Committee Members

Co-Chairman Ken Reid Jeff Morse

Members

Geary M. Higgins Janet S. Clarke Eric Hornberger

Bill Fox

Joint Board of Supervisors and School Board Committee

March 29, 2012

3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. Board Room, Loudoun County Board of Supervisors

1 Harrison Street, S.E., Leesburg, VA

AGENDA Call to Order Public Input (10 minutes) Introduction, Chairman (5 minutes)

• Approve 3-8-12 Minutes Old Business

1. Joint Committee 2012 Meeting Schedule (15 minutes)

2. Volunteer Citizen Input Group (15 minutes)

New Business

3. Loudoun County Public School Capital Facility Planning Guidelines - School Size and Capacity Standards (60 minutes) - School Ingress and Egress Planning

4. Loudoun Lyme Disease Prevention and Awareness (15 minutes)

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JOINT COMMITTEE

NEW BUSINESS - AGENDA ITEM #3

LOUDOUN COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS PLANNING GUIDELINES

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Joint School Board and Board of Supervisors Committee

November 12, 2009 at 4:00 p.m.

Board Room

1 Harrison Street, S.E., Leesburg VA 20175

Members present: Sally Kurtz – Chair, Tom Reed, Vice-Chairman; Supervisor Jim

Burton; School Board Member Jennifer Bergel, School Board

Member Warren Guerin; and EDC Representative John Wood.

Absent: Supervisor Susan Buckley.

Guests present: School Board Chair Robert DuPree, School Board Member

Priscilla Godfrey, School Board Member Bob Ohneiser, Chairman

Scott York, Supervisor Lori Waters, Supervisor Stevens Miller, Dr.

Ed Hatrick, and Paul Brown.

S. Kurtz Good afternoon, everyone. I’d like to call this November 12, 2009 Joint

Board of Supervisors and School Board Committee meeting to order.

Our first order of business is to hear from the public. And I have several

folks who’ve signed up. Could I call Kristen Langhorne? Okay. I’ll

circle that when she comes back. Our second speaker is Sandy Sullivan,

representing the Loudoun Education Association.

S. Sullivan Good afternoon. My name is Sandy Sullivan. I’m the President of the

Loudoun Education Association, and represent nearly 3,400 Loudoun

County school employees. The Association is very concerned about the

current economic climate and equally concerned with the direction that the

Board of Supervisors is taking regarding the FY 11 budget preparation. A

flat budget for the upcoming year endangers the outstanding quality of

Loudoun’s schools, those quality schools that have been spoken of by

many Supervisors. A flat budget for the upcoming year puts jobs on the

line, even as LCPS prepares to welcome and educate more than 3,000 new

students. Supervisors, please do not believe that such quality can continue

when school employees are asked to do more with more students, with

less. Putting our school system into danger impacts the draw Loudoun

County has in bringing businesses to our county. The additional budget

consideration the Board of Supervisors will consider this evening directing

the creation of a school budget with a five-percent reduction to this current

year’s funding levels surely will cut deeply into our school programs, are

employee-based, and directly impact our students. That significance of

cuts to current funding will surely lead to a reduction in force, taking hard-

working employees out of our growing school system. LCPS’

compensation for teachers has fallen behind in the past several years. The

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success of Loudoun’s initiative several years ago to ensure that we would

be competitive with Fairfax has gone. Our ability to draw employees to

Loudoun has slipped. We are almost as far behind in ranking with Fairfax

in terms of teacher compensation as we were before the initiative began.

The ability to be competitive with Fairfax and other surrounding counties

is crucial. It matters. A five-percent cut to current funding impacts each

of our students. Increasing class sizes is one way to manage budget

shortfalls, but this is not an option in many schools, as they are already

backing up against class-size limits set forth by the State. Children only

get one year to be a kindergartner, a beginning middle school student, a

high school senior, a student in any grade. Let’s work together to make

next year for our students a success. The community supports our schools.

The community has become accustomed to the services LCPS provides.

The community supports a tax rate that ensures LCPS can continue to

provide excellent service. Loudoun County remains one of the wealthiest

counties in the United States, even in these difficult economic times.

Beginning the budget process with the tax rate for an average tax bill in

mind is backwards. Equalizing the tax rate should not be the goal. The

objective should be to create a true needs-based budget for all agencies.

Individuals and families who are in true financial distress should be

provided avenues of assistance through specific exemptions the Board

could develop or enhance. Times are tough. No question. Difficult and

prudent decisions need to be made in order to ensure irreparable harm is

not done to Loudoun’s citizens, employees and children.

S. Kurtz Thank you, Sandy. Our next speaker is Kristen Langhorne.

K. Langhorne Supervisor Kurtz, thank you for the opportunity to speak. When looking

at the current CIPs, the one which is the Superintendent’s recommended

version and the Superintendent’s compliant version provided by

Supervisor Waters, it’s obvious there’s a rocky road ahead. Not only are

there unprecedented fiscal challenges colliding with student growth, but I

am also surmising that your two Boards have never been so far apart in

your outlook. The other dilemma that jumps out is that we are still

contending with the same road blocks that existed last spring when there

was a real shot at accelerating the construction of the new high school.

We still have a need for Supervisors to support the schools despite the

economic times. We still have resistance to the southern shift, precluding

construction on one of two suitable County-owned sites. We still have

debate over the value and the use of the ISA site. We still have the

Schools presenting the new Monroe Tech building as a high priority.

These issues hold different meaning to each of you, and you will be

tempted to draw your lines in the sand to protect that which you cherish.

