We will start with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God in the visible with liberty and justice for all. There are no changes in the agenda and there are no other announcements before we get started with our regular meeting. I have a presentation and I will be coming down front. With us this evening is Ms. Susan Rawls and she is the donations chair for the Fairfax High School's All-Mite Graduation celebration and we have a presentation we'd like to make this evening. Okay. I think we're going to move in the vice-microfan. Okay. Just stand right here. We need to stand right here. So look, I want you to know more. So our nice young graduate here. As I said, I am very pleased to see me to have Susan Rawls. She's the donations chair for Fairfax High School's all night graduation celebration. And for those of you who aren't quite, don't know what, an all night graduation celebration is retling, just going to take just a minute. In the fall of 1987, there were a group of parents who got together and were concerned about how youngsters were spending or celebrating after graduation. And as a result of a group of parents getting together Fairfax High School along with other schools in the Northern Virginia established the tradition of hosting all my graduation celebrations. I am pleased to say that this is the 22nd, all night graduation celebration at Fairfax High School, and we are exceedingly pleased that youngsters that are students such and our graduates such as Danny will be choosing to celebrate in an atmosphere that does not condone the use of alcohol or the use of any other substance. And so we're pleased to present this check on behalf of the City of Fairfax School Court to the all-night graduation celebration. The amount is $500. Thank you. Congratulations, and thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you'd like to make any comments, it'd be glad to hear what you have to say about your celebration. Thank you very much. And the kids are going to have a blast. They're going to be busy and tired. All of that's good. They've got all kinds of activities going on. Casinos and bungee jumping and you know, gains and it's just a good, good program that they're going to do. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you I would like to point out that Linda Burke, the cluster superintendent, is in the audience. And it looks like we have three students from George Mason and we're glad to have you students here this evening. And we hope that you'll learn a little bit about local government. The first item is citizen participation and has anyone indicated that we should address the board? Mr. Gereo-Dell? I'm sorry I didn't make these remarks hastily prepared while waiting to speak earlier so that the City of Fairfax School Board which cowardly refuses to declare independence from the county schools which run arch curriculum and other things could attempt fee feebly, to influence the county school board to make changes in the curriculum in February, Black History Month. After all, why shouldn't we celebrate very vigorously the fact that we have a Black President? The one that so many referred to as the Messiah, the one that the media wouldn't tell the truth about for months, for years during the last campaign. The black president who, as Rush Limbaugh, pointed out at the recent CPAC in the conservative meeting, I'm making remarks about how I'd like to see things done. What would you like? Mr. O'Jale I'm making remarks about how I'd like to see things done. What would you like? Mr. O'Dell, just get on with the... The clock is still running. Please. You know from history that when the clock runs out you will always say that's enough, Mr. O'Dell. Not a second more. Mr. O'Dell. Please stop interrupting. Thank you very much. Rush Limbal pointed out that this black president, the Messiah, has in less than 45 days run up a greater deficit, spent more money than all the previous 43 presidents. He was the only senator in the state of Illinois supporting a bill that would permit the murder of a baby born alive in spite of the botched efforts of an abortionist. He promised the clean, open administration and has repoited person after person after person who has 30 hands. The, the, and practically as many of them withdraw as have been able to be approved. Tom D'Aschel, infamous former South Dakota senator, finally voted out of office. This president has attempted to restore to glory by making him the president of Health and Human Services, but he couldn't accept the nomination, had to withdraw because of public pressure, because he likes so many others. Had a terrible record on paying his income taxes. So Hoodies had given us a place, Governor Sibelius of Kansas, a woman who is as vicious as any, who has stood for the reversing of the planet ban on partial birth abortion. Thank you very much. The next item is the report of student representative. Everyone. The second quarter on a roll list was released last week with 222 students from all four grades having the highest honors in the school. So congratulations to all of them. This week the Rebels on the Rise Breakfast was held where Dr. Breyron and others recognized champions in the classroom for excellent academic progress from the first quarter to the second quarter. And this past month Fairfax High School has truly seen a rise in champions as many rebel teams came out on top of various competitions. Some are the Fairfax Latin team which competed this past weekend at the annual TJ Tournament. Fairfax nearly swept the entire tournament at every level of Latin, the Latin 2 and Latin 3 teams both won first place in the state of Virginia and the Latin 1 team earned second place. In girls basketball, the thought congratulations to the following athletes, Lauren Burford who got first team all district, ladies Macnatton who got third team all district, Morgland Godwin and Kaylee Patterson, all defensive team honorable mention and again Lauren Burford, first team all region. In wrestling, we had four seniors in one junior who went to the triple A state wrestling tournament at Oscar Smith High School. They all wrestled very tough and did well. Josh Patterson and Jordan Yoes did extremely well by making it to the second day and earning all state honors. Josh placed seventh place in the state and Jordan placed fifth at the state. And swim and dive, woman finished third and men finished fifth in the state tournament. Congrats to the guys for top five finish. The guys have several very strong individual event finishes and strong relays. This is the best finish for the team in the last eight years. An indoor track, congratulations to the indoor track team on a great performance at Regionals. David Lyd, who is the junior one second place in the 55 meter, Lee's Nuyen was six in the 55 and Kevin Dowd finished fifth in the 1600. In dance, they continued to shine in competition. The senior dance team girls in Academy had to choreograph a piece for a senior project and Christine Centlinger's dance won. to choreograph a piece for a senior project in Christine Centlingers Dance One. She choreographed a beautiful piece with little wonders by Rob Thomas. Congratulations to Christine as well as our other choreographers, Aubrey, Andrea, and Christina. Congratulations to the all athletes and teams on a great winter season. Spring sports trials are over, last week, and all teams are getting ready for a great season. The International Festival will be held this month on Thursday March 19th from 6 to 8 p.m. and Friday March 20th from 7 to 8.45 a.m. Please come out during these dates and watch this amazing show that showcases all the talents from the students at Fairfax High School. The Coral Art Pyramid Show will show performances from Fairfax High School and the near middle school will be held on Tuesday, March 17th at 7.30pm. Be sure to come see the great performances from both schools that night. And the Music Department trip to Orlando Florida will be held from March 25th to 29th. The FHS chorus band, chorus and orchestra will be competing and we wish them the best of luck. Thank you. Thank you so much. The next item is a presentation by Dr. Scott School, who is the principal at Elinira Middle School. And Dr. Poulov, you'll come forward. I'm going to ask this Monday to do a little lead into your presentation. Thank you so much for you and for Scott Berkowitz, the Vice Principal, thank you both for being here this evening. I know while today was a snow day for students, it was a work day for office staffs that we appreciate you coming out this evening. Mrs. Munday? Well, he would have had a choice, but it would have been a spring evening, so maybe he was well advised to come out on the snowy evening. I am very pleased to be here to support Dr. Poul as he gives his annual report to the board on student achievement and overall achievement at linear middle school. It's just a delight to go into linear as you know to see the good work being done there by Dr. Poul and Mr. Brickowitz and all of the staff there. So look forward to a great report and I'll comment on it after it's finished. All right, thanks. Good evening, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. I think I would be remiss if I first didn't think Mr. Berkwist for coming out on the snow evening to help me out. But what I'd like to do with this presentation is first just kind of go over some general trends, what's happening at to school, and then go over some of our achievement data. And so doing try to identify the things that are working well, the things that we need to work on. And using that, we'll go look at our school improvement plan for this year, and then talk some about the specific programs and initiatives that we've put into place to try to build on the things that we're doing well well and also to address those things that need improvement. And then I'd like to conclude by reviewing some of the city initiatives and how they're working and where we're headed and that's kind of thing. So with that, first thing I'd like to talk to you about is what's happening with our population. Student population that is, that phrase, build it and they will come, seems to be true. Right now if you look at the past, last couple of years, our population has gone up somewhat, but we're expecting it to jump pretty significantly. Next year, specifically at the seventh grade level, we're expecting at least 100, maybe upwards of 130 more students. So I guess it's a good problem to have, but certainly, of course with the renovation, we will be able to accommodate all of these students. And if you look at the specific subgroups, you can see that our percentage of white students is decreasing slowly over the last couple of years and we expect that trend to continue. Next year, if you look at our percentage of Asian students, or most predominant Asian subgroup is our Korean students and that jumped up a couple percent this year and in regards to Hispanic students also there's been sort of a slow steady increase over the last couple of years and in regards to our percentage of African American students so it saw a slight uptick this year from 9.3% over just over 10. Our percentage of special ed students is kind of leveled off, maybe dropped just a little bit from last year to this year. One area that's, I think is particularly interesting is our percentage of limited English proficient students has grown to the point now where we have over 47 languages spoken at linear this year. So truly when you want to study world geography come to linear because we have kids from literally all over the world. And we now have one of the larger, what is becoming one of the larger left populations in the county, not certainly as big as some of the others but growing. In regards to instruction, I'd like to just start with the best news first. I'm very pleased to announce that our eighth grade reading SOL scores jumped dramatically by 14% from the previous year. We're rarely pleased with that. And I'll