Lauren Shernoff - Leesburg District - Loudoun County School Board

Today I had the honor of presenting to the Loudoun Youth Leadership Program! LYLP is a unique, hands-on, summer education program that provides Loudoun teens with an opportunity to explore different career options while simultaneously providing them with training in the skills they need to succeed in higher education settings and beyond. Today was local government day!

I shared my journey to becoming a School
Board member and then taught them the process of drafting, revising, and voting on policy. I also educated them on how to get involved and give feedback through that process. They were engaged and thoughtful with their questions, suggestions, and participation!

Whenever I get asked to engage our Loudoun youth, I seize the opportunity, and I’m always blown away! Amazing kids, the future is bright!

Happy July Leesburg! ❤️🇺🇸❤️

This past week we wrapped up our work and now the board enters a recess for the month of July.

I want to take a minute to thank you for following my work over the last six months! I have learned so much and I have enjoyed sharing the journey with you. From school visits, budget decisions, committee work, and policy review, I have truly enjoyed representing Leesburg and our schools. To that end, the goal of this platform, was to provide a detailed overview of my work and our meetings each and every week so that you can be more informed about the school board and understand the rationale for my decisions. Further, this has allowed me to engage with you all and receive valuable feedback. I will continue with my updates in August when we return. Before that, here is my last recap for now.

We had our last board meeting on Tuesday June 25th. We started the meeting with a work session where the audits from the Legislative, Audit, Policy Committee were presented to the full board. A list of those audits were included in my update last week. There were 15 action items. We had several contracts from the Finance and Operations committee to vote on and charter school contracts as well as some grant application approvals. All action items passed. I want to pull out a couple actions to expand on.

First is the passing of Policy 8655, Student Personal Device Use, better known as the “cell phone policy.” This policy provides parameters around personal device use at the various levels of school. It requires personal devices to be stored away from the student so they cannot be used during the instructional parts of school day(unless they are medically necessary or if there is an accommodation in an IEP). This policy received over 400 submissions of feedback and was revised several times. I met with schools, principles, educators, and students to help provide feedback to develop a strong policy. I am grateful that this finally got done. I even had developing a cell phone policy as part of my campaign platform, so my vote to approve this policy is a “promise kept” moment! I will mention that most policies are reviewed every 5 years cyclically, but this policy will remain open to review over the next year to continue to evaluate how the policy is logistically playing out in schools. That will help us continue to monitor its effectiveness.

There was also dialogue around Hillsboro Charter Academy’s renewal. After last meeting's discussion, the application was amended to allow for HCA to be considered in the CIP/CAPP budget for requests to repair and renovate their building. It is my understanding that the Board of HCA was pleased with this language. There was discussion around further amending the application to include studies to evaluate those needs, but those amendments did not pass. I am in favor of allowing for the option to include HCA in our CIP/CAPP priority discussions, but will do so within a larger scope of prioritizing the needs of all LCPS schools. The discussions on that budget will begin in the fall.

We had 9 Information Items. Several policies were included I’ll highlight them below :
🔵HRTD Policy 7650- (Revisions) Licensed Staff Contracts
🔵HRTD Policy 7724- (Revisions) Public Service
🔵HRTD Policy 7730- (Revisions) Religious Accommodation
🔵HRTD Policy 7910- (Revisions), and 7920- (Removal- and combined with 7910)- Reduction in Force- Classified Employees
🔵Student Services New Policy- First Aid, CPR, AED, and Diabetes Management Trained and Certified Personnel.

All of these policies will be action or consent agenda items in August.

Our last information item was the collective bargaining resolution. This has been an ongoing process since we inherited this work from the previous board. The Joint Committee was established by the Legislative, Audit & Policy (LA&P) Committee in response to the prior board’s recommendation to address the eight items LEA raised in a December 2023 communication to the school board, with LEA representatives having an opportunity to have a seat at the table on the Joint Committee. The hope was for the Joint Committee to have an opportunity to come to a consensus and report recommendations to inform the LA&P’s decision-making on the proposed LCPS Collective Bargaining Resolution it would ultimately vote on to recommend for the School Board’s adoption. As a recap, at the conclusion of the May 2 Joint Committee meeting, members of the Joint Committee (including all LEA members of the Joint Committee) expressed they were not in agreement with engaging a mediator to further discuss and work towards a consensus on the eight items and were willing to conclude the Joint Committee’s work at that time and subsequently pass the work back to the LA&P Committee.