Please resist the inclination to do so. We can work towards resolving a

certain overcrowding crisis in which we find ourselves only if you do so.

Thank you.

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S. Kurtz Thank you. Our next speaker is Sarah Stinger.

S. Stinger Thank you, members. I appreciate this opportunity. I’m here to speak

about Agenda Item Number 7, the Memorandum of Understanding. I was

reading through what was posted on the website, and I see and appreciate

having all the information together in one place. I do see a list of some of

the characteristics that you’re looking for on your site, and I would urge

you to please, if you are reluctant to place a waiting criteria – which I do

recall Dr. Hatrick saying that was a challenge – to at least place some

priorities on some of those criteria because you may have some things

driving when really others should be driving, as far as the public’s interest

is. So at least try to put some priorities on those. And for me personally,

walkability, because that has quality of life as well as economic

implications. The next thing I noticed on your document is the review

process, and it talks about how the land matrix team will provide input to

the School Board – this is on Page 21 – to the School Board and then the

matrix team gets a recommendation from the School Board and then they

present that selection to the Board of Supervisors in closed session. So I

don’t see any reference to that wonderful draft criteria table you were

working on before that actually talks about each of those criteria, the cost,

all those details in writing, because when I FoIA’d that same briefing

packet that brought the Cangiano property forward, well I was told, and I

have it in my packet back there, that the land matrix team has no written

record of their evaluation of the sites that went forward to the boss. And I

can show anybody who, I’ve given you all that document. Last week I

gave it to the Supervisors in their meeting, I gave a copy of that letter that

said there was no record. So I want to see a record of how that was

evaluated, and I really think the Supervisors should see all of the sites, not

just the final one. I think they should also see all the information that goes

forward. And the reason I think that is because I think in the past there

has been significant bias with these decisions to the point where people

will go to almost any length to advance their selected site. And some

examples include the RFP. One RFP respondent was totally excluded

from consideration, Mr. Neal submitted a request to have a property he

represented to be considered and the School System said that wasn’t a

formal response. Conversely, Mr. Cangiano had one of his consultants

send a map in a memo that didn’t even reference the RFP, much less

comply with any of the submittal requirements of the RFP, and his land

was considered. That one transmittal letter was a formal RFP expense,

because I asked for that, and that’s all I was given. And his was, you

know, put forward. Other examples are his consultant was hired, the

consultant he used to do the hydro study for his subdivision application,

was subsequently hired by the School System to do the hydrogeologic

study for the school. I think that is a clear conflict of interest, not worthy

of a sole source, notwithstanding my significant respect for the

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professionalism of that particular consultant. It has nothing to do with

that. We’re talking about procurement policies. The other one, I mean,

going back to landowners who said they were not willing, well their land

was offered half the price and they were, had threatened condemnation.

The public was misinformed about the Lovettsville Park requiring

condemnation to have access to it, when there were records in the files that

show other access options. What I’m saying is, there is bias in the past,

and this process that you have in your document does not eliminate that

from continuing. And I would really like to see some better controls in

there. And I also want to bring forward to Mr. Roberts, I think is about

the only one that I haven’t given a copy of this. I’ll pass this down for

him. It’s a memo from Mr. Tim Farmer with the EPA. He has offered to

come speak with all of you. I’m sorry, I’m all confused. I so apologize. I

know better. Anyway, I’ve given this to the School Board and I’ve given

this to the Board of Supervisors, but you are the one person not in those

groups, so I’m so sorry, Mr. Wood. This is a memo from Mr. Tim Farmer

with the EPA. He’s a school-siting expert. I’ve brought, I know to all of

you, lots of writing from him. And he has offered to come and speak with

you. He has offered to help you. These are obviously challenges. And

he’s even made the observation that some of the sites that are being

proposed in Loudoun are larger than he’s familiar with. And he’s a

nationally recognized smart-growth school-siting expert. And I’ll just

leave you with a couple of last things I wanted to read for you. And I’ve

given this to you, but I just don’t see any changes happening. So I just

want to impart these last words to you. Communities – this is from The

Planning Commissioners Journal, this is something that Loudoun County

subscribes to. Your Planning Department gets this journal if you’re a

member of this organization. Communities nationwide are wrestling with

the high cost of schools as towns, cities and counties seek control of

educational spending, citizens and professional planners are being

challenged to help assess all the costs. Planners interested in encouraging

institutions that anchor communities and promote walkable neighborhoods

that are healthy, both physically and economically. We’re talking about

economic decisions. So it’s not just quality of life. I think that’s very

important. And then the last one is governing. It talks about half a

century ago, a Columbia University education professor wrote an article

for a trade magazine and in it, it said if the cost of renovating a school was

more than half of what it cost to build new schools, school districts should

swallow extra expense and build new. But, the article continues to say, if

you track the literature back from that original document written by this

Columbia University education profession 50 years ago, if you track it all

back, you will find in the end there’s no study, there’s no references, it’s

just one man’s opinion, and it’s an old wife’s tale. So I really think you

need to look at that as well. Thank you so much.

S. Kurtz Thank you. Our next speaker is Pamela Baldwin.

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P. Baldwin Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak briefly this

afternoon. I’m here representing a new citizens organization in the

Lovettsville area called C.L.A.S.S., which stands for Citizens for

Lovettsville Area School Solutions. And this is a group of citizens who

are concerned about the need for new schools in the Lovettsville area and

who are eager for a process that is meaningful to citizens who wish to

participate and will produce happy outcomes for all. One of the first

things this group has done is design a survey to allow citizens of the area

to really express their views on school-siting issues and related issues.