talk about why we think that happened in some of the specific things behind that big jump. Our seventh grade reading scores also went up 6%. We did not make AYP two years ago because of our reading scores. And so we really jumped on that aggressively and we were able to make some inroads. In regards to our writing scores, just a slight uptick, just up 2% 94 from a previous score of 92% the year before. Our seventh grade math scores jumped up 7% from the previous year up to 69%. Our eighth grade math scores also went up, but just a couple percent, by 3 percent, from 84 to 87 percent. And in regards to algebra, linear and said a recent history of doing very well on the algebra S.O.L. test, and that continued for all of our students passing. And in history, we also made some gains. We went up 6 percent from the previous year, from 87 to 93%. And our eighth grade SOL scores were kind of flat, just up 1% from the previous year. And our eighth grade science scores actually drop, but just by 1%. We've been performing at a pretty high level for the last couple years and we just saw a slight drop there. And one thing, one change to note about our eighth grade science scores is that they did include limited English students last year if I recall for the first time. So that was, it was especially with linear relatively large limited English proficient population, I should say. We were pleased that we were able to keep that up, although of course we'd still like to see it go a little higher. In regards to our enrollment and our different courses and honors English, you can see in the eighth grade level, we made a pretty big jump from about 160 students to 200. So we're pleased with that. You can see we weren't as successful in moving up our numbers and honors. English at the seventh grade level actually saw a slight decrease, especially when you consider it as a percentage of the total population, and I'll refer to that later in kind of what we're trying to do to address that. Issue we also saw in regards to honors algebra. Both this is combined seventh and eighth grade. Again, it was pretty much a flat grade we didn't see any increase and again as a percentage actually a slight decrease. And then honors enrollment and honors math at grade seven actually dropped a little bit. And this is a particularly as I mentioned earlier with the honors enrollment, there's really a lot going on these days and regards to honors the county is actually piloting a open enrollment policy for honors at eight middle schools next year. And I expect that in two years the county will probably move to open enrollment across all middle schools and honors, but there's still a lot of things that have to be sort of sorted out there in terms of what does open enrollment mean and how will this actually work and how do we work to address the needs of students on a case-by-case basis. Also, we are doing some other things within the pyramid to look at enrollment and honors and how do we identify students for honors. The Appearement Principles actually met in December off site for a whole day. And we talked a lot about what are the best predictors of student success and honors courses. I shared our honors matrix. It's actually the matrix that's used by all middle schools in the county to try to figure out what are the different indicators that all middle schools are asked to use and identify students. And of course, we're also trying to help prepare students for those honor courses with your generous support through the Honors Boot Camp over the summer. Now, I'll talk a little bit about that later as well. But back to the different numbers, enrollment in geometry, you could see it took a pretty big jump. We're very pleased that we're able to offer geometry on site now, as opposed to two years ago. We had to student head to go over to the high school. And I think we have a really strong geometry teacher in place right now. So that's been helpful, but getting back to, we're going to adequate yearly progress and what happened there. Of the 26 middle schools in the county, 13 did not make AYPE. And as I said to you two years ago, we didn't make it because of our reading scores. And we went after that aggressively and made a lot of inroads, but it's sort of one up, one down, and then math, we didn't make it because of our math scores, but if you look specifically at the subgroups, you can see why. Because as I mentioned to you overall, our math scores actually went up both in the seventh and eighth grade level, and our algebra kids were at 100%, but that's actually a different test. But the mask scores overall weren't so bad, but if you look at some of the subgroups, it really helps you kind of digest what's going on. In regards to English, though first, in terms of the closing the achievement gap, you can see the gains that we made across the board. Going up 17%, the African American students, 25% or Hispanic students, so we really made some big gains even more so with the subgroups closing the gap that we did in our overall scores. But in math, you can see that we also went up except in students with disabilities, we actually dropped, but the problem is we were already starting at a very low point and they didn't go up enough. And if you look specifically, the subgroups that caused us to not make AYP were African-American students, Hispanic students, and students with disabilities. And the thing about, I mean, the good news is that it's a relatively small group of students, especially if you overlay those two subgroups. A lot of those are the same students that are just counting into subgroups, or in this case three subgroups. So we are, and I'll talk a little bit now about what are some of the programs and initiatives that we're putting in place to try to address that. And in regards to our school improvement goals for this year, they're based on three, the counties had to pick one from each of the county school improvement goals, one from student achievement, the first one, the second one is essential life skills, and then the third is responsibility to the community. And as you can see, looking at our data, what we're trying to do here in our student achievement goal is to increase the SOO pass rates and math by implementing best research practices, vocabulary and basic skill development that focus on measurement and geometry for African-American and Hispanic students with disabilities because we figure if we can really address those specific groups that's where we're going to see the the biggest gain. And the math teachers picked out when they peeled out or I should say peeled back the layers to figure out what it was on those tests that was causing problems. These are the specific types of questions that those students struggled with. And then in regards to essential life skills, linear will implement a pyramid of interventions, and I'll talk about that in a few minutes. And then lastly, in regards to essential life skills, linear will implement a pyramid of interventions, and I'll talk about that in a few minutes. And then lastly in regards to responsibility for the community, it's that all students will understand a model, the important attributes that people must have to contribute to an effective and productive community and the common good of all, really building on that community service component of the eighth grade civics program. But here are some of the specific things that we're trying to do to address some of those issues that I've already mentioned. I'm not gonna go through all those, you can see the list there, but I'd like to just kind of highlight a couple of those programs and talk to you a little bit more in more detail. But I mentioned the our second goal, the related to essential life skills, is implementing a Pyramid of Interventions. That's the next slide there. And as Mr. Burquist actually worked very closely with Dr. Floyd and some teachers to help create this Pyramid of Interventions. And what we're trying to do here is lay out to everybody, students, parents, staff members, and staff members, a very clear set of protocols on what we're going to do when student struggle. And as the way that the pyramid works, the most minimal intervention is level one, the most serious intervention is level four. And so that everybody kind of understands this is what we're gonna do when a student struggles. And if a student continues to struggle, and excuse me, and if we can't link a student up with the services they need at Lanier, we'll look at trying to move them to another facility, another school where they can get the help that they need. But our hope by having this common period of intermentions, everybody understands that getting involved with a struggling student is mandated. It's not something that's optional. We are not going to just sit back and let a student struggle. We are going to take very proactive steps to try to help address what it is that's causing the student to have so many problems in school, whether those needs are academic, social, behavioral, whatever that they may be. And we'll continue to tweak this as we go along and we learn from what's working and what's not. And this information has been made public to parents. We're trying to, again, get it out to everyone. So everyone knows what we're doing, but it's the first year, so we expect it to take a little bit of time. Also, in regards to what we're continuing to do to improve instruction, we have very active, we're called professional learning communities or PLCs at linear. And that's where teachers of like subjects work together. We've built in time into our schedule so that they can work together to trade strategies, develop common assessments, share resources. And I'm really pleased with the progress that we're making with our PLCs. In particular, one of the things that we're really working to utilize to help students and identify how students are doing along the way instead of waiting until the end of the year and then telling them what their problems are. But we're, I've asked all of our PLC groups to develop at least eight common assessments. And we found that when teachers work together to unpack the curriculum and to write questions, when they have to work together to write questions that demonstrate or can test for essential knowledge within that curriculum, it's not only beneficial to students in terms of seeing where they're at on an ongoing basis, but also really getting teachers to think about what is it that from the curriculum that the students really need to know. And that in some ways is just as important as the actual feedback that it gives teachers about students. And also another initiative that I think we used with a great deal of success last year is the VGLA or the Virginia grade level alternative. This was an alternative assessment that's given to a special letter in some cases ESOL students when applicable and we really tried to use the VGLA assessment strategically last year in regards to our reading scores and I think you could see the I believe it had a major impact on our drastically improved scores and We out of those students last year we identified 94 students 64 from ESO and 30 special ed To take part in this process and we only had a couple of students not pass. So it was very helpful and this year I think one of the things that I wish we had done was VGL students in math last year. It's something we did not do. I think it would have made a big difference in our math scores but specifically with our special ed students, but I just didn't last year feel that we had the, you really have to have the right folks to monitor it. And we had, we had built into our schedule someone to help with the reading, but we did not have someone with the expertise to do the math this year we do. And this year we are going to, we're utilizing the VGLA for 104 students total, 79 or 104 students for the reading VGLA, 79 for the math and 32 for the social studies. And I think it's important to know that we really do look at it