call the vote: all in favor of appointing Nita as our additional social media rep, say “aye.” All opposed, say “no.” Any abstentions?

1:59:19 

Can somebody else handle the Twitter? 

1:59:25 

I was the former administrator, and I can help get access to the Twitter account.

1:59:31 

I’m sorry, I’m speaking up here. 

2:00:04 

The support group will meet the first Saturday in November from 10 to 11:30 at the Oak Library. There’s also an event on November 17 at the K Mosaic District store where they will donate 20% of purchases to our cause, so please come by and shop for the holidays.

2:00:27 

Thank you. Adriana, since I am representing the voters, I want to mention that voting is ongoing now. There are three centers open, and I believe an additional one will open soon.

2:00:46 

Thank you, Daniel. 

2:01:04 

I don’t know if this is appropriate, but I wanted to get this on the record. As the liaison to the Services Board, information should flow both ways. If there are ever questions on how the community services board supports students and their families, I’m happy to answer those questions. My contact information is available.

2:01:49 

I would also like the opportunity to answer those, so I'm putting myself out there as a resource for anything CSP-related. I do work in support coordination for individuals with developmental disabilities, so my experience in other areas of the CSP may be a little more limited, but I am very good at pointing people in the right direction.

2:02:12 

Thank you, Bron. I came across something with a few of my friends. There is a concern with social media, and this has a bigger impact on self-presentation. 

2:02:32 

Recent studies indicate that this focus on self-presentation on social media is associated with adolescents. One conclusion they reached is that we should talk to our kids about how they present themselves online, knowing that they are not alone in this issue. 

2:03:44 

This is a very recent study, so I just thought I’d bring that up. If you send me the link to that study, I'll include it with the resources I'm sending out to the committee if you want.

2:04:48 

I'll give my update as a representative on the ACs. SEPA is holding an IEP event on Saturday, November 16, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. I think they’re partnering with BSS on that. It's a great opportunity for constituents who might be new to the IEP process. There will be breakout sessions covering different parts of the IEP process, including a mock IEP that was very helpful last time.

2:05:14 

If you have constituents who are new and feeling overwhelmed, this is a place where there will be lots of FCPS staff available to ask questions. 

2:05:41 

Regarding the mini-grants, any FCPS teachers and staff can apply, but you do have to be a SEPA member. Membership is only $6, which allows you to apply for mini-grants up to $500 for programs that benefit special education students. The fall due date is the first week of November.

2:06:19 

Moving on to share some events in the field district: tomorrow night, the middle school is having a presentation on "Understanding Your Middle Schooler" from the school counselors. It should be an interesting event.

2:06:37 

At Rolling Valley Elementary School, they will have their annual haunted house and fun fair on Saturday, October 26. They do a sensory-friendly event with lights on and no jump scares from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., then the lights will go off and the event will run until 8:30 p.m. It’s an inclusive event, and they also have a sensory room available for kids who might need a break.

2:07:24 

The West Springfield pyramid is also hosting an annual pyramid challenge on Saturday, November 16, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. This includes various runs for all grade levels and a unified run for students with disabilities to participate alongside their general education peers. 

2:08:12 

Hi, I think because of the changes in the organization, some of the new members may not know why I’m here. I’m Kathy Murphy, an assistant in the UDS office, and I have a long history with the school division in special services. I’m here to listen, but I also want you to know who I am. 

2:09:05 

Tomorrow is UTD Day as well. I’m a member of the League of Women Voters and I see all the materials they send out about early voting. Personally, I prefer to vote in person on Election Day; it’s a special occasion in my house. 

2:09:31 

I’m actually knitting a scarf that looks like the flag, complete with little sparkly beads for the stars. 

2:09:46 

Thank you, everyone.

Next Meeting: Wednesday, December 11, 2024.

Recording 

November 13 General Meeting Recording (YouTube) 

Transcript and Translations

Disclaimer: Transcripts are generated by YouTube with the help of artificial intelligence and may not be completely accurate.

0:03 

[Music] Good evening, everyone. Thank you all for being here tonight. I want to let everyone know that there was an emergency, so I was able to step in as your leader for the evening. I will try my best to follow the agenda and protocol, but if anything comes up, feel free to let me know.

0:16 

So, I will be leading tonight, and I’ll try to keep things on track. If there’s anything that I need to adjust, I’ll make sure to do so. First, we’ll call the meeting to order. It looks like we have a quorum, so we can move forward.

0:36 

Next, we need to approve the minutes from last month. I hope everyone had a chance to look at them. Does anyone have any concerns or changes they would like to discuss regarding the minutes?

0:50 

Alright, since there are no concerns, the minutes are approved.

0:57 

Oh, yes—there were some corrections I was supposed to mention. I’m not sure if they were emailed out this week. Okay, I know she wasn’t able to send them out due to some issues, so let’s say the minutes are still pending until we get that settled.

1:21 

Alright, now, does anyone have any concerns about the agenda before we move forward?

1:28 

Okay, great! I don’t have any general announcements other than to thank everyone for the work you’re doing tonight. I’ll try to keep things moving. I’m generally not much of a talker, so I’ll be speaking a little less than usual.

1:46 

Now, we’re going to move on to public comment. As I say every month, commenters will be limited to 3 minutes. We have the podium set up, and I will be setting a timer. Actually, it’ll be an alarm, so you’ll know when your time is up. 

2:05 

Even though we won’t outwardly react to what’s being said, please know that your comments are duly noted and will be on record for everyone to see.

2:24 

We don’t have any written comments to read at this time, but we do have one person here to provide comment. Please feel free to approach the podium.

2:46 

Okay, hold on. I’ll give you a little wave at two minutes and hold my hand up at three. Is that okay? Great, go ahead.

 

2:59 

In 2020, the Department of Education came down on the Virginia Department of Education regarding Virginia’s practices. They were found to be in noncompliance. At the time, Fairfax County was also in noncompliance. When those findings were issued, Fairfax County refused to provide services to families. 

3:17 

Fairfax County’s response was to say that the Department of Education didn’t tell them they had to comply, so they decided not to follow the guidance. The county was found to be in noncompliance. 

3:34 

Fairfax County’s response, as I found in emails from Don Schaer, was to push back on the decision. As a parent who is well-connected and has a platform, I was hoping they would fix the issue. Thankfully, Fairfax County did not push back and eventually allowed students to receive services beyond just one-to-one support.

4:01 

Now, we’re in 2024, and the Department of Education has come down on Virginia again for a number of issues. One issue is that PWS (Present Levels of Service) must be provided at the end of every IEP meeting. You cannot hold off on providing it until after the IEP is finalized. Some IEP meetings go on for weeks or even months, and children may need services right away. Parents want to give consent, but Fairfax County won’t allow that to happen. 

4:47 

I made Fairfax County aware of this when I was with a friend at a meeting at West Springfield School. I provided them documentation from the U.S. Department of Education, but they said they couldn’t do it. A few weeks later, parents still haven’t received the services, and Fairfax County is in trouble for noncompliance again. 

5:13 

I’ve attended IEP meetings where staff ignored the proper procedures. I told them what they were doing was wrong, but they refused to take any corrective action. Terry Edmond, who represents Fairfax County, pushed false information in response to complaints I made. We know she was wrong because West Springfield High School eventually corrected the issue, which led to their noncompliance being resolved.

6:04 

Now, we have more issues of noncompliance because staff have been instructed to follow processes and eligibility criteria that aren’t being adhered to properly. This is the same issue that arose during COVID when staff were told they had to follow outdated protocols. It’s important to address this to avoid repeating these mistakes in the future.

6:30 

Thank you.

6:38 

Now, ahead of schedule, do we have our representative from the Resource Center here?

6:43 

I don’t see Dr. Anderson. She was going to join via Zoom, and I did send her the agenda, which mentioned she would join at 7:55. I had asked her to come a bit earlier, since we tend to move through the agenda faster than planned. I do anticipate she will join us at some point, but we can continue with the agenda and come back to her when she joins.

 

7:13 

Okay, thank you, everyone. Good evening, it's nice to see you all again. I apologize for missing the last meeting. I had staff in attendance, and I’m not sure if they were able to speak on my behalf. If not, I’d like to let you know that I was out of town for family matters. 

7:33 

In case I'm ever unable to attend, my staff is always here and prepared to provide updates. So, just so you know, we’ll always have an update, even if I'm not present.

7:39 

It’s nice to be here today, and I’m glad to be able to share some updates. I had a chance to talk to Liz before her family emergency, and we had a good conversation. She shared some items she thought were important to bring up tonight.

7:57 

The first update I want to share is about the school board’s work, particularly as it relates to your advocacy. We’ve just started our budget process for Fiscal Year 2026. We had a work session yesterday where we discussed the fiscal forecast. This is just an overview of what the budgeting picture may look like for the upcoming year. 

8:11 

As you all probably know, we don’t control our own revenue. We rely heavily on federal and state funding, as well as support from the county. The process goes as follows: we pass a proposed budget in February, then find out how much money we’ve actually received. We then pass the final budget based on that allocation, usually in May.

8:54 

At the moment, we’re facing a $275 million shortfall, but it’s still early in the process, and we don’t yet know what funding we’ll receive from the state, county, or federal government. 

9:01 

One of the factors contributing to the need for increased funding is the significant rise in the number of special education students. The work you all do is incredibly important, and I just wanted to highlight that. One thing I shared with two of our state legislators at a recent meeting at Woodson High School was that state funding for special education has dropped by 16% over the last six years. 

9:26 

This decline, along with the underfunding of IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), combined with the increased number of special education students, presents a real challenge. I just wanted to bring this to your attention as you look at the needs in your own communities.

9:44 

We’re just beginning the budget process, so this will be an ongoing conversation. Another topic that has come up recently is changes to secondary grading policies. There’s been a lot of discussion, and I’ve heard concerns from several special education parents regarding the changes. 

9:56 

For those who don’t know, in June, our leadership team sent a memo to principals about changing grading practices, with the goal of achieving more consistency across schools. One of the key changes is that at the secondary level, 70% of the grade will be based on summative assessments—things like unit tests or end-of-term exams. The remaining 30% will come from formative assessments, which include homework and in-class work.

10:26 

The aim was to standardize grading, as schools had been using different methods. Some used a 90/10 split, while others had a 60/40 split. However, I’ve heard from many special education parents that this change is negatively impacting students with test anxiety or cognitive disabilities. Students are struggling to learn new material while still trying to retake old tests.

11:00 

Additionally, there’s been a change allowing unlimited retakes of tests, with the goal of achieving a 100% score. Previously, retakes were capped at 80%. While the idea behind this is to give students more opportunities to improve, it’s causing some students to feel anxious about constantly retaking tests. Even though 85% or 95% is a good grade, students feel pressured to reach 100%.

11:32 

This combination of factors has led to an increased workload and stress for many students. 

12:03  
Dr. Anderson brought a motion to the school board to revisit our grading policies. While we don’t set specific grading practices in policy, the board has been working on adjusting the guidance. In our current draft, we’ve limited retakes to one per test and emphasized the need for balance between summative and formative assessments. 

12:24 

We’ve also asked for consistency in grading practices across schools. There have been questions about whether to use rolling grades or quarterly grades, but we’re not mandating a specific approach—just asking for consistency. We’re also allowing teachers to give zeros unless students can show measurable effort in completing their work.

12:53 

These changes are still in draft form and have not passed yet. We had a work session yesterday, and it will be brought back to the committee next week. It’s not yet scheduled for a vote, but it may come up in the next couple of months. If this is something you’re hearing concerns about in your communities, I encourage you to reach out, as all of these meetings are recorded and available on YouTube.

13:42 

The drafts of the documents are also posted on the board's website. If you’d like links to these materials, feel free to email me, and I’ll be happy to send them your way. That’s the update on grading policies.

14:02 

I know Liz and I talked about the concerns last time regarding the changes to the report format and links to the Strategic Plan. I understand that it caused some frustration among the committee, and I wanted to offer some clarification on the thinking behind it. 

14:07 

A couple of years ago, when Dr. Weed came on board, we adopted a new strategic plan after the pandemic. The old plan was seven years old and outdated. The new plan was developed with input from thousands of people in the community, staff, and the board. It was designed to set a new direction for the district.

14:42 

One of Dr. Weed's key beliefs is that for a strategic plan to be effective, everything within the district needs to align with that plan. The goals of the plan are broad, so just about anything the committee works on should fit within one of the strategic goals. 

 

15:03 

You're trying to advocate to the board about things that you all think are important, things we should do because we are all—the staff and the board—trying to align our work to the Strategic Plan so we can move everything forward. Otherwise, if you have misaligned work, you're going in different directions, and nothing moves forward. So the more you can show, “Hey, this is a recommendation we have, and it helps achieve, you know, goal one: Strong Start," if you have a preschool recommendation, or goal number three, which is "Safe, Empowered, and Included." So if you have something about mental health, school funding, or academic achievement, there's lots of broad buckets it’s tied to.

15:48 

But the more you can tie what you bring to us to the things that we, as a community and a system, are aligned with, the easier it is to advocate for that to be done. So I hope that helps explain a little bit. Otherwise, if you bring something that’s not tied to the plan, it’s easier to make arguments against it when there are limited resources. We can’t do everything, and it’s like, “Well, that’s taking us in this direction, and the plan is taking us in this direction.”

16:12 

So that’s kind of the thinking behind it. I think everyone is being asked—staff and the leadership team—to align everything to our strategic plan. What we’re asking our advisory committees to do is no different than what we’re asking our staff to do. But that’s the goal of the system: to move that plan forward. The buckets are very broad, and the measures are flexible—there’s a lot that fits in there. So I’ll stop here. I just wanted to share that, and if I misunderstood, since I wasn’t here last time, but from what Bill shared and what I’ve heard, that was a large part of it. Does anyone have any other questions?

16:42 

[Pause] 

Yes, I think that’s really helpful. Those are the biggest things. I’ve talked about stuff on accreditation, but let’s take questions on this first. Alie, would you like to go first? 

16:53 

No, I’m good. Were you finished? I was just waiting for you to finish, then I was going to respond. Do you have something else to add?

17:06 

Go ahead. 

17:12 

Well, the last thing I want to share with you all is that you may have seen some things about changing the state accreditation standards. The state is trying to look at what's going on. One of the difficult things we’re dealing with is that the state released new standards for how they’re going to accredit schools this fall, to be implemented this year. Typically, when the state changes standards, there’s a phasing-in period to give schools time to train teachers and change the way they do things, but that hasn’t happened this year.

17:29 

So what we’re asking our superintendent to do is keep the data on our standards based on what we’ve planned for, as well as the new state standards. It makes it difficult, and you may see teachers very stressed because we’re trying to change while we’re still fully building this system. I’ll give you one example of what I mean: For a school on the academic side that earned the highest ratings for academics, they’re now being tested, accredited, and held accountable for how many students are graduating with an associate's degree. 

17:59 

An associate's degree is what you get from a two-year college, and while I think it’s a great goal to have students taking AP, IB, or dual enrollment courses, that standard came out in the fall, after students were already enrolled in these classes. And they will be judged on it by the end of this year. So it’s a little hard to do, and that’s just one example. 

18:32 

So keep an eye on that. Some of us think that we’re going to do our best, but when you hear teachers being stressed, part of it is trying to shift on a dime to these new accountability standards, plus the literacy materials, which we were waiting for the state to release their approved list before implementing, and the new reading and math standards that were released in the spring. We're trying to get our teachers back on track, so you’ll see teachers very stressed because a lot of these things came pretty late from the state.

19:01 

So that’s the last thing I wanted to share.

19:08 

I just wanted to clarify, in case there was any confusion, regarding the aligning of the work. There may have been other concerns raised through email or other channels, but it wasn’t that we couldn’t align our work. As far as the alignment with the state mandate, I feel like the way our subcommittees were set up kind of aligned with the state mandate, so we wouldn’t forget where the state mandate is. 

19:24 

Now, we’re all working on the charge and doing it through different lenses, so I think it’s really just about making sure we’re all working on the same charge—not that we’re doing it through the lens of the mandate, but just ensuring that we're addressing the charge properly. The issue is that we no longer have the Policy and Regulations subcommittee, or the Community Outreach subcommittee, which had more of a direct role in policies and regulations. For example, when I look at our state mandate, we used to have the Policy and Regulations subcommittee reviewing educational priorities, and now that’s more spread out.

20:06 

So, it’s important to make sure that we’re still keeping in mind the needs of the public and not just responding to the charge from the school board. We also need to be mindful of the community’s input and the policies we’re reviewing.

20:25 

Fair enough, and I get that. I think what we were thinking is that a lot of that still fits into the Strategic Plan. There might be a disconnect—maybe I haven’t explained it well enough—between only looking at the strategic plan and saying, “This is linked to the strategic plan in this way.” For example, when it comes to policy recommendations, there are areas in the strategic plan where you can say, "This aligns with this goal," and you can have that section in your report.

21:04 

For instance, when I was governance chair in the spring, there were actually two special education policies that came to the governance committee. Before we finalized those, I asked Mike to bring them to the ACSC because I said, "Hold on, we haven't gotten ACSC's comments yet on state law." So we’re still doing that work—it’s not that if it’s not part of the strategic plan, we can’t do it. It’s that the recommendations in the report should be aligned with the Strategic Plan.

21:49 

It’s not that you can’t advise on policies or have public comment. It’s more about how the recommendations you’re making are aligned with the strategic plan when you’re putting out your report. Does that make sense? 

22:33 

Yes, I think that’s helpful. I don’t want to take up more time, but we used to go through a subcommittee—policies would go to the Policy and Regulations subcommittee so we could divide up the work. That way, other groups could still work on other things. Now that we’re on the charge, I guess the issue is figuring out how to divide up the time so that we can manage everything.

23:00 

[Pause] 

It’s a lot to handle, but we’ll figure it out.

24:49 

Absolutely, and that’s a great question. I think—

25:27 

[Pause] 

Yes, just general ideas, putting things into the right buckets. That might be helpful. 

25:37 

I also wanted to mention, and I’m glad you asked that question because it gives me a chance to bring it up: Public comment really does matter to the board. The board may not always respond, but we really do listen. When we see themes in the public comment, I can tell you from conversations with previous boards and this board, people do take it seriously. 

26:02 

You can make public comment pre-recorded, via video, or through Zoom if you can’t come in person. Over the last several meetings, we’ve seen fewer people filling the public comment slots, which is different than during the pandemic when we had hundreds of people sign up as soon as the list opened up. 

26:38 

I’m trying very hard to advocate for special education students. But I’ll be blunt with you: Sometimes I feel like I’m the only voice. I think it’s a different board now, and while there’s a lot of passion for this, it might not have the same level of experience as the previous board had.

27:02 

So to answer your question, I highly encourage you and people you know to give public comment to the board. Sometimes when it’s just one voice, it’s hard to make a case for it. But when people see it in front of them and hear people talking about it, it can have more of an impact.

27:23 

So, if you can’t come in person, please email us. We really do take those emails seriously, and I can’t emphasize enough how much we listen to the information people send.