We’ve now completed a pilot phase of that survey. And I wanted to just

share with you some very preliminary results on a few of the questions

which I think are somewhat revealing. Just a word about the sample. As I

mentioned, this is a pilot phase and 42 individuals have responded to the

survey. It’s designed to not permit people to participate more than once.

We first asked about people’s children in the schools and how satisfied

parents are on a variety of subjects. And we found very interestingly that

elementary school parents are very satisfied on almost all of the criteria we

asked about, whereas middle and high school students are almost all

dissatisfied. For example, on the time spent on school buses every day,

elementary parents 87 percent are either somewhat or very satisfied with

that, whereas in middle school that number is only 20 percent, and in high

school it’s only 16 percent. In terms of school size – that is to say

enrollment – 75 percent of elementary parents are satisfied. That is, either

somewhat or very satisfied. Only 13 percent of middle school parents and

11 percent of high school parents are somewhat or very satisfied. In

terms, we’ve been asked among other things which are the greatest needs

in terms of new schools in the Lovettsville area, elementary, middle or

high school. In terms of the most urgent, 45 percent of the sample said

high school, 46 percent said middle school, and only 10 percent said

elementary school. In terms of the least urgent, 67 percent said

elementary school, 26 percent said high school, and five percent said

middle school. In terms of the best location for new schools, in town, near

town or outside the town, 57 percent said in town was the best location,

with 68 percent saying near town was the second best, and 70 percent

saying out of town was the third best. Ideal capacities for new schools, the

numbers, the average of all the suggestions was 596 for elementary

school; 1,067 for middle school; and 1,394 for high school. And finally,

we asked the question, “Should western Loudoun schools be smaller or the

same size as those in eastern Loudoun?” given that lower population

density means same-sized schools draw from a larger area and therefore,

that means longer bus rides. Seventy-six percent of respondents said

western Loudoun schools should be smaller for that reason. And only 12

percent said they should be the same size. So, as I said earlier, these are

very preliminary results. We’re going to be broadening the sample. And

there are a number of other questions that are on the survey, and we’ll

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share those with you as they become available. Finally, I just wanted to

comment very briefly on the public participation aspect of the school

siting guidelines that you are considering and on the methodology for site

selection. Our group believes that greater transparency is the key to

school siting progress. Citizens are demanding a greater role and will be a

constructive force, if they have that role, but are likely to mobilize again in

opposition to back-room deals that are consummated without timely and

meaningful public input on proposals. And unfortunately, it appears, at

least at first reading, that the guideline document permits contracts that

would go to closing at the point of Planning Commission approval and

before consideration of any special exception required. And this is, as you

know, the situation we were in with the Cangiano contract, and I think it’s

one that nobody wants to repeat. So we would argue that there should be

never a contract that goes to closure before the process of special

exception is completed. And on transparency and public participation, it

seems that we are reminded that we have the right to public input in

sessions like this or to public hearings on the Capital Improvement

Program or we can serve on public boards and committees. But it doesn’t

have anything specific for citizen input beyond that. And that seems like

business as usual. And I would think a good place to start on greater

transparency would be at the earliest possible point, recognizing that

sometimes sensitive land acquisition issues can’t all be public, but to the

maximum extent possible to share information soon with the public on the

results of the recent series of advertisements for school sites in the

Lovettsville area. Thank you very much.

S. Kurtz Thank you. Our next speaker is Leah Parks. And could we have Speakers

6 and 7 come to the front so that they can be available as soon as the

speaker finishes. Okay?

L. Parks Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to speak to all of you. Without a

realistic long-term strategy, you have no realistic short-term strategy. This

is a quote from one of my neighbors and friend, Melanie (inaudible). In

this speech I’m asking each of you what is your strategy to accommodate

growth in our schools over time? My name is Leah Parks and I have two

children in the Loudoun County Public School System, and I’m now

preparing excitedly for a move to Tuscarora High School. I’m here today,

not to talk about that, necessarily, but in fact advocate for all children

across the county. Tuesday it was made clear that Lansdowne is now the

political pawn and sacrificial lamb between the two Boards. We were

clearly told Tuesday evening by some School Board members that the

Board of Supervisors traded the building of an overpass versus the

building of a needed high school. As a result, Lansdowne children are

being bused across town on an interim basis. Interim to nothing, to be

frank. Tuscarora, according to the CIP, is projected to be – according to

the documentation provided by staff – is going to be over capacity in

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2012. And the high school that provides relief for the Ashburn area is

currently targeted for enrollment in Fall of 2018, per the CIP. And this is

based on the compliance recommendation of the CIP, on Page 13. It is my

understanding, though, through some Supervisors that this is not about a

re-ordering of Board of Supervisor priorities, but instead a capital debt

ceiling that must be followed to maintain our bond rating. As a parent, I

must say that this looks and feels like finger-pointing. You who are

diligently working together, I urge you to break this pattern with your

review, recommendations, and votes related to the Superintendent’s CIP

recommendations. To assist in breaking down barriers, a seemingly great

idea was put into action this past summer. An ad-hoc committee was

formed to look at ways to reduce overcrowding through capital projects.