carefully about which students we VGLA and which students we have to take the regular SOL. Of course, one of the nice things is you can always start a student on the VGLA track and if they're having a lot of success, we can always move them back so that they take the regular SOL test. But one of the things that you should know is that if you look, we have a big spreadsheet that we use to create which students to track, which students we're going to take part in the VGLA, and almost every single student that is taking part in the math VGLA, for example, this year, has never passed a math SOL test ever. And so our thinking is why ask a student to continually take a test that they have very little success or very little chance of passing and why not give them an opportunity to be successful and give them an opportunity to repeatedly demonstrate what they can do until they get it right because the VGL is essentially it's a binder, it's a portfolio of their work and they have to demonstrate success on the different standards. And so I believe personally that it is a better alternative for the, but again, has to be done on a student-by-student basis. But we're hoping to model the same success that we had last year with the BGLI and reading this year. Hopefully we'll do the same with math and social studies. But also other initiatives include our after-school programs, Mr. Dejo. I know some of you have met, has done a tremendous job. I look at after-school programs as really not just an extracurricular exercise, but really as a critical part of our academic program. Dr. Ron Ferguson, one of a professor of education at Harvard, I was actually hired by the county to come down to talk about what can be done to help close the achievement gap. And I actually included an excerpt in that first bullet there. And remember, he's in his research. It says in research by Ron Ferguson indicates that providing educational resources and learning experiences outside the home is critical to closing the achievement gap. And for me, you know, if you look at our data and you look at our subgroups, and when we talk about closing the achievement gap for African American, Hispanic, and special ed students, I really believe that having that strong after school program is crucial. We offer a number of academic clubs as part of our after school program, including homework club, there's Lego robotics where students can come not just through the clubs, but also just stay after school to get assistance with individual teachers. And I really believe that the after school program is an important piece of what we do, is demonstrated by the fact that we average about 1,000 students a week are staying after school to take part in all these different opportunities. We offer 32 different clubs. Again, I mentioned a lot of them are academic, but of course, a number of them are athletic and also some of them are just playing social where kids can get together and just be in a safe environment with their friends. We also provide late transportation three days a week so that students can, and we believe that's one of the reasons it's so successful is that students who may not have parents who are working and can't come to school and pick them up, they can take the bus home One of the reasons it's so successful is that students who may not have parents who were working and can't come to school and pick them up, they can take the bus home and stay. Other initiatives, one of the new things we did through the after school program, Mr. Dejo helped put it together. We called it early start, it was a summer program that we started, in fact we didn't really get it together until May or June. It was pretty late. And we were still able to get 100 and how many was 131 students to come. It was a one week transition program aimed at our rising seventh graders. Because we know that that seventh grade transition is really one of the most important in that whole K-12 vertical articulation. And we were very pleased with the results of the program. It's basically half day. Students come in in the morning and spend just about four hours. I think it was from about eight till 12. And we emphasize study skills, a life in middle school, how to use your locker, how to get around, what are the things that you need to do to be successful in middle school, and also just to give them a chance to get to know staff members before they walk in and their peers before they come in on that first day, because if one thing you've ever been to the first day of school for seventh graders, it's kind of scary for a lot of them when they're coming from middle schools, or excuse me, elementary schools that are much smaller and all of a sudden they're going to a school that has over a thousand students. That can be kind of daunting and we've already received a lot of feedback that when the kids went through the program, they felt a lot more comfortable on that first day. We concluded at the end of the week it wasn't just for students but we had parents, we had a big cookout on the last day and it was great and we really had a lot of fun with it and hopefully made it a little easier for everybody to come into this big place. And we are hoping to double the size of the program this year. Mr. Dejo has already planned to offer not just one week, but two, one week sessions. This coming summer, and one of the things that we try to do is dovetail it with the summer intervention program, formerly known as summer school, said that we can make use of the buses. And we identified students who could not, who wanted to take part but said that they could only take part if they had transportation and we were able to utilize some of the extra seats on those buses for those students. Mr. Dejo is also successful in securing a grant from the after school program office so that students are disadvantaged. We provided scholarships to them so they could come free of charge. Even though the cost, I think it was $60. It wasn't particularly expensive. I could be wrong about $10 or $15 on that. But it wasn't too much and we are determined to try to keep the cost down. So as many students as possible can attend. Also, we've really worked to improve our parent outreach. As I mentioned in the beginning segment, our three largest subgroups are our Asian students, particularly our Korean students, the largest Hispanic, is around 16%, and then our African-American students. You've probably met Ms. Capella, Ms. Bowserman, and the whole Latino partnership for success. They continue to put together a number of terrific joint linear Fairfax events each year. And it's amazing. Every year they bring in hundreds and hundreds of Hispanic families. And literally they each call them family by family. And so they get to know them. And we continue to build on that. And of course, I think you will know next month, Miss Mulvaney is working with Matt, Miss Capel and Miss Bowserman to put together the first ever Hispanic version of the roadmap to success. And so we're looking forward to that event as well. Other examples include, we have hired Mr. Matt Lee, he's a former counselor at Leneer, who is very well connected within the Korean community in Fairfax. We've asked him to come back even though he left the county. He runs some schools actually in Korea, and he's a lifelong educator, and he knows a lot of folks' parents feel very comfortable. So he's coming in and working with us a couple hours a week to just connect with the families to help us overcome the language barrier that exists for a lot of those families. And he's been very helpful on those lines and he's hosted a couple of events already. Every couple months he brings in parents to just have question and answer sessions and that kind of thing. Also in regards to our African American students, we have our what's called our TIC program. Teachers inspire and change, which is run by one of our counselors, Miss Williams. And the goal is that programs to empower and encourage our African American students through mentorship and academic remediation. And she's continuing along those lines. Another thing that's new to linear this year is our staff development plan. We've really tried to coordinate the areas of need with our staff development plan so that we could help our staff members develop their skillset. I know one of the other things that I think is important to the city and I want you all to know how much we appreciate all the resources that you've given us through the renovation and all the technology that's there but as Mr. Butram and I are actually discussing just before the meeting technology is just a tool and therefore it's critical that your staff know how to use it and And so we built a pretty, I think, a well-developed technology development plan. We use this thing called a smart, integrator self-assessment to help staff members understand, what are the things that, in terms of technology, that they know how to do and what are those things that they need improvement with. And Miss Dickens, our school-based technology specialist, she developed nine modules to try to give our staff members different options. So it wasn't a one-size-fits-all approach if everybody needs to take this course. We asked everyone to take the assessment so we could see and ensure that all of our staff members have a certain baseline knowledge. But we wanted to give them the opportunities to explore those areas of technology that they thought would be most helpful and applicable to their specific subject. Also, we tried to, Mr. Berkwist actually helped with this. We asked all linear teachers to complete four peer observations. We think we have a lot of terrific folks at school and we can learn a lot from each other. One of the things that's great about PLCs is that people who like to like subjects can get together and share strategies and share resources. But sometimes it's especially helpful if you go observe a teacher in another subject area. And sometimes a PE teacher can learn a great deal from an English teacher and vice versa. And so we ask that everybody observe one of their peers per quarter. We've helped we developed a checklist of look-forces and things, but also some notes to help not just the person that's doing the observing, but also the person that's being observed to give them feedback from their peers. And then lastly, we had an early closing in January and we invited Dan Mulligan, who's a real specialist with closing the achievement gap and had him come in and asked him and we had a broken out into tailored presentations for our core content area teachers, our elective teachers, and then other staff members. And we asked them to make sure that everybody left with a couple strategies that they could use the next day in the classroom and, you know, unbiased, of course, because I helped hire them. But I thought it was pretty good. You have to ask the folks at school. But at least seriously, all the initial feedback was I think pretty good. So also, but to conclude, I wanted to just spend a couple minutes addressing some of the different city initiatives. As I mentioned previously in our efforts to improve enrollment in our honors courses, specifically in the seventh grade, we believe that the jumpstart camp that the city generously supports has been very helpful and very successful as demonstrated by the numbers. We had 61 students participate last year. That's almost double the previous year. 57 of those 61 students started the year enrolled in honors math, four of them moved away, so I couldn't help that. But 56 of those 57 students are still enrolled in Honors Math or Algebra. So that's a pretty good success rate. And that identification process also helped us as we were trying to identify which students would be appropriate for Honors Math using that matrix that we talked about earlier. But when we helped to identify them students would be appropriate for honors math using that matrix that we talked about earlier, but when we helped to identify them