The LA&P Committee ultimately went item by item from revisions to the LCPS proposed Resolution that were requested by LEA in December, and voted to either support the LEA’s proposed language, the LCPS proposed language, or in some cases, compromise language developed by the school board. Those changes were then voted on as we reached a consensus (i.e., 2 or more Committee members in support).

I believed that my vote to send this to the full board, as an information item, would allow the public and the board to begin a dialogue about the proposed LCPS Collective Bargaining Resolution language developed in the LA&P Committee. However, before an opportunity for discussion, a motion was made to suspend the rules and move the resolution straight to action that night. I did not support that motion and voted in opposition to suspend the rules. I felt it was a necessary measure given that both the chair and vice chair were absent from the meeting and it was important to hear their perspectives on such an impactful decision. Ultimately, the 2/3 vote required to suspend the rules was not met.

I take my job, as a school board member, very seriously and suspending the rules would have moved this proposed Resolution to a vote before public input could adequately be provided. I urge you to listen to my comments about my rationale for not suspending the rules which are posted on BoardDocs. I did what I believe is right for all stakeholders involved. I’m not fully comfortable with the proposed Resolution, and I have received feedback from the community and LCPS educators who also have shared concerns. I encourage everyone to thoroughly read the proposed Resolution (posted on BoardDocs) and provide comments prior to August. Please remember that a Collective Bargaining Resolution, approved by the board, will have an impact on all employees in the division. For that reason, I stand by my decision. The Resolution will come back as an action item for the Board this August.

As I mentioned, the board will now be in recess until August and I look forward to spending time with my family and enjoying a vacation as well. It has been my honor and privilege to serve and I look forward to continuing the work this fall with the start of a new school year.

Hi Leesburg! 👋🏻

Things are starting to wind down as schools are out for summer and the school board gets ready to recess in July, but we still have 2 weeks of meetings and work. Here is a quick recap this week.

🎓Loudoun County High School Graduation
⚖️Legislation, Audit, Policy Committee Meeting

🎓I attended my last graduation this week at Loudoun County High School. Did you know that the LCHS graduation is all student organized and led? I love that! It was great seeing them step up and take ownership of this momentous occasion. I have found the graduations to be humbling and grounding for me in a way I did not expect. It is a meaningful perk of the job to be included and celebrate our esteemed graduates. I am so grateful to have been included.

⚖️On Thursday, the Legislative, Audit, Policy Committee (LAP) met. Our first information item was Policy 3410 Office of the Auditor General (OAG). This policy outlines the parameters for the OAG Office’s ability to carry out audits. This office was added to LCPS a little over a year ago and performs audits at the direction of the School Board. I fully support this policy, as is. I believe it will help support the checks and balances that audits offer. Next we had an update on our 2024-2025 Legislative Program. Every year LCPS presents its Legislative Priorities for the upcoming session in Richmond. Some highlights this year are increasing average teacher salary as outlined in the JLARC Study, support for a Recovery School, as well as evaluating state mandated Teacher Professional Development. Those are just a few, if you want to learn more- the whole list is on board docs.

The last information item was a continued conversation on Policy 2610- School Board Aides. This policy has had significant changes added as a result of the new board being in place and the appointment of full time staff aides being implemented through the previous board. I expressed significant concerns about this policy. There is a section in the policy B2(j) that says: “School Board Aides should refrain from conduct that actively disparages, criticizes, or defames the School Board, School Board members, LCPS, its employees, either publicly or privately, or that interferes with the implementation of a decision made by the School Board.” To me, this is an overreach, especially as it relates to what they do in private and I feel it potentially limits their ability to participate in local government processes, like attending meetings and speaking at public comment. Additionally, there are contradictions within the policy as it relates to confidentiality. Board Aides are required to sign NDAs so they are held accountable for should they share confidential information, however the policy outlines that aides should not have access to ANY confidential information. I asked committee members if they would support directing staff and legal to look more closely at the language of this policy and reconcile language around confidentiality as well as clarifying definitions around their roles as citizens and as board aides. This was supported by the committee so those proposed changes will be brought back in August.

