Board, we welcome all who've come to visit us tonight. And we welcome those in our home audience. We will start with the collegial allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. there being the justice role. There are no changes to the agenda and I do not believe there are any additional announcements. We will start with citizen participation. Mr. Geriodeau? Mr. O'Jour. Gerry O'Dell 3920, Bradwater Street. I see that my appearance last month didn't seem to shame you into praying. So let me continue. Not that I wouldn't continue it anyway, but what I was telling you about. The chaplain of the divine mercy. It is said on the beads of the ordinary rosary because of the limitation of time I won't pray it would you please set the clock? Mr. Adele, I'm not sure if it's a question. Mr. Adele, I'm not sure if it's a question. Mr. Adele, I'm not sure if it's a question. Mr. Adele, I'm not sure if it's a question. Mr. Adele, I'm not sure if it's a question. Mr. Adele, I'm not sure if it's a question. Mr. Adele, I'm not sure if it's a begin by making the sign of the cross. That's done this way. Name the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit. And then you say, the optional opening prayer, it's optional, but I like to always include it. You expire, Jesus, but the source of life gussports the souls and the ocean of mercy opened up for the whole world. O fount of life on phantom, abode of vine mercy, envelop the whole world and empty yourself out upon us. O blood and water which gush forth from the heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in you. That last sentence is said three times. And then you say, one our father, which most of you probably know, and then one Hail Mary, which anyone who's Catholic at least know, even though it's scripturally based, every litigian know it. And then you say an apostles creed and then you say on the five decades a couple of other prayers. On the our father beads, if the larger beads interspersed between sets of ten, you say You say, let me get to it here, eternal father, I offer you the body and blood, soul and divinity of your dearly beloved son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world. And then on those ten beads instead of saying, A.L. Mary, you say, for the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world. You go through that five times, five decades, ten times, you know, the shorter prayer. Okay, and at the end you say, how much time do I have to remain? Holy God, holy mighty one, holy immortal one, have mercy on us and on the whole world. You say that three times, and then you can say an optional prayer at the end, which I don't seem to well here is. Eternal God and who mercies endless and dethrasier in compassion and exhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase your mercy on us that in difficult moments we might not despair. Now become despondent. We'll with great confidence submit ourselves your holy will which is love and mercy itself. Time remaining please. 28 seconds. Thank you. This all those spares were taught by our Lord Himself to a very beautiful young nun St. Maria Faustina Kawasca. I went to Rome for a canonization April 30th, 2000. There's something to be said about this prayer, which I'll finish next time. Encourage souls to say the chapel at which I have given you. Whoever will recite it will receive time. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Agile. We appreciate having the system working next time. It's easier to pace myself. Thank you. Our next agenda item is the reported student representative, Danny. Good evening, everyone. A couple of things. First of all, AP exams started today and will continue on throughout this week and will end next week. Teachers have prepared students to be ready for these exams and urge students to keep studying in order to achieve high in these exams. Following AP exams, SOL testing will begin for all under classmen. And once again, teachers urge students to keep studying in order to receive high scores on all their exams. The Year of Champions continues as Fairfax High School receives recognition in all of its teaching, learning environment, as well as individual students receiving recognition for their academic achievement. Congratulations to these this year's boy states delegates Jack Becker and John Gillen who attend Liberty University in June, as well as this year's girl state delegates Emily Andrecones, Sandra Ortega, Megan Talbert, and Michelle Moraine, who attend Longwood University in June. Another factor that is our senior Kathleen Sol, who won Governor last year, will attend this year's Girl State, and will look over as Governor for this year. So, congratulations to her. As well as Aubrey May, who was nominated and subordinate application and resume and was awarded a certificate of merit for her continuing work in the field of dance. Her studio solo performance and choreography were considered in her nomination. Don't miss out, get your student physicals done early for next school year. They will be held on June 3rd from 5.30 to 8 p.m. pre-register for only $40 and $50. I'm going to go online and register or contact our athletic trainers, Rick Usman or Emily Kelly for further info at 703-219-2241. Make sure to come out and catch the FX players new musical, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. They placed that in Rome that is sure to have the whole family laughing from beginning to end. The next performances are this Friday, May 8th and Saturday, May 9th at 730 in the 5th XI auditorium. Take a card, $12 for adults and $8 for students. Please come support the FX players. On Wednesday, May 27th, the Coral Department will hold its annual spring show. This year, the show is themed is Disney, and you can expect a bunch of Disney songs from classic movies to modern day and contemporary movies. The show is free, and everyone will have a great time. Show will begin at 7 p.m. Again, on Wednesday, May 27. Class for the senior, all night, grad are underway, and it's expected that will be a great and fun night for all seniors. Take it to our $60 and can be purchased at the door for $65 if all forms are signed. All forms can be found on Fairfax High School website. The Junior Class of 2010 is planning this year's Junior and Senior Prom, which has a Hollywood theme this year when it will be held on Saturday, June 6th. And finally, only 30 more days, school days, so congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next agenda item is report from Dr. Scott Brabran, who is principal of Fairfax High School, Dr. Brabran. Thank you for coming this evening. You're welcome. I was looking forward to will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I will go. I'm here with the annual State of the School presentation for you. And we're gonna begin here momentarily so that you all on focus who might be watching can go along here on the PowerPoint we have for you. I've kept with a similar format that we've had over the last three or four years. Obviously all this information is as updated as this afternoon when we send it over to you as Mr. Mahia mentioned the Year of Champions. So I think I've got everything in. All right, I'd like to go ahead and begin with an outline of our presentation. You'll see and we're going to talk about mission vision, core beliefs and values. I'm not going to spend as much time on that this evening because we really haven't changed that over the last four years here at Fairfax High. We'll talk a little bit about the three goals for the year that we've had with our school plan focus, a summary executive summary of each goal, and then a little bit more about the year of champion, some of the awards and honors, and some special guests that we've had at Fairfax High this year. The mission for Fairfax High remains to offer a comprehensive program with high expectations that have students develop academic and citizenship skills in a safe and secure environment. The vision, again, marries up with the Fairfax County School Board's three goals that include academic student achievement goals and academics, essential life skills, its second goal, and the third goal, responsibility to the community. Academically, we want kids to be critical thinkers, problem solvers, good communicators, and contributing citizens. For essential life skills we want to help give kids the sound moral character and ethical judgment to go out in the world and be good role models and work well together. And for responsibility to the community we want to recognize the importance of having young people in our schools contribute to the community, make links to the community so that we can better strengthen ties between the school and the community around it. Core values and beliefs again while we're going to go over them quickly, they're a key to having an effective school and I'm very proud of the work our faculty school plan committee did. Really, probably two years ago to relook at these and make sure we were in alignment with what we were trying to do at the school. Each child's important in title to realizing his or her fullest potential. All students can learn high expectations, promote optimal learning. Learning occurs best when it's individually tailored. You'll see it additionally highlighted a professional learning community is paramount for effective teaching. And again, professional learning community is teachers working side by side collaboratively, discussing instruction, reflecting on student work, helping plan new lessons is more effective than folks just by themselves in a classroom shutting the door, locking out the opportunity to learn from each other. We believe that impacts not only teaching, but the learning for students. We still believe in a dynamic partnership, it's not just one person that makes a great school with a collection of people committed to a single vision. And again, we see at Fairfax High Art Diversity as part of one of our assets that helps us really create the kind of resilient student we want for the 21st century. Our three goals for the school year, this takes it down a little bit more of a narrow focus. Again, the first goal under academic achievement, we focus this year on our students with disabilities on our writing skills, and also on African American students. These were writing was something across all students that we felt we could have a greater focus. In the age of the internet it's still powerfully important that students know how to write persuasively, analytically, in all the different formats so that they can be strong communicators. And for students with disabilities in African-American students, these were two subgroups as we looked at no child left behind data that we felt we could continue to raise the bar in the achievement levels. And we made that a particular focus of our school plan. Second part of the school plan was school climate. Strengthening that school climate is a key relationship between student achievement and school climate. And we really worked on developing and focusing on programs that lead students to make ethical decisions, responsible decisions, really help students have the opportunity to make some of their own decisions in their education. And then finally, we're going to refocus again on expanding professional learning communities, as I talked about a minute ago. We really wanted to look this year at best practices in assessment and instruction, but particularly on assessment. How we grade