Music I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to have a question. I'm sorry. Oh citizen participation is anyone signed up? Yes sir. Dorothy Surrell. Miss Surrell. Join us please at the podium. Give us your name and address for the record please. You have three minutes ma'am. Okay. I am Dorothy Sarell. My address is 4105, sideburn road, in the city of Fairfax. I also am a member of the Human Services Committee for the city. And after I described the following information to them, the committee encouraged me to come and present this information to you as well. The committee encouraged me to come and present this information to you as well. This past summer, I went with a young mother to Providence Elementary School so that she could enroll two of her students there. She was new to the area and when we were given the supply list for our school needs, I offered to take the list and do the shopping for her two children. More than 15 stores and $250 later, I still was not complete. The problems that I see with the list were, first of all, the specificity of it. For example, the pencil bag for the kindergarten student, I mean for the fourth grade student, had to be a nylon pencil bag with a clear top and grommets measuring seven and a quarter by ten and a quarter inches. I had to fair it away a ruler to run around the stores, measuring pencil bags to make sure that this child would be in conformity. All of the supplies were brand names. And whereas I could have purchased much cheaper products with store brands, I was latched in to brand names. This tube of Elmer's glue all was my biggest challenge. Costs two dollars. The kindergarten student needed 15 of them and her brother needed another six. I was spending $45 for glue sticks and in addition to the glue sticks they needed bottles of glue as well. And in addition to the glue sticks, they needed bottles of glue as well. The other problem, as I say, is the quantity of the items that they needed. The kindergarten student needed two pair of scissors. My daughters laughed when I told them this because they told me they still had their kindergarten scissors and were using them in their homes for their children. I was very amazed by all of this, I said, and running around in August in 90-degree weather, I was glad it wasn't this young mother with her two school-aged children, plus her toddler, and a new home on packing boxes and all the rest of it, but also importantly, this family had just moved from a homeless shelter. There was no way she could have paid $250 in one month for school supplies and fed those children. So as you consider very carefully your school budget, I hope that someone is able to ask our teachers to consider family budgets. Please review these school supply lists and see what can be done to help families, such as the one I was able to assist this past summer. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rill. Does anyone have any questions? Thank you very much. No, I'm sorry. It was very questions. Thank you very much. It was very clear. Thank you. Mr. Gerry O'Dell. Mr. O'Dell. Gerry O'Dell, Tuesday, May 6, residents of the cities and towns of Virginia will vote for new City Council members and school board members, city school board members. The time to file papers is from January 2, 2008 through March 11. I heard City of Fairfax residents to oppose all the incumbents of our city council and for tonight I emphasize school board. Within the last month I heard on the radio for about the 20th time that the US is about 24th this time among industrialized nations in subjects like math and science at students. That's not news I've heard the same figure ranging from 19th to 25th percentile for the last 10 or 20 years. We're habitually outperformed by our European counterparts. That was not news. What was news is that in Europe, federal aid for education or government aid for education does not go to schools or institutions, but the students or individuals. The students have freedom to pursue their education whenever and however they choose. Consumantly, schools must perform or they will close because students have not supported them. But here in America, in Virginia, in Fairfax, most schools are state-owned and state-operated. The state even dictates the curriculum. The result is mediocrity. It has long been known that private school students score better on the SATs, which, by the way, were in the mid-1990s about 1995 dumbed down to accommodate this mediocrity. Home school students do better than even private school students. Colleges are now eagerly recruiting homeschool students. Charter schools, tuition, assistance and school choice are the norms in Europe, but in the Fairfax County Schools. And this city school board have consistently for as long as I've been aware, 1994, so oppose all of those which insist on mediocrity for your sons, your daughters, whoever you are listening. Every school board member here has repeatedly opposed declaring independence from the Fairfax County schools which dictate our curriculum and hire our teachers and discipline our students and generate mediocrity. Fairfax does a better job admittedly than the state at at large a little bit better. But the state of Virginia has consistently hovered during the same time, for you might be talking about, it about the 26th, 25th, 24th percentile average in the US. But the US is 24th, internationally. Come on, guys. We need higher standards. We need new school board members with a little courage with guts, hearts and heads. Come on. If anybody's listening, please file their papers now. Thank you, Mr. O'Donnell. Student Representative Port, Mr. Tomorrow. Senator Porton is tomorrow. Leadership held a book drive collecting over 1,000 books. There was also an aluminum can drive to donate to the local fire department to support burn victims. In addition, pad tops were collected to donate to the Rod on McDonald House. Over the winter break, varsity wrestling won the Woodbridge Christmas Classic Tournament and had many wrestlers make it to the finals. Rebel gold cards were distributed, and students had begun to enjoy discounts at various local businesses. 2008 is doing great. This past Friday, a swim and dive had their senior night. Both the boys and girls swim teams were victorious in their meet against Westfield to continue their undefeated winning streak, five wins and zero losses. Also this past weekend, boys bars be wrestling one first place at the Stafford Dulles. This Friday at the boys' Barstie basketball game against Stewart, Fairfax will induct six new people into the Fairfax Athletics Hall of Fame. They are former field hockey coach, Star Carl, former baseball and football coach Tom Verbannock, wrestler and cross-country runner Ted P's from the class of 1967, basketball and football player Mike Daniels from the class of 2000, basketball player Joe Martinez from the class of 1994, and baseball player Bill Pulsever from the class of 1991. Our school and community are very proud of these former students, coaches, and athletes. Thank you. We're joined tonight by Director of City Parks and Rec, Michael McCarty, to describe for us the Providence Elementary School Stock File Plan. Exciting stuff. That's an impressive, impressive description. Yes. We're talking about the reality is less impressive. Yes. So Griffith, Ms. Munde and members of the school board, thank you for the opportunity. As part of the Stafford Park development and the redevelopment of the Draper Drive athletic fields, we'll be removing material and the plan is to bring that material over to Providence Elementary School to create a 94 baseball diamond, a 94 base paths and 375 foot outfield using field 3 and 5. What that is is the back, north, west fields of the park. You have some diagrams in front of you. I did a PowerPoint on that. But the stock pile, all the material would go into field five it's the small T ball field as we kind of call it and parts of recreation and that material would be stockpile there until we're ready to construct the actual field the plans are being developed on the field right now we're going to a city approval process for the stockpile plan and what we plan to build into the specs is that we will only do deliveries for the material after four o'clock Monday through Friday, well school is in session and it will work on weekends throughout the day during the schedule time that the city allows for construction to happen on weekends. We wouldn't have any construction or any material being delivered during any activities that the school has after school. I've already spoken to Miss Hannaberry and Mrs. Monday about this planning that got preliminary approvals from them. We will have in the specs that the contractor will clean up the parking lot, any debris that's left there in the evening and our park school will come by every school day morning to make sure that the parking lot is ready to go for the school the next day. Plan to work with the schools and make sure that we coordinate notice that goes up to parents and I would be happy to speak to any of the staff and staff that are working in the after school care program to make sure that that's coordinated as well. The route going in from the parking lot is shown on your diagram but once they enter the field area that'll all be fenced off with construction and construction friends around the mound. It is a large amount of dirt, it's 2,600 truck loads. So about 2,600 cubic yards or 39,000 tons. So it's quite a bit of dirt. And I'm here to answer any questions. I will one other thing. We plan to hopefully start late March, beginning of April with this process. And you did say that you're coordinated with Ms. Hanbury, and not only will you not be there during school hours, but any time the school has activities planned after school or on weekends, you would also avoid that. Correct. Correct. Any questions? Yes, ma'am? I'm just wondering how long, if you start in March and April, when's it supposed to end? Well, the preliminary estimates, if we were working six normal working days, three weeks. So it's a little up in the air because we're working from four to hopefully eight o'clock Monday through Friday, and that's obviously rush hour. So it could be about six weeks. That's all. Other questions? Mr. Chair. rush hour. So it could be about six weeks. That's all. Other questions? Mr. Clerk. Sir, I just got a whole more question. You say it's going to be fence then. It's going to be fence. How high will the chain length fence be? It'll be about eight feet. Eight feet. OK, one gate. Not sure if there'll be one gate going in from the parking lot area. And it'll be one long row many get there'll be one gate going in from the parking lot area and it'll be one long row And then maybe another gate where as you get closer down to the mount Okay, and I understand that these This load of dirt on be just brought in it's not taken from any place else in the city It's just brought in and basically staged here It's the dirt coming out of the Stafford Park Development and Draper drive. Okay. It'll be the base for the baseball field. What we're trying to do is raise that lower field so we don't have to do any excavation and bring it to grade with the upper field, the field 3. So, like you say, it's stockpons. Brought in there at stage there and that's going to be taken back to the rest of the work. Right. And the construction for the baseball field, we don't anticipate that happening until school is out. Is there going to be any interference with any other organization using the field? Well, we're fortunately we get to schedule that and we minor disruption for the schedule of the fields. The