for the camp it really made us look at the information in more detail. And one of the things we have put in in our city fund request for next year is we hope to add rising sixth graders because as much as we are trying to do to support students through remediation and through our pride time, it's built into our schedule, I'm also more and more and more think about it, the more we all need to work with each other in the pyramid and to try to help address student needs even before they come in. And I'm certainly trying to do that by working with all of our elementary feeder principals and their staff. But we thought this would be yet another way by adding six graders to our summer boot camp that not only would it help them get a sense of what math is going to be like in middle school, but also help with that transition process by getting them to come over to the school, see what life that living here is like, even though it's just a small taste for a couple weeks in the summer and then they can share that with their friends. So that's something that we're hoping to do. Of course, we also continue to support, continue to appreciate your support of our Latin program, our Latin enrichment course, which is the seventh grade course, could be sort of like an overview of Latin this past year or this year we are offering four sections that are serving 48 students and an eighth grade we're of course offering Latin one and we're offering of two sections of Latin with 34 students participating and it's because of the city's support that linear is one of the few middle schools that offers four, four languages, of course, in addition to Latin, we have Spanish, French, and also German, which we think is especially important when we're trying to meet the needs of our advanced academics, advanced learners as well. Also in technology support, having that full time T-Spec position is really I think a critical part. It's something to be honest with you, I'm very concerned about in the current budgetary climate because of the school like LaNia with so many resources that I've already mentioned. It is really important to have that kind of support staff there to assist teachers and staff. Also with the use of those common assessments, a lot of them are logged not all of them, but a lot of them are logged into the new E-CART system, which is electronic format whereby teachers can enter those questions into a database and or create poll questions that are generated from the county and then they can use that system to sort the results by question by S.O.L. Strand and it really helps identify those areas that are working well in those areas that need improvement. Also with all the smart boards, laptops, airliners, and all the other technologies that we have, we really think it's critical to have that full-time person there to help. And then finally, with the benefits of our new facility, I have to say it's been already build it and they will come, as I mentioned earlier, not just in terms of students, but county events and lots of really fun stuff. We just had just recently the district course, for example, was held at linear because of our auditorium, which I really believe is one of the nicest of any middle school in the county. We just held the kickoff for the ticket to rewards reading program. We had Coach Larenega from George Mason there, with some players and Dr. Dale. And it's just been terrific to have people from all around the county come to the school to see what we're doing. Also our symphonic band I mentioned a couple of you read our rising seventh grade parent night in our new auditorium we hosted a webcast which was truly an innovative thing I had never seen before it was through an innovative thing I had never seen before. It was through an organization called banddirector.com. We had our symphonic band work with professional musicians from around the country and they actually broadcasted over the internet to music educators all around the country and in some cases around the world. During the webcast there were 17,000 hits on the site. So many that the server crashed, but just for a few minutes. And it's pretty exciting stuff. During the actual webcast, the music teacher from London emailed to say that he was watching with his students. So really neat stuff. And I was really pleased in the kids, I think really enjoyed the opportunity to work with those musicians and to learn from them and then everyone learn from that interaction between the musicians and our students. And by the way, I think he was pretty impressed, the London teacher in London. So we were glad to see that. Also at Artutzerwain, why we're gonna be having our first musical as far back as I know. The Ladnets coming up, our drama teacher, Miss Scott's gonna be doing that. And also we had our second annual with our new gym and with its increased capacity. We had our second annual lights on at Leneer's, student versus faculty game on Friday night. I'm sorry to say that the students won again, but we really thought we had a chance this year, but we lost, but that in all seriousness was a lot of fun. We had a number of our after school programs perform, the cheerleaning, the dance team. So it was a lot more than just a basketball event. We also had a fundraiser through the PTA. I haven't seen the total results this year, but last year we raised thousands of dollars. And most important gave all the kids an opportunity to be engaged at school. And for me, it was really, really, really neat to be there. And I announced the game with the student, but a lot of the students that were in those after school clubs that were there performing. A lot of those are some of our most at-risk kids. And to see them being there in front of 700 people performing excited about something at school, you know, I think is ties directly to what Ron Ferguson was talking about and how important it is to try to provide those kind of opportunities for kids. So that's just a snapshot I could talk more, but I'll stop there and answer any questions that you have. Okay, thank you, Dr. Poole. Ms. Munday? Well, I certainly enjoyed every single minute event as a former middle school principal myself. A lot of great things popped out at me, but the two words that I think are most important. One is intervention. When students struggle at this critical age, and we can't let them slip through the cracks, and you know that, and I think your staff is dedicated to making sure that every student who goes through linear is given maximum support for success. And the other, in so much of it is common sense, and that is making certain that all students are engaged in school. It sounds like educational terms but it's just about feeling like you belong and feeling like you can participate. And I love that you're having great after school activities. We are, by the way, considered one of the model programs in the county in terms of our after school program in terms of numbers of participants in quality of activities. So congratulations on all of that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Monday. Board members, questions or comments? Danny? Just three things. Sure. I'm happy to see you. Good to see you. The year's definitely changed since a couple of years ago. But one of the questions I have is, I don't have Fairfax next year. We're cutting the late buses to one day only. So how's that gonna affect your after school program? I know you have three days. Well, I've found us with you. I haven't, I know a lot of the budget stuff is still in flux. I don't know exactly how that's gonna play out. We're certainly very concerned about it, particularly at a school like linear, where there are a lot of students that rely on those buses to be involved with after school. But, you know, we're just going to try to make do the best we can. Well, you know, I've heard, maybe Ms. Monday knows the more details than I do, but I've heard that they are going to lose one day. I don't know which day of the week it is, but again, I don't think that's set in stone just yet. And I'm hopeful, the stimulus package or something will come along to help us keep those days, but we're gonna do everything it can to keep our after-school programs running at the level that they are now. But we're all in the same boat in those lines, which have to make do. All right, thank you. And then I know wasn't in your presentation, but I was wondering, how do you fit pry time into your schedule? Well, it's a good question. Two years ago, when we looked at different models, one of the things that we did, we invited folks from the high school to come. We thought it would be important for that middle school to high school transition to have a program that was more alike than different. So it makes sense to the students when they went up to the high school. We also invited staff members from a couple schools around the county that like the road middle school example, they had a similar program, but I was just convinced through the literature that it was critical to have time embedded during the day so that it wasn't optional for students to come get help after school, but we could mandate it. As I mentioned earlier, it's kind of part of that pyramid of interventions. And our pride time is part of that. If students are struggling, they have a D or an F, or even anybody that wants to get extra help. We redesigned our schedule so that all students and all teachers are off at the same time. So during that 30 minutes, it's four days a week. Everyone can access everyone. So no one has an excuse. students don't have an excuse, oh I couldn't get my help, I couldn't get this. No, you have that time, you can go see that teacher. We also built in what we call SOAR days, one day a week, where if students are doing well academically, they don't have no D's or F's and they have an R passport system which is our points, sort of our award system you remember I'm sure, as long as their points are above 80 points, they can soar, that means they can go play basketball with their friends in the gym, they can go hang out in the cafeteria, they can go to the library and read. And so we're trying to not only help remediate and enrich students but also recognize students when they're doing the right thing, which I think is very similar to what a lot of what happens at the high school too. But we were very cognizant of that and tried to model our program after it. And tried to pick out the best pieces from what we saw at other schools and make it customise it for what we needed at Lanier. Thank you. Sure. Anything else, Danny? No, be it. OK, thank you. Miss Sorenson. I was just curious about your projected population for next year. And this lady, there seems to be a big bubble and seventh grade next year. Yes. Is that going to continue? I mean, is the following grade also as large or? I haven't seen those numbers yet, but it is going to be a bit of a challenge. We have right now our eighth grade and our seventh grade are pretty close, only about 20, 30 kids difference. Next year, we're expecting our seventh graders to be about over 100 more than eighth grade. So we're going to have this sort of surge of kids coming through. I know that the enrollment around the entire county is going up. I believe it's around 5,000 students for all of Fairfax. There's a lot of speculation as to why that's happening. If it's pulling out of private schools because of financial distress, I don't exactly know, but I know for us it's going to be a big group. We'll have to in terms of our teacher teams, we're looking at how can we arrange them. So it works not just for students next year, but when that surge moves to eighth grade. But it's sort of assuming it's a surge because like you said, it might be an equally large group coming up in the fifth grade. And in some ways that would be the best, so it kind of levels out. It's a surge because like you said, it might be an equally large group coming up in the fifth grade. And so it would be the best so it kind of levels