students, I know there's been a lot out there in the public about the grading scale, but it's really beyond the grading scale to talk about how do we reflect student mastery of learning in our classrooms. So how did we do? First, let's talk about academics. mastery of learning in our classrooms. So how did we do? First let's talk about academics. This year we met all of our AYP goals for no child left behind. We've consistently made AYP since the no child left behind act came into effect and I'm very proud of the school and the faculty and the efforts that they've made to do that. We are a fully accredited school based on SOL results and I'll be sharing with you more so else shortly. Our AP test enrollment is up 54% in three years. It's up 71% in five years. It's up 71% in five years. We are challenging our young people more than ever to go on to college. You know we did a senior survey a couple of years ago. 84% of our students excuse me said they wanted to go on to college but only 59% were taking at least one AP class. We call that an expectations gap. Frankly, it was an expectations gap of about 25%. Yes, I want to go to college, but wait a second. Have I taken at least one college level course in my high school career? So we've really been working to tell all students that you need to step up for the rigor at the level that you can most successfully handle. The AP passing rate, however, has continued to go up. We've expanded enrollment. Passing rate hasn't gone down, it's gone up. And we can continue to improve, but I'm very happy to see a 5% difference in the passing rate from this past year to the year before or from the year before. Our PREAP and Honors Test Enrollment is up 42% in three years, and I'm very proud of that because frankly, you need to be in those PREAP and honors courses if you're going to have the kind of success that you want in the AP courses. And finally, we've expanded our SAT prep. I know you all have been great supporters of us for our efforts with SATs, but we went online this year instead of just having classes that booked up barely, you know, hours after we put them out. We gave every kid a online code that they could access for SAT prep and we're hoping that will have an effect on our SAT scores which was still one of the areas for improvement that we had from last year. A little bit more in academics, SOL scores were up in every subject area. And I'll show you four-year trends to just show you how much they've been up over the last four years. Pass advance were up on all but one SOL test. Our program, R&R, where we have an intervention and remediation program built within the school day. It's reduced F's, and this is final F grades on a student report card. Final F grades, it's reduced them by 14% from last year to this year. Let me go back to say that more precisely. It reduced June 2008's F's by 14% from the year before. We don't have the final F grades, of course, yet for this year. We will soon. But we're on track every quarter this year. We've had less F's than we had the quarter before. And over the last two years, again from June 2008 back to June 2006, we reduced F's in SOL classes by 57%. The 14% in June 2006, 14% of our kids had Fs and SOL classes in their final grade. This past June only 6% very, very, very proud of our work there. And then the Fairfax Academy, which we've had, really now almost on 10 years, had the opportunity to get a $30,000 partnership with the Apple Federal Credit Union Foundation, its Education Foundation, to develop 21st Century Skills, with a new student signature project. These projects are going to give second year students a chance to go out, take a real world problem solving issue for their area, and then have it judged by a group of business people in that field like our fashion design course, second year fashion design students will work on a project, how to design a address that's highly resistant, say, to spills but low cost under $100. Well, they'll take that project, they'll make the design, and then they'll present that project to a team of fashion designers to get feedback. So we're very excited. We're just in the first year of building those signature projects. The next part is S.O.L. pass rates. Just a couple of graphs to illustrate some of our academics. You can see all of these are in the 90s. This was 2008. We don't have the spring 2009 yet because we're two weeks away. But you can see social studies over 97% science is over 94% and math and English up over 96, 97%. So very, very high on our overall rates. You can look here. I know it's a little small print for folks at home, but that's a four-year trend for SOLs. The first one is Algebra 1. Look at that four-year trend in math. You can see in Algebra 2, we took a dip in years 2 and 3 and now we're at our highest Algebra 2 scores that we've ever had. Geometry, you can see a four-year trend going up. Biology, a tremendous, tremendous four-year trend. And we really use PLC professional learning communities to get those teachers to look at what are the essential elements of biology at such a vocabulary rich subject. And kids can struggle with that. Chemistry was one of the areas that we had seen a little bit of a slump on a couple of years back. We refocused our group and we had our highest scores ever and then you can see as you go along our geosystems remained high English again continued to actually inch up we were in the 90s but went up even higher and our social study scores are among the best around in the county and I'll talk a little bit more about that later but are well up in the 97 and 98% tiles. I Have already made a reference to this or have I not know I have and I want to make a point about this know I have and I want to make a point about this. One of the things that we've done, how do you make AYP? One thing you do is when a kid's failed, you don't wait days before to do intervention and remediation. We have January SOL testing. These are often students who passed the class the year before, but failed the SOL. Well in the past what we did is we knew we had to retest them in January when the state gave a testing window and we'd give them a packet. Go take the packet. Hopefully you'll remember something from last year. Now we do something called lunch and learn. We pull these kids in a month or two months before. They have a quick file of pizza in the library and then they get right to work with the content teacher working on the particular strands and areas of need that they have to pass. And if you'll go back to that graph, I guess the graph still up, but if the folks on the monitor, no, actually you can go back one. Go up one. Yeah, keep going there just to show. Look at our three year rate. We were around 50% two years ago on the kids passing. Last year we were at about a little over 80%. This year, these are the kids now that failed the year before. Our passing rate this year was over 90% in January for these SOS. We had about 150 kids three years ago taking January testing. We were down to about 35 or 40 this year, 95% or over 90% passed in January. That's about drilling down to every single individual kid and asking for and expecting them to have success. And I'm very proud of our faculty. And frankly, this City School Board for supporting our efforts with giving this time for teachers to really work with students. Okay, I know this is gonna be too much information, but as I'm apparently told, even though I was a social studies teacher that I like to see data and I figured you'd like to see it too. But this is AYP, the change for subgroups. The bottom line is for every single subgroup. There was an increase in the SOL scores for every subgroup. Here it is for English. You see big gains for our students with disabilities at 8% are limiting as per Fissions 9%. AMO is at the bottom. That is the percentage of passing that you need to have for all of your subgroups for no child left behind. It goes up by four points a year until 2014 when that number will be 100%. And you can see for our subgroups right now, our lowest is at 85%. So we still have an eight point cushion and of course we plan to move those numbers well into the 90s in the next year or two. So we will be in 2014 a school that has all kids passing proficiently on the SOL. The math you can see here the aYP You can see even more dramatic changes. By the way even on English you say well the subgroups go up But did the overall score go up? Yes, we just showed you those others the overall SOL rates are going up but our subgroups are going up quicker. That's called closing the gap for math The overall rate was up over 4%. But look, African American was up over 8%. Hispanics were up over 10%. Students with disabilities in math were up over 20%. This is what this faculty is doing to close the gap. Students identified as disadvantaged up 10%. So we are very, very proud of both our math and our English department for the targeted work they've done with math instruction and frankly with English instruction. I know this one's even worse, but the great thing here is if you want to actually look at GAP information, we have it both by English and by math. English is at the top, the math's at the bottom, and it has GAP data from the year before last to just last year. Here's the bottom line. In English this past year on our SOLs there is now no gap for Hispanic students on English SOL scores compared to the overall passing rate. We did decrease the rate the gap somewhat for African American students, but not enough, and that's why it's a focus this year. You saw us decrease the gap by almost 6% for students with disabilities in English. We decreased it about 1% for disadvantaged students and 7 over 7% for our limited English proficient students. When you look at the gap changes for math, we decreased the gap by 4% for African American students, by about 6% for Hispanic students, by 15% for students with disabilities, and by about 6% for disadvantaged students. So, again, overall rates are going up, subgroup rates are going up at an even higher rate, thus we're closing the gap in both English and math. I wanted you to see I already made reference, but just the visual shifting from SOLs back to our AP and RIGER. We are putting more students in than ever into challenging courses. And last year, even with the increased enrollment growth, we saw an increase in the past rate. And we want to continue to see that, and I hope to continue to see that this year. We won't have time to go in the detail. We did have someone from the county come out just a few months ago to talk about differentiation to our AP teachers. And that's one of the real new topics I think all of us need to be looking at as an area for professional development for teachers. How to teach college level rigor to an even more diverse group of students who can access it if we differentiate properly in the classroom. It is not an easy task, but I think it's one we can do, and we're going to try to stay cutting edge at Fairfax High with getting teachers the tools that they need to do that differentiation. Here's the nine-year test enrollment trend. And you can keep clicking, and you'll start to see all the way back to 2001, we gave 580 AP test in 2001. That next year is when the county moved to allow to pay for AP test and you can see the big jump. I want you to look over just the last few years, four years ago. We were at 1280. Three years ago, we went down just to touch in that second year. That's