field closer to the parking lot gets it's the most use in the fall. So we should be all done. You've weathered all those questions already then. Yes, we've already notified, you know, FPYCA, the church group that uses the softball field, they also have a little league ball, what's happening in there. And they'll still be able to play a little league, they'll still be able to actually use field three while the stock pile is going on. Okay, so there's no overflow to another field say a green acres or anything like that? No. Is that believe it or not there's not enough. Thank you very much. That's all I have. I thought a one other thing. Go ahead. I've got my day hat on. We had a church of Providence up until Fairfax County Public Schools had a church using Providence up until last month. So right now we don't have one there but one may start. So when you say Saturday and Sunday what access are you going to the field? On your second or last second or last page It it's kind of the weird looking diagram because it shows a mountain But there's arrows showing which way they'll be coming in That that could be a problem because we'll we'll need that That's what I was thinking too The we all we'll need to access that parking lot so There'll be some parking spaces that will be combed off when they come in and those are at the corners. If you look at the very last pages, this kind of the parking lot, there's two circles. Yeah. Those areas, those parking spaces will be combed off while the trucks are coming in and out. But the root is that they'll come in off of Germantown Road, they'll take a left into the parking lot, right when they get down to the bottom, shoot in, and when they come out, they'll take a left and go out the large bus entrance right. Okay. Mr. Craig Preff, you could remain mindful of that as other proposals. I'm just going to say if we catch wind that the church is going to go in there. If we lose the weekend's, we're hurting with trying to get that project in a way. You could get Providence to rental money that they'll lose for the church. Sure. No, we'll work it out. I just thought of that as that other truth. Okay. Of course. Mr. Cardi, just two minor issues. Sure. It has been known to reign in the Virginia in March and April. Yes. Been known to reign a lot. Yes. And that's a dirt that that hall root, what you've got described as a hall root is dirt. There is some asphalt, but it's mostly dirt. It would turn into a bog, and that, and so what happens if we get inclement weather? Well, that, that roadway into the actual stock pile plan, the full stock pile plan shows a construction entrance, and they have to create a construction roadway along there, along the gravel piece that's there now to maintain the... So they're going to have to harden that for... Quite a bit, super-silt fences and drainage and controls for any runoff. Which brings me then to my final question and I'm going to ask you to go back to Ms. Sanbury and ask this question of her. Sure. The date of her fun fare. It's typically in the spring. Yes. And it typically has enormous amounts of overflow parking back into the area that you I think are going to have fence tall. They use the field. We did discuss that when we met and she was anticipating that that was going to happen in February. But she was going to get back to me as soon as it would you resolve that with her before we do anything real. Absolutely. We definitely wouldn't schedule on that or any other similar event that you have at the moment. And we have to somehow provide for parking. Well, just that entrance way with the way they're going down the field is going to be fenced off. The rest of the field will be wide open. Okay. Okay. Sorry. So it would allow for auxiliary parking on the field in that type of activity. So it still would be in the habit. So we wouldn't be operating in that kind. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other questions? We'll take this up again under act for an item. All right. Thank you. If you wouldn't mind, I just want to say thank you for the tremendous cooperation Daniel's running has had with Parks and Recreation Department with the after school care program. We had 175 kids that participate this past fall and we have 14 classes due to start up again in February 5th. But the province elementary is starting their first after school care programing on January 29th. And we're very excited Mrs. Handover is very excited I think it's going to be a wonderful program so thanks for the cooperative effort I really appreciate that. Thank you sir. Thanks. Daniel's run elementary school Ms. Mullinux and it would appear to be her entire staff or anything. Not quite but we are well represented. Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to share some of the things that are going on in our school. I know many of you are already familiar with some of the programs and staffing changes that we've made over the past year. I did want to take a moment just to thank our cluster 7 assistant supervisor, Mrs. Burke. Mrs. Burke for attending tonight. We really appreciate her support. And I will also want to thank Mrs. Mulvaney as always for her support. I will be introducing the staff who are going to be also sharing information as they prior to them beginning. They are here to talk a little bit about their roles and what is going on in our school as well as to answer any questions you have at the end of the presentation. Tonight we want to talk a little bit about how Daniel's run is supporting the Fairfax County strategic goals, academics, essential life skills, and responsibility to the community. We also want to highlight how the resources and funding that you as a city school board resources and funding that you as a city school board approve for our use to support not only the K-12 road map to success, but also those county strategic goals. Looking at the new goals and the format that that we are using to develop our work plans and organize our information. As a staff, we always talk at some point about what children need to learn. One of the most important things, this is probably preaching to the choir, but we do know that learning needs to occur for all of us when we can process information in a context that makes sense. Each of us uses our own background knowledge, our own experience, life experiences, as well as our personal interests to make those meaningful connections when we're presented with new information or situations. Children especially need those opportunities during their school day throughout their school life to make meaningful connections. They have a much better chance of retaining that information and going further in various aspects of their learning when they can relate it to something, a value to them. The environment also that we believe we are and continue to offer the students of Daniel's run is one that provides a high level of physical as well as emotional safety for our children. We want our children to go as far as they can academically and we also want them to develop the skills and internalize those skills, interpersonal skills, that they're going to need to make to formulate sound judgments and make safe choices. Now as well as students at whatever age their students as well as later in life. In looking at the academic goal, we did make an effort to align our school plan. We're continuing to work on that with the academic goal. We are looking specifically at reading and math. Those are the academic areas that we are focusing on. In no way does it mean that we are not addressing all content areas and working our very best to make sure that all students are succeeding in all those content areas. As a staff, we have to look for our own meaningful connections as teachers so that we can be connected to each other in a positive, collegial manner, and in turn, the trickle down on to our students is positive and meaningful. We don't want to operate nicolation. One of the nice things that we're doing in terms of connections is thanks to the efforts of Fairfax County principal, Dr. Bergrand, who organized a kickoff for vertical planning. We are actually meeting in teams of staff in content areas to have a dialogue at the elementary level with middle with high crossing all grades. And those meetings are very productive and encouraging in terms of making sure that we are not redundant in the instruction that we're offering our children. And as well as not omitting anything. As you know, I hope you know that as a staff, we do work diligently to support those high academic standards. Literacy has always been a part of our school plan, a part of just daily life at Daniel's run. It continues to be a focus and it has been a huge focus certainly since no child up behind. As a Title I school, we're acutely aware of our strengths and areas of improvement that the state accountability plan and SOL testing requirements have defined for us. We've been very fortunate to have the additional training resources and staff available to our school and children through that federal program. It is very nice that their resources and the city resources dovetail and complement each other so well. We are fortunate indeed. As an advocate for children and public education, as you are, I continue to be concerned about how we define student success, as well as school success in looking at S.O.L. tests. Having said that, we will continue to work diligently to make sure that we are closing those achievement gaps not only for those minority students, but for any child who is not performing on or above grade level. That's our goal. We're very proud of the fact that we haven't it. Attiquate nearly progress requirements each year. We bite our nails during the summer waiting for that data to be published and we look at it very seriously. Give it our attention so that we can adjust our instruction accordingly. We still have, we always will have students who are struggling to meet academic benchmarks. So that is a part of what we do at Daniel's run and a very serious part of our goals and work plans. I wanted to share, and I'm making a lot of personal choices here, a little bit of data with you in the area of math. Because we tend to go to sometimes the negative or the that group of children who aren't quite making it or who really are struggling rather than focusing on those children are making gains in their learning. And that's where I struggle with some of the testing protocols we're using. On the other hand, we do have data that shows that we are making gains in the area of math. And I have been very pleased that we have what I think of as a significant percent of students at all grade levels passing in the past advanced category. So we're not all things to all people yet in math, but I think slowly but surely we're getting there. In third grade, 48% of the total number of students that have been in the first year of the year. So, in the first year of the year, we have been in the first year of the year. So, in the first year of the year, we have been in the first year of the year. So, in the first year of the year, we have been in the first year of the year. So, in the first year of the year, we have been in the first year of the year. So, in the 50% black students fell into the past proficient. Those are numbers that are pleasing to see. Fourth grade, we had 44% of our total number of students in the past advanced. In that past advanced, 27% of our black students in 14 Hispanic students achieved past advanced. Fifth grade, we had 48% of our total in the past advanced. Sixth grade, 41%. Statistics and data, you're getting a piece of it. I'm not giving you all of it. It's certainly accessible