out. But I haven't seen those numbers for two years out, not yet. We will be getting you those numbers. I think at the next work session of work session after, we'll be getting you the five year projection. Linear is on the list of schools in Fairfax County where there are concerns about capacity over time. Now almost all the middle schools in Fairfax County are on that list for a number of reasons, but we certainly will have to look at capacity at linear and the out years. But for next year, we're built, we'll be fine. We're big enough. Okay, good. Oh, I just wanted to ask about the VGLA exam. Is it a portfolio type thing? Is there some ask-in-the-of-a-regular standardized test to it? It's a binder. And students have different SOL strands. They students have to demonstrate proficiency. And they have to show proficiency in those. They have to show that they can be successful and demonstrate understanding of each strand. And it's a pretty elaborate process. They each, each binder is set up, like let's say math, for example, by strand they have to have a sample for each and every one of them. And the teachers have to go through and check them to make sure and if a student like say, you know, is not successful, that binder will not be successful. But what it really does in my mind is it gives students multiple opportunities. They still have to demonstrate proficiency, but they're just giving second third chances to do so. Sounds pretty time consuming for the teachers. Very time consuming. In fact, when they grade them, this year the number of VGL binders has gone up so dramatically that there are two days whereby, or actually it's four days, but every single math teacher in Fairfax County is going to be asked to come grade them. Because that's how voluminous they have become. I mean, do children get recommended to do that as opposed to an SOL or... Well, it's based on... For math, it has to be a special ed student. It's not just... Is that a state regulation? I believe so. I believe it's a state regulation. But yeah, it's. And then for reading, it's also applicable, not just to a special ed, but also English as a second language student. OK. And one last question. When will a lad in take place? I don't. I forget. Remember the date. It's towards the end of the year I think it's in May This April or May. Yeah, okay. Yeah, well, well, it'll it'll be on the website Well, I'm miss Scott is the teacher she's very excited about in fact, they're they just they're in the midst I think of tryouts right right now or just finishing the trials. Yeah, that is exciting for me. Yeah, we fun Hey, thank you Miss Hornston. Miss Knight, thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation. And we will all look forward to hearing about Winnell Ladden is going to be held. It should be fine. To follow on to one of Miss Hornston's questions about the, with the projections and enrollment, do you anticipate as it stands, you've had an odd number of teams, and so you've been able to have a mix 7, 8, team that's all honors. Do you anticipate maintaining something like that, or do you think that you'll be having an even number of teams, adding one more team and doing away with an all-honours team? Well, we met last week, just last week or two weeks. We talked about this very issue. Dr. Wood, the guidance director, has said that what she really needs to see is the breakout of our self-contained special ed, some of our specialized programs, to see what those numbers are like, because that'll sort of dictate what we can and can't do with our teams. So we're looking at a couple different models. They have, we could possibly do four teams in the seventh grade, three teams in eighth grade. We might need to do four, three in a split. We might do what's called a super team where you have, you add say like a one two teachers, one to teach math and science and another to do English and social studies. But Dr. Wood says she really needs to look at the kind of the specific courses that the students need to better understand what is the best option among those that I just mentioned. But yes, there is a possibility that we would do away with that split team, but we just don't know yet. We're trying to get better, more specific numbers to understand what's gonna be the best format for us next year. But certainly require some kind of change. Right, absolutely. Well, if you could please keep us posted through this Monday, I appreciate it. I know that was one of the issues that sometimes parents that are looking at options with children that are receiving level four services in the advanced academic program. I know the way it's currently designed it enhances the likelihood that they would have more grouping with students with taking all owners courses. And so I'd be interested just to kind of stay aware. So as I talked to parents in the community that might have these questions, I would know. Sure, there are a couple things. A couple of things I forgot to mention. We did try to ramp up, so to speak, our communication in regarding advanced academics. My next question question. Yeah in particular we With our rising seventh grade parent night this year we offered a pre-meeting session on honors There were a couple hundred parents and attendance We invited Miss Anne Horak. She's the GT sent GT An honors Expert specialists, I guess is her title for the county. And she came and gave a presentation about GT and honors for the entire county to parents. And then I spoke to this to parents about what kind of level four services we offer at linear. And then we also had a parent, Ms. Welke, I know some of you know, she came and spoke about what life at linear was like for as a parent of a student who was in a GT center and was at Mosby Woods but chose to come to linear and we all, and then towards the end of the session, we just opened up to question and answers and I thought it was very productive and something we're we plan to do again. I also went to Mosby Woods myself with Miss Bowers and two students who were former Mosby Woods students and unlike previous years it wasn't just those students that had expressed an interest in coming to linear but we spoke to all students that were eligible to come to linear. And I was very upfront with them. I said, you know, obviously, as I said earlier, I'm biased. I think linear is a great place. But I think the decision as to whether or not you should go to a GT center or to come to linear school that offers level four services really has to be made on an individual basis. and you need to do what's best for you and your parents should be involved. And I just try to present all the information I can. I think personally that the difference between what a student can get and a GT center and at a school like linear that offers level 4 services with 4 4 languages, with geometry on site, with a really high performing performing arts program where you have a lot of the same students participate, has narrowed. That's just my personal view. I think maybe years ago it could have been like this and this and now, you know, I don't know if the difference is as great. And some would say there's no difference at all. It's just different in the terms of the groupings. But, you know, everyone has a different perspective of that. But I certainly just want to make the case for a linear and let people make the best decision for themselves and their family. Right. Thank you. Well, we were aware and have been kept a price somewhat of what your increased efforts and we appreciate that and it sounds like it's one of the things that's difficult and one of the things I've learned is that the way that the county works in regards to GT Center students they're automatically rolled over into the middle school equivalent. So you really have to be aggressive about getting the names and addresses of those students from those schools so that you can get them and then because in the past, I just think it kind of slipped through the cracks, frankly, and we were able to send out the information to all the parents and I think hopefully We'll see what happens next year where you had one two years ago to this year from those be woods maybe we'll Continue the trend and hopefully But we'll see but again, you know, I want to I want it to be what's best for the student And I really believe that absolutely I do have a couple more questions, but we do appreciate it because we know it takes extra effort on your part. And we appreciate those efforts. One, I should know the answer to this, but I'm a little off. I can't keep up. When will we be starting Chinese? I don't have a hard and fast date for that. In fact, I talked to Miss Monday a little bit about it, but as the students start moving up. I'm just trying to think what you're doing. We are first and second grade prologuz, so it'll be a lot of weird. We're still a couple years away. I think we were closer to that. So, okay, so we'll still maintain the current languages we have. Well, we'll have to see. If we were able to offer five foreign languages, that would be terrific. Well, no, but for the time being, until we get to that point. Yes, I'm not planning to drop anything. Unless the city does, but I'm not planning to drop anything. I like the fact that we can offer four foreign languages, but I'm very aware that the fact that we have the Chinese immersion at some of our elementary schools, and I know that they have a Chinese program at the high school, but it's just gonna come down to the timing and staffing and kind of where we're at at that time. Right, right, well, and did I read this right? For two, four sections, 48 students, maybe I didn't catch that, I didn't make a note of, oh, four sections, 48 students, maybe I didn't catch that. I didn't make a note of, oh, four sections, 48 students. So those are kind of small. Of course we're going to be dealing with budget issues and staffing issues that might make some impact there. So, well, another couple, just a quick question, the thousand and after school program that is unduplicated numbers of these could be this these could be the same students So it could be slight because I was gonna say that's almost a hundred percent I mean that's really high percentage, but it could be a slightly smaller number of actual students That's that's the number of kids in different activities. Yes, that's just like taking attendance That's how many kids are saying so if you have Johnny stays after on Monday and Wednesday. Yes. Okay, so it might be slightly smaller number of actual students that are participating in the program. Yes, as a percentage of the total student enrollment, but yeah, those are just the numbers of kids that are staying after school. Right, so Johnny participates three days a week. Susie may not be participating in anything. Correct. And then just thought it was great that peer review observations that you all have going on. I've never heard of that before and also that unique. I think that's good utilization of resources just getting the Korean liaison units just a couple of days a week, but just to add that. An additional dimension of working with diverse populations. So I commend you for that. Thanks. That the guidance folks they approached me about it. And we thought that particularly with the language piece, it was really important to have someone on site. So even if it's only a couple hours, it's better than nothing. Absolutely. Thank you. Sure. important to have someone on site. So even if it's only a couple hours, it's better than nothing. Absolutely. Thank you. Sure. Okay, thank you, Mrs. Knight. Mr. Bedherm. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Bull, thank you very much for coming in. Wonderful presentation, very important. And like all times, I always walk away with learning something new. Well, thank you again also. I attended the rising seventh grade orientation I think that's why the law of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of parents and you can see that they're going to have engaged the children when they finally come there too. The parents are a little more involved than a little more knowledgeable than that it's going to be very helpful. I appreciate that. I have a few questions. I want to go back to the intervention pyramid a little bit. On the four levels, I noticed the first two levels had parental involvement. At the third and fourth level was there parental involvement in that or I did not notice it in the your little toolkits assigned there. Well just as a practical matter if you talk about placing a student at a different school they would absolutely be rental involvement. I couldn't do that without you. I think that's part of the actual kid I'm just wondering if it was in the thought process there. Yeah it's was in the thought process there. Yeah, it's definitely in the thought process. As far as how it's demonstrated in the actual model, but I would expect parents to be involved throughout, I can't imagine, especially because the more severe as you move up in those levels intuitively, you would need more parental involvement to address the issue. Maybe that's something we can look at in terms of how it's articulated in the model, but certainly it is a practical matter, but that's what I would expect. Okay. And all the interventions that are in each of the level, those are the potential individual interventions that can be picked, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, very much as a toolkit, so that you can Taylor the intervention to the student itself himself or herself Right, exactly because different students struggle for a variety of reasons So we try to give a little bit we want to have a Standard I set a protocols, but I think you also need to leave in a little bit of flexibility to address The individual needs of students. students, wherever they may be. I think you alluded to this going on to the VGLA now. You alluded to it's a portfolio, so it's a lot of work involved. A lot of work. It's got reputation of being very labor intensive. As you use it more and more, are we finding techniques in which we can make it less labor intensive, or we find a little bit as the teachers become more comfortable with it, and it's becoming a little easier to do? Well, I think if you spoke with the folks at school, and I know just from our own experience this year, the reading process seems to be going very smoothly because they've all now done it. The math is where we're learning curve there because these teachers haven't done it before. And the one thing that we are learning is particularly hard on team taught math teachers. So in other words, if you have a special ed math student that's in a team taught class with general ed students, it's been very challenging for that special ed math student that's in a team taught class with general ed students. It's been very challenging for that special ed teacher because they don't have the students in a separate group, so to speak. They're in with all the other kids until how do you make, give those students the accommodations and extra time that they need. It's actually proven easier to do with our self-contained math students because they're in small groups and they're not Because the problem is is that when you are in a regular ed math class, they're preparing for the S-O-L So they're on a bit of a different track and how do you mesh those two when they're in the same classroom together And that's something we're looking at terms of next year What are we gonna do and how are we gonna up differently? Because also the VGLA, the binders are due prior to the SOL. So they're on a bit of a different timeline. They've got to get through all those content strands ahead of the general ed kids. And that's also something that we're trying to reconcile. But reading's going pretty well. It's got the administrator for English. And he may say otherwise, but I think it's, I haven't heard much about it. The math is where we're working on. But again, it's just because it's new. Well, in regards to next year, do you think you'll have enough teachers that are trained up? Well, we have to expand the training for your teachers. I think, well, hopefully they'll all come back, but you know, we'll have those folks that have already been through it once. Just want to, just want to have you had to expand your pool of teachers who have gone through the training? Well, no, I mean, pretty much we'd use the folks that we have on site. One thing that we are talking about, or that I've looked at doing, I've heard other principals is that they're using some of their monies for substitute time to give teachers and students extra chances and opportunities to demonstrate success through the BGLA Binder process. Because it's tough. The problem is when you have a group of kids and some kids have already demonstrated success on certain S-O-L content strands, others have it. How do you differentiate within the classroom to help those students that have already completed it and those students that still need a second or third chance? That's a challenging. It's tough. I give our special ed math teachers and all of our special ed and e-salt teachers that are taking part in this process, all the credit, because it's a lot of work. No doubt about it. I think it's worth it, but it's a lot of work. Two more quick questions, I think we'll be done here. For the early start, 131 students, you went through the one week, I guess, for our today. Were there impressions or was they survey taken at the end of the session or how was there feedback so that you got a feel for how well things work besides their inevitable success during the year? Well, we did, we didn't give a survey. That's something we could look into. I would have to say that the feedback that I'm giving is really, there's twofold. Most of its anecdotal That's something we could look into. I would have to say that the feedback that I'm giving is really, there's twofold. Most of it's anecdotal. From parents, I got a number of messages afterward where they thanked us for providing the opportunity. And just speaking with kids, once a month, I randomly choose students and eat lunch with them. They didn't just come down. They always are scared at first. They think they're in trouble. But when I have them in, I just say, I just want to chat with you and hear about what's happening in school and what's working, what's not and tell me the truth. And I find doing so really gives me a kind of a look at the school from their eyes. Because you're right here, things from teachers and parents, but I think it's really important to try to see the school from a student's perspective. And through those, a number of them did mention without being solicited that they really liked that, they thought it was helpful. One of the other things, Mr. Dejo, has tracked students that took part in the program in terms of discipline referrals and also their grades and how they're doing. And I have that information. It looks good, be honest with you, I haven't compared it to all of the other data to see if there's a significant difference. Because what do you measure it against? I guess it's a bit of a, you know, to all students. What are the matrix for it? Yes, but I do have the statistics. So we can can monitor it. I'm just trying to figure out what kind of analysis to do. I guess this is the best way to put it. I think I can take the rest of the questions I'll pass them through. I don't want to be more. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Batcher and Ms. Lewick. Thank you for a great presentation. Thanks. I have a you for a great presentation. Thanks. I have a couple of questions and comments. And the enrollment slides that you have for the honors courses and geometry. Would there be any way to also include what those run numbers represent as a percentage of the grade population? Sure. I just think it would be helpful, at least to me, in looking at what does 200 represent? Uh-huh. As a percentage of the all-Earth grade students. Okay. Okay. And this is a function of this being my first year on the school board, but you mentioned something about AYP and two years ago, not making it in one category. Was it reading two years ago? Okay. And we've made improvements there, but now we need to focus on math. Sort of like whack-a-mole. I've got one down now. But we're hope. I'm optimistic, you know, if you look at our our common assessment results and is hopefully they are tied in and the E-CART that I mentioned the application. A lot of those questions are based on, are supposed to be predictors to, and it's just some extent of our SOL success. I wouldn't say there's certainly just a piece. We're going to actually give some preliminary assessments in the coming months that will really give us a much better gauge of how we're doing. But we're cautiously optimistic. Yeah. You know, they're looking pretty good, but I don't want to say too much more than that. But we also think that if we can be successful with the VGLA process, again, specifically because that addresses special ed students, where we really did poorly. And we're hoping that that process is gonna help those students. And again, a lot of those students are also African-American, Hispanic students, the other two subgroups. So we really feel like our best, in some ways investment and time and energy as far as making AYP will be going to those specific subgroups. Because overall, you know, we could do better, but we're doing pretty well, pretty good, but it's those groups that are keeping us back. And the VTLA, the notebooks or the portfolios that they're putting together, those are actually constructed during class time? Mm-hmm. Yes, throughout the year. About the year. And it's just an ongoing process. They're big. I mean, it's not like, it's a big, thick binder that it's supposed to be demonstrative of their work or of their success. Okay. Good. One more question. On the pyramid of interventions, what does ALC, stand for? ALC referral? It refers to alternative learning center. The accounting maintains a number of ALCs such as Mountain View, the Burke Center, and others, and those are special schools with highly trained personnel. So for students that have, for example, at the Burke Center is emotionally disabled students. Mountain View is a school like for students that have babies and need to work other kind of unique situations to try to help them be successful. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hey, thank you, Ms. Look. Again, thanks to both of you for coming out this evening. I know Dr. Poole, you have a little longer drive to come. And it's nice to see Mr. Berkowitz with us here tonight. He's our neighbor and community member. And we're delighted to have him at linear as well. I have three quick questions. The first one is, what was the cut score this past year on mathematics? And if you don't have that, if you could email that to Mrs. Mundy, that would be great. What I've scored, did they meet? What's scored do they need in order to pass the? The 70s. I just can't remember the odds. I bet that's not the same place you are. It's in the 70s. Because it changes. it goes up, and I do remember what it is. So, but if you could pass that along, that would be great. I know that we've had an instructional coach. We still have that position. Yes, and all indications are, I know it was on the, there was some discussion that those positions might be cut, but the latest iteration of the budget does have them, has the instructional coach position included and is the instructional coach primarily for English or is that also for mathematics in different subject matter well instructional coaches for Be there for all subjects. It just so happens that Miss Phillips is a former English teacher And so that's definitely her strong point She and again when I talked about why we didn't VGLA students in math two years ago, or I should say last year, that was one of the big reasons we didn't have somebody with that math expertise, because you really have to have somebody that's going to coordinate it. And because of her English expertise, we had, she was really well suited to do that. This year we Miss Whitaker our teacher of the year as we gave her an extra period off to help us with the math but Miss Phillips if you know Miss Phillips she's wonderful and she was so he has presented to us. Yeah she's great and she was so determined that she would help with the math. She actually took math this year. She sat in on a math eight class, so she could learn the content, and thus learn those content strands to help with the compilation of the binders. So that's wonderful. I'm glad to hear that that resource is still gonna be available. And the last, we hope, we hope, it's not over yet. We're all gonna keep our figures crossed and hope that that's gonna happen. And the last one is the technical with our smartboard and what it allows the teacher to do, I know like one of our math teachers for example, Mr. Hornfreck, he loves it. He can walk anywhere in the classroom and using his airliner, he can write on it and whatever he writes shows up on the smartboard. And he can actually go, I mean he could basically anything that he could do from the computer I think but I know he can do a lot on that. For example one of the things he'll do is if he's working with a problem he'll start the problem that he can give it to a student walk around, student can work out on their desk and whatever they write on the airliner shows up on the smart board. Great. That's nice though. That's my little bit of new information for today. At any rate, again, thanks very much to both of you for your leadership and your hard work at Linear. It's always a pleasure to visit the building and to see the good things that are going on. And we wish you'd have continued success this school year and please pass our thanks along to your staff as well. Thank you. Thank you for coming this evening. And again, we really appreciate all your support, especially in tight budget times like these. I mean, not just the money, but just the resources and the community support makes a big difference. So thank you. Thank you, Dr. Poole. We are gonna move right on to our next agenda item and the next agenda item is the adoption of the minutes. Our clerk is here to provide it those and the chair will entertain a motion. I move that the State Fairfax School Board approved the minutes of the February 2nd, 2009 regular school board meeting as printed and distributed. Is there a second? Second. Any additions or corrections? If not, Ms. Louis moved and Mrs. Knight seconded the City of Fairfax School Board approved the minutes of the February 2nd, 2009 regular school board meeting as printed and distributed. All in favor signify by saying aye Chair votes aye members opposed and no members opposed the motion as unanimous the next item is the near middle school change order and I do believe this is the last one. I'm gonna turn this over to Mrs. Munday And I'm gonna ask Mr. Russ to please speak to this matter. Madam Chairman, this is the change order we went over in work session. This would conclude the work at Lanier would be our final change order before the close out of the project and represents the completion of the work. and represents the completion of the work. Okay, thank you, Mr. Russ. People might find it strange. This is actually a negative change order. It said that people will find the emotion a little strange. Chair will entertain a motion to approve. I'm sure. Mr. Vatram. I'm sure. Mr. Betrum. I move to City of Fairfax School Board authorize the superintendent of the City of Fairfax schools to approve payment of change order number 13 as printed and distributed for the renovation of linear middle school in the amount not to exceed a negative $6,000. $8. Thank you, Mr. Betrum. Mr. Second. I second. Thank you, Mr. Betrum. Is there a second? I second. I thank you, Mrs. Sorenson. It has been moved by Mr. Betrum and seconded by Mrs. Sorenson that the City of Fairfax school board authorized the superintendent to approve payment of change order number 13 that's printed and distributed for the renovation of a linear middle school and amount not to exceed a negative number of $6,000 and $8. Madam Chair, just for the people sitting in the House, perhaps it would be helpful to explain that. That's a good idea if you can explain it, then we'll vote on it. The change order includes a number of charges against the school board for additional items that were done, but it also takes into account several allowances that were in the contract that had not been used up during the term of the contract. The amount of those allowances exceeds the charges against the school board, but we are in fact giving up about $45,000 in credits in the contract that were not actually used, and that's the reason for the negative amount. Thank you for that explanation, Mr. Ross. Are there any additional comments or questions? There being none all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Members opposed. No members are opposed. The motion is unanimous. We are going to move on to Superintendent Mattress Mrs. Monday. Thank you. I have two items this evening. First of all, at the end of last week I reported to the city staff that there will be a change in our budget in the funding that we are now, revenue that we are now projecting from the state because of the stimulus bill and then adoption by the state house and Senate over the weekend. We will, the bill allowed the state to actually return the revenue that had been cut based on the governor's proposed budget. This is part of the stabilization funds and it was intended to allow states to be able to return funding to localities to support schools. The amount that will be back in our budget is a revenue projection for the state funding for Fairfax City is $478,751, which is a significant amount of money. That amount of money, of course, would have been cut from our, was cut from our revenue projections. So that will now be in our budget calculations, which means that we will be asking for a transfer from the city or in the city's portion of our budget will be reduced by that amount. Just again to clarify, I know there's a lot of conversation in the media about the stimulus package. At this point, there will be no, this will be the only direct funding to the city out of the stimulus package. And this does come through the state, it didn't come directly to the locality, came to the state as part of, like I said, the stabilization funds, and then the state determined that how they would use those funds and essentially it was to restore what was cut in the governor's budget. The other stimulus package allocations from the federal government go through the program for special education IDEA and Title I students in poverty and that money will not come directly to us because those programs are administered through our contract with Fairfax County. So our portion of those funds will go to Fairfax County. Our students will profit from them. It's not known yet. Fairfax County is taking a tremendous amount of time trying to figure out exactly how those funds can be used within the limitations of the federal program. And the most recent comment I saw from Dr. Dale was that it's not anticipated that those funds would have a dramatic impact on the budget for next year in Fairfax County and therefore would not impact us as well. The one thing I have heard that certainly is positive although we'll have so much of a budgetary impact is that some of the cuts in special education may be able to be restored. And secondly, some of the Title I schools may have some cuts restored as well, and that would profit our schools, but wouldn't have a budgetary impact because we're actually restoring spending and funding. Okay? My second item for tonight, since we met last, our wonderful Providence Elementary School principal, Joy Hanberry, has announced to her staff and community that she is retiring after several years of fine service at Providence and throughout Fairfax County. She's had just a wonderful career to this highly respected in our community and throughout Fairfax County. And she's certainly going to be a very difficult person to replace. Ms. Mulvaney and I will be participating in the selection process as is the, as what is expected in our relationship with Fairfax County. Ms. Mulvaney will be part of the initial interviewing process of candidates selected by Ms. Burke to consider initially. And then Ms. Burke and I will interview all of the finalists and work together to make a strong selection for Provenants Timeline isn't exact. I sent something to you last week. They've got the initial parts of it scheduled Miss Burke is anticipating that it will be after spring break that she will have an announcement But she's not doesn't until she knows who the finalists are going to be and then get those. Those final interview scheduled she really can't commit to a particular date, but. Sometime after spring break, hopefully relatively soon after spring break, because I know this is a. A difficult time for Miss Handberry and of course we hope that we also get the best candidate out there in Fairfax County for profits. So, and again, we congratulate Ms. Hanberry. We will invite her to come and say goodbye to us officially at the end of the year and wish her well on her retirement. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Mrs. Monday. We'll move on to board matters and Ms. Luke, let's start with you this evening. on to board matters and Ms. Luke, let's start with you this evening. Thank you. I had the pleasure of attending the linear middle school seventh grade, rising seventh grade student parent orientation and Dr. Pool and the staff there to the tremendous job at welcoming their incoming community and and really giving us a good feel for what transition to middle school for our youngsters is going to look like. So it was a great night and I also appreciate his diligence in hosting that earlier session which I took advantage of in terms of providing information on their honors program. I think that was very helpful to a lot of parents. And I was pleased to see several of my friends from the GT Center program in attendance as well. Second, I also had the pleasure of attending with all of you, the proposed BEL schedule change meeting at Providence and just wanted to commend our city and our community members for coming out and sharing their opinions on the proposal. It was wonderful to see a Pact House there at the meeting and it's great to see community involvement. And that's it for me. Thank you so much, Mr. Rebettrum. Thank you, Madam Chair. I can only say the same thing, did all for the orientation for the right and seventh graders at linear middle school. It was a very well organized and very well-operated session. I think everybody did walk away with a lot more information than they really expected. I also attended the potential Bell schedule dollar session at Providence. That was a very well-orchestrated evolution that I think a lot of good information was exchanged. And the only thing I can add to that is I also attended a very nice international night at Daniels around about two weeks ago. Again, another display of the diversity of the large community that we are fortunate enough to have in this community. The great diversity in the, and I think they boasted 16, I'm not saying 39, language is spoken at that school, and Providence has an equal number. That's all I have left, Jerry. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Good afternoon. Ms. Knight, thank you. I enjoyed reading at Daniel's run on Friday for Read Across America Day, as I know some of you others also did. And it's very, very sad that we had a, well, I wasn't really, my children weren't sad that we had a snow day, but I was sad that Providence, we were across America day, was canceled and I hope maybe it's just being postponed and we'll hear from them that we'll have a chance to come read at Providence because that's always a fun event. Secondly, I just would like to remind everyone that the Saturday night and the suburbs being hosted by Fairfax Community Coalition will be on March 26th that linear middle school and so publicity is starting to go out into the schools about that. And then finally just to clarify, obviously uncertain as Monday to follow up on your remarks about the budget, our presentation to City Council on the 17th, you'll be presenting our budget to them, and that will reflect the change in the request to be made. Correct. And then also, I'm just wondering, would the impact statement on budget cuts that was prepared that we presented to the community via our community email system. Is that still the latest, most up-to-date information? Should that be, is there any way that that should be updated or do we know any more detailed information about the way the current budget stands that we get an update on that or get. I'm going to be working very closely with Fairfax County in the next couple of weeks. We do have a work session on the 16th, so that's prior to my presentation to the City Council. So I'll be able to give you the latest. I think they go to the Board of Supervisors that week as well. Okay. Right now what they're dealing with is the probability, it's not final because the Board of Supervisors has to act, but the probability that the Board of Supervisors will accept the recommendation of the County Executive to and not to fund the total transfer request and basically to hold them at the same level of funding as last year. And that would mean another $56 million cut in Fairfax County. However, we get a half a million in the stimulus package. Fairfax County, I understand the figure I heard was approximately 25 million. We'll be restored in state funding. So that will help that just gets close to cutting that deficit and half. They're looking at some other things that I don't have a whole lot of details about yet, but to hopefully get that deficit down to a much more manageable number. They're also working with the county to relook at their projection for next year. They built a budget anticipating 5,000 new students next year. They are revisiting that and they may bring that projection down which would have the effect of bringing costs down. So putting all of that together, it's all very, and they're also working on the stimulus plan stimulus funding to see if there's anything that actually could impact the budget coming out of the other stimulus pieces of the stimulus package so lots going on in Fairfax County it will obviously impact us but right now the cuts that have been described so far and they are in our presentation the big things that that will impact our students raising class size obviously being the number one. That's not going to be reversed. Well I found the initial impact statement that you and Ms. Mulvaney prepared very helpful and just I know that it is a moving target and that the county is still looking at variety of factors as they try to get a better idea. But so if there's any, when we have a, I'm certain there will be a point where we have a little bit of a change before it's final. And that if we could do some sort of update and maybe even a communication with the community, I think that would be, with more, it's act on what we think. And the process actually right now, in this step in the process with Fairfax County is they make the presentation of the Board of Supervisors asking for a transfer. And they're preparing that now. Right. Once the Board of Supervisors acts and sends the budget back to the school board, then they will finalize their budget. When they adopted, they didn't adopt. When they approved the superintendent's proposed budget and made it their advertised budget, there were some clear indications that there were at least a couple board members who said, we may come back and revisit some of these cuts. And then I can have more money, so if they restore something, you have to to cut something else but there may be some changes at the end of the day. I can just budget. They were definitely in the presentation concerned about some of the redesign and looking at how that would be done or not and if they approve what's been recommended. Okay. Well we appreciate you keeping us informed and And then I guess lastly, I'm planning to be at the work session with the county school board on March 9, I believe it is, with us looking at the proposed start time. And just I know some of you others are also planning to attend. And so I'm hoping to be there. That's my tenant. It's tentatively on my calendar, but right now I hope to be there. So thank you very much. And thank you Mrs. Knight, Ms. Orrentin. Yes, I also attended International Night for briefly at Daniel's run on John Worked at it. I would just like to say it was amazing. I mean, when my kids were at late in the hall, which is now Daniel'sron, it was always a big event, but nothing like it is now. And it was just amazing that the number of people attending and the enthusiasm. And so I was very impressed with that. I also concur with everyone else at the meeting. Your providence regarding the change in the Bell schedule and the transportation issue was very successful. I thought people were very courteous. I thought there was a lot of good discussion going on. And hopefully there will be a good resolution to that. I don't envy the county school board having to make that decision. Also we've heard that thanks to stimulus money and different things that have happened in the recently closed legislative session enrichment, things aren't quite as bad. They tried to do right by education. I also want to point out that they did agree in their budget to make support staff ratio reductions temporary for the fiscal year 0910 as opposed to permanent, which was in the original plan. So that was another good piece of news. I was disappointed I couldn't go to province today. I did read at Daniel's run. I read to first graders. They were amazing. I read Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel. And they were so interested in Mary Ann. And then I was supposed to tell a little bit about myself. And you know, I talked about being on the school board and their teacher, Ms. Lang, and says, well, you can also watch Mrs. Swartz on TV. Well, I have to say, they were more impressed with that than anything. So hopefully my fans around there watching TV tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Sourinzen. Annie, I'm glad by how. Danny, do you have anything? Thank you. Now, I just want to say I also attended this past Friday, that Daniel's run for a read across America. It's the first time I read two six graders. I remember actually, remember to be in a six-graded and being read to and then walking in while I'm a senior now, I'm reading to the class. Years go by fast. So it was pretty amazing. I just wanna get congratulations to Miss Mollinex and the like, there are brains and all the staff at Daniels Run, great school, great kids and they love talking about high school and middle school. They actually cared more about high school and middle school so I'm saying that. But it was great and I also hope that you guys can attend the our core concert this Coming this month great The 17th Tuesday 17 We will rush right over after the budget presentation Thank you anything else Danny Okay, thank you and and good luck to all of our seniors and may you all have fat envelopes. I guess except now it all comes by email. So you don't need to fat out envelope to know that you've been accepted by colleges, right? Okay, thank you. You still eventually get a fat envelope, don't you? I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have Congratulations are in order. Francesca Lee, a student at Fairfax High School and Fairfax City resident was recently awarded the Harry F. Bird Leadership Award. She is one of 11 students in the Commonwealth of Virginia who received this award. It starts with a nomination by principals throughout the state. Then there are three students who are selected from each of the 11 congressional districts. The 33 students that then are interviewed by a rather distinguished panel of judges and then 11 of the 33 are awarded a $10,000 grant. And so our congratulations go out to Francesca that is quite an honor and I can't remember the last time. In fact, I don't know that there's ever been a Fairfax High School student who's received this award. The second thing is kindergarten orientation is coming up. Well, we're always happy to congratulate our seniors who are leaving us. We're always really excited about the new crop of youngsters who are coming in the door and both the Providence Elementary and Daniel's run will be hosting kindergarten orientation for parents. And we look forward to appearance coming and visiting schools and enrolling their children. I too enjoyed read across the America at Janios Run and hope that they reschedule at Providence. I did attend the Proud Meeting for Ms. Lua who was unable to do so. And while this meeting is going on a little longer, it's not nearly as long as Proud. The Proud Meeting will ask to until 10.55 at night. It was packed full of all kinds of information. It was an excellent meeting, but my husband didn't believe that I was at a meeting that long. So it was a great session, and I was really delighted to attend on behalf of Nisalua, can represent the board. Board members will be attending the Virginia School Board's Association Regional of Foreign on March the 30th. And then Ms. Knight and I will probably be attending the Washington area boards of education meeting on March 18th. And sort of as a personal aside, I'm a member of the Friends of Fairfax and we are the group that sponsors the annual Chocolate Lovers Festival and recently are our grants we provide in grants to 14 community groups and I'm pleased to note that all four of our city buildings all four of our city schools receive grants, Providence Elementary, Daniels Run and Lanier H. Gr granted $500 or various programs at their schools And there were a number of programs that requested grants at Fairfax High School and a total of $3,000 was contributed to Fairfax High School for the Ingram Award for Girl State for the All Night Grad celebration for an English Department program for the Drama or the program in the AutoShop department. So we were pleased as a community group to support education in our community. The last thing I have is that our own Mr. Butram has graciously agreed to be the nominee for the Virginia School Board's Association Northern Region Vice Chair and in order for him to participate the local school board that meaning our school board needs to support his nomination and I would like to provide that at this time in nomination and that would be I move that the City of Fairfax School Board supports the nomination of John Batchem to the decision of Vice Chair for the VSBA in Northeastern Region. And I would ask for a second for that. Is there any questions or further discussion about that? There are being then all in favor signify by saying aye. Thank you very much Mr. Vetchum. We will vote for you when it's time at the regional forum on March 30th. The board will now go into, we have an executive scheduled, an executive session scheduled and I'm going to present a motion to go into close meeting. The motion is on March 2nd 2009, pursuant to section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia. I move the City of Fairfax School Board convening a close meeting to discuss legal matters as authorized under 2.2-3711A7 of the Code of Virginia. Is there a second? Seconded by Ms. Knight. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. The Chair votes aye. The time is 914. The board is going to go into executive session. This is primarily an executive session dealing with information and is not expected that the board will come out and will take any action. Thank you all for attending this meeting as a journey.