Unfortunately, as you will hear today, Agenda Item 6, the arduous work of

the Ad-Hoc Committee, in close partnership with members of the

community, especially Ashburn Farm, was limited in scope. The

Chairman of the Ad-Hoc Committee excluded the discussion of building

additions, trailers, expanded cross-country gifted programs, and other

programs to utilize excess capacities. As it related to Ashburn, only land

purchases of a specific size within a specific geographical location were

discussed. This was unfortunately not a County-wide discussion. Given

the current economic situation that we find ourselves in, we must strive to

be more creative in approaches to determine how to proceed. The Ad-Hoc

Committee will reveal to you that after several months of work, the

obvious is not documented. There is limited affordable land in northern

Ashburn suitable for a high school or even a middle school. However,

they think that Loudoun County should build a high school and also a

middle school in the Ashburn area. We already knew that. Loudoun

County has experienced unprecedented growth not just because of its great

infrastructure. Fairfax County is way better than that on this point. Way

better than us, I should say on this point. But it’s because of our school

system, coupled with more affordable homes in Fairfax. Let’s get our

priorities straight. Schools and kids, which fuel the growth in this county

to support the tax roll, is our business. Our business around this table.

Can we please roll up our sleeves in this Committee? Not in the Ad-Hoc

Committee. Not necessary. Can we work together to determine how we

can get through this? I implore you. It won’t get done if you around this

table don’t do it. If it doesn’t get done, Lansdowne is merely the first

sacrificial lamb. Brambleton and Broadlands will likely go to other

schools on an interim basis, and communities due west of Leesburg on an

interim basis. And I ask interim to what? I wanted to look up in the

dictionary wording for the word interim, because I do believe it means that

you have something on the other side when you use that word. And we

don’t have that right now. Please, as you get to Agenda Item 7, and you

talk about this and you go to your next meeting in December, please don’t

limit yourselves. Please. Think way out of the box. I urge you to do that.

And thank you again.

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S. Kurtz Our next speaker is Wendy Wooley.

W. Wooley Thank you. Hello, everyone. I’d say good evening because it feels like

it’s getting that dark outside. I get thrown off this time of year. My name

is Wendy Wooley. I live over in Ashburn Farm. A couple of things I’d

like to say tonight. First, I want to say thank you. I don’t think that it’s

often enough that we take the time to thank you for what you have done,

and that maybe you have an opportunity to pat yourselves on the back.

I’m thanking you for putting together this subcommittee. The

subcommittee, over six months’ time, was able to do a lot of work to try to

determine where we really are for capital needs. They took a lot of, a look

at a lot of data, a lot of information provided by staff, provided by County,

and I do believe that we’ve even been able to see that there’s even a better

format for a CIP that’s come out. You’ve got a better idea of how to

analyze what’s going on. And we’re seeing some merging of the way that

the County does business at the government level and the way that the

Schools do business as far as planning districts, etc. They are not

completely there, but I think they’re getting closer and I think it’s

important that we look at it that way. With the new data that’s coming

out, and with the new school that’s come about, the reality is that the

numbers are growing. And logic should tell you that in a down economic

time when we’re not building as many homes, that there shouldn’t be as

many kids. And I was probably as surprised as anyone else when I took at

look at the numbers for September 30th and we saw how much growth

there was. And if you take a look at where the growth was, the growth

was in the center part of the county. It was from the Potomac River down

to the Fairfax County line. I guess that’s where it would be if you take it

down towards Freedom High School. And there was really. That’s Prince

William line at that point? That’s a lot. That is where the bulk of the

growth was with the kids. And so, as you take a look at Page 63 of the

draft CIP, it becomes apparent in the out years that even with the two

schools that we have, Broad Run and Stone Bridge, and in the Ashburn

planning area, you can take a look at the bottom number there and you can

see that we are in for serious times. It’s the unfortunate reality of where

we are. It’s why the School Board is being put in the position that they are

to start moving kids out of this district. And none of us like to see that.

There was a document that came out of the Committee over the summer

which was also this, which was taking a look at peak. Where did we think

peak was going to be in? Peak has been a really difficult thing to target.

We took some of the data out of the draft CIP and tried to take a look at

how you could update this document. And as you will see, the bottom line

is that we’re looking at 1,800 students in the Ashburn area north of the

Greenway that need to be accommodated. And I don’t want to have us

lose sight of that. I understand that economically, we’re not in a position

to be building schools right now. And honestly, we’re not asking you to

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build schools right now. We do need to make sure that we plan properly.

We need to make sure that we look for land, because at the point in time

when we are ready and able to build these schools, we’re going to be

bursting at the seams. We’re going to be bursting at the seams at many

high schools across the county as well as middle schools and elementary

schools. So we ask you, take the recommendations that came out of the

Subcommittee. They were good. One change, talk about the ordering of

Moorefield Station versus ES-21. We really do think that needs to be

flipped because I think that ES-21 in the Ashburn area needs to be built

before Moorefield Station, but that’s our own personal opinion. But keep

planning, keep looking. We will be with you to look for creative, out-of-

the-box type thinking. Business as usual may not be the way that we’re

going to get these school sites. It may not be the way we’re going to

afford these school sites. And we will absolutely be with you to try to find

that. Because we need to find a solution for all of the kids in the Ashburn

area. We need to, getting those three schools that are in the

recommendation gives us the ability to finally lock down Ashburn. And

that is something that I think we’ve been fighting to do for over 20 years.

So please support the motion and please move this to both Boards tonight,

through your actions, so that we have the ability to get this into the CIP for

this year. Thank you.

S. Kurtz Thank you. Jamie O’Brien. And Mr. O’Brien is our final speaker.

J. O’Brien Good evening. My name is Jamie O’Brien and I live in The Regency,

which is the (inaudible) 24. Humor, passion, anger, reason, I’m sure you

folks on the Committee have endured all throughout this process.