to you on the State website, but these are the numbers that help us stay balanced in what we're doing at school on a day-to-day basis. And I'm really proud. In addition, we have 12 sixth graders who took the seventh grade SOL. I think that's significant. We had, that's about 10 percent. I'd say of our sixth graders. Of that 12, eight scored in the past advanced, and the remaining four were past proficient. One student met the criteria for taking the eighth grade SOL, they have to take an algebra test, and that person scored in the past advanced. So we're always looking to see those numbers increase, to see our failing students in the past, past proficient and more and more students in the past advance. So we're pleased with the progress. I wanna share one little thing because this was not typical of my generation. We are closing the gender gap in math. In third grade, 55% and 52% of girls, 42% of boys were passed advanced. So, yes. Fourth grade, 55% of girls. Looks like the same numbers are, I mean, the type of osmica say fourth, but we have the similar kind of comparison. In fourth grade, fifth grade, we had a 13 point, 13 percentage point lead of girls over boys who passed were in the past proficient. So I'm pleased with those results. In sixth grade, the gap widens a little bit, but we still have 30 percent of our girls, 46 percent of our boys in the past advance. So it's happening and it's a good thing for, certainly for my generation to see and for our younger parents. This is probably just the norm, but that's just my personal spin on things. We believe we are enriching and challenging our students. We want to challenge all students. As educators, we're compelled to do all that we can to meet SOL requirements because it's the right thing to do for children. The staff continue to do their best. We know that even if the scores don't always reflect our desired outcomes, we definitely have a proactive approach towards improving our instruction. We analyzed data, we use all available resources, many of which we would not have without your support. In looking at goal one, as I said earlier, we're focusing on literacy across grade levels and across content areas, reading comprehension, and critical thinking skills. These are not new for our school or our staff. Learning to read, reading to learn are the fundamentals at elementary, sounds so simple, but are often the most difficult thing to accomplish. Thanks to the support of the city, we have been able to expand and build a fabulous inventory of resources, staff development opportunities, and we're very pleased with with having those at our fingertips. We know we're very lucky. If this time I'd like to welcome back Nancy Nelson, who is our one of our Title 1 teachers and also a reading specialist. She's a .5 Title I teachers and also a reading specialist. She is a .5 Title I and a .5 reading specialist. And she is certainly a person who knows all the nuances about developing literacy for our children. I'm going to sit over here. It's right there telling me to go. Okay. I'm just waking this up. There we go. Can we see that anymore? There we go. We just put up a couple of slides of the children working at school. It's probably more pleasant than looking at my face. I'm one of the reading teachers that Daniel's run. And thanks so much for inviting us here to speak to you tonight. wasn't looking at my face. I'm one of the reading teachers at Daniel's Run, and thanks so much for inviting us here to speak to you tonight. We take our job very seriously. I'm not the only teacher there. But we are certainly, as I said, take our job very seriously in terms of the achievement of our students at Daniel's Run. I've been at many different schools, and I'm just delighted to be at Daniel's Run. I think we have one of the most dedicated, cooperative, really dedicated teachers that I've been with. And I have to say I've always been able to say that every school that I've been at. So we know that teachers are faced with greater challenges every year in terms of the students that they're faced with. And yet we keep asking them to do it more and more. And so where they are really our role is to support not only the teachers but the students as well and our teachers in terms of student achievement. Everything goes back to student achievement. So one of our jobs is to support and coach teachers. We also certainly provide materials and ideas for teachers and we support strategies sometimes directly to students. Not only those students that are faltering but we're making sure that our average and above average students have what they need. And that's our objective. Every day we talk to teachers about what our students have in their hand. That's the appropriate level for them to be able to move from where they are ahead. Not just are they on grade level? And can we keep them there? But we want them to go from point A and improve over the course of the year. And so that's our challenge. How do we do that? We have monthly language arts focus team meetings where we meet with the teachers and our focus is on language arts. More and more this year as we did a little bit last year, we're asking teachers to bring student work so that we can talk about and brainstorm together where are these students? What is it that's keeping not only this particular child but this group of children or your whole class from achieving these objectives? Okay, so can we brainstorm together? What are you doing that's working that you can share with me? What can we add as reading teachers to give you some other strategies that you might use to move these children ahead? We're not just talking about turning the next page in the book. We want to see where are they and where do they need to get and how we're going to get them there and how can we do it together. So that's a big focus of our meetings, that brainstorming piece. Then we have our Monday PLC workshops, which we've started this year. And once a month, not only myself, but some of the other departments as well, have two sessions of extra support and enrichment for teachers. And those are focused topics where teachers can choose to learn more about, for example, assessment or critical thinking skills or reading fluency. We pick a few topics and we invite teachers to come and we just study them together. We present some things and then we learn as teachers together. The other is this year we've really focused on training for school wide administration of the DRA, which is the developmental reading assessment. It's been used in the county for grades one and two. We also use it in kindergarten and now we're using all the way from third through sixth. So this past year has been a really intensive training year for teachers to get on board with how to do that. We've been in there supporting them in the classroom. But the most important thing that's come out of that is really identifying not only the trends in a classroom and a grade level, but what is each specific child? Where are they in the spectrum of their learning and literacy? And coming up with a focus for instruction for that, each particular child looking in a classroom and saying not what grade level are these children reading on and how can we get them to move to the next grade level But what individual skills are we seeing that our trends across their classroom are trends across the grade level? For example, that has helped us this year identify some things that we really want to work on across the school One of which is getting our kids to be a little bit deeper thinkers You know, we can move them ahead. We can get them to recognize words. We can get them to be fluent readers But we feel as a staff we've come up with the idea that we want them, and we've always had this as a goal, but now we're seeing that some real specific ways we can get into helping children really become more reflective, help them become better interpretive readers. So I think we've got kids, even in the kindergarten, who might be readers, yet are they able to really reflect and think and it goes back to what Kathy was saying about that making connections. Are they able to connect with their reading to their life to other books that they've read to the rest of the world and getting them to be really strategic and thinking about their reading is the challenge. So that's the discussion that's going on all the time and that assessment piece and having teachers involved in that very individualized testing is just really making a difference. Of course, in class lessons, coaching, going into the classroom and sharing with teachers how to do shared reading lessons. We used to think all the years I've been in teaching for more than 30 years. And I think when I first started, we taught kids how to recognize words and we sort of hope they would understand what they're reading. And if they didn't, we would say that their parents really don't understand what they're reading. Well, now we know we really have to teach them how to understand what they're reading. And a classroom teacher can do that for her whole class by bringing in a story. We see teachers using this smart words now for that and putting up a story that she can read aloud to them, even at the upper grade levels and talking to them about how to access that text, how to understand it. What do you do? What do readers do when they're reading a text? They stop, they think, they make connections, they ask questions and demonstrating that for students is really the way to teach kids how to comprehend. Of course, our book room, managing our book room, our book room is filled with thanks to all the money that the city has given us. I think any teacher from around this county would be jealous when they saw it and people that come to our school that are new are amazed at the materials that we have. It seems as though we're spending a bottomless bucket of money on it, but the materials are expendable and we expend them. We have our students using all those books. So we do thank you over and over again for all the support you've given to us. It's just a tremendous amount of money that it takes to keep this program going and to keep kids. We want them to have reading books in their hand every day, not just independent reading books, but guided reading books. And so that's the challenge for us. We have a tape recorder program going. We have 200 tape recorders that we've ordered and every classroom teacher from K to 3 has about 150 sets of books and tapes and the students in the class who are either at risk or maybe have English as a second language or who we feel just aren't getting some stimulation at home can keep a tape recorder for the year and check out books and tapes all year long and we've really seen some turn around in terms of their vocabulary development, their understanding, their English skills have really started to blossom. So that's a program that's really near and dear to our hearts. A parent university that we have going of sorts for our kindergarten parents, as soon as those children come to school, October doesn't even pass. And we've got those kids identified that we really feel like we've got to get in there right now with them and get those parents. And we give the parents the DVD of skills and activities to work on at home. We give them magnetic letters, we give them a white board, we give them activities to do a tape recorder to keep at home and we really want we want it to start early because we know how much has to happen for those kids before they get in those upper grade levels. And then of course just the intervention that we do even with students ourselves, whether it's through the reading recovery program or other interventions that we have to support. Not only those kids who are struggling, but to make sure those average and above average kids are all getting what they need. So that's where we're coming from. It's a great fun job. It keeps us busy. And again, we couldn't be more delighted with the staff that we have, that we work with that are every day anxious to learn new things and to get on board with the ideas that we have to support them in the classroom. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Nancy. I want to clarify what a PLC is. You may have heard it. You may be remembering PLC is the acronym for Professional Learning Community, that is a framework that we try to have for ourselves as a staff to foster collegiality, sharing resources, all of that. So PLC Monday, I'll talk a little bit more about that, but it is some a new way to provide staff development on topics of interest and need for teachers. So not everybody has to participate in all sessions, but they can pick and choose what area they want to learn more about or just to review. In mathematics, we continue to focus on improving and increasing achievement for all students and all the math strands. The strands don't change from one grade to the next, but they do reflect spiraling skills and greater complexity in the application of those skills. We do have a wide variety of resources again through much of what we've been able to acquire through city funding. And as a staff, we do look for ways each year to be creative in how we are clustering children so that we are optimizing instruction to be as differentiated as possible. This is not easy to do. We often are going back to the drawing board midway through the year or with each subsequent year that follows to sort of revisit is this the best way to that we want to organize our children and keep those groups fluid. So this time I'd like to introduce our math lead teacher. She is our tech technology math resource teacher. You met her last year. She's going to share some new tidbits with you about our program. Thank you. Thank you. In looking at math, student achievement, specifically our strategic goals, we continue to reflect on ways to enable students to reach their full potential. Of course, this is a goal that is not new, of course. But I'm going to talk a little bit about what we've done specifically this year. In particular, we've identified specific strains using data from recent years in number of number sense and patterns functions in algebra. Number of number sense being a big one because it really permeates all aspects of mathematics and patterns functions in algebra being big because it really starts to set in there in six and seven in those years when scores sometimes cannot be as good. So as a whole school, as a team, we were looking at those specific areas and setting goals in those areas. So what do those goals, what do you have to manifest themselves in a day to day inside the classrooms. On a day to day basis, we would see teacher teams meeting to reflect on student work and achievement. We'd see teachers planning together and examining student results. This is a powerful research-based and effective method from proving teaching and in turn student achievement. I collaborate with teachers weekly or monthly during their team meetings, talking about assessments and pieces of student work, and the results that we either expected from different practices or maybe results that we didn't expect. And that reflection I think is a really important process. I also meet with teachers during the PLC meetings and we talk about different strategies and what they will look like in the classroom and kind of give teachers resources constantly pulling from our strong pool of personnel, technological and instructional resources to meet diverse student needs. We would see a wealth of differentiated instruction, including flexible dynamic groups based on learning needs. We would see students communicating their mathematical ideas to each other and to their teacher through journaling, through meaningful discussions, and just basically valuing the question, how did you get that? Where did that answer come from? Explain that to me. That process helps them move from a superficial level of knowing to a deeper level of understanding the knowledge and the concept of being able to apply it. This is a quick snapshot of various day-to-day outcomes of our academic goals. But what about the big picture? Or long-term effects of what we're looking for? One of the big picture outcomes is the vertical communication going on both within our school and within the Fairfax pyramid. Meeting with other math teachers in the pyramid has been a great opportunity to increase our awareness. The challenges kids will face once they leave our doors. Sometimes those are hard to keep in mind and those are really important for us to consider as we reflect on our teaching. It also strengthens our professional resource space of ideas and just professional resources to pull from, so that's another advantage. Another big picture goal is from these goals that we're sending is the means by which we help children get ready for the rigors of high school. We know that one of the big goals in math is to help children get to their absolute fullest potential. And often in this day of this race to produce as many engineers and mathematicians as possible, we get focused on the pace and how fast we're pushing that rather than other ways to truly prepare them for the rigors of higher level math classes. To truly prepare students, however, we need to do more than just push them through an already shallow curriculum. We need to, if they're to master the step- step skills in a textbook, but only have a surface level and knowledge and understanding, they'll have a trouble applying that knowledge later when concepts are expected to be applied in a much harder environment. They'll be less likely to build on top of that knowledge successfully and connect it to new concepts they're learning. Applying concepts at a more rigorous level also requires a deep conceptual understanding that takes continued exploration, a wealth of experiences, and most importantly time to develop. Students need multiple learning opportunities such as hands-on experiences, experiences with manipulatives, meaningful discussions, and problem-based learning to refine their understanding before moving on. Our goals are long-term. For example, mastering the long division algorithm may appear to only take a couple of weeks. But if we do not help students develop a strong understanding of the patterns behind and number relationships behind these concepts and develop a deep sense of what it really means to divide numbers when they get to a higher abstract level dealing with variables and dealing with rational numbers, they won't have that foundation they need to a higher abstract level dealing with variables and dealing with rational numbers. They won't have that foundation they need to build on. So quick mastery of a procedure does not guarantee future success. We know the weight of our responsibility at the elementary level and we continue to grow and reflect on how to best prepare our students for their future. Thank you. Thanks, Christine. Moving on to goal two, essential life skills. This is a standalone goal now, previously a lot of the components of this topic or these skills were embedded into other goals of school plans in the past. Now it stands along and we really are looking closely at this. We do feel it's a goal about interpersonal relationships and the perspectives that we have as individuals and as members of different groups. Developing the positive meaningful, appropriate relationships is a lifelong skill, but it is a skill that is crucial for ensuring the well-being of our children as students now, middle and high, university and beyond, and as adults when they are out there living, hopefully productive and responsible lives. Some of the objectives in this goal, though, have been a little difficult for us to wrap our minds around. Exactly. How do we measure values such as sound and moral character and ethical judgment? And do we recognize these behaviors in the same way? So there is a need for us to have a lot more discussion about this goal in the context of our own school community. As a staff, we definitely decided we need to have further conversations and to make sure that in looking at this goal that we are making connections, helping our children make connections in a meaningful way. So this year we're gathering a baseline data. We're looking specifically at how children make safe and healthy choices for themselves in a variety of settings and working through that process. We've been fortunate at Daniel's run that we don't really have any serious discipline or attendance issues. We do support and teach our children about expectations for student behavior. There's a lot of consistency in those endeavors. And we support and teach those expectations in terms of behavior that are outlined by the Fairfax County Regulation, Government Student Conduct, or student rights and responsibilities. We have developed a character education program that we call stars, which helps children put these expectations into a more user-friendly context. We do look for every opportunity to recognize our students informally and formally during the day and throughout the year. And I'd like for Andy Andersonine who is our tech communications resource teacher to talk to you a little bit about this goal and some of the things that are going on. So. Good evening. It's nice to see you all again. Good evening. It's nice to see you all again. Good morning. I'm going to try to talk to you from my own sphere of influence here this evening, which is technology. And I've tried to pull some samples of how we are relating the technology to go to, which is the essential life's skills piece. The first piece would be a fifth grade global awareness program. It's a program that comes down from the county. What happens here is that the fifth graders in studying their cultures and regions and the fifth grade will learn, excuse me, will learn different software programs during the year. And then this project culminates in an activity where they then choose from their new wealth of information, their new depth of knowledge of the software, choose the right programs that will get them to reach their goal in this project. And that kind of decision making, that kind of making judgments is the higher level thinking that we're always looking for. How it's done is a new series that we do on a news program and it allows us to use our students to model behaviors that we want to show to the rest of the students. What I think, when I think of how it's done, I think of the parent that I sometimes see telling their children behave, be good, and it doesn't seem to make any difference in the child, and I find myself thinking, does the child know what behave means, what be good means? What be good means? If the child has never been told, you're being really good. Maybe the child can't define be good. So how it's done puts the model up there, and we have the kids do it. Say, this is what we mean by this. And we're finding it to be a lot of fun. The kids are having fun with it and it's effective. Mr. Multanix talked about our stars program. Stars is an acronym that stands for Sharing Our Spaces, Teamwork and Effort Attitudes or Positive Respect and Kindness and Success. And this takes the form of a star report that the kids see on the news. And in a star report, I will receive word from a teacher about some behavior that has occurred. And I will go