28:01 

[Pause] 

Text: I have a question on policy. My understanding—and I’m not saying it’s correct—but my understanding in elementary school was when I received report cards for students who were not working at grade level, the report card only reflected work at grade level, not below grade level. Is that the same in secondary schools, or is it handled differently for students not working at grade level?

28:20 

I’m not sure at that level, but I can find out and get back to you. We’re more focused on the overall retake policy right now, but let me look into that.

28:43  

That’s a good question. It seems like consistency across the county is something we need to focus on, to make sure that families of students who are not working at grade level have the same understanding of what those report cards mean.

28:59 

My understanding is that the report card should reflect the same information. The issue is whether the report card shows the level of mastery for grade-level standards or individualized standards if the student is not working at grade level.

29:17 

It’s supposed to show the level of mastery for the student’s individual standards of learning. If a student is working below grade level, it should reflect their mastery of the content at their level, not just at the grade level. 

30:02 

...not have any information, which means the only information provided is whatever the data shows with the progress reports. But those aren’t supposed to be the sum total of the student’s access to the curriculum. So then, how do families get a broader understanding of how their child is accessing the full curriculum? That might need a broader scope at the school board level, or just more understanding to get consistent policies and implementation.

30:30 

Yeah, let me look into that, because my experience has been that there was both the report card and the Depage report. So maybe that has changed since then. The report card just literally says “NA” next to the subject, with no further information—not just “NA,” but the report card itself is blank, which has been my experience. I haven’t heard any different from others, but I’ll look into it. My understanding is that, at the school board level, everybody should have report cards that are filled out properly. So let me check on that.

31:06 

Yeah, that would be great. So I’ll look into that. But from the policy side, our biggest concern has been consistency. That’s what we’re looking for—no confusion, right? So our expectation, as people have said on the committee, is that this should be consistent for all students. 

31:24 

One of the things I heard brought up in the committee was, “Is this applicable to all classes?” Yes, that’s right. The purpose, at the beginning, is that this applies to all classes. So that should address that.

31:49 

[Music] 

Yes, hi, I have two questions. I have one really easy question, I think. The first question is: Do you happen to know if there will be an Inclusive Schools Proclamation this year? If so, when might that be?

32:08 

There has been one in the past. I’m pretty sure there is one scheduled, but I don’t have the calendar right in front of me. There usually is one in December, I believe. But I can look it up after the meeting and let you know for sure. We have a set of proclamations that repeat every year, and I believe this is one of them. So it should be in December. 

32:32 

I brought the Neurodiversity Proclamation last year, which I plan to bring again this year. I’m not sure exactly when it will be, but I’ll double-check and confirm for you.

32:41 

The other question is regarding grading. Back in 2019, I had brought up a concern about grading to Megan McLaughlin. Then, the pandemic hit, and it sort of went to the back burner. But at that time, I had learned through my daughter’s personal experiences that something fairly unique to Fairfax County is that when a student gets an F, even if they retake the class and get a B or better, that F stays on their transcript. And it’s also included in their GPA. 

33:10 

So that’s something we were going to work on, but I realized I lost track of it. I’m not sure if this has been fixed yet. This is more of a transcript issue than a grading policy issue.

33:35 

Yeah, that’s more of a transcript question. It’s related to grade replacement policies, so it would be more of a regulation and operational matter. We can look into when grades are replaced or if they stay on the transcript. But that's not something handled at the policy level. 

33:54 

Wouldn’t that be a policy issue? Wouldn’t it be something that the policy addresses?

34:01 

It’s a bit tricky. When I first joined the board, I struggled with this because the board is more like a board of directors, and the CEO handles the day-to-day operations, which in this case, is the superintendent. So, grade replacement and those kinds of operational regulations are under the purview of the superintendent’s staff. 

34:24 

But I can certainly find out. This wouldn’t be addressed in policy, though.

34:37 

I just want to add something real quick. I know I’m not the primary speaker, but I just wanted to mention something regarding the subcommittee structure. When we were working on this, we approached it more as a structural change rather than a change to the substance. So, it’s not that if something doesn’t seem to fit within our current structure, we’re just going to reject it outright. We’ll find a place for it.

34:55 

If there isn’t a clear place, we can provide a supplemental report or find another way to bring it forward. In no case will we say, “This isn’t an issue we’re going to consider because it doesn’t fit into this structure.” The structure is just there to make the work more organized and efficient.

35:06 

Okay, moving on—thank you. Sorry for keeping you waiting, Dr. Anderson. If you’re still here and able to provide us with an update...

35:35 

[Pause] 

Oh, sorry, Christine, I didn’t realize you had your hand up. My apologies for making this go longer. I didn’t want to miss your question.

35:47 

Christine: Can you hear me now?

35:53 

[Pause] 

Can you hear me?

36:04 

[Pause] 

Try again now.

36:12 

Okay, can you hear me now?

36:17 

Yes, I can hear you now, but it sounds like there might be some feedback. Are you picking up the meeting audio while speaking?

36:39 

[Christine speaking] Yes, we can hear you now. 

36:46 

Christine: So, my question is: Would it be helpful if some people in the subcommittee made a concerted effort to provide public comment at board meetings throughout the year? Would that make it more feasible to be aligned with what we are producing at the end of the year in terms of deliverables, and help build a relationship along the way?

37:01 

That’s a great question. When you make public comment, it’s always helpful to be aligned, but it’s not necessarily required. What matters is that the public comment raises awareness. I think building a relationship is crucial—especially since many of us who live and work in this world are immersed in it. We know the acronyms and the day-to-day issues, but for people who don’t have kids in this world, it’s not as clear. 

37:23 

So raising awareness of the issues—whether positive or negative—is important. If you can align it with strategic plan goals, even better. For example, saying, “I see issues in XYZ areas, and without addressing these challenges for special education students, it’s hard to meet this goal” is really helpful.

37:43 

But I don’t think aligning public comment with the report is absolutely necessary. It’s more important that you can provide input on the issues, especially if you can present themes that others can rally behind. It lets the board know that these are issues people care about, and that there are real challenges facing special education students.

38:02 

Does that answer your question? I think the more you advocate throughout the year, the more impact your message will have when the report is finalized. 

38:39 

Yes, I’m wondering if this could be an opportunity for greater advocacy, where we’re heard throughout the year, and the deliverables at the end can have legs and be put into practice. We want them to be actionable and not dismissed as beyond the scope or not implementable. I think the advocacy should happen on the committee level throughout the year.

39:03 

I would highly recommend that. I think when you wait until the end of the year, some board members may be hearing about these issues for the first time. It can be overwhelming. But if you’re building relationships throughout the year, if board members are hearing from you and they can connect the dots when the solution is presented at the end, it makes it much more impactful.

39:47 

Thank you for letting me speak. I really appreciate being included tonight. Hi, hi from Kansas City! Thank you!

40:16 

Dr. Anderson, thank you for being patient. Are you ready to update us?

40:23 

I can barely hear you.

40:31 

[Pause] 

We can hear you now.

40:38 

Great! Thank you for waiting. As you can see, we’ve been really busy this month. We will be busy for the rest of the month at the Family Resource Center. We are currently interviewing for the position of a specialist, as our previous specialist retired and moved to Prince William County. We had some great candidates, so we’re excited about that.

41:02 

At the beginning of this month, the SIB Shops and SIB Teens held an event. The SIB Shops are for children in grades 2–6 who are enrolled in FCPS and have siblings with special needs, to meet other siblings in a relaxed setting. The SIB Teens event didn’t fill up as much, so we’ve had to advertise multiple times. 

41:40 

On the 12th, we had a webinar on language arts and literacy instruction for students with significant cognitive disabilities. The turnout wasn’t as large as we’d hoped—only about 18 people—but the community said that’s expected since the demographic is smaller.

42:02 

Today, we had a session on executive functioning skills in Arabic, requested by the Arabic-speaking community. Our liaison for the Family Resource Center was able to provide that in Arabic.

42:23 

We have another session this Friday on building resilience and helping teens develop coping skills. That’s already getting good registration. And later this month, we have a webinar on starting conversations about drugs for families.

42:40 

Looking ahead to December, things are a bit slower due to the holidays, but we have a couple of key webinars scheduled, including one on reducing stress and increasing happiness and another on protecting kids from digital exploitation. This will be a joint session with Fairfax County Schools, the police department, and the Department of Justice. 

42:55 

That’s a really important topic, so we want to make sure families are aware. There are a lot of predators out there, and we want to help families keep their kids safe.

45:00 

...and have a platform to ask questions as well. On the 20th, we have a Youth Mental Health First Aid training for families. 

45:12 

This one is not a webinar, but a day-long information course that teaches how to apply the Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) action plan to assess the risk of suicide and harm. Bethany Diers will be helping with that. The course covers listening non-judgmentally, giving reassurance and information, and encouraging appropriate professional help. When I spoke with her the other day, we discussed the idea of making this a series. She mentioned that there’s an uptick in risk from March to May, so we’re thinking about creating a platform where others can view the videos they did two years ago. We might also offer this course as a recurring event. 

45:47 

For this one, there’s limited space—only 30 people can join, and it will be in person. 

45:55 

You can check out the books or the Padlet links—we encourage you to use any of the resources on the update. Are there any questions or anything else you’d like to know? 

46:13 

I’m not sure if I can hear you all. If you're speaking, I can't hear you yet.

46:17 

Would you like me to type it in the chat? It’s not really a question, more of a comment.

46:23 

I can hear you now.

46:32 

Okay, it's not really a question; it’s more of a comment on the number of families who attended the webinar for the adapted curriculum. We have somewhere between 500 and 1,000 students a year graduating with an applied studies diploma. That’s just those in the graduating class—not all grade levels. This literacy curriculum and initiative impacts all grade levels. 

46:59 

So, I’m a little concerned when I hear feedback like 18 families attended. That number seems low when we think about how many families are out there. These families are often the most challenging to reach because they have the least amount of bandwidth. They are also the most important to reach due to the vulnerabilities their children face. 

47:17 

It’s essential that they have access to literacy in order to function independently in the world. So, I really hope that FCPS can look into how we’re reaching out to this population. Eighteen is not a large number when we consider all of the families who are impacted by the adapted curriculum. 

47:34 

All of our webinars are recorded, so we could potentially send this out with the help of the DSS when identifying these families. Perhaps we can send the link to parents as a resource they can view. 

47:47 

I hope that helps. Thank you.

47:50 

Are there any other questions? Christine has one.

48:02 

Thank you, Christine. I’m sorry, everyone, I don’t mean to be the one talking the most, but I’m also seeing an issue here. Well, in the next few years, with digital citizenship, I guess that’s what we’d call it. There’s an issue of what kids are doing online—saying things improperly, sending inappropriate messages, and engaging in behaviors they shouldn’t be doing. 

48:30 

I’m wondering if we can advocate for more resources for parents so they can better understand what their kids are going through right now, on a macro level, and how to respond to it. 

48:39 

I know some principals have been great about confronting the issue directly while protecting the students, but I think we need to help parents communicate with each other. Not everyone is going to parent the same way, but it would be helpful for parents to know things like, “Is your child 13? That’s the age for TikTok,” and how to navigate these conversations.

48:56 

It’s important to be able to support parents in knowing what to do if they see something troubling. What should parents do if they spot something inappropriate? What are kids facing right now that parents should be aware of—beyond just exploitation, but what are kids actually doing with all the access they have? 

49:10 

I think it’s difficult for parents to know how to handle things when their child isn’t involved but they hear about something else happening. It’s a gray area. Sometimes you don’t know how much it affects you until it’s impacted you in a harmful way. 

49:23 

So, I think there’s a real opportunity here to engage parents a little more on this issue. 

49:31 

Great idea! I’ll definitely take that back to the team and see if we can find an expert to provide more resources on that topic. Appreciate you bringing it up. 

49:44 

Thank you. 

49:46 

I don’t see any other questions. So, thank you so much, Dr. Anderson.

49:53 

You’re welcome. I’ll see you next month.

49:59 

Okay, take care. Bye-bye.

50:04 

I’m sorry, everyone, we’re running a little behind. If you’re ready for the DSS updates, we can move on.

50:13 

Yes, I’m ready. Let me go ahead and share my screen.

50:22 

Some of the updates I’ll be sharing today were information provided to me by other staff members. So, if you have more detailed questions, I may not be the perfect person to answer them. But just a reminder: You all have the 4x6 cards in front of you. If you’d like follow-up information, please feel free to write your questions down and submit them at the end of the meeting, and we’ll make sure you get the answers.

50:52 

First, I’ll provide information about the BASIL resources for students accessing the adapted curriculum. Last month, we talked about the BASIL resources for students on the general curriculum, and we said we’d follow up this month with information on the adapted curriculum. This is information that was shared during yesterday’s webinar for parents, sponsored by the Family Resource Center. 

51:14 

Jugnu Agrawal, our manager of special education curriculum, was able to share these slides with me. So this is the exact information that was presented to our parent community yesterday. 

51:28 

For students accessing the adapted curriculum, there are different literacy BASILs used depending on the grade level. All of these BASILs are research-based and aligned with the science of reading. For K-2, we use *Building with Stories*; for grades 3-5, *Access English Language Arts*; and for grade 6, *Adapted Classics*. 

51:55 

For *Building with Stories*, the primary focus of the program is to foster vocabulary understanding, print awareness, listening skills, and communication independence. 

52:13 

For grades 3-5, the focus is on reading literature, informational text, speaking, listening, language, and writing. 

52:27 

For the *Adapted Classics* program, students receive instruction on four adapted classic novels. Each novel introduces a genre of literature: mystery, adventure, biography, or fantasy. Areas of focus include genre, author introduction, theme, prediction, engagement, adapted text, vocabulary development, and comprehension, as well as written expression and reader theater.

52:59 

All students will have access to literacy programs to supplement their BASIL instruction. These programs are chosen based on each student’s individual needs, as determined by data collection. The four literacy programs offered are:

- Pathways to Literacy

- Early Literacy Skills Builder

- Early Literacy Skills Builder for older students

- Early Reading Skills Builder

53:34  

The programs are carefully sequenced and highly structured, allowing students to progress in small steps. They include repetition, multiple practice opportunities, and a variety of instructional formats. They also have built-in data collection.

53:50 

The programs are designed specifically for students with significant cognitive disabilities. They also offer accessibility considerations, such as multiple means of representation, and different ways of responding—whether through pointing, looking, or using AAC devices.

54:11 

Materials can be adapted for students using AAC devices, including those who use alternate access methods such as switches or eye gaze. The programs also include simplified language and extension activities to help students generalize skills.

54:33 

This is what a typical language arts block looks like for students on the adapted curriculum. The block lasts 90 to 120 minutes in total. It’s divided into:

- 30 minutes of the BASIL language arts program

- 30 minutes of literacy intervention 

59:51 

And the remaining time is really spent on specific IEP key goals that students have, as well as the V-Sols, the Virginia Essentialized Standards of Learning, that they'll be working on in those standards of learning as well in the remaining time. 

1:00:00 

Alright, so that's a little information on our Literacy for students in the Adaptive curriculum. I wanted to also share some updates regarding some of the work we're doing to support twice-exceptional learners. So, there is a group that has been pulled together, a central office team. We meet once a month with Dr. Reed, and it's a multidisciplinary group. The work of the group is really focused on these three goals: 

1:00:19 

1. Building the capacity of our teachers and staff to support the programming needs of our twice-exceptional learners. 

2. Establishing foundational knowledge with our staff about twice-exceptional learners and what systems and structures Fairfax County has in place to support these learners. 

3. Deepening understanding regarding the instructional programming needs of our twice-exceptional learners. 

1:00:47 

I wanted to share with you some of the goals and actions, some of the specifically actions that have taken place and that we're working on right now to support twice-exceptional learners: 

- Developing and facilitating division-wide professional development for all teachers and administrators on twice-exceptional learners. 

- Facilitating division-wide professional development on Universal Design for Learning for all school-based and district-level teams. 

- There have been revisions to the TWOE handbook and execution of a plan for widespread distribution of the TWOE handbook. 

- Developing and promoting asynchronous learning modules that can be accessed by all teachers. 

- Implementing a mentorship program to build a network of support for school leaders as they change structures and practices to ensure they're meeting the dual programming needs of twice-exceptional learners. 

- Developing and facilitating learning opportunities for parents around the division's twice-exceptional programming. 

- Analyzing current data and practices to identify and pursue opportunities to increase inclusion for twice-exceptional students. 

- Analyzing current data and structures to increase access to advanced coursework for twice-exceptional students. 

1:02:28 

Again, I just wanted to share some of the information that this group is working on and working toward. If you'd like any additional detail regarding any of these items, we'll make sure to send this out electronically to you. So if there's a question that comes up as you're reading over this in the next couple of days, you can submit any follow-up questions to Holly and Liz, and we'll be able to answer those for you. 

1:02:45 

Lastly, for DSS updates, I did want to share an update regarding our C19 or our compensatory services. 

1:02:58 

So I shared a similar update a month ago. If you look at the very top chart, you can see that for past reimbursements, they are 98.6% complete. For ongoing and future reimbursements, we're at 43.3% completed. 

1:03:21 

And then if you look at the bottom chart, the blue includes information regarding the actual service delivery information. If you look at that first line, FCPS enrolled, FCPS has delivered a little under 56% (55.6%) of the comped hours that have been outlined as part of our compensatory services. 

1:03:47 

And then again, there's some additional information there related to meetings requested by parents and the number of delivery service hours that have been provided, about 45%. So in total, we're at about 54% of the total remaining hours. Of course, we do have a little over 57,000 hours that are remaining and need to be delivered. 

1:04:17 

So one of the updates is that FCPS is going to be starting a Saturday Academy and opening that up for parents and children beginning November 16th at four school sites: Greenbrier, East Orange Hunt, Oakton High School, and West Springfield. So again, just another opportunity for parents and students to be able to receive some of the hours that are afforded to them as part of our compensatory program. 

1:04:54 

Okay, so those are all the DSS updates. I see that Dawn put her placard up, so she may want to add a little more information. Let me go ahead and turn it over to Dawn. 

1:05:07 

Let me turn my mic on. Okay, I wanted to add that if you have an email from school yesterday afternoon announcing an opportunity that is different than the division, it is limited to our high school students with disabilities, and there are a limited number of opportunities available, about 24 hours. There were 300 positive responses to that across the division, so if you fall into that category of having a high schooler, check your junk mail because you may have gotten one of those emails. It's an easy form to indicate your interest in that tutoring. 

1:06:01 

It doesn't have to be services under an IEP, and it's just another opportunity for students. So, I wanted to make sure you all were aware of that. Thank you both. 

1:06:49 

Questions? 

1:06:56 

I was pleased to see the eight actions and goals relating to TWICE, however, zero of them are A, which is for some of our kids. So I wondered if you could speak specifically about whether or not there are any current actions happening related to the possible creation and opening of the center as Dr. Reed has stated publicly at SEPEV for parents that this is a possible future that many of us desperately want. 