Tonight, I will concentrate on the latter. And that is reason. I’d like to

applaud the Joint Committee thus far for being pro-active in trying to get

ahead of the school crowding issue. Very positive steps have been

endorsed thus far: recommending a new middle school and new high

school being built in Ashburn, recommending ES-21 be moved from

Dulles North to Ashburn. I’d like to suggest we build upon those sound

recommendations and swap the timing of ES-21 for ES-16, Moorefield

Station. As we do that, I’d also suggest that we build ES-21 on the ISA

property or swap existing property for a new parcel adjacent to the ISA

property. Opening ES-16 at Moorefield Station will create the same issue

we had with Creighton’s Corner, and that is a spanking-new school

collecting dust or a school occupied with kids from all over the place.

Newton-Lee is also not an advantageous site because it is not projected to

be busting at the seams for even five years out. The Regency, Farmwell

Hunt, Carisbroooke, Ashbriar, Parkside, Fields, Ashburn Run, and

Cameron Chase. These are all names of the communities that are bused in

different directions that could potentially fill an appropriately-placed

elementary school. As the middle school and high schools are built, this

will also create a consistent and logical feeding system to Farmwell

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Station and to Broad Run High School. Go Spartans. Now for the

numbers. Six hundred and fifty kids just from the above-stated

community. This move would have a cascading effect on overcrowding

issues in many other schools. This move alone would bring the following

schools under capacity: Mill Run, Creighton’s Corner, Cedar Lane,

Dominion Trail, Seldens Landing, and Steuart Weller. This plan would

drop the number of schools in this area over capacity from 10 to four, a

60-percent drop. That is progress. That is reason. Thank you, Committee

members, for your time and dedication to the folks in Loudoun County.

S. Kurtz Thank you. Michelle Detweiler.

M. Detweiler Good afternoon. My name is Michelle Detweiler and I am here to speak

today in support of the recommendation by the Joint Capital Needs

Subcommittee. Your Subcommittee, as you have heard, has done

excellent work and deserves our thanks and praise. To explain why I am

supporting their work, I’d like to share with you an analogy. Our family

enjoys participating in community theater, and right now is rehearsing for

a show some of you might be familiar with, called “Joseph and the

Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” As I’ve been going through both the

Subcommittee’s processes and the rehearsal process at the same time, I’ve

noticed several parallels, and I would like to share one of them with you.

This show tells the story of the ancient Joseph of Egypt who has to fight

peril with managing and husbanding the country’s resources in both years

of want and years of plenty. Apparently, even in Egypt, they say business

cycles (inaudible) like we do today. Joseph does his job wisely and saves

Egypt from great perils. Right now, we are obviously in a time of want,

following a time of plenty, but as we all know from previous ups and

down-turns of the business cycle, another day of plenty will come. We

have an opportunity now to be wise stewards and wise planners, as Joseph

was. If we are careful and use this time wisely, this time of want provides

us an opportunity to look to see what we have done well, what we still

need to do, and what we need to improve. Your Subcommittee has done

just that. Joseph was tasked with providing enough food for Egypt. In our

case, we are tasked with providing enough schools for our children.

Enough educational food, if you will. Joseph had to be a master planner

for their food supply. The Subcommittee has done excellent work in

planning for our future educational needs. In planning for food needs, any

good farmer spends his winter time planning next year’s planting and what

should go where, and in which fields to grow crops. Your Subcommittee

has done excellent work during this winter-like economic time, a time in

which the fields are laying sallow, if you will, to plan out what should

happen when spring time returns to the economy. They have studied the

data, seen the September 30th numbers which show great concentrations of

students north of the Greenway and greater than expected increases this

year over last year, in those very student populations north of the

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Greenway. Did you know, actually, that well over half of the

unanticipated increase of all new high school students throughout the

entire county this year over last year were from two northern Ashburn

high schools? Broad Run and Briar Woods, with Stone Bridge trailing

just behind. Yet those students have had too few schools planned for

them. The Subcommittee has seen this problem, recognized it, they have

taken out their graph paper and pencils, if you will, just as any good

farmer or gardener would, to plot their spaces for the following planting

season, and they have given us a good direction, a good map to follow.

Please follow their lead and formally endorse and approve their

recommendation. Then you, like Joseph, will be good stewards, well

managing both this time and the future times of plenty to come. You will

ensure that when this winter-time period is over, whenever that may be,

that necessary steps have been taken and procedures followed to ensure

that we will have steps in place to make the best use of the years of plenty

to come. You will have ensured that even during a difficult period, a

fallow field will be followed by a better harvest. Our future students will

rise up to thank you, just as those of Joseph’s period thanked him. He is

still remembered for his wisdom. Your work here will ensure that we will

be looking back with gratitude to you for your foresight in your realm, just

as Joseph’s people did in his. I can’t guarantee that anyone will write a

musical about you, but you will have done the right thing. And that is

definitely something to think about. Thank you.

S. Kurtz Thank you. That brings to end our public input part of the agenda. I’d

like to record that Committee members Sally Kurtz, Tom Reed, Jim

Burton, Jennifer Bergel, Warren Guerin and John Wood are present. Mrs.

Susan Buckley is not present today. We do send our condolences to her.

Her father died yesterday, so she will not be attending any of today’s

meetings. Along with Committee members, the Chairman of the School

Board is here, Robert DuPree; Board of Supervisors member Stevens

Miller; Chairman of the Board Scott York; Blue Ridge Priscilla Godfrey,

School Board member; from the Leesburg District Tom Marshall; from

the Broad Run District Bob Obneiser; and from the Broad Run Magisterial

District Lori Waters. I’d like to, since we had several speakers who were

speaking to our Item Number 6, I’d like to rearrange our agenda and have

Mr. Miller and the Joint Committee – are you there, Mr. Miller? – go over

the item and have us deal with that first.