track that child down and we'll do an interview that will film and present on the morning news. The student gets a chance to tell what happened and we discuss maybe why they use that behavior, why that particular behavior occurred, and then we'll relate it back. Hey, that was a good example of a positive attitude and what else? Respect and kindness? Teamwork and effort. And again, it's putting that lay, it's a demonstration is putting a lay below it. What does respect and kindness mean? This is what it means. Here comes a big dose of me. I just wanted to show you these. These are examples of 8 by 10 glossies. We also send home with the kids when they've been on the Star program on the news and we actually letter them, label them. I remove that of course for now, but I think they're great for either framing or at least hanging on a refrigerator. There's a momentum. The first grade sing along is a kind of large involved project that started a few years ago actually as a part of the reading initiative. When I first came to Daniel's run, I was amazed at the collection of songs the first grade teachers have. It's a folder that's this thick. And it's song, not just songs, but songs have been rewritten to suit the curriculum. And I said, that's a resource that we should not lose. And I was constantly trying to think of ways to preserve this thing. So what we came up with was the first grade sing-along. We went to Fairfax High School and talked with Chris Johnson who is at the Academy about recording software. This is what multiple track recording software looks like and we purchased this package. It allows you to lay down say a guitar track and then a vocal track and then another instrument you can add to it. If that person makes a mistake, you don't everybody does not sit in and redo the whole thing because you don't retract by track and then they're all blended together. So that made it all possible. We now had the vehicle, thanks to this is Mollinux. And then the Ramworths got together on Friday afternoons after school for about a year and recorded some of these first grade songs. We would just play them in and from there we created a menu system that we put on the server and also put shortcuts to in the first grade classroom. So the kids sit at the computer and they can choose one of these links. And when they choose a link, the song pops up, the lyrics pop up, the song is played, and they advance the slides with the space bar. And when a song is over, it returns back to the menu page, what they don't realize is their reading. And I love using music for reading because you can't slow, you have to keep up with the song. You can't stop. It's sight vocabulary. It's what's going on there. You have to learn those words to keep up with the song. And so that's what it was actually all about. It was the reading component. But then it's become more And that we now gather the kids once a month in the main pod and they come with their little songbooks for the month that relate to the things that they're studying in In class and they sing along with the Daniels Run Ramworth and we all kind of assume and we all kind of assume different entities in front of them. It's like we're not Mr. Anderson, Mrs. Osberg, Mr. Becker anymore. We're Ramlin, Andy, and Ramlin Bev. And that's building relationships. And this kids are operating in a group and that's a group dynamic and they're contributing and that goes back to that same goal. And when it's all said done, if you want, you can buy the t-shirt. Thank you. Thank you, Andy. That's just a snippet of what Mr. Anderson does in our school on a day-to-day basis. He's very creative. And when you're talking about how to engage children, he does an outstanding job always looking for ways to support instruction with teachers in classrooms as well as do things more on a school-wide basis. Our last goal is response field of the community. This also is a standalone goal. We want our students to understand their relationship to their community, whether it is a school community, local, national, or global community. And our focus is to teach children how to exercise good stewardship of the environment. And Laura Hubert-Minhaz is here. She's going to highlight some of some of the things she's doing in connection with this third goal. Hello. As you probably are all aware, Daniel's run has been working on an environmental program for the past five years. Most recently we have been working on the constructed wetland and the swamp wetland. This program fits well with the third goal of our school plan under responsibility to the community. This goal encourages students to be respectful and contributing participants in their school, community, country, and world. Just this fall we had three weekend voluntary events. The goal of in our school plan states teachers will provide opportunities for students to exercise good stewardship of the environment. To accomplish this goal each grade level excuse me every class will participate in an outdoor project in each grade level. Second, third, fourth, and sixth graders have already completed the school for this school year by participating in activities such as planting in the Swamp Wetlands, planting bulbs, and water testing. Another way for students to meet the school is for our entire school to participate in a paper recycling program. Every class also harvested vegetables in the fall and will plant vegetables in the spring. Daniel's run has also participated in the science vertical articulation meetings. From these meetings, I made a contact with a Fairfax High School Biology teacher who has coordinated with me to have AP biology students earn their volunteer hours by helping with our six grade classes. So as you can see, Daniel's run is providing a variety of experience for students to exercise its stewardship of the environment. Thank you. I have just a few more comments in summary, and then depending on our time, we would certainly be happy to answer any questions. We do have much to do as always to meet student needs. Without your generous support, it is generous, and we recognize it's generous. In terms of the tech resource staff, the instructional resources that you provide to our school, we would not be able to do many of the things that bring an added dimension to student learning. Our all-day K program has been up and running for many, many years. It's been extremely valuable in providing appropriate early intervention for our at-risk learners as well as a school day that offers more challenging work for students who are ready. The tech staff and our Latin teacher who isn't here tonight bring a level of enrichment to our programs and content area instruction and they've touched on just a few of the things that they have been doing over the past few years as well as some new things. We are able to do so much more in terms of our in-house staff development, curriculum planning, development of lessons with a high level of interactive learning because of the support of these teachers. It's difficult actually to measure the benefit of all of the technologies that the city has provisioned our schools with. It has become such a routine part of learning and the work day for all of us. However, it is interesting for me to see our kindergarten children coming already tech savvy helping teachers. It is phenomenal what they can already do. And they remain hungry for more. So technology is alive and well up and running nicely at our school. Your funding did help us purchase smart boards for every single general education classroom, kindergarten through sixth grade. You're invited to stop in any time. You will find those boards being used routinely by teachers and students. You have also made it possible for to increase our inventory of laptops for student use. This is the next hot item in our building. The teachers are onto them. The teachers have been onto them. They do, you know, get somewhat territorial in the upper grades. However, at the younger grades, we're seeing much more of an intent to get their hands on these laptop cards. And letting go of them is not easy. The children love using them. They are so motivating. And the potential for flexible instruction is endless. So our future goal is to continue to increase that laptop availability to our students as we replace desktops is to be with laptops. And then any accompanying software that can expand or enhance our learning we're certainly going to pursue getting. Those meaningful connections, I hope all of us have mentioned it a little bit and you're feeling that we are looking for connections that are productive, that are useful and beneficial as professionals, as our students, in so many different settings in our building. We really do work hard to have our learning experiences being engaging and meaningful. We're very appreciative for the funding that has allowed us to do more elaborate professional development. And I feel very strongly that staff development is a key in creating and enhancing an effective professional community. I'm proud of the way our staff works collaboratively and all aspects of their professional responsibilities. The funding has been used to have very reputable educational consultants who speak routinely for school systems, are providing workshops for just our staff. Dan Mulligan and Deleham Lester Lamonick, who is an author, have conducted workshops over the past few years on literacy, improving academic performance, building professional learning communities, and other timely topics connected to student achievement. The release time that we are able to manage for planning through sort of combined efforts of our funds is very valued by elementary teachers. They do plan for four content areas every day, each day, every day, all day long, and within that planning piece they are expected to provide differentiated instruction. It is daunting to carve out the amount of planning time they need to be effective. And that's their goal. They hear it a lot from me. They know in their hearts what they need to do. But making it all come together is not always an easy thing to do. We do look for new ways to train teachers. We did talk about our PLC Mondays. This is really, I'm really proud of this. This is something that the teachers generated. And looking for ways so that I'm not the talking head at a full faculty meeting and everybody is doing this, taking care of email. So we want those staff development opportunities to be valuable and a whole staff forum with me as a presenter is not always the most effective way. So I listened and it has been really neat and I would be happy to share some of the topics that teachers have done and if they want to pop in and see it up and running I'll be glad to let you know. We know very much as you do that what occurs in the classroom is really where the rubber hits the road. As parents you know the curriculum that we teach is very different from what you experienced in elementary school, and certainly very, very different from our experience. And we expect a lot of our students and in turn a lot of our teachers. We want our students to learn not only more information in terms of volume, but the information is becoming more and more abstract at younger and younger grade levels. And it is, it's amazing what our children can do. We sometimes think, I know in the early days we thought, oh, there's no way. This is crazy. You know, the economic vocabulary for third grade social studies, and you know what, they've nailed it. I did want to mention that it take this opportunity to also mention that we require a lot of our teachers to meet some of the emotional needs of this diverse population that they're