1:07:14 

Yeah, thanks Lauren for that question. I do know that there have been conversations at that monthly meeting related to the TWICE-Exceptional Center. I don't have any updates to share right now. I know Dr. Reed was working with Iona Spikes, one of our directors in our office of special services, and I think that Dr. Reed—again, I don't want to misspeak—was looking at convening a group that was going to be looking specifically at the Twice-Exceptional Center. But I don't know the status of where that is now.  

1:08:02 

I'm not sure if Dr. Edmond heard if you have any additional information. 

1:08:14 

A whole lot more, but I will add, in our last SEP when we were with them, there were some action items gathered. Dr. Reed asked me to provide some names of elementary and high school principals, and that's been done as well. I can check to see if we have an update; I know we have a meeting this Monday, as a matter of fact, so we'll see if we can gather some updates. 

1:08:50 

Regarding the topic from the slides, you may not be able to answer tonight, but is it possible for us to get an update regarding the implementation of the emergency procedures and equipment for students with mobility impairments evacuating buildings? I know there was movement on that last year to start bringing sleds into the building—well, not necessarily sleds, but equipment—so that students with mobility impairments could evacuate the building during actual emergencies. I know we have a new Chief of Safety and Security; we could get some kind of update on that. 

1:09:32 

I believe there was work movement, and I've checked in on a couple of times on it. 

1:09:45 

Amanda, it's funny you mention this. Some people know I was in Indianapolis over the weekend to visit my sons, but we also went to the Buffalo Bills and Colts game. I was thinking of you and I was thinking of this exact topic as I was walking down from the top of the stadium. On every floor, they had evacuation chairs, and they had a little case with the chair in there, clearly marked "evacuation chair." I thought, "Oh, we probably need to follow up on that question that came up." So, your timing is perfect. And yes, the Bills won, which was good news for me because we are Bills fans! 

1:10:24 

I don't see any other questions. So, thank you very much. 

1:10:36 

Let's move on to old business. Before we do that, I forgot to make sure I asked everyone to sign in. If anybody hasn't done that, feel free to head over there to it. Also, I'm not sure that either Liz or I explained to new members about the questions for the record. In case we try to keep things moving, we have these index cards around the table. If you put your name and question on it, we will get them to the right person. We keep a running spreadsheet, and when we have answers, we send them out every month with our minutes and the agenda for the next month. So, we want to make sure we don't miss any questions. 

1:11:17 

Moving on to business, we would like to have each subcommittee chair present an update on what you're up to. So, if we could start with… I'll just go by numbers. I guess Committee 1—who is the subcommittee chair for that one? 

1:11:46 

Our subcommittee took some time to look over the baseline data report. The first goal was a strong start. We had a really wonderful conversation about pre-K and just looking at all the statistics

 so far, and just trying to come up with some questions regarding data. We just want to learn more about the pre-K initiative FCPS is undergoing. We learned a little about it last year with the Inclusive Preschool pilot that's happening. 

1:12:19 

Oh, and I meant to ask while you're giving your subcommittee report—if you could give us an idea if you appreciated having the extra time to work tonight, if that was helpful? 

1:12:34 

Yeah, especially tonight because it was the beginning, and we were still trying to figure out what we needed to talk about. We were still kind of reading things, so I think tonight especially, it was really helpful. 

1:12:53 

Thank you. 

1:13:03 

Committee 2: So we have Committee 2, which is "Safe, Supported, Included, and Empowered." We kind of went back and forth on the report. Two of the big things that stood out were the abolishment of exclusionary practices and disproportionality when it comes to discipline. Part of our conversation centered around the fact that there is not a district-wide requirement to notify families when a student has an incident put into Synergy. Parents are just stumbling upon that information as they're going in to look at grades or other things. 

1:13:47 

In terms of absenteeism, we started digging into the idea that Fairfax currently has only one pathway for schools—a brick-and-mortar building. We're hearing from a lot of families that it's just not working for their children. So, we were going back and forth, and I think we're still in the process of figuring out where we want to head with this report. But there were great conversations across the areas. 

1:14:21 

Did you appreciate having the extra time? 

1:14:28 

Absolutely. This is a good group; we can talk. It's a really hefty topic when you think about it, so we could have probably talked all night. 

1:14:38 

Do we have a chair? The chair wasn't here today? Oh, that's right, I was! But I don’t know… I think our group appreciated the extra time. It was relaxed, and I think often we feel pressured to get things done. We had a relaxed conversation, and a lot of ideas came out, such as different models of virtual learning or different structures for the school day, like block scheduling. It was nice to have the time and not feel rushed. 

1:15:02 

Thank you, subcommittee. 

1:15:17 

For the one, a chair—do we have a chair? We do not have a chair. Can somebody just tell me what you talked about tonight? 

1:15:23 

We went through some of the measures that were proposed for 74, and we decided which ones we wanted to really focus on to help guide some data collection points from the BO. And we discussed different ways to divide these responsibilities. Sorry, as I'm writing, I’m also responsible for doing the minutes for this, so instead of listening, I’m writing. I’m also running the meeting, so I apologize if I’m not keeping track.

1:16:06 

Subcommittee 5—definitely appreciate the extra time. So we started thinking about speakers. We actually have a speaker for December. Our committee is—I'm not sure what we’re called, but it’s the transition, getting out of the system. We have a speaker coming next month from ARK, whose perspective is about what students from FCPS might have had that would have helped. We will also have a speaker representing parent experiences, and we are looking at a speaker to represent the on-the-ground teachers helping kids transition. We're struggling a little bit on how we might actually do that. I’d like to ask if it’s okay for us, as individuals, to reach out—not invite people, but just ask, "I asked my school principal, can you suggest someone?" I don’t know what the practice is for outreach, so when I finish, I’d love to get an answer to that.

1:17:32 

Also, we noted that one perspective that might be helpful would be the CSB perspective. We have someone here who’s, thankfully, very busy helping that subject be successful, but we were wondering how we or others might engage with that, you know, because that’s an important perspective. I know my family has benefited greatly from our relationship with CSB.

1:18:09 

If you could just send your request to Ry, um, and then I probably—the answer will be yes, but we have to follow the process of going through, and then we’ll come back to you with a yes or no. Just email us the request. 

1:18:17 

Thank you. Your answer to your question of reaching out individually if you'd like. 

1:18:39 

We have a couple of new policies that Don had forwarded to us. Thank you for those. We didn’t have a chance to look at them well enough to figure out which subcommittee would be asked to send them to for review, but we are going to do that as soon as possible. So, is there a deadline by which we need to submit feedback?

1:19:03 

Inform on feedback from the Governance Committee in the late spring. 

1:19:17 

There are not major policies from what you know we had submitted, and then what the feedback was. So you have sort of the final by next...that would be very helpful.

1:19:45 

They're important policies, and we really appreciate your work on them. Thank you. I appreciate that. I was the chair of the Governance Committee when these policies first came to us, and the way it normally works in the committees is that staff will make recommendations for changes or no changes. The committee will look at them and either agree or ask for changes, and then it goes back to staff for further work. In this case, there weren’t many recommendations from staff that needed to be changed, but some of us on the Governance Committee felt like we really wanted the Executive of this committee to make sure that’s what you all saw as well. As one member, I felt like there was a lot more that needed to be in these policies than what was there. When you see them, you’ll see they're very short—about a quarter of a page. It was a pretty robust conversation in Governance; the policies aren’t super detailed, but the regulations are. So take a look from your expertise. I think that’s what the Governance Committee felt: there weren’t many changes recommended, but we felt like there needed to be more substance to these policies.

1:21:03 

Does anyone else have anything to add on what the subcommittee has done? Oh, sorry, Lauren, thanks.

1:21:08 

I have a point of clarification about these policies. We have a legal mandate from the state of Virginia that we must review policies and procedures for the provision of special education and related services prior to submission to the local school board. So I wonder if we have a little more clarity as to the timeline. This is something that staff brought directly to the school board without ever showing it to the ACSD, as required under Virginia law. I don’t know why that happened. I know when it was brought to us—because I was chair of the Governance Committee at the time—I said, “Hold on, has ACSD reviewed these?” And because they hadn’t, I asked them to be sent to ACSD. That’s why we haven’t voted on them yet, but I couldn’t tell you why they were brought in that order. They had already been pending for the previous Governance Committee when I became the chair in January.

1:22:02 

So when I became the Governance Committee chair in January, they had already been pending from the previous Governance Committee. I don’t know how that process happened, but when I asked, when they were brought to me, I asked ACSD first. I was told no, so that’s when I said, "Send them to ACSD."

1:22:31 

This is important. It was in the spring, and it’s now November.

1:22:37 

So they were brought to me as part of a list of many, many pending policies. The school board had already passed a deadline for reviewing the boundary policy, so we had to review that first. During the review of the boundary policies, I believe it was in April—I don’t know the exact meeting, but I think it was in April—that’s when I said, “Hold on, these have been pending. They should have gone to the previous committee. Let’s review them now.” That’s when I realized they hadn’t gone to ACSD, so I asked for them to be sent to ACSD in April. I followed up again, I believe, in the summer. But one issue was that the report was still being finalized, which made it hard to put them on the ACSD agenda. It didn’t happen at the next meeting.

1:23:25 

That’s when I think the timeline broke down. I think that's when I asked. 

1:23:36 

Can you speak to how this is happening? We have a legal mandate that we must see all policies prior to submission to the school board. This keeps happening—it happens every year, and we repeatedly say, “Hey, there’s a Virginia law that mandates this.” Can you speak to why this continues to occur each and every time? It’s unacceptable.

1:24:05 

Alright, I'm on now. Okay, for these specific two policies, I’d have to go back and look at the timeline for how they were brought to the Governance Committee. I’m not sure if the entire school board votes to approve policies or if everything has always flowed through the Governance Committee. I don’t remember things being finalized by the Governance Committee; it was always the entire school board that voted on the final policy. These two policies haven’t gone to the full school board yet. The ACSD would have an opportunity to weigh in. The Governance Committee is the first step in that process to get feedback from the committee, then it goes back to the office of procedural support to incorporate recommendations or changes. Then, prior to going to the full school board, it comes back to the ACSD, which is happening now. Based on recommendations from ACSD, further changes will be made, and then it’ll go back to Governance. If Governance is okay with those changes, then it will go to the school board for final approval.

1:25:31 

We don’t vote on it. We may vote on it in Governance to send it to the board, but the policy doesn’t change until the board votes on it.

1:25:51 

Can you just give the titles or subject of the two policies that keep being referred to? Everyone here probably knows what they are, but I...

1:26:05 

Don’t have the information?

1:26:13 

Yes, the two policies are Policy 2670 and Policy 2671. Policy 2670 is for the program for students with disabilities, and 2671.1 is for multi-agency placement policies. If you go on the board website, I can send you the link. You can search for them and see the current policies.

1:26:31 

Thank you. We will move on to new business. Liz talked last meeting, or the meeting before, about the idea of having a series of town halls. We were thinking January would be a good time to have that kind of meeting. I don’t have much more information on that other than we’ll work to figure out what the structure will be and how to invite people. But feel free to send any ideas you have about how that might work, especially if you’ve done something like this before.

1:29:01 

Alright, we’ll start working on that. Next, we will move on to member time. If anybody has anything to say...

1:29:29 

Some meetings I feel like I really

 talk. I apologize, but I'm going to give myself a quick update because this is exciting and important. So, we have an event we’re very proud of called the IEP Palooza, which is actually this coming Saturday. We encourage you and your constituents—especially those with newly identified students or those new to the IEP process—to attend. It’s a wonderful event where you can get all your questions answered about the IEP process. It’s from 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM at Luther Jackson Middle School. You do have to register in advance, but it's easy—just go to FairfaxCountySEPTA.org. There will be breakout rooms, and in each room, we’ll have an SE person, and at least one or two people from DSS or TSL will be there. The breakout sessions last time were really helpful because people could ask the experts all their questions. It will be a great event. 

We also approved some mini-grants yesterday at SEPTA. The fall mini-grants are done, but look for opportunities in the spring if you know a teacher who could benefit from some extra funds to help students with disabilities.

1:31:21 

Anyone else have anything?

1:31:26 

I just wanted to remind everyone about Inclusive Schools Week, which is coming up December 2nd through 6th. Several schools in Fairfax County participate, and this year’s theme is "Every Place Matters." Just something to look out for online.

1:31:52 

That is our time this evening. We’re only a little bit over. Thank you, everyone, and we’ll see you again next month.

1:32:05 

[Music]

Next Meeting: Wednesday, January 11, 2024.

Recording 

December 11 General Meeting Recording (YouTube) 

Transcript and Translations

Disclaimer: Transcripts are generated by YouTube with the help of artificial intelligence and may not be completely accurate.

0:00
The October minutes— the correction that needed to be made was just a spelling error of a name. We did not reissue the minutes to avoid further confusion. It was just a committee member's name, which was misspelled. I am going to ask that you incorporate the changes to the October minutes along with the November ones.

1:04
The only change to the November minutes is that the start time and finish time were listed inaccurately. The committee started at 7:40 and finished at 9:10. That is not what the minutes read, but it will be corrected after our vote.

1:24
With the agenda, I want to add one item under new business, which is the boundary review advisory. I'm going to appoint a member to that, so you can add that to tonight's agenda under new business.

1:54
Those are the changes we have. Without any objection, the changes to the minutes and the agenda are accepted as submitted. Nobody disagrees, so we will move along.

2:06
A few general announcements and reminders: We do have accommodations in place for individuals on the ACSC tonight. I am going to remind you to please resist the habit of talking over one another, as our interpreters and some of our participants require support. This makes their job more difficult.

2:27
I will also ask you as a gentle reminder to place your name tent on end if you want to make a comment, and when you're done, please remember to press the button on the mic until it turns green. Now, how you turn it on is the same thing—just press it once. See, this is why we need to be quick.

2:53
But, until you turn yours off, somebody else can’t turn theirs off, so that's why you have to wait for that. Another thing I wanted everyone to recall: When you're in your subcommittee meetings, we are recording those meetings. We are no longer posting them to the website because the metrics showed they weren't being listened to that often.

3:16
If they were going to be posted on the website, it would be required to translate them into our six or seven languages, and it was prohibitively difficult to get them up to the website in a timely manner.

3:30
However, the recordings are still available upon request. I bring this up because even though they’re not posted, they still exist, and if anyone wants them, they can get them. Just because you're not posting them doesn’t mean you should forget that your discussions could become public.

3:59
So, remember that in your discussions. I think that’s all of the announcements. Am I forgetting anything? I know Holly hates it when I ask her that because she doesn't know what's in my head.

4:10
But I almost just... okay, what have we talked about that I haven't covered? I can't think of anything. Thank you. So, with that, I'm going to hand it to Holly to handle the public comment.

4:22
Thank you. Well, public commenters will have three minutes. Even if we don't outwardly react, we are listening to everything. Everything will go into the record. I will keep a timer. At two minutes, I’ll give a little wave, and at three minutes, I’ll give a little read.

4:52
The only public commenter we have right now is Carollyn Hayden. We have the podium set up for you.

5:05
Can you hold on one second, Carollyn? Someone has their computer unmuted. If you are listening on your computer at the same time, can you please make sure it’s on mute? We're getting a feedback loop with the microphone.

5:23
Thank you. Go ahead. Sorry.

5:29
Hi, I'm Carollyn Hayden. Just before I start, I'm speaking for myself tonight, not as a member of ACSD. On Tuesday, I broke as a parent. It happened upon reading an email from a member of the FCPS leadership team again ignoring our requests for appropriate staff members to be at an upcoming IEP meeting to discuss our son's return to school.

5:49
To understand, I have to share our family's traumatic experience. Please know I do not share this lightly or without some fear of judgment. Yesterday, I realized that the longer I keep our story quiet, the longer our family and other families suffer in fear, judgment, and worry about when it will happen again. So here it goes.

6:00
Last school year, our son, in a heightened dysregulated state, making a self-harm statement, locked himself in a room at school and wrapped an HDMI cord around his neck. At no time did he make threats toward the school or staff. However, FCPS staff chose to call for police assistance instead of intervening.

6:31
No less than seven police cars showed up, along with paramedics. Police entered the room, and while trying to grab the cord from around him, he got hit. They immediately put my son’s hands behind his back, took him aggressively to the floor in a prone restraint, and put him in handcuffs. He was in sixth grade.

6:49
While in the prone restraint, the cord became tighter around his neck, leaving welts. My son was kept in handcuffs for over 30 minutes, even with me present. He was eventually calm, but he was turning red in the face and appeared not to feel well.

7:04
This year, in seventh grade, in another dysregulated moment, the school team called in the SRO. This further triggered him, causing him to lock himself in a room again, grab a laptop cord, and wrap it around his neck. The SRO called me later that afternoon to check on my son, and during our conversation, threatened to call social services and possibly remove my son from our home, admitting him to a mental health facility.

7:30
The incident resulted in two staff members—the crisis resource teacher and my son’s one-on-one—filing assault charges against him. I have seen the video footage. I can tell you, as a prior FCPS administrator, the interactions between my son and the two staff members were minimal—less than a few seconds—and did not result in injuries or the need for any school personnel to leave school or seek medical assistance.

7:55
I broke on Tuesday because I feel my expectations for justifying that, even though we have struggles, my child is so much better in FCPS than in other school systems. I broke because in my work now, I’m watching the same harmful and traumatic experiences unfold and impact other families. I broke because it shouldn’t be this hard to get my son what he requires.

8:22
I know that these three minutes won’t change anything, but after I broke, I became ignited. I’m here to say I will continue to share this story. I’m going to do so with intent to change the fact that FCPS continues to teach the same lessons and refuses to make changes. That is insanity.

8:40
When will FCPS learn that you can only push a parent of a child with a disability so far until they break and rise again, with more intensity and purpose than ever before.

8:59
I know we’re not supposed to react, but bravo. That was brave, and I think many of us have similar stories. What particularly resonates with me is in my work, just like yours, it’s not just my own stories but many others. It weighs heavily. Thank you for sharing.

9:34
Great, thank you, Liz. So, I am going to share the screen and share with you some of the information that Dr. Anderson wanted me to share tonight related to the offerings coming up in both December and January at the Family Resource Center.

9:46
So, I put on the screen the December offerings, the webinars. As you can see, there are two webinars remaining for the month of December. Actually, on Friday the 13th: "Protecting Kids Against Digital Exploitation – Keeping Kids Safe Online," and also on December 20th: "Youth Mental Health First Aid for Families," which is a course. If you'd like more information about this course and how to register, you can go to the Family Resource Center webpage, and all the information will be there.

10:41
Now, moving on to January, there will be five offerings:

• On January 10th: "Help, My Kids Won’t Go to School," a morning offering from 10 to 11:30.
• On January 17th: A series on "Supporting Your Child's Executive Function Skills."
• On January 24th: "Depression in Teens."
• On January 31st: "Understanding Trauma in Your Child," a morning hour and a half webinar.

11:16
So, again, you can go to the Family Resource Center webpage to register for any of these offerings.