Board Aides help support our work in many different ways. Every board member uses theirs differently. This is a big job, there are a lot of documents and policies to work through each week. It was asked by our legal counsel in the meeting if we would like them to have more access to confidential information and keep the NDA, or just preclude them from all confidential information. Legal counsel wanted to know if having access to confidential information would help support our work - my answer is yes. I want to be clear that accountability is of utmost importance to me. There are clear consequences for our aides and ourselves if confidential information were shared in any capacity. If those consequences are clearly outlined in policy and an NDA is required, then I believe the parameters are in place to allow confidential information to be shared with aides to support the work of the board member. It is my understanding the majority of the LAP committee agrees. I look forward to the revisions on Policy 2610.

We had 2 action items. The first was to decide the Audits from the OAG Office. Three audits are a carry over from the previous year and we voted to add 4 more. We also switched up the order to prioritize a transportation audit, which will assist in providing information as we work towards solving the early start time issues. Here are the audits we are proposing to the full board to approve:
IT Third Party Risk Audit
Audit of LCPS Staff Support and Advocacy Resources
LCPS Transportation Management Audit
Jefferson Contracts Administration Audit
Registrar Information Management and Data Integrity Audit
School Board and Staff Communication Audit
Security Pass and ID Badging Audit

If you have any questions please reach out.

Lastly, we tackled the Collective Bargaining Resolution, once again. This has been an ongoing process since the previous board passed the work onto us, and then Loudoun Education Association (LEA) walked away from the Joint Committee that was intended to bring consensus language that would represent LEA and LCPS. As a committee we went item by item from revisions to the LCPS proposed resolution that were requested by LEA in December, and voted to support either the LEA’s proposed language, the LCPS proposed language, or in some cases, compromise language developed by the school board. Those changes were then voted on as we reached consensus (2 or more committee members in support). That vote sends the revised resolution to the full board on Tuesday as an information item. There are still items that I have reservations about that were included, and there are items that I believe make more sense and I am pleased were included. A quick reminder that Collective Bargaining was approved to go forward by the previous board, this next step is to establish a resolution. After a resolution is adopted, unions can bid for election to be LCPS’ representative. This is where we are in the process. I anticipate a thoughtful dialogue around this at our Tuesday board meeting as this is a significant decision with far reaching implications and I would appreciate your feedback as well.

Tuesday will mark the last board meeting until August 13th. We will be in recess for the month of July. I will bring one last update for the 23-24 SY next week which will include a summary of accomplishments for what I am calling “Round One.” Have a good weekend and stay cool! 😎

On Monday June 3rd, The School Board voted unanimously (Ms. Labell absent) to enter into a Closed Session, pursuant to 2.2-3712 of the Code of Virginia, for the following reasons:
Discussion of the evaluation and annual performance of the Superintendent, as authorized by Section 2.2-3711 (A)(1) of the Code of Virginia.

When we came out of that closed session a motion was made: “That the Loudoun County School Board approve the Superintendent’s 2023-2024 evaluation as presented in closed session and authorize the Board Chair to execute an addendum to the LCPS Superintendent Contract in conformity with the terms approved in the closed session.”

I voted to support that motion as I felt like my perspectives were fairly taken into consideration. That vote passed unanimously with Ms. Labell and Ms. Griffiths absent from the vote.

Tonight another closed session was held. The following statement was released tonight, following our meeting, from Loudoun County School Board Chair Melinda Mansfield:

“The Loudoun County School Board met this evening and convened a closed session, as authorized by Virginia Code, to discuss and consider the performance and possible disciplining of a specific public officer. The discussion centered around concerns regarding conduct that seemingly went against confidentiality provisions set forth in Board Policies 1030 and 1035, as well as the Superintendent’s contract.