the year when we went from 1280. That was my first year there. We went down about 20 tests, but we brought in R&R. We brought in also AP study hall. You take three or more AP classes, you can take it and sign up for a study hall and have a whole period where you're with people like you who need extra time to get all the work done for these courses. Two years ago we went from 1264 to 1521. This year we're at 1613 we went up almost 100 and next year we're at 1951. Now you might say well you know the school board waited AP test this year so part of that might be just an increased interest because of the waiting. I've got in the county-wide data, the county has seen an 8% increase in AP tests. And so probably there is some of that reflected in student interest. But our one year change from this year to next year based on the scheduling that we have right now from student request is a 20% increase. And I've been told from the Assistant Superintendent of Instruction we're one of the three highest schools with enrollment growth for next year. So I'm very, very proud. I see our students responding to the challenge. And I'm very proud to see, frankly, we're almost in a senior class of 500. You divide the number for AP test per kit. Now, I know that's rough because you can take AP in junior and one in sophomore year. But you're really getting up at some very, very significant numbers as we talk about challenge index and other parameters about how we're putting rigor into the classroom. And I think rigor as I've, and many have said before, rigor is one of the new three yards. Not reading, writing, rhythmatic, rigor, relevance, and relationships. And it starts with challenging courses for all. This is the R&R program. I'd like to publicly say that Gloria Allen, who was there at the beginning, co-chairing a group of teachers with this program and also Karen Hatchell, who was one of our teachers of the year, a few years ago, she's our math department chair, you've come up with a program that allows kids to get intervention and remediation during the school day. If you get an F on your report card interim or the end of quarter, you're going to sit with that teacher till the next grading period until that F comes up. If you don't have an F, you get freedom and a reward. You can go to the cafeteria, you can go to the library for quiet study, or you can go to any teacher you want to get extra help. Go back one. I just want to show this is the percentage of students with final F grades from June 2006 to June 2007. That changed and then to June 2008 this past year and of course we'll have for you next year the date of another month as I told you already though well let me just tell you this graph before I get ahead of myself. We had in June 2006 14% of all kids had at least one F on their report card their final report. It stayed the same after the first year of R&R. Last year though, it dipped down to 12%. You can track the changes for male students. Male students two years ago, 17% had enough. It went up 1% to 18%. Last year it was down to 14%. Female, believe it or not, interestingly, has run a bit flat so far in our two years. Look at ninth grade though, ninth grade, two years ago, 14% of ninth graders had an F. Now it's down to 12%. It's down at 10th grade by, from 14 to 13. It's down at 11th grade from 15 to 14. And in 12th grade it's down 13 to 10. So when you look at the numbers of kids in those classes, those are large numbers of students with F's not getting them now. Even if it's just one or two percent, percent is change. Moving on to the next one, F's for white students have not changed in two years, but it's not gone up. Our African American students actually, the F grades have gone up, and that's one of the reasons this year in the school plan that group of students was a real focus. Third quarter, third quarter. African American students, Fs, were down 18% from third quarter last year. So I expect very positive news on that front, but we'll wait till the final data comes in. Look at our Hispanic student reduction in Fs. Two years ago, 28% last year, 20%. And it was a one year change of about 31%. That is a significant reduction. We also saw a significant reduction among our Asian students. I also want to show you for AP, all of this enrollment growth. I know the New York Times just had a big article. I believe it was in the last two or three days because I just got it on my email this afternoon of teacher concerns about increased pressure and increased enrollment in the AP program. And I share the concern to do appropriate staff development. But folks, we've gone up 71% in five years, and the APF rate has gone what? It has gone down from 2% to 1%. Now, no, that doesn't mean that there aren't kids that maybe now are getting more seas, and maybe there's some more ds. But we're not having students fail and I still believe a student who takes a harder course and struggle some is in better position to have success in college and to take an easier course and get an easier a ride through and maybe gets in higher grade but maybe will not be prepared for the kind of college level work that they'll have when they leave the school. Our Honors and Pre-AP, again, tremendous growth, I think I told you over 40% in three years, it has not gone up at all, it has stayed the same at 2%. Look at our special ed numbers in two years. We had 38% of our special ed students with Fs in June 2006. We are down now to 22%. That is a huge drop. It's almost, and I'm not a math guy. It's almost 50% in two years. And you know why? When you give students extra time and a chance to individually get instruction in a smaller group with a teacher. You can have even students that maybe have struggled before have the success that they need and deserve. Look at our SOL courses. 14% had F's two years ago. We're down to 6%. That's over a 50% drop in two years. And your SOL courses are your core academic subjects. One of the big issues that will be coming up, and I know you're hearing about the state of Virginia as a requirement for no child left behind, this will be an issue for graduation, excuse me, graduation will be an issue for state accreditation and that is graduation rates. I want you to know the work that we've been doing not only to close the achievement gap, we've been doing it by making sure the graduation rate is going up for our students not down. Here's an example. I told you we've closed the gap in math and in English for our Hispanic students. And we've done that with a graduation rate that's higher than Virginia's, which is at only 70 percent. It's higher than Fairfax counties, which is at 74 percent. We have an 86 percent Hispanic graduation rate. So we're getting scores up not by moving students out, but by keeping them in. And our graduation rate for So we're getting scores up not by moving students out but by keeping them in. And our graduation rate for African American students which I don't have on the chart is also higher than both the state and the county. And I can get those figures for you. I ran out of time. But the bottom line is we're doing it by keeping students not by asking them to walk out. New programs we talked about enhanced R&R. We had a streamlined 9th grade transition program this year where we had less seminars but more effective. We let R&R start early for the first time even before kids had grades. And there was a concern, well what students make good choices. What they start to go to teachers even before they had to and yes they did. They took advantage of that. We also gave a sharp and focused for kids with multiple F's. If they were retained students, we didn't give them what we call a 4F schedule where they had to go to four different teachers. If you're retained you're going to pick your math and English teacher and you're going to go to those two teachers. If a student had more than 4Fs, we would have them meet with the counselor and they would pick the four classes that they would need to work on. Expansion of Avid program, I'm a big believer in Avid and you'll get to see or we'll talk a bit more about that later. We're going to go and have four AVID sections next year that comes out of our staffing. But it's a program that's getting great results with the subgroups that we've talked about and really with all students. And our AVID coordinator was asked this year to sit on instructional counsel so that all students, excuse me, all students can benefit from the strategies that AVID is using and that the AVID coordinator can share with all teachers in the faculty what the AVID program is doing so that we can, as the AVID program says, AVID dies a school. So it's not just happening in an AVID class, it's happening in every class. We expanded Lunch and Learn, I told you about that already with the January testing. And we standardized expedited retake process from a pilot last year. The expedited retake, many kids qualify in the spring. They have 48, 72 hours to retake the test. They were close, but just barely didn't make it. Now they get focused instruction. They don't go back to their classroom while they wait for the two days to come. And that teacher has the other students to work on doing new instruction. They go to another teacher specialized in that content area on that teacher's playing period to get specific focused remediation. This is the area that you need to work on. Let's practice this issue. Get back up there and take that test and we really saw an increase in our expedited retake results. Sustain silent reading, we tried to work in the cluster seven this year, had a focus on literacy and one of the things that our elementary and middle school colleagues have done that frankly we haven't done it to high school was try to embed sustained silent reading into the school day. We did a pilot this year with four departments. These were four major departments, foreign language, English, e-sol, and I know I'm going to be in trouble for not remembering the fourth. I'll have to get back to you on that. They did sustain silent reading during every pride time and pride time comes after R&R. It's an additional class that rotates through about once every two weeks. So we're excited about that and we do have faculty and student survey results that we're going to be sharing soon actually at the cluster. We have one writing common assessment per quarter for all PLCs. That's that focus on writing again. I've gotten some preliminary writing results in. I don't have them summarized yet for the school board but they do look very solid and I will follow up and try to share this with you in the days ahead. Closing the gap by raising the bar, we have all of our ninth grade students with disability students enrolled in Algebra 1 this year and next year. And one of the things we're going to do, one of the reasons we've been successful, we double blocked Algebra 1. That means they get Algebra every day. Next year, we believe we're going to be the first high school in the county. We're going to double block geometry. These kids can do the math. If they have the time to do the math, and they have a great teacher in front of them, and we've put the best of the best in front of these students. And we're looking forward to continuing to see their success this year and next year. We have a new student services course selection process. The students get to go during the day to see teachers, not at a table during lunch time, but actually go during a expanded block period