11:23
That’s the report and information from Dr. Anderson from the Family Resource Center. Any questions?

11:30
(inaudible response from audience)

11:35
Of course, Mike is relaying somebody else's input, but I'm sure he'd be willing to pass them along.

11:42
We will move on to the next segment of the agenda, which is our school board year-time report.

11:48
Thank you, everybody. It's nice to be here, and hopefully, you guys are getting geared up for winter break in a couple of weeks. I know for some of our kids, that change in routine can be a lot, so hopefully, it'll be a good break for everybody.

11:59
A couple of things we’re working on: we're still going full steam ahead on the school board. We've had quite a few meetings in the last few weeks. A couple of big things are happening. One is we’re finalizing our systemwide grading policy update. The vote will be at our meeting on December 19th, next Thursday.

12:12
Some of your advocacy was heard. We made sure we put in the grading policy that there’s a balanced and fair approach between summative and formative assessments. We’ve heard issues, especially from special education students, regarding the 70-30 split between summative and formative assessments, and the amount of stress that’s causing students, particularly test anxiety. So, we included in the policy that staff should have a balanced and fair approach to both summative and formative assessments, rather than being heavily weighted toward one.

12:50
That's one way your advocacy worked. Hopefully, that will pass at our vote next week on Thursday. There are quite a few other things in there. We addressed the need for consistency around grading practices, but also recognized the need for flexibility to accommodate diverse populations. We added some philosophy to recognize diversity, though that’s not an exact paraphrasing.

13:17
We also added wording in the policy around consistency across departments, rather than across the entire county. One concern was the 70-30 summative split, which might work well for a math class but might not be suitable for a performing arts class. So, we tried to allow for a little more flexibility to match what works best for different types of classes.

13:43
So, once we vote on it, the grading committee, which is an operational committee under Dr. Reid, will reconvene. They will make regulatory and practice update recommendations, which should come back to the board in the work session in the spring.

14:02
Just an update on grading—your advocacy, especially from special education families regarding the 70-30 split, was heard, so stay tuned.

14:08
There’s a lot of work happening. We also heard about Goal 2, which is part of our strategic plan. Goal 2 focuses on inclusion, and there’s a section on inclusion specifically addressing the fact that we did not meet the state indicators (Indicator 5A and 6) for inclusion, both for school and preschool. There’s a lot of work focused on inclusive efforts to meet those indicators.

14:39
I have a next step that is to ask for additional data points beyond just the state indicators to balance the metrics. I’d like to hear more about this and also about having continued services for folks who ensure that the environment is conducive to inclusion.

14:52
Take a look at the Goal 2 report because it talks about inclusion.

15:05
The other big thing we heard was a report from our consultants on their recommendations for middle school start times. I’ve heard from several special education families about concerns regarding transportation for students who are accessing programs outside of their neighborhood schools.

15:21
One of the issues raised was whether the data they brought in included those bus routes, and we’re still pushing on that. A lot of the board members want to do that work in conjunction with the boundary work we’re doing, to minimize changes, so stay tuned. There’s no further action on that at the moment. We’ve asked for the recommendations on how to implement it, but if you want to look at it, our work session last week has all those documents available.

15:46
Another major focus right now is the budget. We're putting more money toward safety and security in response to safety concerns. Dr. Reid presented a report last week on inclusive schools, and if you want to check that out, it’s available.

16:12
The next big thing coming up is the budget. We’ll be voting on the budget in February. This is the first year of collective bargaining, and we have a bargaining agreement for a 7% increase, but that’s contingent on us having the funds.

16:25
So, that’s the next big thing for you to keep an eye on regarding budgetary spending.

16:32
I think that’s it for now—there’s a lot more, but I wanted to focus on what might be more impactful.

16:37
Before we open up to questions, I just want to check with the room: Does everyone know how to access the board docs?

16:51
It's okay if you don’t. Feel free to reach out to me privately or send me an email.

16:56
I’ve been thinking for a while that it might be appropriate to put together a little primer on how to access board docs—this is the site, and this is how you find the report in question. If that’s something you’d find helpful, let me know, and I’d be happy to put together a step-by-step guide.

17:09
It doesn’t even have to be a live session. I can just provide a written guide so you can find any of this data yourself.

17:16
My question, however, is about the grading policy that goes on Board Docs—how far in advance of a meeting does a report go on there?

17:32
It should go on at least three days in advance. I’m not sure when this one will go up, but we have the final draft of the governance committee, which I’m on. After the chair's meeting on Wednesday, they finalize what goes on the agenda for the next week, so it should be up soon. We have the final draft, and the governance committee has worked on it.

17:58
Once that’s approved, the draft will go on Board Docs for a vote next week.

18:11
It should be up soon, but if you don’t see it by Monday, let me know.

18:17
I will be checking early every morning to see when it arrives, and I will let you know as soon as it’s up.

18:22
I just wanted to add: When Rashna talks about something that hasn’t been voted on yet, you do have access to it before the board does. It might be a limited window of time, but you have a few days to look at what they’re being presented with, and you can provide feedback to your school board member before the decision is made.

18:41
You can also see the latest draft, which didn’t change much from the last governance committee meeting, which is also on Board Docs. If anyone wants to know what Board Docs is, it's a system we use to post all our agendas. On the agendas, there are links to all the documents we’re reviewing, and everything is publicly available.

18:59
So, the latest draft from the governance committee is on Board Docs, and anyone can access it.

19:08
Questions: I'm not sure if this policy or regulation pursues where it needs to go. Is there anything in the policy about communicating with families when a student is going to get a service, so the family is aware? I realize in secondary schools that for many students, we’re trying to move them toward more independence and accountability, but we also have students who cannot communicate that independently to their families. Is there any requirement for communication at some point before the report card?

19:31
So, the level of communication for incident reporting would fall under OPP (Office of Policy and Procedure). There is a requirement for communication, but that’s more operational. The specifics of communication would be addressed in policies that were revised last year and implemented in January.

19:56
The specifics of exactly what communication is needed is more operational. We do have policy requirements regarding this.

20:06
Any other questions?

20:39
Our subcommittee had some parents from the Data Center, and they were talking about how overall their students are having a wonderful experience at their work site. However, as they graduate, there’s no placement mechanism to connect them to jobs. I wonder if you’re aware of any FCPS initiatives to hire brand new FCPS graduates into food services, janitorial work, or other positions where FCPS may currently be understaffed and having difficulty filling those roles. We have all these new students with disabilities who graduate and are seeking work but are unsuccessful.

21:05
I’m not aware of any specific initiative, but it's something I've discussed—how we can better match graduates with open positions.

21:38
Alright, I don’t see any other questions. Moving on to the next item on the agenda: DSS updates.

22:12
Thank you, Liz. I’m going to share my screen now so I can present updates.

22:22
Okay.

22:31
So, I’m going to go ahead and share our updates for this month. Please keep in mind that the data is gathered from different offices and departments within the school system. If you have questions related to any of the specific content that I can’t answer tonight, please write them down on your index cards, and I will make sure they get to the right people for answers.

23:08
A member of the committee requested some data related to special education staffing, so I wanted to share some of that with you. I’ll be sharing the complete data set in the questions for the record, which will be submitted to Liz and Holly. But for tonight, here’s some of the data as of this past Monday, December 9th.

23:35
Currently, we have 3,420 special education teachers. The current vacancy count for special education teachers stands at 97, which represents 2.8% of our current special education teaching staff. Of the 3,420 teachers, 636 are provisionally licensed, representing 18.6% of the total special education teaching staff.

24:06
Additionally, 139 are special education teacher trainees (just over 4%) and 57 are long-term substitute teachers, representing 1.66% of our total special education teaching staff.

24:39
We also have data on special education paraprofessionals. Currently, we have 2,460 paraprofessionals, with 72 vacancies, which represents 2.9% of our total number of paraprofessionals.

25:01
I just wanted to share this data related to staffing. When there are vacancies, schools use existing staff creatively to meet needs. I don’t want you to think that because we have 97 teacher vacancies, we have 97 classrooms without teachers. Schools are combining classrooms or using other strategies without exceeding class size limits to ensure students have teachers each day. The same is true with paraprofessionals. Principals are using their staffing flexibly to meet students’ needs.

25:56
I also wanted to share some of our current recruitment efforts. As you know, special education positions continue to be a critical need area across the county, state, and country. Our Department of Special Services and Human Resources continue to hold monthly special education information sessions via video conference on the second Thursday of each month.

26:31
These sessions provide an opportunity for people interested in becoming special educators or paraprofessionals to ask questions. We also share information about cohorts that might help people receive endorsements in special education. Some of our current IAs (Instructional Assistants) are pursuing special education certification through these opportunities.

27:06
DSS and our recruitment administrator also attend job fairs throughout the year. We start early in the year and continue through a 12-month cycle, partnering with Human Resources to provide early hire contracts and on-the-spot interviews. We’re focused on special education hires for the spring, and we attend both local job fairs and university fairs to meet with recent college graduates.

28:03
In the spring, we’ll be hiring for next school year, especially in special education. One exciting opportunity is the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) conference, which will be in Baltimore this year in March. FCPS will have a booth for recruitment purposes, and we’re hoping to connect with local college graduates who are interested in staying in the area and potentially securing early hire contracts.

29:14
I also wanted to mention that Fairfax County Human Resources has launched a program called Teach Forward Avanza in partnership with I-Teach. I-Teach is an accredited non-college program offering aspiring educators affordable and accessible opportunities to earn their teaching certification.

29:52
Teach Forward is an FCPS cohort designed to help employees with bachelor’s degrees become fully licensed teachers. FCPS will offer this program to 100 employees who do not currently hold a Virginia teaching license, and they will become provisionally licensed teachers for the 2025–2026 school year.

30:06
Participants must commit to teaching in Fairfax County in their endorsement area for two years after receiving their provisional license. FCPS will cover approximately 90% of the cost of the program. We’re holding information sessions in December and January, and interested participants can register online.

31:00
This program will focus on special education and other critical need areas in the county, not just special education. We expect that a significant number of participants will be in special education.

31:28
Rashna mentioned the Family Summit earlier. The summit will be held on March 15th at South Lakes High School. It’s an all-day event open to FCPS families, educators, and community members. The event will feature a keynote address by Dr. Julie C and Dr. Chrissy Petty-Ponack, inclusive schooling experts.

32:05
The summit will also feature a resource fair showcasing Fairfax County programs and community organizations. We’ll assign staff members to participate in the planning process and share information about the event.

32:45
Two final updates:

1. Extended School Year (ESY) services for 2025 will run from June 30th to July 25th, with July 3rd and 4th as student holidays. ESY sites and bell schedules will be announced in January. Staff hiring for ESY will begin in February.
2. Monthly updates on compensatory education services: 
   • We are 98% complete with past reimbursements.
   • Future and ongoing reimbursements are 44.9% complete.
   • Of the 112,000 hours required for compensatory services, 62,000 hours have been delivered, and 48,000 hours remain.
   • 707 students are receiving compensatory services via Varsity Tutors, with nearly 5,000 hours delivered to date.

Here’s a cleaned-up version of the transcript with timestamps:

35:41
That is all for DSS updates. Before we go to questions, here's the privilege. I'm going to ask one first: What measures are in place to ensure that long-term substitutes have access to the necessary IEP information of the students they're serving?

35:47
So, at the school level, it's really the Special Education team, directed by the Special Education department chair. We now have department chairs at all levels—elementary, middle, and high school—who are responsible for ensuring that any long-term substitutes or teacher trainees have access to student IEPs and the information needed to provide support.

36:07
They collaborate with the other teachers who might address the goals in the IEP. Long-term subs and teacher trainees cannot case-manage students, but provisionally licensed teachers can. They work alongside a licensed and endorsed special education teacher to ensure that accommodations and services are followed.

36:24
So, it's handled at the school-based level.

36:29
Yes.

36:36
Thank you for sharing this. The numbers were better than I expected. I was curious—over previous years, is a 3% vacancy rate better than usual, and were there more year-round contracts signed last year that helped improve those numbers?

36:47
To answer your first question, I don’t currently have data from the past three to five years, but I can get that. From what I've seen, this year seems better than the last couple of years. We found that the number of staff deployments needed at the beginning of this school year was significantly lower than in the past two years.

37:04
As for your second question, regarding year-round contracts for ESY, we didn't implement them. A few years ago, we considered it due to challenges with hiring for ESY staff, but with the increased pay we’ve offered in the last couple of years, we've had no challenges hiring for ESY recently.

37:23
I think the extra compensation has really helped.

37:31
Thank you.

37:34
Have you looked at the breakdown of the 97 vacancies in terms of learning disabilities, multiple disabilities, ID, etc.?

37:43
We can definitely get that. HR has that information. I only received the raw numbers, but if you'd like that detailed information, just let me know and I’ll get it for you.

37:55
As usual, we’ll share these slides when we send out the minutes.

38:07
Thank you. Going back to the 100% staffing goal—how many students does 100% serve? Over the last five years, how have these ratios changed? One recurring theme in conversations I've heard over the last three years is that even with full staffing, the system struggles to meet the needs of individual students. How does that look in the long-term?

38:44
I think I can respond from the perspective of how staffing works. The number of students assigned to a teaching position is based on various factors, including class size limits depending on the disability category. So, even though we’re at 100%, the number of students impacted is large in a system as vast as ours.

39:02
I know schools are doing creative things to meet the needs of students. We’ve also been looking at staffing structures as part of our enhancement plan, particularly at schools like Burke School and Keyan Kilmer Center.

39:25
We’ve had new leadership working with administrators at these sites to gather information.

39:43
In terms of what 100% means, it's based on current staffing models. But as I’ve said before, our staffing models haven't changed much in 30-40 years, and they may not align with best practices anymore.

39:56
I think the enhancement plan will help address this gap, and we have a real opportunity to be leaders in the country if we get it right.

40:09
Thank you for that.

40:17
Can you give us a breakdown of the vacancies across the general education positions as well?

40:22
I didn’t request the data for general education vacancies specifically, but if you put that on an index card, we can follow up on that too.

40:30
Thank you.

40:35
Moving on to new business. Rashna has an update on some of the questions that came up during the school year. You can find the answers on BoardDocs December 5th, under business policy.

40:46
There will be a post on Friday with more details.

40:55
Thank you.

41:00
Any additional questions?

41:10
Okay, moving on to the subcommittee reports. Committee one, please give your report.

41:25
Yes, so we continued our conversation from last month. We reviewed the discussions from last time and determined who we want to invite to speak and the questions we’d like them to address.

41:45
Thank you.

41:50
Committee two, go ahead.

42:05
We’ve been focusing on access to necessary emotional and behavioral health resources, as well as disproportionality in services. We decided to request discipline data and discuss how to gather information on staff injuries on the job.

42:25
Thank you.

42:30
Committee three, Brandon Cassidy.

42:35
Thank you. We reviewed our goals and started shaping them into recommendations. We’re focusing on what we want to achieve through the committee.

42:55
Thank you.

43:05
Committee four?

43:10
We reviewed the baseline data and streamlined requests for additional data, along with a few questions about staff details.

43:30
Thank you.

43:35
Committee five, J.

43:40
We had a number of guest speakers tonight. We had representatives from Davis, and Diane Mon, director of programs at Northern Virginia, who shared insights about the transition process for students. We didn’t have much time to talk about data requests but will work to get them together despite the restrictions.

44:00
It was great to hear the speakers and parents' perspectives.

44:10
Thank you, J. Any questions from other subcommittees before we move on?

44:20
Moving on to policy reviews. This year, as the ACSC is tasked with reviewing policies, not just one committee reviews them. You've received two policy changes for new business—largely administrative—and won’t go through subcommittees because they're just procedural adjustments.

44:50
One remaining review is the transition toolkit for students leaving FCPS. This is directly related to your committee’s work, and we’re asking for your review. It’s not time-intensive, and I’ll share it with you offline if you're in agreement.

45:10
Any questions?

45:20
Moving on to our bylaws: if we’re putting someone on another group, we must vote. Susan Ederton has agreed to take on a role with the Family Summit planning committee. She’s already been interacting with the committee, but we need a formal vote to officially confirm her role.

45:40
May I have a motion?

45:45
Motion to approve Susan Ederton for the Family Summit planning committee.

45:50
Second?

45:55
Second.

46:00
Brandon, would you like to speak to your motion?

46:10
We specifically asked Susan because of her understanding of the importance of special education representation in this conference.

46:25
Any other comments? All in favor?

46:30
Aye.

46:35
Any opposed?

46:40
Motion carries. Thank you, Susan.

46:50
Next, for the Family Summit, Joanne Walton has agreed to manage the nominations for the First Class Awards. The timeline is tighter this year, as the summit is a month earlier. The qualifications for nominations will remain mostly the same.

47:10
I’d like a motion to add a new award for teams, recognizing collective contributions.

47:20
Can I have a motion?

47:30
Motion to add the team award to the First Class Award categories.

47:35
Second?

47:40
Second.

47:45
All in favor?

47:50
Aye.

47:55
Any opposed?

48:00
Motion carries.

59:59
Brandon: By Brandon, any second?

1:00:11
Brandon: Would you like to speak to your motion?

1:00:17
Brandon: Um, I think that really the better... more... better... more...

1:00:49
Brandon: Um, any other comments? Would you like to speak to your second?

1:00:55
Brandon: Well, I just believe that it would be good to acknowledge me, in addition to individual awarders. I believe that’s the purpose. I actually think, in the last two years, we didn’t have an award specifically for teams, but we had nominations that were so compelling that we ended up giving one of the awards to a team. So it lends itself to just adding its own.

1:01:21
Brandon: So, we have the motion on the table to add a first CL award for recognition of special education teams. All in favor, say "Aye." All opposed, say "No." Any abstentions?

1:01:35
Motion carries. Thank you.

1:01:40
Brandon: Moving on, the last piece of old business I have is, we had talked about, at the beginning of the year, doing the extended subcommittee meetings but not doing them every month. Holly, Mike, and I, in our upline conversation, had this idea to do a dedicated ACSD meeting to solicit and hear public comment.

1:02:07
Brandon: Anybody that’s been on this committee for longer than a year or so, we used to get a lot more public comment than we currently get. I don’t want to suppose reasons for that, but I do believe one of the main priorities of this group is to represent the voice of the community. We can’t do that if we don’t hear it.

1:02:30
Brandon: I would like to solicit formal public comment as a town hall meeting in January. This will require a lot of participation and cooperation from all of you with your representative organizations to share that information.

1:02:56
Brandon: Holly, Mike, and I will work out the logistics. We may make an exception to the time limit so people can speak a little bit more extensively. Three minutes goes fast. Possibly even considering some Q&A if families are willing to do that.

1:03:22
Brandon: I thought January was particularly useful because it gives us enough time to incorporate themes into the annual report, but still allows a couple of other meetings for more extended subcommittee work.

1:03:43
Brandon: Questions or comments on that? Jan?

1:03:48
Jan: One thing we did previously when we had this kind of event was to do breakout groups. I think we did it by age/grade levels, like Elementary, Middle, and High School. That way more people had a chance to talk and share, and we had facilitators taking notes.