Based on the discussion, the Board voted that in light of an unauthorized disclosure of confidential information pertaining to an individual rating concerning the Superintendent’s evaluation that was otherwise discussed in a closed session, that they reaffirm the confidentiality of individual ratings and all aspects as such evaluation discussions, which the Board has a duty to treat confidentially, individually and collectively.

As shared in a previous Board statement, it is essential that Board members abide by School Board policy and binding contracts and conduct themselves in a manner that reflects the mission, vision, and values of LCPS. Through its unanimous vote, the Board affirmed the need to move forward and continue its work to serve the students, staff and families of Loudoun County Public Schools.”

I hope that this provides some clarity around the events of the past 2 weeks. Maximum transparency has been and will continue to be one of my most important goals. However, in the work of a board member, there are times where confidentiality is required.

Out of respect for the process, in addition to the confidentiality outlined in the Superintendent's contract (approved by the previous school board, that I am now accountable to), I did not want to comment until this had been brought to a close. It is time to move forward and continue the work on behalf of the students, employees, and families in LCPS. Please feel free to reach out with questions.

HAPPY SUMMER LEESBURG! ☀️❤️😎

I hope that everyone had a great last week of school. Summer is a great time for rest, relaxation, and fun. I hope you have a safe and wonderful break. I want to say thank you to all our LCPS educators and staff for all their hard work! We truly appreciate you and I hope you can truly unplug and recharge for next year!

This week I am going to work backwards!

🎓Heritage and Tuscarora Graduations
🗓️School Board Retreat and Full Board Meeting
🤝Joint Board of Supervisors and School Board Meeting

🎓There have been many exciting and fun opportunities throughout the last 6 months, but Graduations may be my favorite. Seeing all the students, families, and educators come together to celebrate this milestone is incredible! I want to take a moment and congratulate all of our LCPS Graduates. This is a tremendous accomplishment and a special moment in your lives. We are proud of you and excited to see where your next steps take you. It is an honor to be in attendance at the Heritage and Tuscarora High School Graduations!

🗓️Tuesday was a 14.5 hour work day for the full school board. We kicked it off with our school board retreat, which was made up of several work sessions. Besides full board meetings, there are not opportunities for all 9 of us to work collectively on topics as it would violate quorum rules. Retreats allow us to focus on big topics. For Tuesday’s retreat we focused on the following:

Dr. Spence’s Post Entry Plan Presentation: “Superintendent Dr. Aaron Spence presented the Loudoun County School Board with a report on the ONE LCPS: Forward Together Post-Entry Plan. The plan involved visiting with stakeholders from all over Loudoun County, engaging directly with students, families, staff and community members, and ensuring their voices were heard. Through these interactions, Dr. Spence gathered valuable feedback, began to assess the current state of LCPS schools and departments, and worked to understand community and staff concerns.” (LCPS Media Release)

I encourage everyone to read the Full Plan: https://www.lcps.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&ModuleInstanceID=378666&ViewID=7b97f7ed-8e5e-4120-848f-a8b4987d588f&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=480213&PageID=254700

I found the report to be very thorough and reflective, in many ways, about the concerns I am also hearing when I am in the community and our schools. It is abundantly clear to me that our schools need more support with personnel. We must focus on student achievement, especially intervention and English Language Learners, Special Education Students, and our Economically Disadvantaged Students. Additionally, there is a desire from our schools to have “needs based” staffing, instead of “numbers based” staffing to help support the diverse needs in front of them. Another area to address are the ongoing behavior and discipline struggles. Those are just 2 items of the many many things covered in the 30+ page document.

I had 2 questions for Dr. Spence about the plan:
How does this work and dialogue continue?
How will you report out specifically how these items are being worked on and continue to educate our community on the process and timelines?

For me, the real work of THIS board and Superintendent begins here. While I have been active in tackling many of the items outlined in the plan, including the Grading Policy, Early Start Times, Elementary Master Schedule, Arts Stipends, Number of Assessments, Appropriate Technology Use and AI, now it is time to really dig into helping support this plan. Dr. Spence will continue working with stakeholders and groups and hopefully provide additional listening opportunities next year. We will also have updates throughout the year that outline how we are prioritizing the items in the plan and working toward change.