working with. And that takes a lot of time and effort. Good teachers, great teachers, they understand that the profession is not about salaries or convenience schedules. And I do know that the system does lose some of those good teachers, some of those great teachers because it's a school system. We're not always recognizing the effect of the increased professional demands we place on teachers. And sometimes the emotional toll when resources, planning, time, and training aren't available to the degree that we're needed. Emotional toll on teacher morale, I do want to just mention this, because it is something that as an administrator, I am constantly wanting to make sure we're staying at a happy level. I know that teacher morale is really connected or goes sort of hand in hand with the level of support and trust. They feel among their colleagues with their parents and with their supervisors. I've taught in schools and I'm sure any experienced teacher here can also report the same where teachers were isolated from colleagues, power clicks among teachers were formed, materials were hoarded rather than shared. These are not the haters that we see at all happening in our school. And I'm very proud of that. And your funding, your resources, your interest and support of our school really have eliminated that as a concern. There are proposed budget cuts on the horizon with the school system. our school really have eliminated that as a concern. There are proposed budget cuts on the horizon with the school system. And these are of concern to all of us who advocate for children and public education. The budget is still very much work in progress, but many of the proposed cuts are going to affect our children and our teachers' ability to meet the educational needs. Programs that support early intervention for at-risk students, tinkering with increasing class size, looking at specialized programs, especially in the area of fine arts, foreign language, are some of the items on the table that are for review. All proposed cuts are affecting all of the school levels and administrative levels throughout the county. And I believe we're going to feel the pinch. The this budget deficit does alarm me as a title one school and with a lot of diversity within my building and a lot of students who are economically needy. The cuts to existing programs that support those students and class size are the areas that I am most interested in getting status reports on. We are not going to be able to provide the same level of quality over time that we're doing now if we continue to stretch our resources, not just the physical resources but resources in terms of our personnel. So I am making that statement in the hopes that in the months ahead as the budget is discussed that all of us work as much as we can together to communicate our priorities when these budget decisions are finalized. Having said all that, whether we're in facing a lean budget year or not, and I've been through many of both types. It has been a true blessing, personally and professionally to be part of the city schools and that's thanks to you. Our school board and our wonderful superintendent Mrs. Monday, I deeply appreciate and our staff really, really appreciate your support of our children, of them as professionals and of our facility. So on behalf of them and myself, I wanna thank you for making our school the incredibly wonderful place it is to be, and feel free to stop by anytime and have a walk about. So if you have any specific questions, I know we've probably exceeded our time limit. But. Thank you, Ms. Mullin-Hex. Does anyone have any questions? I think you were very thorough. Now you know why I agree with you, both of us. No. And if I may say, you're probably right that we've had a bit of a rough patch and we don't know where we're going to come out on the budget this year. And sometimes that's reason to be, to not despair, to at least feel bad about ourselves. But know this, that 95% of the systems around this country, and the teachers in them would trade places with you today. No questions asked. No then. I know that I want to make sure all of our staff know that and our community members, including our parents, know that it's we're a remarkable school and I'm so proud to be a part of it. I assure them that we will do the best we can for our children. And we'll make it work. That's what we're all about. Thank you. And I make a brief comment. I'd start with me not to comment after listening to that presentation. For the last few years, I've spent my professional life researching the best practices in education and visiting some very, very fine schools, both in the county and even having an opportunity to interface with educators around the country. And the qualities of great schools, first of all, is professionalism. It is the teacher in the classroom, but it's also that teacher working in collegially with peers and really looking at student work and looking at how we can change instructional practices to meet the needs of every student. And you heard that over and over again. And this is not new behavior at Daniel's run. This is embedded in the school culture. And that is what works to make certain that all students learn. The other thing that I just loved hearing was the whole emphasis on depth of learning. So much you hear in education now with the accountability times of accountability and AYP is basic skills and foundational knowledge. And we know we have our first and foremost responsibility to make sure that every single student gets to the foundational level at the very least. But what you and your staff are doing is taking children well beyond foundational knowledge. And with, and I love the, I am a former English teacher, so I've come late to the math and technology and science world. Now I do believe, by the way, as a former English teacher, that reading and literacy comes first. But having said that, really understanding now the whole concept of that depth of learning and understanding mathematical principles beyond the way that many of us were taught is just such an exciting new frontier. And that you had 13 students out of grade level last year. That didn't used to happen in Fairfax County. That just didn't used to happen. We didn't stretch students at that end. And I think that's just the beginning of us looking at what our students are capable of. And not just pushing them through math texts, but really helping them build that level of understanding that's going to serve them well as they go on through school and in life. So congratulations. I'm so very proud to be associated with you. Thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you again. Thank you. We move now to the second public hearing of the fiscal 2009 Superintendents proposed budget. Madam Superintendent, do you have any comments before I open the public hearing? If the budget matters to the superintendent, do you have any comments before I open the public hearings? Well, this is my first budget presentation. I've finished the budget presentation, but my first budget to have presented to the board. And I think as we all know that between now and May, the unknown factor is going to be what happens with Fairfax County's budget. Both in terms of the tuition bill, which is the biggest portion of our budget and is at this point an estimate at best and again, it's an uncertain budget year in Fairfax County. So we know that that is subject to change. And also, although I fully expect and hope that Fairfax City can continue to provide the instructional grants to the schools as they have in the past, they make a difference. I think this is the first of our four schools. Every one of them will tell you that the resources were able to provide these schools make a difference. But I also will want to look and see what happens with the Fairfax County budget and see if what was recommended by our schools makes sense in that environment. So there may be some slight changes as we look at how money would be allocated, but overall I believe that those allocations will remain what I propose and hopefully the city will be able to fund them. Thank you. Thank you. And the Monday is correct. These numbers are subject to revision as both our friends in the General Assembly have done with us and as Fairfax County goes through its budget process. But with that said, I'm going to open the public hearing. Does anyone sign that matter to speak to public hearing? Does anyone in the audience care to speak to the fiscal year 2009 budget for the City of Fairfax schools. Mr. Odell sir. It's good to see you again this evening sir. Thank you. It's good to see you again to see you, sir. Thank you. It's good to see all of these hates on the timer here, that you're asking me. Well, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, I'll come. No, I mean, that means I get unlimited time, like the others mean. Good luck, sir. You go ahead. I'll let you know when you got 30 seconds. I, uh, the good news is, You go ahead. I'll let you know when you got 30 seconds. Hi. The good news is I did not re-examine the budget that I was provided last meeting and if long since forgotten what to say. And you didn't, further good news from your perspective. You didn't bother to discuss it here, so it's to refresh my memory or provide me any opportunities. So I'm therefore at this point maybe limited to one comment that I came to mind listening to the very first speaker at this podium tonight, a woman who lament are excessively high and unreasonable, at least for those of us, or some of us, who are not terribly rich. The woman that just moved here is apparently on welfare or haspan or whatever and had to put out $250 or so. I have her own money for school supplies. I can tell you that from my experience as a student in pagan schools, That's a word for public schools. I did attend some of them. Very fine pagan schools. No mention of God. And no mention of money that I had to pay out of my pocket or my parents for school supplies. I, it raises the question of my mind as to whether there's misplaced priority because there's's a budget crunch, you want to dig into the, it's an indirect tax. It's a user tax, I suppose. But the materials aren't all, I mean, some, so things that are called supplies because they're expended is opposed to equipment, which is more long-lasting. But somebody made reference to the same woman I guess it was, the first person here tonight at this podium, to students or teachers or whatever was laughing, because they still had an air position, but the scissors from kindergarten, I can't believe that somebody was able to keep the same pair of scissors that long. But I think the question that comes to mind is, are you diverting money for school supplies through other purposes like salary increases for the equipment of computers? I mean, it's fine to have computers computers but people can't even have the basic supplies because of this place priorities. And then maybe you could scrap the sex education program. It's a waste of time and money and it perverts the morals of the students. You know they have told you that before and you show your total disregard by ignoring that. Thank you, sir. Anyone else want to speak to the fiscal 2009 budget? Don't all come at once. Here is seen no one else. We'll close the public hearing and move on to our action items. The first being the minutes of the December 3, 2007 meeting. Do I hear a motion? Ma'am. I move that the City of Fairfax School Board approve the minutes of the December 3, 2007 regular school board meeting is distributed. Is there a second? Second? Moved by Ms. Knight, seconded by Mr. Butterm to approve the minutes as printed and distributed in any discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. The motion passes unanimously. Approval of Superintendent's2009 school board budget as 47,957,105 dollars. Is there a second? Second. Discussion. I don't know. No discussion. No discussion. I think we've discussed honey and milk. We have discussed. And I should say for the public's consumption at home, lest they believe that we spent more time discussing dirt stock piles at Providence School than a $47 million budget. We have discussed this budget at great length and work sessions and in previous meetings. And I'm satisfied that the board has done due diligence on it. There being no discussion, I'll call the question. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. The Chair votes aye. The motion is approved unanimously. Moving on then to the change orders at Fairfax High School. Madam Superintendent, I believe we have Mr. Russ with us for for explanation or discussion tonight, Mr. Russ. Mr. Chairman, this is a change order from Fairfax High School for a number of items as we finish up the project. As you are where we did into an agreement with the contractor that was curtailing change orders going forward. This one basically represents about one-third of it is a problem that discovered with the roof that had to be corrected, about $45,000 there. It was not something that was within the scope of our agreement as to small items to be corrected. About another third of it is finished changes. That is changes in finishes at floors or walls or ceilings, things of that nature, which we requested, which are in addition to what the actual plan was. The remaining 45 are larger items, where there were problems with the drawings or with the plans that had to be corrected for safety or health reasons. The roof didn't drain properly. We need to put additional roof frames. We had problems with the parking lot grading where the cars wouldn't park there all nice. Things of that nature, they had to be done. And that amounts to about 45,000 additional. So you've got about $145,000, one-third and a roof problem at the gray series, one-third in finishes we changed, and 1,000,000 other minor items had to be corrected. So in some, this is in addition to the change order, we approved that was we had hope to be the end of all change orders. Yes, sir. And these are matters that came to our attention subsequent to them that were not contemplated nor addressed by that earlier change order. That's correct. There are items either that we requested to be changed after the fact or where there were very serious problems that arose, particularly the roof problem, which were not within the scope of the agreement we had. And we again hope and pray that this is the ultimate change order at Fairfax. Yes, sir. Questions? One question, please. Mr. Chairman, Jack just want to confirm that in terms of our margin funding available for change orders, this puts us where? This puts us over our initial budget, obviously, because we had used up the construction budget, but does not exceed our contingency amount. I believe we will have a discussion of that in a brief work session. Subsequent to the closed meeting this evening. Roger that. Thank you. That's all I have. Further questions from Mr. Rust, or the superintendent? Do I hear a motion? Mr. Chair. I know. I move that the City of Fairfax School Board authorizes the City of Fairfax School Board authorizes a superintendent of the City of Fairfax Schools or her designate the Director of Facilities Management to approve payment of change order number 16 as Printed and distributed for the renovation of Fairfax High School. Is there a second? Second. Move by Ms. Craig seconded by Ms. Knight to approve the change order as we've discussed. Is there further discussion? Hearing none, we'll call the question. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. The Chair votes aye and the motion is passed unanimously. Moving then to the action item concerning a change order at linear middle school. Again, Mr. Rust, Madam Superintendent. Mr. Rust. Mr. Chairman, Madame Superintendent? Mr. Russ. Mr. Chairman, this again is a similar agreement to the agreement that we had with Grundle construction at Fairfax High School in inland near as you know because of the dirt issues that we ran into we are over our initial budget. What we had tried to do was limit our exposure on change orders going forward. We had calculated that there was approximately $330,000 that was remaining to be used both in the existing contingency and in the extra work we had to do. This basically reflects that we had approved 171 of that at the last meeting, 171,000. And the balance of about 157,000 is the balance that we would pay to Dustin Construction for changes in the work from here. Again, if there were something major that had not been anticipated, they would have a right to come back to us. If we asked them to make additional changes, we're going to be responsible for those. But generally, unless there is something of that nature, they're going to eat the change orders going forward. And this would basically allow them a payment of the outstanding retention to reduce it down to a 2 percent level upon execution of the agreement. It's now at a 5 percent level at the present time. So this, in effect, creates a fix some payable to them for all known remaining issues that we have. When we were looking at estimates of what those values were, this is a discount of about 30 to 40,000, on what we thought the values of the change order were going to be. Questions for Mr. Russ? No, I think we've already, we have discussed this at some length and have been awaiting this agreement for some time. Yes, sir. There's a matter of fact. Do I hear a motion then? Mr. Chairman. Ms. Knight. I move that the City of Fairfax School Board authorizes the superintendent of the City of Fairfax schools or her designated director of facilities management. To execute an addendum to the agreement between the owner and dust and construction dated March 17, 2006 for the renewal of an additions to linear middle school. Is there a second? Second. Discussion? Do we have a director of facilities manner? That would be true. Yes, we do. It's contract. I'm sorry. I withdraw that question. Is there no further discussion? They call the question all in favor. Signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye. And the motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Moving then to the Fairfax, the Providence School Stockpile Plan. We've heard the discussion, are there any further questions about that before we entertain a motion? Then a motion please. Mr. Butler. Mr. Butler. I move to the City of Fairfax School Board. Authorize the Providence Elementary School's stock file plan as presented by the Director of Parks and Recreation. Is there a second? Second. Discussion? Very none. Good job. Well discussed. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Chair votes aye and the motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. The board will now go into presuming an approval of the motion. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just following that one along. Yes, we have to have superintendent's matters. I don't do this often enough that I flow. Madam superintendent. Well, I will be very brief. First of all, I want to publicly thank Dr. Dale for inviting this board and for inviting me to the presentation of the budget. On Thursday night, I think it's a good opportunity for us to hear firsthand some of the proposals that that staff is putting forward to the Fairfax County Board and to welcome us into the process are responsible. And I hope it can't be a positive process because we know at the end of the day they're going to have to be some substantial cuts made in the Fairfax County budget. But at the same time, I think beginning by asking us to be partners in this endeavor is a very positive step. And I know that I'll be there and a number of you will also be visiting with three of the four schools PTA boards. I've met with Fairfax High School PTA board previously, but I'll be back with them and with linear and Daniels Run PTA boards. Part of it's just an opportunity for me to meet some parent leaders, but also to reinforce our commitment to the roadmap to academic success and our commitment to the excellent performance of all of our students and to share some of the success that we're seeing and why this board wants to continue to promote the article articulation and the pathways that have been certainly part of the success that we're hearing about in so many of our students now. I look forward to meeting with the Providence Board soon as well. In addition, this is the time of year when amazingly the schools begin to plan for next year. At the end of this month, I will be at the rising ninth grade curriculum night at Fairfax High School meeting with the ninth grade parents. And just when we feel like we're settling into one school year, another one begins. But I always look forward to that evening as a as a principal and I will represent you well that evening as we greet the parents who will be new to Fairfax High School with ninth graders next year. So I look forward to all of those events. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Superintendent. Miss Craig. Well, and I don't know if this is not the place to do it, but I want to go back to that Speaker on Providence Elementary, because I thought about it after she left. I'm guessing the way this list reads is because it was a package and they just wanted to show you you're getting higher quality stuff than Rose Art crowns or I don't know I mean that's my question well if and I'm not really sure it's our area either but but I do I mean that's how I took it after she left and I really looked at it I thought well maybe they're just trying to let you know you're getting higher quality items for that price as opposed to going into Walmart and buying up having having done this, I got the kids and the last family before she did and I went on the same sniper hunt. I thought we'd been yes we had him in the conversation. And I will tell you that those pencils are unobtainium in Fairfax County because I went to six stores looking for them. because I went to six stores looking for them. It's quite shameful, quite frankly, and I hope that we can encourage our superintendent to have a conversation PTA list be used as a prescriptive list that required students to have these particular brand products. This was a miscommunication and certainly that a community member went out of that school believing that this was what she had to provide for her children was a miscommunication. And Mrs. Handbrake takes responsibility for that miscommunication and will work to make sure that that doesn't happen again. In fact, this is a PTA project. They put these packages together. Part of listing the actual brands was to let parents know what they were getting for their $51, $57, $54, for years worth of supplies. It was interpreted as a requirement. And again, they take responsibility for that miscommunication. I'll also assure you, and I know their parents here that know this, that no child would ever be penalized for not having school supplies. And certainly not brand name school supplies. But it was a communications problem, and therefore it needs to be corrected because that one family believed that is something that we need to address. Well, and I will tell you that three years ago when I did this, I believe that. More than one family believed. Yeah, I thought we had had the discussion before and it's right. You're just showing you're getting brand