1:04:22
Jan: That might be aspirational for January, but maybe after our annual report, we could have another one. I’m not ruling it out, but I don’t want to overpromise.

1:04:36
Brandon: Thank you. Go ahead.

1:05:03
Amanda: Thank you for acknowledging that. I have a question.

1:05:08
Amanda: How will we communicate about this? I don't have CSS...

1:05:27
Brandon: I don’t have an official answer, but I’d say mention it to the communities you have access to—some of us have larger audiences, some smaller—but just talk it up to people who might want to participate.

1:06:06
Brandon: We’ll work on some tools and maybe ask for help distributing that information.

1:06:12
Brandon: We could even put it in news or other communications.

1:06:26
Amanda: Would FCPS put it in the weekly newsletter, like they did recently?

1:06:38
Brandon: Yes, they could. There are a variety of tools we can use to communicate.

1:06:52
Amanda: I can work with the Communications team to explore additional ways to spread the word.

1:07:06
Brandon: Are there regular communications to parents of students with disabilities?

1:07:32
Amanda: Yes, there’s a special education newsletter. We can use that, too.

1:08:01
Brandon: I can send messages through the e-delivery system to families.

1:08:23
Amanda: Could we invite multiple people from the Department of Special Services to attend, like Mike Bloom or Dr. Reed?

1:09:00
Brandon: The more important people in the department may encourage more participation.

1:09:21
Amanda: If they were there, it could help to have a Q&A session at the end.

1:09:34
Brandon: I just want to clarify that public comments are handled in a certain way, and any responses would be at the discretion of those individuals.

1:10:17
Amanda: Just having them there would help, even if they don’t respond immediately.

1:10:34
Carolyn: I’d suggest looking at early February for scheduling, as it gives time for school board members to include the event in their newsletters.

1:11:03
Brandon: The reason we chose January is because in February, we typically review the annual plan, which takes up a lot of time. We’ll do our best with the January date.

1:11:27
Brandon: If this event proves useful, we can look at adjusting the timeline in the future.

1:11:39
Brandon: I can still contact the school board members to distribute the information.

1:11:47
Brandon: We need to move on to the next agenda item.

1:12:01
Brandon: Jay, go ahead.

1:12:10
Jay: A voice that hasn’t always been heard is the CS left. Maybe it’s good to get that voice heard.

1:12:24
Brandon: I think you answered your own question about who to tell.

1:12:29
Brandon: We really need to focus on certain parts of the county to make sure those families get heard.

1:13:21
Brandon: I think it’s a really good idea to extend the time for public comment so everyone can voice their concerns.

1:13:37
Brandon: We definitely need voices from underrepresented regions.

1:14:04
Brandon: I’ll contact school board members from those regions to ensure representation.

1:14:15
Brandon: Mike and I will also talk about allowing virtual access to public comment to overcome logistical barriers.

1:14:42
Carolyn: One thought—perhaps we could have interpreters available for those who need them.

Here’s the cleaned-up version of the transcript with timestamps preserved:

1:15:22
So, moving on to new business. I shared in advance two policies that...
1:15:28
Unfortunately, I do... we don't have any copies of those available. No?
1:15:33
How do we hand that? Did anybody not get the policies by email?
1:15:40
Oh, I'll pull it up. Talk amongst yourselves while I figure this out. I'll give you a topic: The Civil War was neither civil nor a war. Discuss.
1:15:55
I'm going to try once I pull them up... I'm going to unplug. [laughs] That was a line from an old Saturday Night Live episode, Linda Richmond’s Coffee Talk.
1:16:08
Did you... Did you send them?
1:16:35
I'm pulling them up now.
1:16:46
While we're waiting, share your... or if you don't, I will. You're pregnant?
1:17:01
Um... I actually got... [pause] looking forward to my...
1:17:23
[Pause]
1:17:52
I just wanted... [pause] they're lucky to have you. I’ll tell everyone. Okay, so the two policies are... I have them pulled up now.

1:18:06
So the two policies are 26-70.2 and 26-71.1. These are large... there's no substantive change to these policies. These are corrective changes that are required for adding information or implementing policies that address issues already decided upon.

1:18:27
You can see the redline version up there; it really just adds more description, saying the same things that were said before, particularly about compliance with IDEA. If we have any discussion on that, I’ll need a motion to approve. We don’t need to make any changes unless you have something you’d like to recommend. That would be part of the discussion after we have a motion.

1:19:01
So, we don’t have that conversation until we have a motion to approve these changes or not approve these changes. Keep in mind, we’re only giving our approval for a board decision that has already been made. We don’t actually implement these.

1:19:12
I need a motion before we can discuss accepting this policy as presented.

1:19:17
I motion that we accept this.
1:19:32
I need a second.
1:19:38
Second.

1:19:46
Would you like to speak to your motion?
1:19:53
No, I think it’s just as you said—it’s just a matter of giving it a little more flesh and description.

1:19:53
Any comments, questions?
1:20:00
Seeing none, the motion is to approve the policy as submitted. All in favor, say “aye.”
1:20:10
All opposed, say “no.” Any abstentions?
1:20:15
Motion carries. Thank you.

1:20:17
And the other policy is even shorter. The changes are...

1:20:23
The private placement decisions. This actually did get reviewed by Policy and RS last year regarding changing the seclusion and restraint referral process. This is in compliance with the settlement on seclusion and restraint with Fairfax County.

1:20:37
It is being done to address a backlog in private school placements. I need a motion to accept this as submitted.

1:20:42
Do you have enough?
1:20:48
Just anybody move to accept this policy as submitted?

1:20:56
Stephanie. Second?
1:21:04
Amanda, would you like to speak to your motion?

1:21:09
Any other questions or comments?
1:21:15
Okay, the motion is to approve the changes as submitted. All in favor, say “aye.”
1:21:23
All opposed, say “no.” Any abstentions?
1:21:28
Motion carries. Thank you.

1:21:32
And then lastly, I’m not going to share all the background because we don’t have all night, but ACSD was invited to add a representative to the Boundary Review Advisory Group that is addressing the boundary changes anticipated over the next year at Fairfax County Public Schools.

1:21:39
My question to this group is, in order to find a representative, we have very short notice, and we need to vote on it. Is there anybody who is both a parent and also submitted to be considered and was not selected for this body?

1:21:54
I see your hand, Nita. Are you offering?
1:22:02
No? Okay. I mean, I can represent ACMC. I did submit and I was selected.

1:22:09
No, we want separate if you were... No, I can bow out in that capacity.
1:22:14
Oh no, if anything, we prefer to populate the group with people who have an interest in students with disabilities.

1:22:22
We didn’t have long to organize this; the invitation was made to me over the weekend. It’s a large time commitment, both in terms of the frequency of meetings and the duration of the group. You would need to be willing to serve until January of 2026.

1:22:42
I did tell staff that, given the nature of an advisory group, we can’t guarantee that anyone will be on this group a year from now—reasonably, many of us will be, but...

1:22:47
The solution I came up with, in partnership with a few people who I asked and turned me down, and then one who said maybe, is that Jay Burenville and I are going to tag-team this. Both of us have a challenge with the frequency of meetings and the amount of work involved, but I’d like to go back to staff and say that we’re giving you two names. We’re not both going to attend all the time, but we’ll see who’s available and share the load a little bit.

1:23:19
Assuming that’s agreeable to everybody, I would like a motion to approve Jay and I as representatives on that body.

1:23:26
Do I have a motion?
1:23:31
I need a second.

1:23:36
Al, would you like to speak to your motion?
1:23:45
Sure, I think that it’s great to have ACSD represented, and I think you guys bring a lot of experience and valuable input. I think the idea of co-representatives is excellent, given the time commitment. It’s more likely one of you will be at each meeting.

1:24:03
Thank you.

1:24:08
Any other comments or questions?
1:24:15
Seeing none, I’ll call the vote to appoint Jay and myself as co-representatives to this body. All in favor, say “aye.”
1:24:23
All opposed, say “no.” Any abstentions?
1:24:28
Seeing none, the motion passes. Moving on to member time.

1:24:41
Does anyone have anything they want to discuss?
1:24:48
I just wanted to ask if you have anything you’d like to be considered for the Family Summit.

1:24:57
Sorry, we did talk about that and bringing it up. I forgot.

1:25:13
Sorry, SHPO is having their sensory-friendly Santa event on Saturday. It’s posted on the list, which I’m sure you’ve seen, but it’s great! It’s awesome. Come join us, do some crafts. He’s very patient, and it’s a really nice experience for kids who don’t like... Santa and Mrs. Claus were both redheads, just saying!

1:25:48
[Pause]
1:26:01
So, if either you or Jay are stretched... I would really love... [Pause]

1:26:07
Oh my gosh, I think Jay and I both feel a lot of time pressure in saying yes to this. Can we pull this off?
1:26:13
People, can we redo that vote?
1:26:25
Yes, you can.
1:26:30
Thank you. Harry, second?
1:26:36
Daniel, do you want to comment on your motion?
1:26:45
[Pause]
1:26:52
Thank you!

1:26:57
We have an event this Saturday, the 14th, from 2 PM at E restaurants in Lake Bridge. It’s called the Jingle Jangle Ball

. It’s a fundraiser. Last year we raised $1,100 for our FUT Min grants. We really appreciate any support. Come help us share the news.

1:27:07
The student performers are really great. It’s one of those events that makes you smile. You’ve got student performers and then Scott Elliott and his band. There’s holiday music throughout, and lots of great raffle prizes.

1:27:32
All proceeds go to S, along with 20% of the food and drink order during the event. So, please come and join us! If you have a little extra time, we’re also looking for a couple of volunteers to help with raffle tickets and monitor the application. The signup genius is on our Facebook page or you can just... [Pause]

1:28:05
Thank you, everyone!

1:28:15
All right, action items for the next meeting. We’ll be sharing information about our town hall. When you see notification that the first-class award nominations have opened, please participate in that process.

1:28:32
Please do. There are plenty of people in this division who are worthy of recognition, and it’s always a wonderful challenge to have many nominations to choose from.

1:28:47
Lastly, just a few words. I wish you all a very happy holiday season—Christmas, New Year, and whatever you celebrate. May your time off be peaceful and enjoyable.

1:29:00
And with that, we are adjourned.

Next Meeting: Wednesday, February 12, 2025 

Recording 

January 15 General Meeting Recording (YouTube) 

Transcript and Translations

Translated Transcript Coming Soon!

Disclaimer: Transcripts are generated by YouTube with the help of artificial intelligence and may not be completely accurate.

3:08
Good evening. I apologize for interrupting. The folks online cannot hear.

3:18
Can you hear us now?
Audience: Yes, thank you.

3:25
Yeah, like, raise your hand if...
3:32
Um, so, you know, this is something that we chose to do as a committee because our work is so largely informed by the public. I want to give just a quick rundown of what the ACSD is and does, and when I say quick, I mean very quick. For those of you that may not know, we are an advisory committee to the school board. We are a state-mandated advisory committee, and that means that all the school divisions in Virginia must have an entity like this one to advise their division school board on matters relating to students with disabilities, as well as to communicate back to members of the community about what's happening in those departments within the division.

3:51
We are, many of us, parents, employees, and representatives of related organizations that represent the community on this body. But, you know, it’s a large division, and we’re 30 people, so it's critically important to us that we have these opportunities to listen to others who are in the community every day. You should know that we do welcome public comment at all of our meetings, but for this meeting in particular, we've extended the window of time and the number of formats that you can deliver that comment in. So, that's why it's a somewhat enhanced opportunity to speak.

4:43
You're going to get some assistance with the mic at the podium when you approach the podium. People who are in the room will be addressed first, followed by people online. When you approach the podium, you hit the mic with a quick tap. It'll turn green, your mic is on. When you finish, tap again. No other mic will work in the room until yours is turned off, but if you forget, we have support members of the community right there—excuse me, members of the ACSD are right there to help you.

5:03
You have a four-minute limit, and that is a hard stop. So, you have a timer, and you'll hear the timer. You can finish up your sentence, but you can’t continue beyond that, or we'll run out of time for everyone to speak.

5:46
Let me see... I think I’ve covered everything. I would like to, since we have so many members of the public here joining us, to do a very quick turnaround of the room for each of the members of the ACSD to say their name and who they represent. That’s it.

5:58
Elizabeth Alinsky: My appointment to the ACSD is on behalf of Moon, who is an at-large member of the school board.
Holly Sterns: I represent Region [unclear].
Ali Baler: I represent Special Education.
PCA: I represent disability services.
LaM Hunter: I represent the Providence District.
[Name unclear]: I'm a representative of therapy recreation services.
[Name unclear]: I represent Southern District.
Daniel Corell: Community Services.
Bo Carlyn Pyton: I represent the Braddock District.
Nita Pton: I represent [unclear].
Susan Edon: I’m an at-large representative for K-Y McDel.
Rachel Charlton: I represent Region 1.
J Burenville: I represent Region 4.
Stephanie Smith: The Franconia District.
Mim: [Unclear].
Shannon Duncan: I represent Virginia.
Kathy Murphy: I’m a member of the ACSD.
Mike Bloom: I am the Director of Special Education Instruction, and I am also the staff liaison to the Advisory Committee for Students with Disabilities.
Ter Ur: I’m the Assistant Superintendent for the Department of Special Services.

9:00
We have a few members joining us online. Would you like to hear their introductions?
9:07
Yes, please.
9:13
Amanda Campbell: I’m the Springfield District representative for Sandy Anderson.
Harry Henderson: I am the representative for Mason District for Dr. Ricardi.
Adriana Van Brada: I am representing the League of Women Voters.
Christine Bennett: I’m the Region 3 parent representative.

10:02
Thank you. I think that’s it.

10:20
Good evening, I’m Don Schaer, Director of Special Education Procedural Support. Nice to see you all.

10:33
As you can see, we have a very diverse audience already represented within our roles on the committee. But, you know, nobody knows everything that's happening in the division, so we really want to hear what your experiences are and what the situations are that you value and want to elevate.

10:51
The school board members were all invited to attend. I did tell them in the invitation, as is typical of our public comment period, that none of them are being asked to answer questions or engage in the discussion.

11:05
We will be forwarding transcripts of all the public comment to them following this event, and we also incorporate all the public comment we receive over the course of the year in our annual report that we submit in June. So, one way or another—actually, with this meeting, two ways—your comments will be preserved and forwarded to the school board and the superintendent. We do not respond to your comment in real time, nor do we ask questions or take questions in the moment, but we do follow up if you ask questions that require a response. It could be staff, a committee member, or a school board member, depending on the nature of your presentation.

12:00
But this is not a Q&A session. We will incorporate the comments in our work. With that in mind, our public comment part of the agenda is handled by our vice chair. I’m going to hand the gavel to you, metaphorically speaking, to take over.

12:07
You’ve already covered most of what I usually start out by saying. I’ll just remind everyone that we have a four-minute limit. We have this handy kitchen timer. When it hits three minutes, please try to look up periodically. At four minutes, we have to get to the next speaker. It’s not personal—it’s just that we have so many of you here today, and we want to make sure everyone has the same opportunity. We also have some written submissions, a video submission, and a number of people on the line who would like to speak.

12:47
I’m going to go down the list of everyone who signed in. Our first speaker is Jessica.

13:28
Jessica Marose: Tonight, I want to share two examples from our IEP meetings demonstrating how the lack of quality regulatory training for special staff and FCPS policies and practices are limiting access to the services, evaluations, and placement considerations that our son needs or is entitled to.

13:50
At our annual IEP meeting last spring, I requested a comprehensive speech and language evaluation for my son, sharing new concerns about his inability to produce clear sounds, even though he was progressing through later grades. The school team rejected my request on the basis that he first needed to work on an articulation goal without the support of a speech therapist. If he failed to progress, he would then be considered for evaluation. The meeting staff assured me that this was the process for speech evaluation and accessing speech services. My family decided to go through the reevaluation process just to get this concern evaluated. My son was diagnosed with a speech sound disorder. Still, we remain concerned that the school team would not provide speech therapy as a related service for this new finding, given their previous refusal to provide speech therapy for his documented severe expressive and receptive language delays.

14:43
We added speech and language impairment as a secondary disability category to access speech services in preschool, so that other parents with non-verbal or limited verbal children are also going back through eligibility to add speech and language impairment as a secondary disability category just so they can access speech services that their children should already be receiving under the developmental delay disability category. The defective blanket policy of denying speech therapy as a related service, which many parents advocated for change last year for children with severe communication needs, is not evidence-based and must end.

15:30
Second, regarding placement and meetings: staff were unaware of and therefore not considering placement options within the school district. I had to request a child manager for my region. My legal was to have that discussion, but they continually referred to the special education class as an "inclusive" environment, which is misleading to parents. Their model program does not meet the state standard of 50% typically developing students. Most staff were unaware of the obligation under IDEA that children with disabilities be provided access to a general education setting, which precludes the staff from considering those options during the placement discussions. I provided my team a copy of the 2017 colleague letter from the Department of Education on the subject. Staff calculated service hours for the special education class based on a presumptive placement and without consideration for all placement options. They then used those hours as justification for why resource classes were not an option during placement. This practice is clearly out of step with the IDEA preference for educating children in the least restrictive environment.

16:17
To address these problems, I would like to suggest that FCPS undertake a review of its staff training regarding IEPs and services to ensure compliance with federal standards for IDEA and that all staff attending IEP meetings complete mandatory annual training on the applications of IDEA. I would also like to request that FCPS publish on its website all policies and processes currently in place for IEP teams regarding accessing evaluations and services to increase transparency between parents and staff.

17:31
I’m going to make a request. We had a few messages come through from those online. If you could, when you’re giving your public comment, please bring the microphone closer to your mouth so it projects better and the people online can hear you clearly. Thank you.

18:07
If you'd like to submit something in writing, please do so. Your complete comments will be included in what we forward. You can send any written comments to [email protected].

18:58
You'll get the rest of your message even at the time, so move on to our next excuse.

19:06
Excuse me. I am an extremely proud employee of FCPS. I see every day, but really, the miracles that take place in the school system, and I'm so grateful to be a part of FCPS. I absolutely love my job and I love the school I work at. I couldn't be prouder. That said, my daughter is twice exceptional, and we have had a horrific experience at school. I believe that FCPS is failing our twice-exceptional learners, and I want to illustrate that through a personal example without using my daughter's name.

19:56
First of all, you should know my daughter is in the level four AAP program. Well qualified, she's brilliant. She has autism, ADHD, generalized anxiety disorder, and sensory processing disorder. She truly is twice exceptional. Her first year at FCPS was last year. Having a social communication disorder, of course, she would just come home and kind of melt down. She needed to be isolated in a quiet environment, head down, just until one day she refused to go to school.

20:04
She said she didn't know why she was alive. I found out she'd been quietly crying every day in class, and I called her teacher to discuss. He said she doesn't have a disability, she's manipulative. I asked how he could know such a thing. He said her math scores are high, therefore she's not disabled. This is a personal example of how an exceptional ability can mask the very real struggles that are being faced.