The other large part of our retreat was focused on the Strategic Plan and the Metrics. We reviewed the Metrics and then participated in an activity to help prioritize some of these metrics to help align them to the Post Entry Plan. Those new metrics will be presented to the public this fall. The last school board developed the strategic plan,and this step signifies the passing of the baton to the new leadership as we make the plan our own. The metrics I specifically asked for included reporting of all subgroup growth data, tier movement and intervention data, discipline referral data, and number of Racial Slurs and Hate Speech data.

After lunch we discussed our Compensation Philosophy as employees from the Segal Compensation and Career Strategies Group will facilitate a review for us, paid through EOY Funds. Each of the board members were interviewed and now Segal will work to engage stakeholders in various positions to help us see how we compare to our competitors, and what ways we can better support compensation in LCPS.

Lastly, we talked about Multi-Tiered Systems of Support and ways to tackle the sub group and Tiered Growth Data in our schools. This was a carry over from another conversation. I wanted to bring light to the many schools that have high Tier 2 and Tier 3 percentages and make sure we can focus on supporting them.

Next we moved into the full board meeting. We had 4 work session items. The first was a presentation from GEAC- Gifted Education Advisory Committee. It recently came to my attention that their schedules changed for next year in Elementary school and some subsequent challenges were brought forward. I was able to meet with several teachers and discuss this as well as bring awareness by asking at the meeting. If you are a Gifted Teacher and want to reach out I would appreciate the feedback.

Next we were able to share our budget priorities for next year. I have been looking forward to this dialogue. When we first got elected we got thrown into the budget process and it just never felt like it was our budget with our priorities. Tuesday we went down the line, board member by board member, and shared our priorities. Here was my list:
1. Arts stipends and allotments for elementary, providing equity there.
2. More Flexible Staffing/ Look at staffing standards - provide better ratios to meet these growing needs for our EL, Sped, and Economically Disadvantaged students.
3. Additional School Based Staff Support: DIFS, Gifted Teachers, Librarians, Deans
4. Retention Bonuses for Educators
5. Community Partnerships to help support our most vulnerable students and address homelessness
6. Hire Behavior Specialists to help with discipline and behavior struggles
7. Welcome Center Expansion to a second location (CAPP/CIP)
8. More Athletic Trainers
9. Hourly Paid Testing/Assessment Administrators so that classroom teachers and specialists don’t lose instructional time to assessments.

This list is preliminary and evolving, and each board member had a list of their own. Not all of these things will be possible but it felt like a large step forward in taking ownership of the budget for next year.

We also had a presentation on the 24-25 Consolidated Grant Approval. This addresses how we will use Federal Funds for Title I-Title IV. That will be an action item at the next meeting.

We had 2 action items. The first was the approval of the revised 24-25 SY calendar with the addition of 4 PD Days for Teachers. That passed unanimously and there was no discussion. The 2nd action item was for Renaming Schools. I want to be clear that this was NOT a vote to rename the 9 schools listed. This was a vote to establish town halls and community committees to decide on new names, one of which can be to keep the name as is. Once those committees are formed and feedback is solicited, and recommendations are made, the board then votes school by school to rename or not. The vote Tuesday was to move forward with the community engagement piece only. No costs are associated with that, unless we later vote to rename some of the schools based on the feedback. I want you to know I read every email in support and against renaming and I weighed the decision, but I ultimately feel that each school community deserves the opportunity to provide feedback specific to their school name. After that, we can understand how and if their current school name is impacting them. Once that happens, I feel I can make a better decision on whether or not to spend the money to rename on a school by school basis. Happy to engage in further dialogue about this.