S. Miller Well thank you, Madam Chairman.

S. Kurtz Ooops! I’ve been reminded that I didn’t do approval of the minutes. But

guess what. We can do it after this item. How’s that? Mr. Miller, could

you proceed?

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S. Miller Sure. Thank you, Madam Chairman. The report of the Committee is

brief, which is probably reflective of the degree of consensus we were able

to achieve. And rather than risk putting my personal spin on it, although I

agree with recommendations that were made in the Committee, what I’ve

asked is for our staff support person, Mr. Brown, to summarize the

material and provide what answers he can from a staff perspective as to

logistics of what we have recommended, what documents will be altered,

what alterations they will be. They are not extensive, but I do believe they

create a degree of certainty as to some policy questions that we were asked

to investigate. Effectively, the recommendation is that we would add

some proposed amendments to the Capital Improvement Program, the

CNA be submitted to each of the two full Boards for them to review, and

then either embrace or modify as they see fit. And I’ll hand it over to Mr.

Brown for the details.

P. Brown Thank you, Mr. Miller. If you’ll turn to Attachment 1, it really, it’s

labeled Attachment 1 – Page 1, this is the meat of the summary motions

that were conducted at the Committee level that reached consensus on

their direction for the Ashburn planning subareas and the Leesburg and

Dulles planning subareas. I’ll start with Leesburg and Dulles. The

working Subcommittee basically affirmed the current planning

assumptions for those planning subareas, realizing that in the Dulles area

there were still going to be some schools that could not be designated yet,

waiting on final residential build-out and numbers of pupils, but that

where they were and had been designated, they concurred that the

Planning staff had reflected accurately the numbers and locations of

schools that were needed. The main primary recommendations came in

the Ashburn planning subarea and as you can see in Items 1, 2 and 3, there

was a clear motion that recognized the need for a high school, a middle

school north of the Greenway, and to take one school that had previously

been designated Ashburn/Dulles on the elementary school level and to

designate it clearly in Ashburn Elementary School. So the net change in

the capital plan was one high school, one middle, one elementary north of

the Greenway. Actually, all these schools were already in the plan but

they were basically Ashburn/Dulles and this recommendation basically

puts a designation on them and a recommendation on where they should

be located. Behind Attachment 1, this is what staff has provided to kind of

visually represent the effects of those motions. In no way did the

Committee represent or make a recommendation on what year these three

schools should be funded or put into the capital plan, but they were

needed. What they did recommend was that the Ashburn school, which is

being designated as HS-8, should be constructed before HS-6 in the

schedule, that MS-6 which is already scheduled, now designated an

Ashburn school, would have to be decided when that was triggered to be

needed, and the same way with ES-21, which became an Ashburn school.

What staff did – as you’ll see we’ve shown the planning subarea that these

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schools covers on this attachment on Page 2 – we took the current adopted

Capital Improvement Program and indicated based on the years these

projects were adopted, what this would look like. In no way did the

Committee weigh in specifically, and I wanted to make that clear. We just

gave it as a representation that if the adopted plan continued as you

adopted it last year, this is where these schools would logically fall. Since

the release of the proposed School Superintendent CIP, a lot of that

schedule has been re-thought, so I guess staff’s comment would be “Don’t

get hung up on the years” in this report because it was based on last year’s

adopted CIP. But clearly, what the Committee wanted to convey was the

designation of these three schools in the Ashburn area, a high school, a

middle and an elementary north of the Greenway, and that they need to be

planned in the six-year CIP cycle that we’re going through now, and that

the land-site decisions would be made in collaboration with that CIP

planning. And that’s a pretty concise summary of what the Committee

consensus report was. And there’s other Committee members here, and I

welcome Mr. Miller and any of the Committee members to embellish my

summary.

S. Kurtz You did not seem to cover Number 3, the first page of Attachment 1. The

Committee recommended the two Boards direct their staffs to work

together with the Chair and Vice-Chair of each Board, develop

recommendations for locating such schools.

P. Brown That was contingent – I’m sorry, I missed summarizing that – that was

contingent upon this Committee referring this out to both Boards, and if

the Boards directed that this be moved forward in the capital planning

cycle, Item 3 would be the direction to get the staffs together and start

looking at that.

S. Kurtz So, if both Boards approve the recommendation, then that would be the

next step. Is that what you’re telling me?

P. Brown That’s my understanding of the intent of the Subcommittee.

S. Kurtz And Mr. Miller, you’re shaking your head yes?

S. Miller Yes. Just probably shouldn’t editorialize, but yes, that is what I

understood the intent to be. And of course, every member, I think except

Mrs. Burk of the Subcommittee, is here so if any of them wants to

elaborate or you have questions, we’re here.

S. Kurtz I have no…. Mr. Burton, you have a question or a comment?

J. Burton While I applaud the Committee for its work, I think I understand its

recommendation. Was the Committee – I see the vote was 5-1 – is that

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really an indication of the Committee’s strength behind the

recommendation? Was it a good solid 5-1 or iffy, maybe?

S. Miller I think that’s something I’d be remiss to try to characterize. They’re here.

If they want to answer, that’s a fair question. I mean, in my case, it was a

solid.

S. Kurtz Ms. Bergel, I believe you were the only one who did not agree. Did you

have particular reasons that we haven’t heard so far?