to go to three or four teachers that they're thinking or courses that they're thinking about taking and for the next year and talk to that teacher who's currently teaching it about the course and the requirements and then that night we have the curriculum night with a greater focus on parents talking to teachers not looking at a long PowerPoint like this. We have E-CART which is a big county initiative for form of assessments. I haven't been able to get county data, but I can tell you we are leading, we are leading high school for the number of assessments we're doing. And form of assessments is frankly just an old term for dip-sticking. How are my students doing in class? Let's do a common assessment. Let's administer the assessment and then look what the students know, what are they still not know, and let's meet with teachers and figure out how to teach that better. And we're doing that, we're doing that well and we can continue to do better at using that program. And then this year for the first time ever, what we think is the largest career day in Fairfax County 55 plus professionals in the Fairfax community came for a career day. Students got to pick their top three choices and went to many sessions to hear about the skills and abilities that they need. It's a great part of essential life skills goal two for the school board in Fairfax County. What do I need to know? We had the Supreme Court Justice of the Commonwealth of Virginia, who was there and also presided over the sniper triumphant's William to talk about in a group, and I loved it. He was in there saying, you have to be a strong writer if you want to be a judge. And of course, our focus is on writing this year, nice to hear. You know, I don't think you got to see this before he said what he said. We got to have the head of pediatrics from ANOVA Fairfax. We had people from the entertainment industry, reporters, the medical industry, law enforcement, the City of Fairfax brought out their mobile crime unit, again, a professional musician. Every aspect you can think of and we're just getting the summation of the surveys we surveyed students, we surveyed those individuals and we surveyed the faculty. And so far the results have been simply outstanding. The highest ratings have been among the business community saying, I love this, I want to do this, and I want to come back and we plan to present this next year, perhaps even more expanded form. But I must tell you the hours that Marine Cam are career center specialists put into making it happen, work tremendous. And I appreciate her and all of student services led by director Marcy Miller and our counselors for just tremendous work. This is Strengthening the School Climate, goal two. And one of the things on here, I've shown you this slide now for three or four years, the bottom line, over the last four years, suspensions are down. The number of days from school are missed, is down. Residivists, students are suspended more than twice are down. The number of students involved in people who are frequent flyers are down. All of it is down. I will tell you though, this year, if we did year to year, we're up a little bit this year. We feel a lot of that's been driven by some of the stresses that students are facing at home. Two weeks ago we did depression screening and we identified a significant number of students in our student body who have felt some depression this year. And we do think a little bit of the uptick we've seen this year is from that. But overall, the four-year trends are all tremendous double-digit reductions in suspensions. And we're going to continue to work to keep school climate strong and the school safe. So new programs under school climate that I want to share with you. We talked about the ninth grade transition program. I mentioned that R&R begins now before enterums. We have the rebel roar warning bell. There's no more shouting at students. They hear the roar. And they don't want more of the roar, so that means go to class. And we have a greater consistency. We ask teachers to close the door when the tardy bell rings and then if they're still in the hall they have to report to the sub-school. We also did something tremendous change and not a consistent practice. Is we moved attendance away from teachers into the sub schools. Now, the first, and what we did before, when a student had two tautaries, the teacher had to make the first call. Now, the sub schools make that call. Teachers can focus on teaching and instruction and leave attendance to administration. This was our first year pilot, but I very, very much feel we continue to ask more of our teachers we need to start finding ways we can reduce things from them. We're actually facing a new regulation next year based on a fourth circuit ruling that attendance cannot be a determining factor in grading before three unexcused absences would result in an F for a student under new regulation that will not be the case. So we're going to have to do more than ever to really attract kids to school and develop alternative programs to get them in and it won't be able to be done by threatening them with an academic failure. Additionally, we have a new Student Services Advisory Panel for Parents. This is a great opportunity for parents to come in and give feedback on what we can do better to reach out to them. We've increased our parent access. This was a cluster goal and a goal of the school as well to get more of our parents on Blackboard. I don't have the numbers in front of me, I could get them if you need them, but we have more than ever our parents that have Blackboard access to student accounts. We had a new minority student outreach counselor and a program to, especially for African-Americans, we had small groups where we targeted students that we thought needed a little extra help and support and that counselor was meeting with them at various times to offer encouragement, offer expectations and monitor student performance academically. I mentioned the school wide voluntary depression screening. I'm also proud to tell you I believe we are one of two high schools in Fairfax County to receive national recognition for our school counseling program. We went for a, I like to call it like the national board for school counselors. You have national board for teachers. School counselors have to become more data driven and show that they can affect the instructional program. We asked our counselors to do that and Miss. Miller led them on a full year review of all the programs in school counseling to show that their programs are making a direct link to academic achievement in the classroom and they did receive ramp status and will be honored at a Dallas conference this summer and your support will allow them to be there and again I thank you for that. Some continuing programs, again you've heard of these, the rubble round up very popular with parents and frankly with teachers a chance to meet face to face instead of an email. We still do our weekly thumbs up for employees, people who go above and beyond need to be recognized. Students are the beginning of every faculty meeting, student presentations. The last one was the musical we're doing now, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. They did a snippet from that. We've had art, we've had various groups come forward. We've had Abbott. We have our Pride Time TV student TV program. Mr. Mahia knows the work that student government does. It comes on a couple of times a month. It's a great cultural institution now, frankly, in the school. We have our peer mediation that's garnered awards and it's one of our ways that, again, as we talked about suspensions, you don't need to always suspend the kids. Sometimes you just need to put that young person with an experienced counselor who can mediate along with the peer help mediate that conflict. Rebels of the round tables, pulling students at random once a month to get their feedback. Our School Human Relations Committee is up and running, and we've continued to do our outreach for all of our parents. Many of our Hispanic and Korean apparently, Aeson that we have at the school, we've really utilized to reach out to those groups as well. that we have at the school, we've really utilized to reach out to those groups as well. Goal 3 is PLCs and I realize I've probably gone over my time here, so let me try to move through. A greater focus on professional learning discussions for best practice and assessment, a common grading design. What we've said this year is, you know what, if you teach biology, it's the same class. The grading design needs to be the same. How you count homework, how you count test, how you count, classwork needs to be the same. And we did that in every subject area. That was new this year and we're going to continue that. We can't have the same subject with a different grading design within the same school. We really continue to do vertical teaming, and I thank you again in the support that you've given us to do that, where we have elementary, middle, and high school teachers getting together through all those content areas to talk about how they can better deliver instruction. We continue to do our joint administrative meetings with Lanier. I think a close relationship with the middle school principal and their administrative staff and the whole school was crucial because we'll only be as strong as they're strong. And we continue to do that and we have an IC or an instructional council retreat in the summer and we have the whole pyramid. In the afternoon we bring in the elementary schools that feed us and really have a chance to get energized for the beginning of the year. We focus staff development this year on best assessment strategies each month. There's been a packet of reading that the professional learning community needs to do on assessment, the power of the zero. What about late work? What is the purpose for grading? What we're doing now is trying to build content knowledge and teachers, not just tell them today it's this and tomorrow it's that, but let them talk and have a conversation about what makes the most sense for kids. Do we have consensus? I don't think we do, but I think we need to begin to lay out what we think best practice is and encourage teachers to use that in the classrooms so that we're trying to get kids on a winning street and not a losing street with our grading system and our assessment policies. Staff development needs to continue to be focused on this best assessment practices and I've already mentioned E-CART to you before. I know I keep bringing up renovation and you might be saying, didn't we celebrate that a couple of years ago? I want to thank Rod and Patty again. Yes and no, we still are tweaking a few things. I just want to mention again, I know I mentioned it last year. We now, because of your support, we retrofitted our auxiliary gym. We can put 200 students in there for SOL testing. At some schools, classrooms have to shut down during SOL testing. At Fairfax, students continue to stay in their classrooms receiving instruction, because we are able to accommodate so many students in our auxiliary gym that becomes, frankly, a testing center. And I do want to thank publicly Director of Student Athletics and Activities Tim Gordon, who was a math teacher and understands that letting us use that facility for basically the month of May is a huge help for our instructional success, both for AP test and then for the SOLs. We