We had nine info items. I will give a quick recap of each:
-Post Entry Plan (abridged version)- full plan and discussion is from the retreat
-Update on the Final Budget FY25
-Hillsboro Charter School Renewal Agreement- this dialogue surrounded on whether or not CIP and CAPP Funds should be used for their renovations as it was part of their proposed renewal and subsequently removed by the committee at staff’s request. I am not opposed to potentially working on projects for Hillsboro Charter as they do support LCPS students, however I need to be able to look at ALL school needs and prioritize them. I wanted to make sure that remained an option for us in the agreement, but not decide which (if any) projects we would commit to, until we know more about all the renovation and repair needs of the entire district.
-Middleburg Charter Revised Calendar- they also want to add the LCPS PD days
-Middleburg Charter and Hillsboro Charter Technology and Support Services agreement- this is annually approved and establishes how LCPS supports the charters
-Policy 8273- Student Speech and Expression- this was voted to go back to committee, as board members wanted clearer definitions and other policy cross references included.
-Policy 8550- Parental Notification Concerning S*x Offender and Crimes Against Minors Registry. This item will move to action.
-Policy 8655- Student Personal Device Use (aka Cell Phone Policy). Please take time to read the policy and send additional feedback. We had a lot of discussion about this, mainly wanting to clarify where kids can keep them and if language can be added to include more specifics around consequences and enforcement. This will go to action next meeting and I hope we can get it in place for next school year. So glad we are doing this!
-Head Start Grant Application- This usually goes on consent but staff wanted to inform us of this annual process.

🤝On Monday the Joint Board of Supervisors and School Board Committee met, and the biggest takeaway is that we approved our work plan of topics for the year. We also had presentations on tennis court usage, attendance zone and boundary review processes, and events and activities logistics for Park View as it is renovated.

That was a lot! Thanks for reading! Hope you all have a great kickoff to summer!

Graduations are the absolute best! This is why we do what we do! Supporting student success! Congrats to Heritage Graduates and all LCPS Graduates! ❤️🎓❤️

⭐️Very busy day for the Full Board tomorrow! June 11, 2024⭐️

9:00am-3:45pm: School Board Retreat
4:30pm-???- 2nd Tues School Board Mtg

Lots of important topics to cover! Both meetings open to the public! Admin Building 100B!

Hi Leesburg! Summer is just around the corner! We are almost there! I can taste it! ❤️☀️😎

As we reach the end of the school year, I continue to feel honored and blessed to be your representative especially as I am able to attend many school celebrations and graduations. I look forward to sharing that with you! Additionally, we have much work to complete in the coming weeks before we take our annual recess in July. Next week we will have our board retreat (9am-4pm) and board meeting(4:30pm) on Tuesday June 11th. Both are open to the public and will be held at the admin building in room 100B.

This week’s recap includes:

🏠Loudoun County State of Homelessness Faith Summit
🏆SEAC Awards Ceremony
🗓️Curriculum and Instruction Meeting Summary 🌟Northstar Senior Celebration
⚖️Legislation, Audit, Policy Committee Work Session on Collective Bargaining Resolution

🏠This week I was invited to attend a Faith Summit on the “State of Homelessness in Loudoun County”. This was a gathering that included faith communities, churches, Loudoun County government employees, Shelter House, LCPS McKinney- Vento, LAWS, and many others. We came together to learn the data surrounding homelessness in Loudoun County as well as learn about some of the key organizations such as Loudoun Cares, Project Belong, and Care Portal, that support our most vulnerable families. The statistics are truly staggering as homelessness is on the rise since 2020 here in Loudoun. We cannot ignore this, and must work together to raise awareness and support our community. Did you know that over 1,100 kids in LCPS do not have a stable home and homelessness in young adults ages 18-24 is up 385% here in Loudoun? Those are just 2 of the statistics. It was an empowering event, not only to learn more about the state of homelessness, but to feel the call to action in the room as we collectively share a passion for supporting the families of Loudoun County. I look forward to continuing to connect with community organizations and even explore potential partnerships down the road.