J. Bergel Yes, I had a particular reason because I thought Number 3 was not

realistic in the current climate, though I think it is the desire of many of

the members of the Subcommittee as is seen by the vote to try to get these

schools on the ground as quickly as possible. I thought the CIP might

indicate a more dire situation that would be acknowledged if we kept any

school in Ashburn from being built at the high school level. And the CIP

presentation the other night did confirm what I suspected would be the

case, which is why I believe this is why the staff put HS-6 still with a need

on the ground at Loudoun Valley Estates as soon as possible. It’s not

designated in the new CIP as HS-8 yet, but there’s some switching around

in the CIP that we need to take place. So I admire the fact that the Boards

could work together to do this, but I am not confident that we will get to

the end result of acquiring land which is needed in that new Ashburn area

that is recommended from north of the Greenway to the Potomac. And

that is why I had to vote no. I also had questions for Subcommittee

members to consider, but that was not taken very much under

consideration. It was essentially given a cursory glance and then we went

right to a vote.

S. Kurtz Okay. I think that answers it. Anyone else? Mrs. Waters, did you have

any comments or questions that you have?

L. Waters Yes. Real honest here, folks. I mean, the public was there. Those of us

who participated in it and a few other members who came, this is what we

were able to reach consensus on. And I’m glad we reached consensus and

said that what I said 11 months ago, here to tell finally that we need a high

school for the students north of the Greenway. But I think as Mr. John

Stevens said at your meeting, your School Board meeting the other

evening, this isn’t a plan. And so it leaves a lot of people in limbo as to

what’s going to happen. I’m a little bit concerned at this point about

Number 3 of having the two Boards and designees do recommendations

and such because I think that is going to get overtaken by the CIP. The

School Board got their presentation from Dr. Hatrick. We just got our

books. And you’re having public hearings the first week of our…. It’s

the 30th and December 1

st, I think. And then you’re going to deliberate

and I don’t think there’s time to do Number 3 if we’re going to consider

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the data that Dr. Hatrick presented in terms of the number of students in

these schools and the overcrowding that is going to occur. And even

whatever you decide on the high school boundary situation shows that

some sort of planning action has to take place in this CIP, because

Tuscarora will be overcrowded. You have to have some place for those

students to go. And so this, I think we need to move this forward as good

as we could reach consensus on. I wish it would have gone farther. I wish

we could have explored alternatives such as additions, expansion of

current facilities, trailers, those kinds of measures that would have

provided a little bit of other than just build a new school to accommodate

the seats. But we seem to go in circles about the numbers. And I think we

now all have at least a firm agreement that the numbers are there that more

seats are needed in the Ashburn area, and we’re going to have to put some

resources to it. But we also have to recognize our limitations and that’s

where I think the creative thinking has to come in. We can’t just expect

75 pristine acres to pop up somewhere in Ashburn that we’re going to be

able to afford. I think we have to have a reality check on some of this.

So, ES-21 was something else that I brought up at the last meeting. We

had the September 30th enrollment figures and so I moved to have that

included, but we didn’t spend extensive amount on time on that because

the School staff emphasized to wait for the September 30th numbers. And

we have them and we see the overcrowding. I mean, it’s just a question

that the community has at all three levels. Where are you going to put the

students? Where do they have to go to school? And so, this is, it is what

it is. I think we should move it forward to our respective Boards, but I

think the CIP discussions that are going to go on in the next few weeks

and then with the School Board and then on to the Board of Supervisors,

that’s where the real decisions have to get made and the priorities placed

on reducing the overcrowding in the highest spots. And I think that is

putting a high school in Ashburn as soon as possible in the CIP, and

perhaps using the County-owned property in Ashburn as the asset that we

have that we could use today to move forward and build the schools

ASAP. I think that’s worthy of continued discussion immediately

between the two Boards.

S. Kurtz Mr. Ohneiser, I believe you had your hand up next.

B. Ohneiser I just want to respond positively to Mr. Burton’s question. I think the

interest level and the justification was as solid as a rock, as they say in the

music world. The Ashburn Farm community established the solid data

backing up the 1,830 students that are beyond current capacity. And the

next step is very straightforward because we need to go to the public and

ask for approval to purchase land within a particular range of amount

which the CIP has initially established to be approximately $52 million in

our CIP, per the Superintendent’s input. So, regardless of where the

school’s built, regardless of boundaries, regardless of any other Pandora-

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box type argument anybody comes up with. We need approval to buy the

land where the population is, and over the length of time that land will be

usable, which should approach infinity, it’s needed where it’s needed. A

comparable, which I have to bring out is the combination of Woodgrove

and Valley, will not even reach capacity by the year 2020. We’ve

established we need 1,830 seats. So any degree of hesitancy is

malfeasance. Thank you.

S. Kurtz Was there another hand down here? Mr. York?

S. York Can somebody explain why Number 3 was done, because in all my years

here, we’ve never had the Chair, the Vice-Chair, both bodies, deal

effectively with going after seeking land for schools. So I’m just curious

why this was recommended.

S. Kurtz Mr. DuPree, I think you have an answer.

R. DuPree I think I do. Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. Yes, sir. That direction. One of the

things, there seems to be – because I drafted this motion – there seems to

be strong support for Items 1 and 2. And I drafted them based on the

discussion we had had over the five or six months. But it begged the

question of how do you then implement that recommendation? And we all

know that a large public meeting with maps and discussions of parcels

doesn’t really work sometimes. And so that was just my attempt to

suggest an implementation method that would allow the staff and also

some Board member from both Boards’ input to keep an eye, so to speak,

on how is the progress going forward, to make sure that we get to the

objectives put forward in 1 and 2. It was a suggestion, the Committee

adopted it. If there’s a better one, I’d certainly like to hear it, and I could

(inaudible) knowing after next month, I don’t have to worry about that

responsibility. But I did think it was important to have some Board

member sounding-board participation, I guess, as the professional staff

looks at, looks over sites. But again, taking it out of the large 18-member

meetings.