have new Smartboard Proficiency Standards. I want you to know that your funds supported smart boards in every classroom. This year every teacher had to take a mandatory smart board test. If they didn't pass it, they would have to, yes, we did remediation and intervention. But they all passed. I can tell you now, 1% proficiency in the basic operation. What we want to do now is work to develop a next level at probably an intermediate and then an advanced test, not just how to use it, but what kind of lessons, what kind of instruction can you do on smart board so that the value of your dollar for investing these smart boards in the classroom is being realized. As part of a technology plan with, again, city support, we're putting new mobile smart boards in every department next year, one for every department. The math department will get a mobile smart board that you can use where the student can have their hands on the smart board at their desk or a group of students. And whatever they're doing on the smart board is transferred up automatically to the smart board at the school at the front of the classroom. And what we want to try to do is start to move the technology as much as possible, directly into student hands. We also have some new centaels. These are clicking devices. You can do it for a survey or for a multiple choice to have a student click. Think of it like, jeez, I know this game shows. It's a game show where you put the answer out and you click. And then automatically you can look up at the smart board and see how many set answer A answer B answer C answer B Millionaire. Yeah, who wants to be a millionaire? That's it. Phona or audience participation. That's it. We have new 21st century world language lab. I'll show you a little bit about that in a minute and with your support we're going to expand. We're only the second high school to have one and next year we will be the model world languages school in Fairfax County with three additional labs and yes we are already starting to embed in the PAL scores which are the proficiency levels for students in foreign language. We're going to establish a baseline, and yes, we expect that our students will become increasingly proficient with the aid of this technology, and we know you will be looking to see that kind of result. We've enhanced memory with your technology support for all computers, so computers can run faster, and teachers can more quickly move through. This is true for student computers as well. We've also increased and are planning to increase over the summer mobile card and lab capacity to reflect FCTS class size increases. We can't increase class sizes and then put students in rooms where they have to share access to a computer. That's not instruction of the future. We're going to put more computers in these classes so that we can accommodate this class size growth. Finally, we want to say thank you for the track renovation that's complete. We know there's some discussion of a stadium entrance renovation that may be in process, and we thank you for that support. But everyone at Fairfax High School knows that you've given us a state-of-the-art facility that's second to none in Fairfax. We've had a couple of special guests this year. Dr. Dale came out probably just a month ago to visit the World Language Lab. He was able to listen and pair up with another student speaking a language instead of in the old days where one kids up talking and everyone else is listening now with the headphones on you have multiple conversations and you're paired up with one or two other people you can't hear anyone but those one or two other and so language is flourishing in that environment the teacher is able to monitor everyone's conversation and even listen in and offer specific tailored feedback to those groups. It also allows, for example, music. One of the exercises was how can you pick out Spanish words out of a Spanish song? Well, in the old days you'd be annoying your next-door neighbor in the other classroom whose students would rather come in and listen to pop music, even if it's in Spanish, but listen to pop music. Now with the headphones on, they listen on a download from the internet to a song and fill in the blanks. We also had the former Secretary of Education, who was the acting Secretary of Education. This fall Margaret Spellings come out. She came out to visit our Avid program and she had the CEO of avid Jim Nelson We were very delighted to have them there to see the results we've gotten with avid and she also stopped in to see a World language lab and was thrilled to see that we're investing this kind of technology. So it is money That I think is well spent and has gotten a lot of attention and will get results in Fairfax. Year of Champions. We're state champions this year in Latin 2, our Cretaman team. I want to thank Miss Carr and Mr. Caffory, our Latin teachers, for really taking that program to the next level. We were state runner up in varsity cheer. Science Olympiad, we took first and second in the region. We had 54 medals in the region and we came second in the Commonwealth of Virginia for Science Olympiad. Deca, we had 22 national competitors and we had one of our teams play third place nationally overall. Do you know until three years ago we had never won a national DECA competition. We've had three straight years of national placing in our DECA competition. 18 National Merit Commended students, which you'll get to meet next month. Ellen Baumgarner was State Champion in the 100 meter breaststroke. We had a 200 medley relay State Champions and of course remember last year our girls swim and dive were state champions as a team the first one in Fairfax High's history. This year the medley relay Lauren Gurkey, Ellen Baumgartner, Gene Dionales and Teresa Harvey and then in the free relay we had Ellen, Frances Dowell, Gene and Teresa. The Governor Kane gave us the VIP School of Excellence award again this year. We were proud of that. You might go, well, isn't there another tier? And the difference from the next tier to the tier we were in was for the advanced studies diploma. The percentage you needed was like 60% and ours is 59. I can assure you that we will be in the top tier for the governor's classification, but I don't think they do appeals on less than 1% as it stands. And then our teacher, the year nominee, was Eric Kenny, who was also recognized in the Department of Education as one of 25 national teaching ambassadors. And we've been thrilled to have him in that role, which we mentioned again. Our support employee of the year was Laura Beatty, who is really my right hand left hand and half my mind. She's fantastic and really in her. I want to say it's almost 19 years in the county. She served four Fairfax High Principles. She's a tremendous resource and we're very lucky to have her. Mr. Mahi already mentioned Kathleen Soe as a girl state governor. James Lee went for boys nation and Danny already shared with you. The girls and boys state people for this coming summer and we know they'll do great things this summer. We mentioned ramp status, one of our seniors Francesca Lee got the Robert Bird $10,000 scholarship from the state of Virginia. She was honored down at the Supreme Court of Virginia and there was one for every congressional district. So she was one of 11 people in the Commonwealth. Joan Hartman, one of our counselors, received the AAUW State Educators Award just last week in Richmond. We were a Virginia Blue Ribbon, music blue ribbon school for the first time in Fairfax Highs history. We were a Virginia Honors Band, and yes, Fairfax County told me last week they will fully fund the signage for the Fairfax High Honors Band, for the girls, women, dive, and our drama's VHSL One Act play that will soon be out on the field house to recognize for all who go by our state championship destinations. But congratulations to all our fine arts folks. They have done a tremendous job in elevating that and Miss Benson, Furbergen, the honors band. Band came to Fairfax High School in 1979. This is the first year we have a Fairfax honors band and I'm very, very proud of the work the students have done and Ms. Benson. I also wanted you to know that we received word from our ESOL Department in the county a couple of weeks ago they were looking over last year's data that our ESOL kids level two that means they're not in the beginning level anymore they can now start taking regular courses toward graduation. Their social studies world history scores were the highest in the county. And again, I just really come back to it's a nice way to wrap up. It's the teachers and the support staff focused on students. And as you've heard me say, the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing, students keep the main thing the main thing students are the main thing if There hopes and their dreams and their education are the focus you can get tremendous results We've got a clear mission in vision. We're meeting our exceeding our goals We've got new programs. We're strengthening our existing programs and I do believe we're a school in a year of champions of champion students, teachers, parents, and students. Thank you for your time this evening. Thank you, Dr. Brewerin. Sorry for going longer than I should have. Excellent report, and we appreciate the information you brought forward, and we certainly appreciate your leadership and hard work with our staff and faculty as well as our students. Questions for Dr. Brabrand? Oh, Madam Chair. Mr. Vatram. Dr. Brabrand, I've got to echo the chair's sentiments that it's just a wonderful presentation. Every time you come before us, you provide us with a really exciting kind of presentation. I get where we just try and keep up with you. And I've got a number of questions, one more break down to just a few of them real quickly. For, you talk about your programs, you talk about the R&R, the, the, the pride time, the pilot programs AP, you got students moving back and forth. Your teachers and staff have been doing a lot of work to keep the main thing the main thing. Are they doing okay? Are they, are you starting to see kind of burnout or any kind of? Yeah. Well, we work... I can't tell you this. We got final data from the Teacher Working Condition Survey that was taken last year. Now that was last year and probably, I would say April. So not reflective of this year in the budget process. What teachers told us in the Working Condition survey, they did say compared to other high schools in the county that they worked, when the question was asked, do you work 10 or more hours beyond your contract. The numbers of teachers at Fairfax High who said they did was dramatically higher than the average for other high schools and for the county. However, when it was asked about is their mutual respect and trust at the school our average which was much higher both for the county high schools and for all schools same with shared mission and vision. So I do feel we're a faculty and staff that is working very hard, but I do think we're doing it together jointly. It's tough this year because as you well know, in the public knows there's no colon step for any of our employees and class sizes going up. So we're really going to ask folks to do more with in this case the same or even in some cases slightly less. I got to say one thing and I wanted to share that the PTSA teacher appreciation week was last week. Clay Jorgensen is the PTA president and her and her staff did an