21:03
This is elementary school in Springfield. Last night, I went to curriculum night as we moved into middle school. They had a session at 6 o'clock for special education in one area, and at 6 o'clock, a session for advanced academics in an entirely different area. How can I go to both? You can't. I chose to go to special education. I asked if they offered small group learning for children in advanced academics, and the answer was no. What about those who need it? They said there aren't enough kids who need small groups if they are in advanced academics.

22:06
I'm concerned that as we continue this journey, FCPS cannot provide faith for my child in this system that I adore, that I give my all to, and that I just think the world of. Thank you for listening. I would encourage you to consider twice exceptional learning centers and better training for staff. Thank you.

24:00
While she's doing that, anybody who came in the room after we began, if you would like to sign up to deliver public comment, the sign-up sheets are up here now. We need to sign up so that we know to call on you.

24:19
Speaker is J. There's additional seating over here too. PR, still arriving. Thanks, Jenna. Last April, I spoke to this group about steps FCPS could take to better safeguard our children who are on the autism spectrum and have been subjects of bullying. According to Autism Speaks, about 60% of children with autism experience bullying in school. I wanted to be here tonight to check in and see if progress had been made or considered.

25:00
My son is now a junior, and he is on the autism spectrum with low-functioning autism. He's a pretty smart kid. He plans to go to college. He's applying to George Mason and CNU after next year. Unfortunately, he's been the target of bullying by classmates and teammates during his high school tenure. During his freshman year, he was called racial slurs on the football field, at lunch, and in the classroom. Over the course of a couple of months in his sophomore year, bullying occurred again. He was called "co-spreader" and "shank." That then escalated to a physical fight with the other student, again over several months, and was reported to the administration with no immediate actions taken.

25:44
The request I made last April for FCPS was to create a countywide standardized bullying harassment form that can be completed by a parent or student at the time of an incident. The form would document when the incident occurred, the aggressors involved, the type of behavior, witnesses, and the location. In my case, and I'm sure with other folks, our reports were not entered into the bullying management system in a timely manner, nor were they complete. They were missing all the dates and times of reported incidents. So, at the end of the day, it did not fit the definition of bullying because it did not appear to have been repeated over time. This devastated my child, who was on the spectrum, because the school did not perceive what occurred to him as bullying, and as a result, it made him reluctant to report future incidents.

26:31
The second request I have is for an update on the status of training being developed for athletic coaches and staff on how to recognize characteristics of students with disabilities, how to interface with them, and how to ensure that IEP accommodations are met outside of the classroom on the playing field. I was told by FCPS administrators within DSS and Student Activities in the athletic central office that this training was in development.

26:57
The background of this request is that leading into his sophomore year, my son was called a baby by one of the coaches on the football team while attending weight room practice for football. The weather that week in July was very hot and muggy. All the kids had to run sprints outside prior to entering the weight room. Even after being told it was only a weight room day, for a kid on the spectrum, this is hard to adjust to. Honestly, it probably wouldn't be easy for any of us if we showed up expecting to be inside on a 100-degree day and were told we had to run sprints outside. After the sprints, my son was in the weight room leaning against some weights, and the coaches approached him and asked him why he was not lifting weights. My son's response was that he was tired, it was hot, and he felt ill. The coach responded, "You're being whiny, and you sound like a baby."

27:41
My son initiated a physical altercation with the coach and was placed on the ground by the coach. Does name-calling have to be part of a coaching team culture for any child? If a kid is whining that they're tired and hot, shouldn't the first response be to set the expectation, acknowledge, validate, and restate the desired behavior, then motivate? So, instead of saying to a kid, "You're being a baby," it should be something like, "We don't tolerate whining here. It's definitely hot today, I get it, we're all hot. I need you to grab a quick drink of water, relax, and then get started on your machine workout. I'll check back with you in a few. We're all in this together, we're a team."

28:53
After this, we did meet with the coaching staff the following afternoon, and we had our son apologize for his behavior. The coaching staff said it was an unfortunate incident and that the coach was just trying to motivate the player. We explained again that because of his ASD, it’s difficult for him to handle such situations.

29:06
Hello, I’m the parent of a kid who’s in A4 in the general education setting. Although he’s successful academically, having him in general ed is definitely fitting a square peg into a round hole. He's a great kid, but he has his own approach to the world. He suffers from sensory overwhelm in the cafeteria, but he wants to eat with his friends. He processes every detail in the room, and he needs routine to make that easier. He loses his ability to speak when he's stressed, and teachers think he’s refusing to answer them.

29:43
Like all autistic kids, he has a lot of needs that are not understood in our schools. The start of every school year is difficult. He has a new teacher, new classroom rules, and a schedule that cannot be counted on until the schedule for specialists has been set every year.

30:08
We have multiple meetings to advocate for his strengths and supports every year. He's expected to fit into a classroom model that's designed for non-autistic people. We need a 2E center that is designed to meet the needs of kids like mine. I want to thank Dr. Reed and FCPS staff for their ongoing support of 2E kids, but the work has been focused on the needs of older students. The needs in elementary also need to be met for our 2E kids.

Let me share two things that are needed. We need sensory-friendly infrastructure and we need training for Gen Ed teachers and staff on autism and neurodiversity-affirming support. Last year, DSS shared a guidance document for creating trauma-informed spaces, but these spaces aren't required and they're often not prioritized. As we move forward in updating our school infrastructure, we need to think about noise, smells, and lighting. We need classrooms to be physically larger but less crowded. We need a calm and predictable lunch space in every single school. We need FCPS to require sensory-friendly design in all our school renovations and new construction.

31:34
Second, we need all teachers and staff to have a better understanding of autism. Do you know that until 2013, a person couldn’t be diagnosed with both ADHD and autism? This is true. It’s quite common actually to be autistic and have ADHD, but doctors were taught that you could not diagnose both of those in one person—this was until 2013. So there have been a lot of changes, a lot of updates, and this updated information about autism needs to be brought into our schools and taught to Gen Ed staff and Gen Ed teachers. We need updated training about autism and neurodiversity-affirming support.

FCPS has been working to support more inclusion for students with disabilities, but it's not a matter of just changing the student placement. Autistic students have communication differences, sensory differences, and information-processing differences. Our schools are built and designed for non-autistic students. The mismatch between the needs of autistic students and the school environment results in overwhelm and misunderstandings. To be truly inclusive, FCPS needs to design sensory-friendly infrastructure and provide updated neurodiversity-affirming autism training to all teachers and staff.

33:13
Thank you.

33:25
Good evening and thank you for being here tonight. My fourth grader has not received consistent instruction since September. I never imagined I’d be in this position, with a child refusing school. I never imagined this because when my family returned to the U.S. a little over two years ago, I was quickly connected with a community of parents of kids in FCPS. I read about the years of advocacy these parents had done, I saw the handbook they fought to make a reality, and I read their stories. I thought, “Thank goodness my child won’t suffer like that because these parents have worked so hard to make things better.”

29 months later, I stand here disappointed. In August 2022, I registered my children at my school with psychological reports in hand. My child was found eligible, but it took 29 months, more local screenings, committee meetings, a risk assessment, and missing over 200 hours of fourth grade before my child was deemed eligible for special education services. She had the same needs now that she had 29 months ago, and the educational impact has always been there. The problem is that the knowledge and mindsets needed to identify and support a 2E student with a perfect score have not yet trickled down to every school in FCPS.

34:49
My child has been traumatized by school staff unintentionally sending the message, “If she just wouldn’t act so autistic, she’d be fine.” Children like mine are being failed. There needs to be a sense of urgency around changing mindsets and building knowledge, and it has to start at the top. It’s time to ensure that every principal, assistant principal, and AART has the knowledge, mindsets, and desire to affect change on their campuses. Then we need those school-based leaders to inspire and lead their teachers to build the knowledge and shift those mindsets.

Having a 2E handbook and website resources, even a course for staff, is not making change fast enough. Teachers, especially AAP teachers, must be trained in special education and twice exceptional students. It feels hopeless knowing that my child’s story is the same as the stories that were told 10 years ago. It feels hopeless knowing that I have two more 2E students moving through FCPS right behind my fourth grader. If things haven’t changed in 10 years, then how can I feel hopeful that things will change in two years or four years when my other children get to fourth grade? Why do so many children have to suffer before we’re willing to make this a priority?

35:29
Why do so many families have to tell their very personal stories on public record so their children can get a free and appropriate public education? Why do families like mine have to experience career loss, the enormous expense of an educational advocate, and utter desperation for change to happen? I urge you to prioritize training teachers, especially AAP teachers in elementary school, so that my story may be the last story.

37:13
Take your time.

37:29
I'm Diane Gold. I’ve been involved with FCPS for about 17 years, starting with my oldest, who is now a young adult on the autism spectrum. You're going to hear from me again, it's hard to decide what to talk about because I have so many things to address, but it's in the same vein. I also have two kids with IEPs—one is dyslexic with ADHD and the other is autistic. Both are twice exceptional, and it's been an extraordinarily painful process at times in FCPS.

I’m also a dyslexic individual myself who grew up in FCPS and was not served as I needed to be as a child. I had to move to a different county to be recognized and have my needs addressed. This has been going on in my family for 45 years, since I was about five. I’m a self-advocate and I also co-founded the Fairfax County Special Education PTA because of the pain we went through. I didn’t want any other family to experience the same, and I knew there were a lot of us out there. I’ve since become a private family advocate to help other families and ensure their children don’t suffer as mine has.

38:36
The primary things I want to talk about tonight are school refusal, homebound services, voice exceptionality and neurodiversity, and the secondary model of intervention, which is not conducive to evidence-based or consistent remediation of disabilities. Starting with school refusal and homebound, I want to say upfront that we have a mental health crisis for all students right now. We’re seeing this in FCPS, and it’s not going to get any better. One of the areas we’re seeing this is with school refusal and anxiety disorders.

We cannot continue working in silos. We’ve been talking about this for over a decade. All groups need to work together to tackle the problem. School refusal is an anxiety manifestation, not a willful choice. Staff needs to understand this. Students with school refusal desperately want to succeed. They want to be with their friends, but they can’t walk through the door. It causes extreme emotional distress. However, our school teams have no idea how to address this. They don’t have the training or universal experience to deal with this.

40:11
I’ve had elementary schools say that they’ve never seen a kid with school refusal. I have six people on my personal caseload who have dealt with school refusal, including my own child. Of those six, four were in elementary school, and four of them said they wanted to die. My own child was desperate by seven years old. FCPS promised us a 2E center last year, and as far as I understand, there have been no concrete steps toward its manifestation. I think many parents here are expecting a response. It’s critical that we move forward. Thank you.

41:27
Thank you.

41:37
Michelle, my name is Michelle Kids. I'm the parent of three twice exceptional children, and I’m back again, so thank you for having me. I testified before you all earlier in the fall about my daughter’s experiences. My daughter is an autistic high school senior, and when we last left off, she had dropped an elective after her teacher told her that he needed her to use more two-way communication skills, which she literally can’t do when she’s anxious or dysregulated. So she dropped that class, and the stress level went down in our household. She continued to work with our amazing ETR to talk about her future career plans, where she hopes to work in the museum industry.

42:23
But things didn’t go much better in another of her elective classes, which also would have been helpful for her future career plans. Our special ed chair met weekly, sometimes daily, with the teacher to explain my daughter’s IEP, but things didn’t get any better. The first teacher said the quiet part out loud; this teacher did it in front of my daughter’s peers. For example, my daughter sent the teacher an email asking for directions on how to do something on the computer, and instead of writing back the directions, the teacher said, “Let’s talk about it in class.”

43:06
Also, my daughter has a flash pass, so she can’t stay in the classroom. She can pick up her things and leave the special ed chair arranged for my daughter to go to class, be marked present, take a computer, and work elsewhere where it wasn’t loud, noisy, and crowded. So the next time my daughter went to do that, the teacher stopped her teaching and said to my daughter, in front of her peers, “Are you going to be coming back today?” Needless to say, we did not bother to have another traumatic IEP meeting, and my daughter said, “I’m dropping this class. I’m so tired of trying to tell teachers how to teach me.”

43:41
It is absurd that our Gen Ed teachers don’t have a basic understanding of disabilities like autism. It is offensive that they refuse to implement IEPs, and it’s hurtful when they blame students for their disabilities. Now my daughter is in a self-contained English class as a high school senior. When she was in ninth grade, her Lexile score was that of a college student. She was in honors English her freshman year, and the teacher wouldn’t follow guidance from her case manager. My daughter ended up on partial homebound by the spring of her sophomore year.

44:19
We tried a team-taught honors class, but the wonderful teachers did not address her areas of need in higher-order language use. She ended up on partial homebound again. Last year, 16% of kids in partial homebound were twice exceptional. So this year in her English class, I picked her up the other day and she said, “I’m really frustrated with this book that we’re reading. We just started reading 1984.” I asked her, “What page are you on?” She said, “12.” She then asked, “Is this whole book going to be an allegory for Nazi Germany?” Well, this child does not belong in self-contained Gen Ed English.

45:07
And here we are. Our teachers don't have training in special education; they are not required for their license to have training in special education if they are a general education teacher. I found this online from BCU—it's best practices for co-teaching. There are six of them, and I'll hand them to you all to pass around. My daughter's teachers have never used the best options; they've used the ones that are recommended to be used seldomly. This is not okay, and it needs to change.

45:49
Thank you.

46:04
My name is Laen M., and I am the parent of an 11th grader, 10th grader, and 6th grader in FCPS. All three are gifted and have disabilities. Two-E kids were called out in the A year T final report. Begin reading on page 43, then look again on page 27. We have the data from expert researchers showing that what FCPS currently offers these students is not enough. We have decades of parent and staff advocacy for these kids that has largely been informed by my kids. Only one in 100 of their peers is similar to them in current placements. They're not finding friends, they're not finding belonging, and many of their daily interactions with students and staff are negative.

46:43
For many Two-E kids, inclusion does not mean they are included. Many of them have cycled through all of FCPS's current placements before ultimately being pulled to homeschooling or enrolled in private schools, often after lengthy and expensive legal battles with FCPS. This especially vulnerable population deserves a free and appropriate education with their true peers. Now is the time to open a Two-E Center. Begin it as a pilot program, only serving 100 kids, expanding every year. Let its development be iterative and student-driven, with leadership from Dr. Reed. This could be accomplished very quickly, as her quick action on inclusive preschool showed us.

47:30
If a pilot 2E Center is announced now, IEP teams have time to recommend this placement and staff have time to apply for this fall. No one should be pushed into the 2E Center. All staff and students should choose to be there. If any 2E student's current placement is working well for them, they should remain there. But for students who are not thriving in their current placements, providing a new option could be genuinely life-saving. Two-E students suffer higher rates of depression and self-harm due to the ongoing rejection and isolation they face every day. Please give them immediate relief by creating a refuge where they can be their true selves.

48:05
Give a building where every staff member is well trained to understand their strengths and challenges. Provide a specialized environment without terrible lighting, overly loud bells, and huge crowds in the hallways. Help them to remember that they love learning and that learning is possible during school hours.

48:26
When we first moved into FCPS in my oldest son's fifth grade year, all the staff continually commented on what an amazing self-advocate he was. His prior schools, all private international schools, had staff that listened to him when he stated his needs and took action as a result to collaboratively solve problems with him. In FCPS, that has very rarely happened, and he's become a weaker self-advocate every year as he learns that staff will almost never take action to meet his needs and will rarely even listen to his concerns.

49:02
What all my kids have learned day in and day out during their school days in FCPS is that their existence is an inconvenience to others, and that often they will be punished for their disabilities. This has proven true in general education, in level 4 AAP, and level 3 AAP in honors classes, and in CSS classes. The status quo is not okay and is failing our 2E kids. Complex problems require specialized solutions. It's probably too late to reach my older Two-E kids, but my sixth grader is young enough to actually be served by FCPS's 2E Center. I truly hope so. Kids urgently need this option—not in five or ten years, but immediately, this fall.

49:50
Next is Call.

50:01
Can you hear me? Yeah. I want to speak to the first parent who was up here when you were talking about speech services. This is something that came up in one of these meetings, I believe it was years ago. I remember them getting out the mic. You might remember this because we were all appalled at how many kids—young kids—were being evaluated for special education services versus the number that actually received those services. So maybe that's something that you could follow up on and speak with this parent in particular about it, because it's appalling. That same story, years later, I thought that somebody had at least taken this up the flag at this point.

50:44
I'm going to dive into some of the stuff I have. West Springfield High School was found in noncompliance for ESY. They have a practice of only considering it for high school... or excuse me, for summer. They got called out on it and were found in noncompliance. They were supposed to consider it for summer and for the entire school year. As of an IEP team meeting I attended today, I was advised that Rory Dufield and DPN told them that they don't have to, even though a hearing officer—or excuse me, an appeals officer for BOE—stated that they do have to. So it's a concern, and it's an ongoing theme that we have staff members who are following GPN, which is the same group of people who got them into the mess in the first place. They need to know that they can dissent and they need to know that they can do it and still have job security.

51:39
I also want to talk about mediation. I attended a mediation recently, and Fairfax County, as it often does, at the end of the meeting, said that all documents had to be returned. Well, that's not true unless Fairfax County negotiates that upfront and before the mediation takes place. They can't sit there afterward and say they have to be returned. So I said no. The parent I was with said no. Ashley Skinner at DPN's response was to say, "You have to give it to us," and to also say, "Well, I guess I'll never print these out before Monique Blunder the PSL there."

52:19
We exchanged emails after this because she was concerned about everything that happened. It went up the flag with the BOE, but the mediator and I contacted Vie, and Vie didn't respond. So I filed a complaint in response to try to get some kind of answer. Vie came back and said that, yes indeed, Fairfax County cannot require that a parent or anybody return all the documents. That has to be something that is negotiated in advance; it's not, "Hey, the mediation is over, now this is what we want." But Fairfax County continues to tell parents and even a mediator now that that's not the case.

53:03
Am I three minutes? One minute left? Okay.

53:09
OCR retaliation. So OCR recently released a document on retaliation, and if you go through it, a lot of parents in here, if you happen to read it, will find some things that are very similar. For instance, when you contact your elected official, like for me, Sandy Anderson, and you say, "Hey, I have some concerns at my kid's school," and she doesn't respond, and then you go back to her and you say, "Hey, I really would love to talk to you about this," and her response is, "Our lawyers told me not to respond to you," that's retaliation. You can't do that.

53:56
I'm actually surprised that she put that in writing, but I'm thankful because I put it up to OCR, so now they're going to deal with it. But this kind of reaction is just unacceptable. When parents go and bring our elected officials or our school members or anybody else a concern, we should be listened to.

54:14
Thank you.

Next, we have Sah.

54:30
Thank you for having me. I just want to add to a lot of the things that parents said. I have a student with a profile. My son is in middle school, autistic, high support, limited verbally, ADHD, processing—name it, he's got it—anxiety disorder, all of that. We've been in the system for about 10 years. We've had our ups and downs, we've had school refusal for several years, also. We were changed to a different school, which resulted in him not having school. That was great, and now we're back to school.