name and that's why you're paying. So that's all. I was just curious. Yeah. And you're buying a year's worth as opposed to Daniel's one where you just you supplement during the year. Oh, yeah. I get it about every two months. Yeah. There are those who refuse to do it and just sent along the requisite pencils that we thought were necessary. If the parent doesn't speak English and is intimidated by the system anyway, given this list, yes, what? Yes. That's it for me. I just said. They didn't use this list. It was a new fundraiser in more recent years, I believe, because I know in early years of Providence we had a more generic list. Then I think it just kind of evolved. General more generic list of go out and I think this was strictly related to the BTA effort. Well, but the confusion exists and we will, I do see that lady periodically and I'd like to go port back to her at some point that the matter is being addressed. Okay, thank you. That's all. Dorothy or the... Dorothy. Yeah. Actually, I was in the ladies' home this morning, the lady with whom she's full. Outwards. I've been ill-stead, I'm afraid. Sir, very good conversation on the school supplies ahead of me. I've got a few questions back with the presentations we had that I'll Really to use so that I can get some of my ideas or questions clarified. I didn't I figured we'd Porture the people in the audience long enough Give them some No, they're wonderful presentations wonderful and I just had questions in terms of We talked about literacy, the writing skills, spelling skills, you know, I talk about keyboarding and stuff like that. I'd like to see what we're doing with that. I'd like to see what Mr. Anderson is doing with supporting the smart board software curriculum and stuff like. I'm just interested in those kind of things and we'll have more discussions on that. And that's all good, my friends. I think it's important to note that according to Bill Gates off-seating by the family of those kindergartners are in sixth grade, they won't need keyboards anymore. We're going to get rid of them. See there? And then our principals will be back saying, well, come on. School Board, produce them. Yeah, all right. It'll happen. Ms. Knight. Thank you. I just would like to share that the next meeting of the Fairfax Community Coalition is this Friday morning at 830 at Old Town Hall. And the group is going to be looking at a couple of activities in the community to work with parents and get parent input, but they're also going to be looking at a, and I know I'm not going to get it right, but it's not a teen speak out, but something similar to that. And I believe they're looking at planning jointly with Woodson. So I've been happy to help support these efforts, and I think that they're very valuable to encouraging some of the issues that were referred to tonight about how we support our families and our schools. So if anyone can join us, please do. Thank you. Mr. Murrer. Okay. The board is going to go into a closed session and then do a brief work session back in the back room on a matter of matter. But before you turn off your television, so those of you in the listening audience, as we segue into that, you're going to see there will be a film produced by Mario Chacho, a student of the Fairfax High School Leadership Class, produced by that team with the guidance of Nancy Melnick, the responseer, on the subject of the new Fairfax High School. And I think you will find it as entertaining as we did. With that note, then I move to convene a close meeting as follows. On January 7, 2008, pursuant to section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia, I moved that the City of Fairfax School Board convene a closed meeting to discuss contractual matters as authorized under 2.2-37A7 of the Code of Virginia. And I have to call for a voice vote. Ms. Gray. Thank you. Mr. Puckram. Aye. Ms. Knight. Aye. And the Chair votes aye. It's unanimous. We're going to, we're, we're, this mean is adjourned and we're in closed session to the next section. I'm gonna go to the next section. I'm gonna go to the next section. I'm gonna go to the next section. I'm gonna go to the next section. I'm gonna go to the next section. I'm gonna go to the next section. I'm gonna go to the next section. I'm gonna go to the next section. I'm gonna go to the next section. I'm gonna go to the next section. I'm to go to the library. Why am I like about this new school, the subreddivation? I love it because, first of of all the library is beautiful. I've already taken some of my juniors there to work on their papers at the computer lab and it's just a very airy beautiful place and I encourage them to use it every day. I also like my new room. I love my room because it's airy and bright and I love the new furniture here to see this beautiful desk. I like the entrance. I think it's very modern. It's very appealing because of all the glass. And I think that George Step, who was in charge of it and also Rod Spelman and Patty and all of those people who were instrumental in making this renovation such a a successful one are to be congratulated. I like the new school a lot. It's a lot brighter because of the windows and the smart boards in every class, you can really help the teachers. Although some students understand the smart boards better than the teachers do. The school before, I remember my freshman year, it didn't even look like a high school, and they were just always blockaded and you can get through anywhere but now we've got the best looking school in the county. Well fair facts I was in the wild. What can you say? It's just new, it's beautiful, it's really nice and you know how the work that went into it you know has really showed up and I remember my freshman year when everything was just being, everything was just starting to be constructed. And now looking at it, it's just beautiful. It's just wow. And it makes every morning coming here, you know, actually better because you know you're not going to be in a space-out close than with no lights. Very much taxable. Let's go. I came to Fairfax High School in the fall 1983. I was a long-term sub. I was hired up to the group of 1983. At that time, I was only 11 years old and it's in my early early career. So my new school, the new school, inside and out. And I watched it slowly kind of show wear and tear and now it's brand new school. It's kind of surreal on a way to see the changes and to be here in the same location, but a completely different building. So it's really something. It's, I never thought I'd be here to see this kind of thing happen, but it's been an amazing change. I think it's by far the most beautiful and functional facility in the entire camp. You're on the stacking. The process of training is that it organizes an interoperability. Okay, CMA is concept. It's an advantage because it's organized, so it's very well, and helps with copy-gumming. It's the advantage because it's easier to read off of as opposed to read some teachers' concerns. I'm asking you, I hate psychology teachers and world teachers. I like using the smart board, you can be able to write ad notes to PowerPoint and students can also write essays on the board for everyone to write ad notes to our point and students can also write ad notes on the board for ad notes to change. That's better than normal. Adrian, good point. Very good. These markets are turning into music. What's the most important thing to do right into the words so that they'll know when to put that back in line. I'm going to write a letter to that stranger. So I'll make sure that there's a better interlocutor in it. Number four. I like using this smartboard because I can have things prepared at a time for the students to use and make everything in the class. Which means it more effectively. I could already have the homework answers that my figure says. I like to highlight what they need to pay attention to. And then when homework's done, you can just get rid of that. Pop up the quiz and go to the next thing. So it just makes us be able to pack in more instructions every 90 minutes. My hair pack, I'm Karen Hatchela, and I was coming to share the math department comments about Smart Bores and how it has helped us so much with giving you guys great instruction. I'm Karen Hatchel and I was coming to share the math department comments about smart boards and how it has helped us so much with giving you guys great instruction. Basically, that piece of technology which we are so happy to have has allowed us to reach more learners, especially visual learners. We're also able to share a lot of the math that we do that is in motion and you can actually see the physical motion on the smart board which we were never able to do before on just plain white boards or chalk boards. We're happy. Thanks. I'm sorry go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go home, I Yeah I'm going to move to the science wing about a year and a half ago now I suppose and it's really been great having such a nice inviting space full of light, to full of room for people to work and the labs previously we had some shared lab space where different chemistry teachers would coordinate and have to figure out when their college would or wouldn't be in the moon and now we often do a lab whenever we want, it really helps us to have students involved actively in what we're learning what we're doing in chemistry. So it's really great. Students seem to be really positive to having a nice space, you know, latest equipment and you know, room to work. And so it really has been a great experience. The new science wing is fantastic. We have Smart Board, we have ample lab space, which is a lot of the hands on activities that are really essential for science learning. It's a lot better than the room you have for, which are limited in classroom, they had no lab space. In the random classrooms that sometimes you just were assigned to, the new science wing is above me on anything I could have imagined when we started this renovation three years ago. I really like the new cafeteria. The TV's are amazing because I get to watch new Fox News video. The tables are amazing. I love the food. When you're captured, you're really nice. It gives you that wanted break and relaxation, needing a hard day's of work at school. You see the beans in there. So I'm just letting you keep back, relax, and enjoy some food, and then get back to work at school. Fairfax High School began its renovation in March of 2005 and finished in August of 2007. Every inch of the building was touched by renovation or new construction. We moved approximately 16 different times. So it was a name of coordination effort for administration and staff and teachers and the students as we moved in and out of various pockets of the building as renovation made its way through the school. As a result of innovation, we basically have a brand new facility. It's quite exciting to now interact in new areas. It's a pleasure to be working here. I take the bottom line with the renovation here at Fairfax High, comes down to something that I tell the students at the end of every dress. I tell them that the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. And with this new renovation, when those students enter this grand entrance, when they go in classrooms and interact with smart police, when they go off and study at the Georgie Step Library, they know this school is for them and that they truly are the main thing. Right in the yellow sky, we'll see the stars in shines so bright A god made for us tonight I see. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a you I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do it. I'm Thank you.