unbelievable job. There wasn't just you go, okay, teacher appreciation luncheon. There wasn't just you go, okay, teacher appreciation luncheon. They gave every teacher and every support staff member down to every single custodian, every food service worker, every secretary, a $25 gift certificate or more donated from a local business in the Fairfax community. It was over $7,000 distributed last week during this luncheon. And I think that is a real shot on the arm. One of the questions in the working condition survey for you all to know was, does the community support me asking the teacher, me in my classroom and in the school, and the average for that was just off the charts. So I do feel the community very much appreciates the support they get from parents from the city school board and from the county school board and the cluster and all of the folks centered around wanting to help them. But I am concerned on going about another tough budget year and And I do want to thank you and the City Council for passing the city budget last week, including the additional money for a second late bus day that I know. I think Chairman Miller and maybe some others are responsible for it. It does send a signal to our faculty that you recognize the hard work they're doing. Excellent. Please make sure they're doing. Excellent. Please make sure they know we love them. Okay. For our and our teachers are, are they receiving a lot of visitation from kids who are not, who do not have F's who are just coming by to get a little more refresher? Do you see a lot of that? Yes. One of our reasons for success in math, we have something called creative classrooms. High-fire math kids, tutor, students who may be struggling a little bit of math. We have 400 students involved in that program. The high-fire students love it because they get a little extra credit in their calculus class. They love that. The struggling student loves it because they get a little extra credit in their calculus class. They love that. The struggling student loves it because they get a little extra credit. They get extra credit just for coming together and agreeing to take their time to spend mentoring and being mentored. And then the teacher, instead of trying to deal with 30 students at once, walks around and works with the peers to make sure good learning is taking place or to answer qualifying question. to make sure good learning is taking place to answer qualifying questions. So again, that was a teacher idea that we've supported over the last several years and its head tremendous dividends. More and more students, we had our freshman students tell some administrators earlier this year after the first couple of R&Rs in the cafeteria because they were free to go there that it's boring in here. They're tired of just watching TV reruns of the sports center, and maybe they should go to a teacher. And frankly, that's the idea. And one thing I have tried to say to parents, some people go, well, it's 45 minutes, you let students do whatever they want. In college, they're gonna have 24 hours and seven days a week to do what they want. We need to start as part of essential life skills, teaching students now how to manage their time, and make good choices. And most of them are. And if you have an F, the choices made for you. So we do feel it's well. Our library is packed. We have a new librarian, Ann Boss, who was many of the young students, elementary librarian at Willow Springs and the place is standing room only and that's a great thing for a library especially this beautiful as the George Step Library that we have so I'm delighted and I think we'll continue to see more students use it. And the last question, good segue going into the college prep and how things are in college. When we talk about the AP courses and we feel that we're trying to get the college rigor into the academic life of these students. How do we gauge, and we've heard stories and we've seen articles that some colleges don't think the AP students are really coming out and coming into their colleges with the real good preparation. How do we gauge that we're getting real good college prep and send our kids out with that? I think that's the next frontier, frankly, for Fairfax County, which is to start to better track how our students do. As a starting point of Virginia colleges, I know initially as we looked and adopted these three strategic goals from Fairfax County School Board, that there was some discussion about trying to better track how do our students do in their first years of college in Virginia either at a two year or four year college? I think we need to answer that. I still remain convinced that a student taking rigorous classes in high school setting with a school counselor, with teachers, with R&R, with all of these supports is in better shape to have success later than having that in your first year of college where there are plenty of opportunities for distraction. Let's get the good study skills base in high school. So, when we know all those other things will go on as distractions in college, the academics will be there. It's too late to be practicing your academic game once you get to college. You need to be an and thinker, learner, and I just, all the data I've seen says that even if the grades, even if those professors think they're not prepared, the students stay. College completion rates are higher from the research I've seen in students who take advanced coursework. If you don't take it, you get overwhelmed and you drop out. And we can't have a country. One of the things going around YouTube these days, do you know, there are more honor students in India than in all of the United States for all of our student population. Our students all are going to have to compete if they want the opportunities of the future. It's not going to be handed to us, and I think part of it is having rigor at the high school up. Thank you, Mr. Veteran. Additional questions? Ms. Swarnton? Yeah, I was just wanted to congratulate you on the improvement in chemistry. It has been a problem for En frankly, since a couple of my kids were at Fairfax, and I was just wondering, what specifically did you do to beat that up? One thing we did is we started creative classrooms for chemistry on a more limited basis. It's not 400 students. I'm not going to suggest that it is. But students that were struggling started to get paired up with our AP chemistry students. I mean, you asked the direct question and I'll give a direct answer. We also changed our chemistry faculty. I think teacher quality does make a difference and we need to have the right people in front of our students. It's a very, very difficult subject. I remain concerned though. I remain concerned about attracting top quality teachers of all areas, but particularly in the math and sciences. I mean, it's been discussed nationally, but I think we need to start looking at some new ideas to get the best of the best in the math and science fields in teaching students. If you looked at a chem class and I took chemistry in Virginia some years ago and what is asked now? It's dramatically, dramatically harder, but I am very, very pleased. We've also done a lot of after school sessions for prior to the SOLs, our science folks often meet on Saturdays or after school and lots of students come. I think we drew prizes just last week, iPods. I don't know what we gave away, but we gave away things and lots of students come. And I do think we're doing a better job as a professional learning community in chemistry, looking at what is the other teacher doing if we get an a common assessment and my score is a little bit better than yours. Well, what lesson, how did you teach that lesson so I can teach a lesson with some of those materials or with that strategy? It's not about running to me the principal or anyone else. It's about just show me the principal or anyone else. It's about just show me the technique you use to help convey this message. And I think that helps a lot as well. Okay. Well, thank you. It was a great presentation. And I think you do make very good use of the data that you have because it's just lying there and you got to do something with it. It sounds like you're doing a good job. I want to thank Diane Hutchins as our assessment coach. She's been our assessment coach since I've been there for four years and she really has used the database that we've gotten to really. If I ask for it, she'll get it and it's a big help because it is, in a sense, information, how to put it in the manageable bites that can be shared with teachers in a way that's meaningful. Okay, additional questions, Ms. Lewis? I don't have any questions, but I just wanted to thank you for an incredibly informative and inspiring presentation. We're very fortunate to have you leading Fairfax High. And I'd like you to extend our thanks to the teachers there as well. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Ms. Lourke. Ms. Knight. You know, I really have no questions, but you cover things so thoroughly. But I just am so impressed with how you just acknowledge the people that you work with and appreciate that because I think that's what makes high school so good. It's your leadership but also the respect you have for your members of your team. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Dr. Behrman, be easy there, Mr. Mahia. You know, I feel great. I think great of you. You know, you're an inspiration to the students myself. So congratulations on a well done job and the presentation. And adding to the chemistry thing last week or I don't know when it was when they were doing the chemistry reviews, I was talking to a sophomore friend of mine and we were talking about the week and I was like, so what are you doing this weekend? I have a chemistry review session and I'm like, what? It's wonder we have these. They didn't have that in my sophomore year. So, great job on that too with the faculty. Okay, Ms. Monday. Well, I think that the comments make it obvious how much you appreciate it, Dr. Brabrand, and the results clearly speak for themselves. But I do want to publicly comment on the work that you've done specifically in the investment in technology. Dr. Brabrand and I have had some interesting conversations this year. We both are very grateful as this board is that the Mr. Staff managed the renovation process so well at Fairfax that we have the wonderful good fortune of having bond funds remaining to continue to invest in technology over a few years. But even though we know we have the money, we also recognize the context in which money is being spent this year in particular. So Dr. Brabrand not only provided a plan for spending the money but an accountability plan as well. Two of the things that he mentioned, one that the test for teachers is not something required in Fairfax County, and is unique to Fairfax and Lanier. Their technology people created their own assessment tools to make certain that this wonderful equipment is being used and is going to be used at an increasingly high level. And they're taking responsibility for that. The other, we are the world languages model school. We know that now and we had a wonderful presentation from Fairfax County to share some great information there. And we'll continue to be looking at student outcomes in world languages. And I am absolutely confident as Dr. Brebrand is that these are, this investment will pay off in student learning. So I congratulate you on so many