55:04
When I tell staff he's experiencing anxiety, their response is, "Oh, he's crying." Well, crying is not always an indicator of anxiety. These kids know that really, really well. Teachers and administration need to recognize that anxiety comes in many different shapes and forms, so I think training is a lot of what parents alluded to.

55:43
Another thing is with middle school, what I've come to realize is inclusion is non-existent. When we had our transition IEP, we selected the courses that we felt our child would be interested in, such as band or music. Very fine. We were out of it and into going into literacy and personal development. That would be more helpful.

56:06
Plan, come to find out, halfway through the year, just for my son, he had no opportunity for inclusion with his peers that he did in elementary. I work with elementary kids; he worked hard to have those relationships, and slowly the playdates went away. The parents started ghosting me when we asked for, "Hey, can we meet?" And that's hard. It's hard for us parents as we work hard to make sure they have those social

interactions. He has limited verbal skills, so when you have kids who can't say, "Oh, that's my mom's car," these are the types of things that school districts and administrators need to think about when working with a population of students that can't verbally say, "Hey, that's my mom's car. I'm going this way."

57:03
So as time goes on, you learn more and more. Lunch is a quiet lunch. What's a quiet lunch? It's him with one of the staff members and maybe two other students. No inclusion opportunity because the lunch is, number one, super loud and they have music blaring on top of it. So it's like, what's going on?

57:29
Additionally, he has an assistive device. They've got it. The staff checks the box by taking the training, but no one uses it. So what's the point? I don't understand if you're not teaching by using that device, helping him communicate. But they just check the box.

57:56
Lastly, the big thing we've experienced is there's a lack of belief in our students, especially those who are high support. They don't believe in his ability, and with that, he's regressed three years of academic learning. It's really heartbreaking, but we're going to work at it and hopefully get him back to where he was. But believe in our students. Just because they're high support and limited verbally doesn't mean they aren't able. They have ability, and I wish staff and administration would believe in our students more than just... thank you.

58:42
Thank you. I hope I'm reading.

59:00
Good evening. My name is Ay Mangy, and I would like to tell you why my daughter stopped attending FCPS. My daughter is autistic and has ADHD and anxiety. She started in the CSS at Old Creek in kindergarten. The chemical changes associated with puberty hit her hard, affecting her mood and her ability to self-regulate at the end of sixth grade.

59:26
She was transferred to Burke School. Unfortunately, her mental health continued to decline in seventh grade, leading to multiple hospitalizations and nine months of residential treatment. She worked hard in residential and experienced significant progress and growth. When she left residential in December of 2023, we were hopeful that she would be able to return to a CSS setting where she would have a wider array of educational choices with peers of similar functioning levels. However, her IEP team disagreed, saying she was fragile and we needed to proceed cautiously. They said making any changes would risk her progress.

1:00:04
It quickly became clear to us that Burke was not the right environment for her. She was no longer at the same place emotionally or developmentally as her peers there. She felt bullied and was deeply unhappy. We called an IEP meeting in February to change her placement. Over the four months and three meetings this process took, her mental health began to decline again. We watched her spiral into suicidal ideation. I was called to pick her up from school at least once a week because she was unsafe. She slept through class to escape feeling bullied, targeted, and unheard.

1:00:56
In the meetings, the team used her unhappiness in the setting against her, claiming that her fragile psychological state meant it was too great of a risk to remove her from the very environment making her miserable. As the semester and the IEP meetings continued, her mental health continued to decline, leading to yet another inpatient hospitalization. She was discharged quickly because removing her from the environment that was causing her distress immediately improved her mental health. The professionals at the facility could see no reason to keep her there.

1:01:37
This IEP meeting we called in February did not conclude until two weeks before the school year ended, at which point we were told that since the school year was almost over, it made no sense to transfer her to a CSS setting. She would be placed at Cedar Lane for high school, and if we wanted to change her situation the following year, we would have to reinitiate the very process we had just endured.

1:02:02
Her social worker from residential tells me that ours is not a unique story, and that students returning from residential are often placed in environments that are at best inappropriate and at worst actively harmful. We are lucky to have the means to place our daughter in a private school where she is now happy and thriving. She has friends, enjoys her classes, and feels safe, heard, and valued. She is working hard to make up for all the learning she has missed.

1:02:26
I would ask two things: First, please listen to parents. If a student and their parents feel strongly that the student belongs in a different environment, there should be a mechanism for a trial period in that new environment. Second, when a student is returning from residential treatment, please take into account the progress they have made there. Students returning from residential deserve to be met where they are, not where they were.

1:03:39
I have two children with IEPs, including a daughter who graduated from MCPS in 2024 and an autistic son. He is currently a sophomore at an FCPS high school. My twice-exceptional son and I wrote these comments together. FCPS needs a Twice-Exceptional Center now to save the lives of our 2E children and improve student education. A Twice-Exceptional Center is vital to prevent further damage caused by years of mistreatment by staff and students, inaccessible curriculum, or inadequate social-emotional support in the classroom.

1:04:12
He struggles daily and has very little motivation to face the school day. In middle school, he was forced to give up AAP classes for general education 10-team classes. My son states, "I have very little hope for the future. How can I be expected to focus on making good grades in school if I feel ostracized and an outsider among the other kids? I am regularly misunderstood by neurotypical kids, but even my teachers seem to have no clue or interest in understanding or truly helping me. I feel overlooked, unwanted, and misunderstood. I feel like a burden."

1:05:00
Like many 2E kids, my son has faced isolation, depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, loneliness, and bullying for most of his FCPS career. He wants to embrace his uniqueness, creativity, and love of learning, but his spirit is crushed. Even his teacher in a team-taught English class makes him cry frequently and has told the class that he never wanted to be an English teacher. How is this a supportive environment?

1:05:39
Current class offerings do not work for 2E kids, especially for my son, who has tried every class configuration. General education classes are far too large and too loud. Bullying is rampant, and 2E kids are largely misunderstood by undertrained teachers. Team-taught classes are overcrowded, very loud, and the pace is far too slow. The majority of students interrupt meaningful learning with behavior that draws attention away from the group. Self-contained classes are taught excruciatingly slowly and don’t hold the interest of 2E students. Honors and AP classes are also quite full and overwhelmingly loud. Worst of all, the team-taught option is rarely offered, especially at my son’s school.

1:06:40
Here’s how a 2E Center would benefit everyone. First, it would be great for FCPS as it would allow the district to finally provide a level playing field for neurodiverse children, whose educational and gifted needs have largely gone unmet for decades. It would attract top educators who want to teach and nurture our students. It would decrease absenteeism, school refusal, and increase engagement. It would allow FCPS to become a model for the state and even the country.

1:07:03
It would ease the rate of legal action taken against FCPS, decrease the number of students withdrawn for homeschooling, increase graduation rates, and improve the quality of education FCPS offers. It would benefit the community by demonstrating that we value all citizens, including the neurodiverse and disabled. 2E kids have a difficult time finding one another in FCPS schools currently, despite needing one another more than ever. They are scattered throughout the schools. Many 2E students cannot access school clubs or sports due to therapy, medical appointments, lack of confidence, and lack of motivation.

1:07:59
My son is so exhausted by the end of the school day from trying to be “normal” and remember all the rules while struggling with executive functioning and social deficits. 2E kids are not second-class citizens, and they should not be punished for their disabilities. They are future inventors, doctors, scientists, tech experts, and even teachers. Isn’t it time we acknowledge that?

1:08:24
Thank you.

1:08:33
Next, we have Jen. She graduated in 2016 and has a son who is currently a senior.

1:08:44
I didn’t prepare any remarks. I don’t know what I want to say. I’m really tired of telling my son’s story, as I’m sure all of these parents are. Pulling our kids out and finding ourselves in these meetings over and over—what’s the purpose? I’m curious, so I’ll check it out.

1:09:09
The topic I want to talk about is high school literacy, which I’ve been talking about for years in rooms much smaller than this. The higher we go, the smaller the room. High school literacy is not being addressed as a priority for our students. These students have suffered the longest without having adequate literacy instruction. The Virginia Literacy Act is doing tremendous work for grades 3-5, but that doesn’t mean we can just forget about the older kids. They are leaving school with horrible mental health and unprepared for what comes next because they don’t have basic literacy skills.

1:09:47
They are the ones who were told for years, “You don’t have this Lexia, you don’t have this or that—you're fine." In our case, my son participated in team-taught classes, got A’s and B’s, but couldn’t pass his tests, or passed by just a point or two. But that’s okay because he got good grades, so he’s fine. He’s supposed to go to college, but he can’t read. That doesn’t work well for a student now trying to figure out how to manage. The only way we got any help was by hiring an advocate, which, for years, I thought didn’t seem right. I’m a reasonably intelligent person—I should be able to navigate the system. But eventually, it became clear that I had to hire an advocate. That’s when we finally got private evaluations and began making progress.

1:10:52
Unfortunately, that didn’t go well, so now we are using his college savings to pay for private services. He goes to a speech pathologist for reading intervention and walks in with all the other second and third graders who are trying to get a handle on early-found dyslexia. This is wrong. These students in high school need to be addressed now. It’s urgent. We can’t just wait for them to graduate and say, “Oh, we’re doing well now.”

1:11:31
Thank you.

1:11:37
I only have one more name written here, so if there’s someone else in the room who came here to speak and whose name is not listed, please raise your hand.

1:11:44
And our last speaker in the room will be Molly Cronin.

1:11:56
Good evening to the members of the advisory committee for students with disabilities and the FCPS School Board. My name is Molly Cronin, and I have worked in FCPS for the past seven years. I’m currently a learning disabilities teacher and have previously been an elementary school classroom teacher, ESOL resource teacher, and enhanced autism teacher.

1:12:13
Today, I’m speaking to

you as a current case manager and former general education teacher, who has taught too many students over the years who can’t read or are over two years behind. I taught in fifth and sixth grade for several years before asking to move down to a primary grade. I needed to understand why so many of my previous students couldn’t read. When I began teaching kindergarten, I quickly saw where some of the cracks in our students’ foundational skills begin.

1:12:44
In first-quarter kindergarten, teachers spend weeks completing one-on-one beginning-of-the-year literacy testing, formerly known as PALS, now called BS. Then, they are often told that they’re also responsible for completing the intervention that they just found their student eligible for. Early intervention is an amazing idea, but in reality, it typically falls on classroom teachers to complete both tier-one instruction for up to 32 students and the two and a half hours of reading intervention per week.

1:13:18
If I could wave a magic wand and do one thing in this district, I would require every school to have at least one kindergarten interventionist whose job is to support our kindergarten teachers with collecting beginning-of-year data. We already have systems for literacy and math, but this data often falls on the classroom teacher to manage alone.

1:13:48
I’ve read reports that it’s estimated to be 8 to 10 times harder to intervene effectively for an older struggling reader in fourth grade than it is to intervene in first grade. So, I wonder how many students we could have effectively intervened with in first grade, so they are not later identified with a specific learning disability, which is really a code for dyslexia for most of our kids in fourth or fifth grade or even middle school or high school.

1:14:06
It’s imperative that FCPS provide schools with the personnel and resources to ensure that every child has access to early intervention. As a classroom teacher, I can tell you that when it falls on us, we have to make a choice: Do I complete the early intervention, or do I focus on ABC or D? Usually, science or social studies gets cut, which means students lose out on necessary vocabulary and background knowledge that impact their overall comprehension.

1:14:44
I'm a huge supporter of the science of literacy, the science of reading. I've been preaching to the choir about SAR for as long as I've been in this district because I feel like I'm the only person in my age bracket who learned about the science of reading in college. And that's a problem.

1:14:50
I'm incredibly grateful now that Fairfax County Public Schools have finally shifted from balanced literacy to structured literacy. I also feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to be both OG and Letter trained. These trainings were paid for either by my current school or overall by the district.

1:15:01
I've completed two MC courses, and I'm currently in Letters volume two. However, I know I'm fortunate to have signed up for these courses because I have a flexible schedule, no children, and I can sign up for evening courses. I can take a week off in the summer. I have the availability to sign up because that's typically when these trainings are available for students.

1:15:26
FCPS needs to ensure that all elementary school teachers, and hopefully instructional assistants, have the opportunity to be trained by both OG and Letters without any hardships placed on them personally. Too many teachers want to be trained but are unable to commit to giving up a full week of their summer when they may need to work a second or third job.

1:15:53
I have a lot more to say, but just one blur at the end really quick. This is my short list of dreams, way of a magic wand:

Invest in training general education teachers more on how to differentiate for students with disabilities.

Ensure that all general education teachers have shared planning time with their special education case managers (that doesn't happen).

Invest in curriculum and resources that have student-friendly resources available, including for students with twice-exceptional learners. And I promise I wrote that before I got here.

Provide math manipulatives to all FCPS elementary schools.

Provide science materials to all FCPS elementary schools.

1:16:44
I’m sorry for the things I’d love to please send them to [email protected]. We will include it.

1:17:01
Thank you so much to all of you who came here today. We made very thoughtful motions and appreciate it very much. We are now going to move to our virtual speakers, who also appreciate you.

1:17:13
If you are ready, Joann Hill is our first speaker.

1:17:35
Just listening, and she said she’s not going to speak. Okay, so we'll move on to Don.

1:18:11
Yeah, that's the video that played. Yari was here earlier, but I don't see her online anymore.

1:18:47
He's unmuting them as we call their names. They can hear us, but they can't respond until they're unmuted.

1:19:00
What was the name? She is not—lastly, Jennifer Cranston?

1:19:13
I do not see her online. Okay, so... oops. So it would be time to move to our next. And just for our audience, to make it clear, no one was blocked. We were calling names of those who wished to receive a link to speak in person here. But all of those who requested that through our email address were sent a Zoom link.

1:19:36
Hly was verifying whether or not they were actually online. So as she was calling the names, I was looking to make sure they were either present or not. A majority of them were not present online, and a couple of them were just listening in.

1:19:53
Our last video testimony: the parent is online listening in, but we're going to play that parent testimony now. But no one was left out.

1:20:34
We are Nancy and Josh, and our son has hearing loss. This school year, we learned our son has permanent genetic hearing loss in both ears. He was fitted with hearing aids in August of last year, and since then, we have been working with our school, Mantua Elementary, and the FCPS Audiology Department to ensure he has the accommodations needed to access the curriculum as best he can.

1:20:47
Unfortunately, we have had a very difficult experience. Multiple audiologists we spoke with insisted that an FM system or assisted listening device called a Roger was the best technology available to minimize our son's disability. We want this technology because it helps eliminate background noise for someone with a hearing disability like our son. Hearing aids help, but they cannot recreate normal hearing—they amplify all noise. So even with them, it can be difficult for our son to follow the curriculum due to other students talking, moving chairs, wrestling papers, etc.

1:21:34
So far, we've been denied access to this technology on the basis of a single functional hearing test. Additional data demonstrating our son’s hearing disability has been ignored. As a result, our son still experiences difficulties working in small groups, when a teacher moves far away in the classroom, when he is in a space with poor acoustics like a gym, or when he is learning new content like Spanish where his current vocabulary and ability to read lips fail to allow him to follow instruction.

1:22:00
Unfortunately, that's not all. The FCPS audiologist further insisted that other accommodations should be excluded from our son's 504. They told us soundfield technology, like microphones for the teacher, should not be included in his 504 because it would benefit all students, not just our son. They insisted he did not need an IEP to help him understand his disability, how it affects his education, or teach him how to advocate for himself in school.

1:22:32
The FCPS audiologist also went so far as to spend several minutes lecturing us that, based on a chart they brought, our son could actually hear. Despite the expert opinions of multiple clinical audiologists, in this person’s opinion, our son's hearing loss did not actually prevent him from accessing the spectrum of words, sounds, and syllables needed to comprehend instruction.

1:22:44
This goes beyond just refusing our requests—this denies our reality. We live and experience our son's disability every day. We notice when he can't hear something we've said. We are reminded every time we need to repeat a word or phrase or tell him what another person said because he lacks the faculties to do so himself.

1:23:10
We are working and will keep working to minimize the impact his disability has on his learning and development. Our school and administrators have been helpful, but unfortunately, FCPS audiology has stood in the way. We hope something can be done to change this process because its current state is unacceptable. A public school system should strive to accommodate disabilities, not force parents to seek outside counsel. It is not fair to the students, families, or true to public schools' commitment to appropriate access to education.

1:23:54
Our son is a good student, a hard worker, and he enjoys his teachers and classmates. We know he will never experience the world the same way that hearing people do, but he deserves the chance to live up to his full potential by closing the gap between the hearing and the non-hearing. Thank you for your time today. Please contact us if we can be of assistance in improving this process for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community.

1:24:36
Apologies, those of us online can't hear you a little bit more because we have statement...

1:25:03
To communicate, but PR for students with disabilities—there's empathy and connection with functioning challenges. Students should not be misunderstood, and students need more education and support for ADHD and disabilities to thrive, not just survive, and be successful.

1:25:22
The administration plays a pivotal role in setting the culture of the school and guiding educators and supporting students with disabilities. As such, I would like to propose that those who have already offered training to teachers now offer targeted leadership training to the administrators. Neuroscience shows that many of our students' regulation, auditory processing, and simulation challenges can lead to behaviors that are often misunderstood and unfairly punished.

1:26:05
It is essential for staff to understand these neurological and sensory issues better. There are too many office referrals that take our kids away from the classroom at the discretion of the teacher and their own skills. If the same teachers are consistently reporting the same students, their needs have to be better supported. It is crucial to identify and support these teachers to ensure they have the tools and resources to manage their classrooms effectively.

1:26:29
Informal removals from class to the office should be documented accurately. Every time a student is removed from learning, it should be considered a suspension, not just being sent out of class. There is a lack of consistency in how disciplinary actions are reported to parents versus the system. These inconsistencies can send mixed messages to our students and hinder effective collaboration between parents and school staff.

1:26:59
We need to establish clear and uniform guidelines for reporting and documenting violations across all schools in the district. Boards lose their effect when their actions don't match what they say in meetings. While the school board meetings and committee meetings say the right things, these commitments often do not translate to the school level. It is essential that policies and promises made at higher levels are implemented effectively in our schools to ensure our students receive the respect and support they deserve.

1:27:17
Lastly, I would like an update on raw scanning and CPF public school provision of administration of students with disabilities. Thank you for your time.

1:27:37
Holly, I’m really sorry, it’s really hard to hear you. I know you’re speaking loud, but I don’t know why, but it's really hard to hear you online.

1:28:05
Is this better? I know what happened—the audio quality totally changed when it flipped back to you.

1:28:12
Louder? There’s a transcript, too, from our audio feed, so you will also be able to read, and for the committee members, these are written submissions we can make sure you see. The audio was loud and clear on a different mic. Is this any better?

1:28:33
Yes, it is. Great. I’ll use this one.