🏆Wednesday evening I attended the Annual SEAC (Special Education Advisory Council) Awards. This heartwarming celebration of inclusive peer students, educators, administrators, support staff, and organizations was good for my soul. Huge shout out to Chair Liz Crotty and Vice Chair Shehnaz Khan and countless others who orchestrated a beautiful evening honoring our dedicated inclusive educators, students, and community members for their hard work and support of children with disabilities. It was truly an honor to personally congratulate each winner and it reminded me of all the incredible people we have in LCPS and the critically important work we support for our students with special needs. All the feels! I am already excited for next year!

🗓️Thursday the Curriculum and Instruction Committee Meeting met. We covered 3 information items. The first item was an update from the Social Science and Global Studies Department. Next year will be a “SOL Crosswalk Year.” That simply means the standards are being updated and will be fully implemented and part of SOL testing in the 25-26 SY. Teachers will familiarize themselves with the new standards and work to incorporate them this year but will not be fully accountable to the new standards until next year. As part of this rollout the VDOE has suggested a new sequence for teaching Social Science that would move different topics to different years. Although it is strongly recommended to make this change, the prior board, through committee, along with feedback from stakeholders has decided to keep the current sequence here in LCPS. The 2nd part of this presentation centered on addressing controversial and sensitive content in the curriculum. Policy 5420 was adopted in 2022 to set guardrails for teachers and allow for community input around controversial material. The standards take students through modern day history and address social movements of the times. This policy helps guide the way that work should be done, and I encourage any parent who is uneasy about the way such topics are being addressed, to reach out and discuss it.

The next item was from the Department of Professional Learning about school support updates. There has been some reorganization to move part of professional learning and leadership development under HRTD next year to support talent development. Additionally, district level facilitators who used to support multiple schools are being transitioned to school based jobs. They will now be 1:1. The positives are that they will be embedded in one school and work directly with the needs of their staff and students. The hard part of this is that there are not enough to support all schools so not every school will have this role to support. I am hopeful that over time more facilitators/coaches can be added to support all schools.

The last item on the agenda was an instructional technology update. I had asked for this to be put on the agenda as a response to the feedback I have received from parents and teachers about technology use in the classroom. We got an update on how instructional technology is used in the classroom, as well as how tools are selected, evaluated, onboarded, and off boarded. After that the presentation turned to the topic of AI(Artificial Intelligence). The central office staff is working on some guidelines for using AI in our schools and classrooms which are included in board docs. There was a lengthy discussion about these items. Personally, I am concerned about the amount of screen time that kids get during school hours, especially post pandemic, and especially for our youngest learners. I asked staff to work towards outlining some guidelines and best practices for LCPS and bring it back to committee this fall . Additionally, I asked our committee to draft a policy for AI as it relates to instruction and plagiarism. My colleagues agreed and that work will also begin in August. I expressed that I wanted to have a foundational policy in place that will help guide the appropriateness of AI in instruction and learning. Staff did communicate that they were hesitant because AI is changing all the time, but I actually think that supports having a policy built on foundational principles that guide us as AI changes. Thoughts?

🌟Thursday afternoon I attended the Northstar School Senior Celebration. These students will walk at their base school for graduation but they were celebrated for their accomplishments at Northstar School. Chair Phyllis Randall gave the keynote address and told the students the two words that will save your life in the next 4 years are, “call home.” She reminded them that no matter what, calling home is always the answer. It was a wonderful ceremony and I was honored to attend along with several other board members.

⚖️Friday morning the Legislation, Audit, Policy Committee held a special work session meeting to continue work on the Collective Bargaining Resolution language. We were able to work through 6 of the 9 items but due to time constraints had to push the rest of the work to the next LAP meeting on June 20th. The Chair presented the original LEA and LCPS proposed language and I did my best to offer compromise language so that the eventual elected bargaining union representative will be able to support their needs and also find ways to support LCPS as a division. This has been a long process and it is a heavy lift. I have said from the beginning that this has to be a partnership between employees that support collective bargaining, the division, and the school board, and I am not going to waiver in that commitment. I still think we can get there. I know we need to move forward, but we also need to get this right. While we are close, more work will need to be done. I believe that the school board has shown good faith towards that goal by offering this extra work session.

Well, that’s a wrap. Let me know if you have any questions and have a wonderful last week of school!