things tonight, but that particular part of this presentation really resonated with me because I know that you made a firm commitment for accountability, and that's very much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mendeck. I have just one or two questions. And this, the first question relates to AVID. You told us that you will have four sections next year. And is that an opportunity for youngsters in grades 9 through 12? Or is that primarily 9th graders? Or can you explain that? It's a- Next year I believe it's going to be one for every grade level. It's a four year process that we've gone through. So our numbers are a little smaller at 12th grade, but our ninth grade are coming in right at the size of a normal course 25 to 30 in those. And we need, there's a balance, but you've got to run those classes. When I got there, it was a program that was under enrolled and we can't have a program that's getting great results to be under enrolled. We also sharpened our focus to make it purely, purely focused on getting students to take challenging courses. If you don't sign up for honors in AP, you cannot be an avid. It's not a remedial program. It's not about remediation. It's about support and intervention for students who want to step up and take the challenge. And part of it, we think, is changing the culture for students to know with the right support that they can do it. I'm hopeful down the line that we can maintain these, these sections actually come out of the general staffing. So it's me actually having to make choices with the instructional administrative team about where to spend it. But I think we've got in a good return on our investment and I take the same strategy as we do with our technology money. We need to put it out there but then we need to ask for and expect great results. But Margaret Spellings came out and said she was very impressed as was Jim Nelson the CEO of Abbott with the work that we've done. By the way this year I want to say all of our avid seniors believe I've got this right every one of our Avid seniors this year is in a four year College and remember this Avid criteria and many cases students who parents don't have college backgrounds Haven't been put necessarily on the college track. I think last year it was a hundred percent a two or four This year all of our seniors who are Avid are going to be in a four-year college next year. And that's exciting. And we hope to see continued growth in the program. Thank you. The second question is, across between a challenge in your opinion. Several weeks ago, there was an article in the Washington Post about Wayfield High School and the principal and the staff that requiring a senior project of every senior. Do you see FCPS requiring something like that in the future and your opinion about how effective a program that is for our youngsters? Well, I will tell you that I think under student learning, essential life skills, student learning plan is something that Fairfax County is really looking at. I think they trialled student learning plans at four schools in the county, four high schools. And they are looking to really expand. I think frankly right now, Kim Dockery, the Assistant Superintendent for Special Services and Student Services, is looking at going more global with a student learning plan foundation. The Commonwealth of Virginia is telling us that not this coming year, but the year after seventh graders will have to have a school learning plan of some kind. So the opportunity is good. Could I see that developing into something that becomes a capstone project senior year? I do, and I do know that West Springfield has done a pilot I believe in their English department with sort of a senior project of sorts and I believe TJ also has their students do it. So frankly it's getting a model that works and then it's finding out where it's appropriate to place it. I do where it's appropriate to place it. I do think there's a place for it. I mean, I think there's still room to redesign the senior year for students. And you know, the question is does it need to be an add-on or do we just need to look at time a little differently? Many of our seniors this week, frankly, are taking their AP exams, which for them is a really their final. In fact, many have taken the final as a prep for the AP exam. And there's still time afterward. Many of them work on projects, but frankly, they could be finishing their senior project at that time. I think what we're trying to do right now at Fairfax is use the Fairfax Academy, Apple Federal Credit Union Signature Projects is our own experimentation with this notion of a senior project. It's second year Academy students who are doing these projects. And if it's successful, if we can design a good model, if we don't have something sent to us from the county that we would start to look at spreading that out into some of our other departments as an activity. But there is a place for it. I just think we have to figure out do we have the resources? Where would we place it? But students need to start making their connections outside of the school and I think a senior project does that and it's going to be more reflective of the kind of college work that's going to be asked as well. I appreciate your comments and I would look forward to hearing more about the projects from the Academy and experiences that our students have and faculty feedback as well. And the last thing is a general comment. We believe that we are quite fortunate to have your leadership in our community and that you and your family are part of our community. And I think there are many opportunities where there is really positive parent feedback. Ms. Mundian and I had an opportunity several weeks ago to participate in the lead program, seminar, I'm not sure what you call your classes. And the parent participant there, I think, said something that is really meaningful. And what she relayed was that you trusted the people you work for to do a good job. And I think that certainly is a reflection that your trust, that the responsibility and the trust that you put in your faculty comes back in many ways and the way it comes back to us is that our youngsters are challenged and they receive excellent opportunities and you foster that sense of respect and that sense of responsibility with the faculty and with the students and I think the payback is student achievement. So we do appreciate all that you've done, and we wish you every success in the future, and thank you so much for coming this evening. Thank you very much, Chairman. You're welcome. All right. Have a nice evening. Thank you. I'd also like to recognize Linda Burke, who's in our audience. She has been great to work with all of our principals and to work with Mrs. Mundey, and we appreciate the support that you give to all of us. Okay, thank you. We will move on to our next item and our next item of business has to do with approval of minutes and our clerk provided nuts. The chair will entertain a motion. Madam Chair, Mrs. Nick. I move that the minutes from the regular school board meeting number 9 held on Monday, I post six, be approved as presented. Thank you. Mrs. Nice, or second? Second. Mr. Betrum seconded. Mrs. Knight moved and Mr. Betrum Seconded, the minutes of our regular school board meeting number nine held Monday, April the 6th, 2009, be approved as presented. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Amber's opposed. New members opposed the motion is unanimous. We will move along to superintendent matters. Thank you. We're going along to superintendent matters. Thank you. We're going to spend most of this evening talking about budget adjustments. But I do just want to say briefly to make certain that the board is aware, but mostly anyone in the home audience that might have some concerns about the Fairfax County's response to the flu and the steps that the Fairfax County is taking to make sure that our schools are well prepared for anything that might happen in regard to this pandemic. I think as you know, because we've been able to send along the information that Fairfax County is providing that the county is on top of this situation in daily and more than daily, more frequently than daily if necessary, conversations with the health department. If you're following this story in the media, you know it is changing rapidly in some cases, but we're again getting the best possible and the most recent information. Fairfax County has already sent home a backpack letter to parents in multiple languages. It's keeping its public website constantly updated with the newest information and the newest direction. But I think the most important thing for parents to know is that the decisions that should any decision need to be made about the closing of a school in Fairfax County and that could include one of our schools. That will be done with the best possible health information and in absolute concert and cooperation with health officials at the state, the national state and local level. So we're in good hands. There's a real commitment to continue to communicate openly and reassure our community that everything that's being done is being done. As you know as well, at this time there are no suspected or confirmed cases of the flu in Fairfax County. So that's where we are today. And that could change, but that's where we are today. So did you have any questions about those issues? Okay, I'm glad you feel well informed. Typically we would be voting on the adjusted budget tonight, but because of the changes that occurred, we knew that there'd be a tuition adjustment, there always is at the end, but this adjustment was not all anticipated. So we need to take a few minutes this evening to walk through the information that you got via emails last week and then was provided to the City Council and became the basis of some City Council action last week and then the passage of the City Budget and our budget will follow suit to be voted on in June. So if you would go to the section of your notebooks related to the budget, and I have provided you with three pieces of information. One, the first one says Fairfax City tuition bill and walks you through some numbers for FY09. And the most important thing that I want you to see is the progression and the history of the estimates that Fairfax County provided for FY09. That's this year. Beginning just about this time last year, April of last year, then August of last year, then the actual billing. And then the latest estimate, and then the latest estimate, it's still an estimate. Actuals cannot be determined until the year is actually over, and the county knows what it, in fact, spent this year. So the operating budget is still in an estimate phase, but as each month goes on, those numbers get more and more likely. What is an actual now is the average daily membership and we came in at the end of March this year at 2764, which was significantly lower than what we budgeted at. And that was a primary cause for that final estimate based on the actual ADM to be so much lower than what we had been budgeting on. So you can see that when you look at what Fairfax City budgeted based on Fairfax County estimates that progressed through time. And although this is my second year of budgeting, and this was actually my first budget that I managed last year, there were dynamics in the last two years that are just extraordinary. First, the up and down of student enrollment, the unanticipated increase