1:28:38
This submission is from Faith Smith: "Dear committee members, my oldest son, Benjamin, was diagnosed with level two ASD in June 2024. He had just turned 11, and I went through my private insurance for the assessment. He’s had an IEP for years due to ADHD, which might actually be the ASD, anxiety, and an undiagnosed learning disability. He is very bright but completely disengaged in school. It’s difficult to get him to attend, and when he’s there, he mostly reads on his own. I’ve done everything I can to get help for him in school and outside of it. I meet with teachers, counselors, and administration

1:30:06
This is especially noticeable in math and other areas. Both of their elementary schools in FCPS and even the Office of Special Services seem completely lost on how to provide specific instruction in this area and how to collect and measure relevant data. I do not think accommodations are sufficient, and instead, they require specifically designated instruction based on a written IEP goal to improve short-term memory as a lifelong skill. Strategies such as note-taking, learning to copy a teacher's notes, and extensive practice with vocabulary or content-specific vernacular (e.g., terms like difference and quotient, and proper nouns such as state and ocean) are necessary. I request that FCPS review the need for specific goals and instruction for students impacted by auditory processing learning disabilities. My daughter’s team is trying hard with vocabulary and giving written instructions paired with verbal instructions, but these accommodations still fall short of an optimal learning environment. This is an area I think FCPS could greatly improve.

1:31:06
Next, we have Lori Allen. As a parent of a child with learning difficulties, I value the role of public schools in providing a free and appropriate education. However, here are some systemic challenges I've personally seen, which are echoed by many parents:

Inconsistent delivery of accommodations. Accommodations like extended time on tests, pre-teaching, and read-aloud are often undelivered or unfeasible within current cost structures. School teams resist including these accommodations, knowing they won't be implemented, or they agree to them but then teachers fail to deliver. Even when implemented, some of these accommodations unintentionally stigmatize students because they aren’t a cohesive part of the environment.

Updated autism basis. The criteria for determining eligibility in the autism category are not aligned with the latest understanding of autism spectrum disorder, leaving many students without essential support.

Individualized placement decisions. Students with sensory issues, such as auditory processing, often lack proper class placements. Team-taught general education classes are too loud, while small group settings are avoided due to social concerns.

More educators and training. There is a surplus of staff attending IEP meetings to resist services, but a shortage of staff to provide services. Time spent arguing with parents to deny services could be used to deliver reading, math, or language programs that students desperately need.

Balanced inclusion. Inclusion is important but should not come at the expense of individualized support. School teams want my child in a large classroom, but sensory-wise, this is not his least restrictive environment.

Streamline and clarify testing. Excessive testing is invasive, delays services, and burdens families and schools. My child has been fully evaluated (e.g., language, KTEA) eight times in the last five years with similar results, yet FCPS won’t stop requesting more tests. FCPS could easily collaborate with parents to determine necessary evaluations and accept valid private assessments.

Universal Design for Learning principles could address many systemic challenges by offering multiple means of presenting information and allowing students to demonstrate learning in varied ways. Scaffolding is often well-implemented, but classrooms rarely feature adaptive materials, diverse learning methods, or technology support. It is uncommon to see teachers adapt a test for a specific student with a disability or accept a project instead of a multiple-choice test or essay. Yet in real life, multiple-choice tests are virtually non-existent. By addressing these challenges, schools can better support students with disabilities and ensure they receive the education they deserve.

1:34:01
Our last submission is from Von Harden. I have two sons who are in high school within FCPS. One son has ADHD and has a 504 plan to provide appropriate accommodations so that he can adequately learn alongside his neurotypical peers. I have spent many years tirelessly advocating for my son in the FCPS school system to ensure that his teachers follow the accommodations listed in his 504. I have witnessed other families having to hire outside legal support to ensure their students receive the appropriate accommodations they are legally entitled to. In our family’s experience, it is very difficult to get teachers in high school to acknowledge, let alone provide, the appropriate accommodations listed in his 504. Oftentimes, my son has to remind his teachers that the 504 plan exists. This is frustrating. It feels like there is a lack of understanding that not all students learn with the same methods as their neurotypical peers. I recommend that FCPS focus on educating our kids and accommodating multiple learning styles.

1:35:07
Those are all of our submissions. Thank you again.

1:35:13
That concludes our public comment section. I want to thank everybody. For me, this is the most important part of the work that we do, and I want to thank you all for sharing a part of your very literal souls when you talk about your children and the struggles you’re having. I’m also the parent of two kids with disabilities that went through county public schools, and I work as an advocate privately, so I hear a lot of these stories in my day-to-day work. But putting them formally on the record is a different level of discussing your experience, and I want to tell you that, personally, I appreciate it, and I’m sure that I speak for all of the members of the AC when I tell you that we appreciate you taking the time and emotional burden to share this information with us. I’d love to hear your thoughts through the email address [email protected]. If you have any feedback about ways we could do this again month to month, our schedule often has certain things that we have to do in a given month and we can’t necessarily expand our public comment the same way we did tonight, but public comment is always available at all of our meetings. We don’t get many people, and I don’t think most people realize it is always available. We went to extra effort this time just to boost participation, and I appreciate that it worked and that you all shared your time and energy with us.

1:36:38
That being said, we’re going to move on to our agenda. You’re always welcome to stay. We have open meetings, and you’re welcome to stay, but we’re going to somewhat rush through it since we built a limited agenda for tonight, anticipating that most of our work would be listening to all of you.

1:36:51
I’m going to move on to the agenda. I know you all have multi-part questions, and those take up time, so don’t think you’re not welcome.

1:37:02
Next up is the Family Research Center news.

1:37:16
Good evening, everyone. Thank you for having me. My camera is not working on this laptop, so you’ll hopefully be able to hear my voice. Can you hear me?

1:37:26
We can. Yes.

1:37:32
Great. So, again, thank you for having me. Some of the announcements we have are that we hired a new family resource specialist. Her name is Nadia Erlang, and she has about 23 years of experience in special education. We’re really excited to have her on board, and we’ve already learned a great deal of information from her.
Pivoting to our webinars, I know that’s what you all like to hear:

On the 10th of January, last week, we had a webinar on chronic absenteeism titled Help, My Kids Won't Go to School. We will continue that series with Dr. Jonathan Dalton, who runs the Center for Anxiety and Behavioral Change. This is a grant from the counseling office, and he’ll be doing two webinars in March.

On January 17th, we started a series on supporting your child’s executive functioning. This will be a two- or three-part series continuing until March.

On January 24th, we have a webinar on depression in teens, and we’ll be joined by Ms. Engel, a CRNP from the National Institute of Mental Health.

On January 31st, we’ll have a webinar on understanding trauma in your child. This series will be in Spanish only.

1:39:29
Looking ahead to February, we have:

On the 7th, a webinar on understanding executive functioning milestones, challenges, and implementation. The first part will focus on effective strategies for children in upper elementary grades.

On the 14th, a continuation of the trauma in children series in Spanish.

On February 18th, we’ll have a risk prevention series, part one, hosted by Bethany Dears and her team.

On the 21st, we’ll focus on nurturing adolescent growth, supporting mental health, and recognizing and addressing anxiety and depression in teens.

Lastly, on February 25th, we’ll have part two of the risk prevention series, which will focus on suicide prevention and supporting your child.

1:40:34
You should have access to the Family Resource Center update sheet with more information about our new family resource specialist and our January webinar series. I’ll send Mr. Bloom the February webinar list tomorrow. Are there any questions?

1:41:03
Any questions can be submitted separately.

1:41:10
We all know you can still submit questions after tonight for any presenter. I’m trying to keep us from being here until midnight.

1:41:15
Understood.

1:41:20
Seeing no questions, we’re going to move on to our report.

1:41:29
Thank you, and thank you to everyone who gave public comments today. I really appreciate it. I took notes as you were speaking, and I’ll share those with my colleagues on the school board. I know it’s hard to share personally about your student, and even harder when they’re not getting the support they need. As a parent myself, I feel for you.

1:42:00
Especially when my son started in an SCH class in 2004 and graduated in 2022, I’ve lived through this world too. I understand. I promise we’re on it. It’s a long road, but we’re working on it. You can reach me through my email, and I’m happy to connect.

1:42:32
Thank you for sharing. I’ll give you a very brief update on a couple of things we’ve been working on at the school board, including facilities work. It’s not the most exciting stuff, but one area I’ve been focusing on is sensory-friendly designs and addressing overcrowding.

1:42:59
I know some of the issues raised today in public comments touched on sensory-friendly spaces. Unfortunately, our bond funding isn’t great—about $854 per square foot, compared to Pia’s $43 and others at $15. It’s a tough reality. However, we’re doing our best with maintenance and coming out of operating funds.

1:43:50
We’re currently on a 42-year renovation cycle, which is a challenge for building or renovating schools with sensory-friendly spaces. This renovation cycle should be about 25 years. We’re exploring ways to minimize delays, such as mini renovations or public-private partnerships. But that’s where we are right now.

1:44:20
So, the reality is that renovations take a long time due to limited funding, and we need to raise awareness about the needs in our community to change this cycle. Thanks for your patience as we work on these challenges.

1:44:38
Please continue to make your voice heard. We’re working hard on the boundary issues to maximize capacity and improve programs. Thank you for your understanding.

1:45:25
It's 300 pages of information online, as well as the presentation yesterday. Budget work is the other thing coming up, so take a look at that for our budget work session coming up soon. There's also the chance to come speak at our budget public session. So, that's briefly what we're doing right now.

1:45:38
I know there's a lot of work being done on inclusion, and I'll just say that I’m advocating for a continuation of services we need. I think that’s important. But I also think that if we can get inclusion right, if we can be clear on this, I think everything can be supported a lot more. This is about leaving our society better for being a society together.

1:46:12
So, I’m working on including a lot of training and additional support.

1:46:26
Thank you. Any questions?

1:46:33
Just for information—questions for the school board member or committee members?

1:46:38
Delany?

1:46:43
Please. I wanted to know what information you have regarding how many of our school buildings are actually up to standards. I’m thinking about all the places that don't have real signage—what’s happening there?

1:46:49
My understanding is that all of our buildings are up to ADA standards, but I can confirm that by asking our facilities staff. However, I will say that the ADA standards are not very high—just the reality is that the standards for accessibility aren’t very high. But I don’t think we fall below the required level. I’ll double-check.

1:47:40
Not seeing any other questions, the next item on the agenda is DSS updates.

1:47:45
So, great, thank you. And, as Ms. Seymour-Heiser alluded to, our work around inclusion... I don’t have updates today because of the winter break and our week off due to the snow event, but I did want to share that in our February meeting, we will be bringing to this committee some plans around inclusion that we’d like your feedback on.

1:48:14
So, we have a number of updates—some of them were shared at the School Board work session on December 3rd—but we wanted to bring this work to this group. I know you've heard bits and pieces last year and into this year regarding our Pre-K inclusion expansion, but there are other initiatives around inclusive schooling that we need to update you on and get your feedback on at our February meeting.

1:48:50
That's all I have for tonight. Any questions?

1:48:56
Lauren, go ahead.

1:49:03
Thank you, Mike. I have two questions. First, is it planned to distribute a draft for us to review prior to the meeting, or are we just going to get it live and then provide immediate feedback?

1:49:09
Yes, I’ll work with Dr. Edmond’s team and we’ll come up with a strategy to make sure everyone has the information in advance of the meeting. You’ll be able to take a look at it beforehand, and then we can discuss and provide feedback during the meeting.

1:49:26
That's a good idea. And part two…

1:49:34
Any other questions for DSS?

1:49:45
The next item on the agenda is old business. We’ll go through some quick updates on the subcommittee reports, starting with Goal 1.

1:49:57
Subcommittee updates?

1:50:03
That’s okay.

1:50:09
We discussed the idea of calculating cumulative facilities as well, broadening some of the sports.

1:50:17
Thank you. Goal number two—Caroline?

1:50:35
Goal number two: we discussed our data request tonight, and I’m hoping to finalize that within the committee so we can start gathering data. We’re looking at data related to discipline and staffing positions. Our goal for number two is really about students accessing the appropriate social and emotional support.

1:51:16
Goal number three: We talked about getting an outline for our goals and assigning parts for each version.

1:51:37
We were able to get those parts assigned to people who weren't here too. Absolutely, almost done.

1:52:05
Our goal is to keep everybody involved.

1:52:11
Goal number four: We talked about people we’d like to bring in to speak with. We put together a list that we’ll be sharing with you in the next day or so of staff we’d like to hear from in the next couple of meetings.

1:52:25
Goal number five: We also talked about our data request. We were a little confused because I thought last year's requests were supposed to be in by this meeting, but we missed that due to our guest speakers.

1:52:54
Also, and I apologize for putting you on the spot, Danon, but our subcommittee five is really interested in the CSB work. Would it be possible to make time at one of our regular meetings for a brief introduction of what CSB is doing?

1:53:14
Absolutely. If Danon is willing, we can put it on the agenda for next month.

1:53:29
Thank you.

1:53:35
You could just let me know—I can talk for hours about it. If you could narrow down what you'd like to know most, that would help.

1:53:48
To speak to your point about the timeline, our report is actually due a month later than last year. So you’re not off schedule, just a different timeline.

1:54:00
Thanks to the subcommittee chairs. Also, I’ve received questions about shared Google Documents. The operating manual specifically says we can’t have shared documents, but the guidance from the board is that we can have a shared document as long as there’s no interactive commentary in that document.

1:54:47
So, you can have a shared document that everyone can see, but you can’t use the comment feature to interact immediately.

1:55:07
Relating to the Google Doc, our committee is using a document where people are making comments or suggesting edits without responding to them, and then during the meeting, I’ll note for the record that I’ll incorporate everyone’s edits.

1:55:35
There are also some subcommittees that have accessibility issues with using shared documents, so they’re making it work in other ways.

1:55:46
Thank you for that clarification.

1:55:52
At last month’s meeting, Nita, we had assigned you to the boundary review. Do you have anything to share from their work?

1:56:04
Thanks for asking. I’ve attended one meeting, but last week's meeting was postponed. It’s rescheduled for next Wednesday. We had a demo of the boundary review tool, which shows a lot of data. For example, you can click on a school and see the profile of every student and all the services they’re accessing.

1:56:22
Next week, I’ll get more information, but there’s been a lot of discussion about what the committee should consider during the boundary review.

1:57:03
I’ll update you more after next week’s meeting.

1:57:10
Moving on, a quick update from the Summit planning committee. I attended my first meeting on Tuesday, and we are in the preliminary planning stages. We're deciding on subcommittees for exhibitors and vendors.

1:57:51
The summit will take place at South Lakes High School, and it will be an all-day event from 8:30 to 3:30. We’re still figuring out the capacity and logistics for exhibiting, but I’ve suggested not using hallways for exhibits.

1:58:25
Joan Walton asked me to share information about the ACS’s First Class Awards. The nominations form will be opening soon, and I’ll send an email to this committee once it’s available. Please share it with your constituent organizations.

1:59:03
We have a lot of talented individuals in special education, and we want to ensure they’re recognized.

1:59:28
Thank you, I’ll do that.

1:59:41
Any other questions for the subcommittees or old business?

1:59:54
Moving on, would anyone like to add something under new business?

2:00:01
Lauren?

2:00:07
I received an invitation for a Superintendent’s Advisory Committee on two programming, which is very exciting. The first meeting will be on January 28th. This new committee’s goal is to increase access to unique and advanced academic programming for twice-exceptional students.

2:00:31
The committee will explore expanding services for twice-exceptional students, and I’m looking forward to it.

2:01:01
I also accepted an invitation to join this committee. From what I understand, they’re not looking for a collective ACSD voice, but there will be multiple ACSD members represented.

2:01:53
Brandon, go ahead.

2:02:01
So, I have to check in with my team on this, but on March 15th, there's an event related to education and transition. It's at the C and Check facility in the county, and it's something everyone here should be aware of.

2:02:22
That’s all I wanted to mention for now. Thank you.

2:03:01
I think that’s helpful information. Thank you.

2:03:25
Yes, hi! This information can be found at oa.org. On January 27th, from 7 to 8 PM, we're having a webinar on understanding EAL (English as an Additional Language), with strategies and tools to facilitate language development. Then, on February 1st, we have our monthly CARU support meeting from 10 to 11:30 at the Fair Oaks Government Center. Visit our website at aaca.org/events for more details.

2:03:58
Thank you!

2:04:05
I’ll prepare a comment about this later, but there was a lot of discussion about public day schools, and I think there are a few things we should keep in mind. One is that staff in public day schools put themselves in harm’s way every day to work with some of the most difficult students.

2:04:17
Another thing is that many students in public day environments are provoked by other students in the same setting. We have the dubious distinction of having been in the public day school system longer than anyone else in the county. While we’ve seen significant growth at home and in the community, we can’t escape that environment because proving the ability to function in a normal environment requires first proving the ability to function in the more challenging environment of public day schools.

2:04:48
I don’t have a solution, but I hold the public day school system in high regard and am grateful for what it's provided. I just wanted to throw that cognitive dissonance out there. I’m sure this issue exists in many other restrictive environments. I'll leave it at that.

2:05:31
Thanks. Thank you all.

2:05:36
Thank you. I just want to highlight for other families here that my family has personally benefited from the partnership between FCPS and Varsity Tutoring, which offers free online tutoring for middle and high school students with IEPs or 504s. I wanted to make sure other families are aware of this partnership.

2:06:04
Thank you!

2:06:10
Sorry for the delay in taking notes for the minutes. It looks like Ally and then Amanda.

2:06:23
I just want to give a quick SEPA update. Please remember that by joining SEPA or supporting us at events and fundraisers, you help raise money for the SEPA Mini Grant, which provides funds to teachers benefiting special education students. You can visit fairfaxcountysepta.org to join SEPA and get more information. The deadline for our spring mini-grant application is February 14th. The application is open to all FCPS teachers and staff who are also SEPA members.

2:07:01
Thank you.

2:07:09
Amanda, go ahead.

2:07:14
Hi, I just wanted to draw attention to the school board’s work session yesterday. The early part of the session focused on the creation of a school safety and pedestrian safety self-assessment tool.

2:07:21
I encourage anyone listening who has experienced accessibility issues with walking paths, biking paths, or the kiss-and-ride area (including bus loading/unloading) to help impact the creation of the self-assessment tool. Accessibility considerations are currently lacking in the draft, but your feedback can help change that.

2:07:46
I heard back from Brian Lambert, who responded quickly with some ideas. I had contacted Sandy and the at-large school board members with my thoughts, and Kyle forwarded them to Brian. It was nice to get such a quick response. I just wanted to highlight this as an opportunity to share any accessibility issues you’ve encountered.

2:08:31
Thank you.

2:08:42
Any other comments or questions?

2:08:49
Alright, thank you. The last item on the agenda is a recap of our action items.

2:08:56
We hope to receive four class nominations from committee members. We will also be sharing a transcript of the public comments made tonight with the committee and FCPS leadership. Mike will be looking into sharing the inclusive schools plan in advance of next month’s meeting.

2:09:18
With that, we are adjourned. Thank you for your time tonight!

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