in student enrollment last year and then almost exactly to the numbers of students the unanticipated decrease this year. So what's going on in terms of student enrollments right now, how predictive are the kinds and measures that we've used in the past. Clearly we don't have a trend here when things are going up one year and down the exact same number the next year when no conditions had changed from one year to the other and we should have normally expected growth this year. So that's what caused the decrease in the what we now see as the budget estimate or tuition estimate for FY09 and that will net the city a little over a million dollars. It's 1.2 million. There's going to be a little bit of a correction there because when ADM goes down, obviously we net some savings on the tuition side, but we also get a little bit less in state aid, because that's also driven by ADM. And we also had a slightly reduced estimate for classroom rental. But all of that is good news, especially as we had an unanticipated increase in student population last year. And we were looking at the last minute for increased funding. Now that actually, that increased funding was not needed so it can go back to the city. That's FY09. The next page using the same format essentially gives you a shorter progression of time, but the same basic story. And that is in November of this school year, November 08, the first number that I saw from Fairfax County was an estimate of 38 million, 38.3 million. And that was the number that they put out publicly as their revenue estimate for Fairfax City. That's what they expected in revenue from Fairfax City for FY 10. that in revenue from Fairfax City for FY 10. That was reduced by $2 million in March as they began to put together a budget based on the fully at that point anticipated reduction in the county transfer. And then finally the number that they gave me last week at the end of April also realized the reduction in transfer and the reduction in expenditures based on they lowered the number of students that they're predicting to have for next year and other savings that they were able to put together to reduce their operating numbers. We continue to budget with an ADM estimated at 2834. And for that reason, I feel comfortable recommending, I felt comfortable recommending to the City Managers Office that we budget based on the actual estimate this year that we have a contingency built in with the ADM number. Again, I don't know what to anticipate for next year in terms of student enrollment. Fairfax County does believe there will be some growth because we are on a growth trajectory and we've had two large kindergarten that are on their way up the ladder. And so, you know, when the larger, we have more students coming in than going out. So that means that that growth trend will continue. Our two elementary schools have reported very, very strong numbers at their kindergarten orientations. And in particular, Daniels Run reported that they had 20 more parents, families. At this year's kindergarten enrollment than last year. And so that's again an indicator that we may have an even larger group of kindergartners next year. So for that reason, we do have a contingency for growth here that I think is sufficient for FY10. But that netted in terms of budgeting $1.6 million back to the city budget, which obviously was a welcome news to everyone because that helped in a very, very tight budget year. There was no change in the classroom rental estimate. So that's where we are. It was very an interesting process to say the least. I wish it didn't happen at the 11th hour, but the people in Fairfax County were literally working throughout the weekend to try to come up with these numbers, both for their own budgeting process and for us. And so again, this is the best that we can do given the timelines that we're on, given the fact that ADN is calculated in the month of April. So that has to be, we're never going to get that data before we got it this year. And this year in Fairfax County in particular with the operating side of the budget being so unpredictable and working with the stimulus, the federal stimulus money, and other new processes. It really has been a very difficult task to come up with some budget numbers. Now, tomorrow night, Superintendent Dale will work with his board on the adjusted, the process now to adjust their budget, they adopt I think in mid May. So later on this month, the new number that they will have for the city revenue estimate will be the number that they gave me as an estimate. I suppose that they'll round it, but it will be that number. They will have then reduced by little over $3 million from their first revenue estimate in their public documents that they now put out in their adopted budget. So that will then become the official number in Fairfax County as well. Okay. It's about budget. Let me just point out one other thing. At the end, the ever very familiar to you, two-page budget document, which is what you will have in your, will put up on the screen in June so that we can go through this. We did adjust it just to show you where there will be changes. We'll be in a closed meeting after this meeting to discuss staff compensation and light of the decisions made by the City Council. It was already alluded to this evening that we, that the City Council gave us actually a $10,000 increased appropriation specifically for late buses, which we put in under subsidies and contributions. So that will amend the administrative school board expenses. So those are the numbers that need to change and then obviously some totals. And then the numbers that I just described to you in the previous document will be plugged into this document. And that will give you the changes in our budget that will be adopted in June. Anything else, Ms. Mende? Could you provide some information about the award that was recently given to Ms. Hambier? Yes, it was my pleasure to be at the conference, the annual Fairfax Futures conference on Saturday. It was just the Saturday, wasn't it? Two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, that's right. And I was very proud to be there as Joy Hanbury was the school administrator who was selected as the educator of the year by Fairfax Futures. And she was specifically commended for her inspirational work in school readiness for the children at Providence, but also throughout her career, the actions that she's taken herself. She was herself a early childhood specialist early childhood teacher, so that's been a passion of her throughout her career. But a couple things that I think it was very gratifying to hear spoken about publicly is her unselfishness in giving her time throughout the community to help children and parents get their children ready for school. And also the way that she works with her faculty at Providence to help families make certain that even before their children come in that front door that they feel feel like provinces they are school and they feel comfortable taking their children to province. So it was very inspiring and I was extremely proud of Joy Hanbury and we'll have a chance to honor her next month at our regular meeting. We're going to miss her. Okay, thank you, Ms. Vendée. Board member comments? Ms. Lewick? I just wanted to publicly thank all of the students who participated in the student panel discussion a couple weeks ago. I thoroughly enjoyed that and I appreciated their honesty and how forthcoming they were in sharing about their middle school and high school experience. It was a great evening. That's it. Thank you. Mr. Thank you. Mr. Bachelor. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just wanted to pass on that for I think a couple of the schools. We still have teacher appreciation week taking place this week. Linears got a production of Aladdin Jr. I hope to partake in and look in this weekend to this coming weekend to see and, you know, finally having a way to the form, my son has already seen it twice. He liked it so much. I think he's just got that many friends going. And then I want to wish her by good luck on the APs and the S. Wells coming up over the next month. You will need it. I'm sure. Thank you, Mr. Buttram and tonight. Nothing tonight, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Sauranton. Oh, I just wanted to restate that I was so impressed with Dr. Brabrand's presentation. And as a matter of fact, it gave me an idea for something perhaps we can look at in the future. I would love to have some teachers come talk to us about their professional learning communities and how they actually work. So I think it's a fabulous idea and I'd love to hear from people in the trenches about how it actually works. And the other thing I'd like to say about Dr. Brabrand, I mean he looks at the data, he tears it apart, but he analyzes it with such a good common sense, which is sometimes a hard commodity to find in this day and age. So I really appreciate that. And also, yes, good luck in May. Thank you. OK, thank you, Mr. Me here. I just want to say that for everyone, please come watch anything happening on the way to Forum this weekend. And Wednesday May 27th, please come see Spring Show, the course of Spring Show. And this tonight's sufficient my last night. Next month I will be introducing the new representative. He is a guy as well. So for you. And I just want to say it's been a great year. I so remember back in June when Christina was introducing me the Fourth of July parade and it's been a great year and I'm excited I took up the position and you guys are great so thank you. Okay thank you. Have you already elected the student rep? Yes. Yes. And it is. Jonathan earlier. Or like, oh great, super, thank you very much. We appreciate that. We'll look forward to you bringing him next month and reducing him. Thank you. And I just have a couple of things. The first thing is that the Providence PTA will be hosting a meet and greet for the newly, for the new principal, Jesse Kraft. And that will be on Wednesday, for the new principal, Jesse Kraft, and that will be on Wednesday, May the 6th at 7 p.m. And I hope that all of the Providence Parents will have an opportunity to stop by and to meet him. The second thing is, is that the Washington area boards of education will meet on Wednesday, May the 13th, and Fairfax County Public Schools will host. I am looking forward as Mr. Retrimus to seeing Aladdin Jr. and the play at the high school. Something happened on the way to the forum. And Ms. Munde and I did have an opportunity to attend Arbor Day at the end of April at Daniel's run elementary school. And we certainly thank, offer our thanks to the Community Appearance Committee for keeping up this age old tradition. We did have the student government officers there participating and it was a nice opportunity to remember different ways to keep our community green. There if there is no additional business we will adjourn this meeting and go into close meeting and I'm going to read the motion to go into close meeting. On May the 4th 2009 pursuant to section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia. I move the City of Fairfax School Board can be in a close meeting to discuss personnel matters as authorized under 2.2-3711A, one of the Code of Virginia. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. We will go into a close meeting. I do not expect that the board will come out and make any announcements. This regular meeting is now adjourned.