S. York I don’t know. I appreciate that. Then if this were to go forward, my

suggestion would be to somewhat amend it. Either have the Chair or the

Vice-Chair, but not both. I would say one of the least from our body

ought to be the Supervisor whose district is going to be most impacted in

the given area to be part of that, and I would say the same on the other side

of the table. It’s the only, my only thought there.

B. Ohneiser And the one thing I was doing was trying to avoid anybody alleging that

there is a parochial involvement in that, because maybe they would have

different points of view and being in the region, since I’m not going to be

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either one of those offices, I didn’t have a dog in the fight at that point.

But either one.

S. York Can I go ahead and just make a little comment, if it’s all right with Mrs.

Kurtz, even though I’m not a member of your Committee?

S. Kurtz Yes, Mr. York.

S. York I want to thank the Subcommittee for taking this on. It is not an easy task

by any means at all, because for one particular group of the two main that

were following this issue, they do feel as one citizen had stated, was the

sacrificial lamb. Well, I hope that at end of that day, that isn’t to me the

sacrificial lamb as they get cut out. And there is absolutely at the end of

the day nowhere to go. I would hope – and quite frankly if there is

support from this body to move it forward – I would like us to be able to

do this and put it on the Board agenda for Tuesday to take care of, because

I think this is something that needs to just happen quickly. Obviously, the

discussions with respect to location is paramount in that given where we

are with the budget scenario right now, can we fit it in, and if so, how do

we make it happen? I’m going by this chart that it is needed to open by

2012?

P. Brown Not by the numbers on this chart. (inaudible)

S. York Okay. Well, if you can get, it would be helpful if we do send this item

forward to get the numbers exactly when that school does need to open up

to meet the need of the community. And I would, again, I want to thank

the Subcommittee for their work on this and hopefully from here, both

bodies will work expeditiously to get this next high school done. And I

know it’s going to be tough. There is no question. But we have to deal

with the fact that if you go by these numbers, we’re missing a high school

we’re not planning for. And we have to do that. It’s not fair to take,

regardless of what group is impacted to move them out of their school

now into another school with it hanging that they’re going to be

somewhere that we have at this point nowhere planned. Thank you,

Madam Chair.

S. Kurtz Okay. Mrs. Bergel, and then, Mr. Wood, I believe you had a comment?

Okay.

J. Bergel I would ask if Mrs. Waters could clarify which County-owned site she

meant on the record, because based upon that clarification, I had a

comment, if I thought she meant what she meant.

L. Waters If I could just clarify, the County-owned property that I was speaking of

was the former ISA property in Ashburn along Farmwell Road and

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Waxpool. The County has a proffered site, Loudoun Valley Estates II, but

it has been designated for HS-6. That is ultimately the reliever for Briar

Woods High School. But HS-8, that came out in the Subcommittee report,

needs to come first to relieve Stone Bridge and Broad Run. And I think

that we should look at the former ISA now County-owned 100-acre site in

Ashburn as a high-priority candidate, given that we already own the land,

so we don’t have to buy it. We don’t have to worry about land acquisition

cost. It’d be ready to go. It would be the thing that we can get on the

ground fastest.

S. Kurtz Okay. Thank you. Mr. Wood? You had a comment, Ms. Bergel?

J. Bergel Yes. Just really quickly, because at one point I had asked Mrs. Burk if it

were the former ISA site to get figures on how much of the commercial – I

mean, it’s a commercial area – what would happen to the tax. I’m sure

there are smaller properties in western Loudoun that is a commercial base

and a tax base for the County. I’m not sure what the figures are if we were

to use that for a school site. Not that I’m saying it’s not an appropriate site

for the school, I’m just saying I’d ask Mrs. Burk to get numbers on that at

one time to figure out how much of a tax base draw that area is, if it does

get filled out as a commercial base, since we don’t have it for schools. I

am not saying that we don’t need a school site for the kids. I am just

indicating I would ask for that information.

S. Kurtz Okay. Mr. Wood?

J. Wood Just a question on Number 3. Is it – and again, you guys are experts at

this. I’m definitely not. But why wouldn’t you just keep your joint

Committee in place and refer, have staff refer the recommendations back

to the joint Committee, which is the group that contains most of the

knowledge anyway, it sounds like, as to what, as to this particular item.

No? Not a good idea?

P. Brown Well, just to provide a little bit more background. Last January, Mr.

Miller and the Board directed us to go through every planning subarea,

and using current land-site criteria and vacant land, identify all the parcels

that would be five acres or larger that could be used for public facilities.

So for this Committee, we had finished the Ashburn subarea and when we

brought it they asked us to fine-tune that research down to the middle and

high school level. And the map that we brought back to the Subcommittee

was only 11 parcels, and of that only three were viable for high schools.

So I think the intent – Mr. DuPree can weigh in on this – those were based

on the pure standards of 75, 35 acres for the two schools. However, some

of those sites were smaller and the School staff were willing to look at

how to engineer them to get the full program on the smaller acreage. The

Committee did make it very clear that those weren’t the primary sites. We

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amended the website and it clearly states this was for a fundamental

exercise with certain criteria. But there could be possibly other sites out

there that would be able to be engineered to support the program for a

middle and a high school. So I thought it was the intent of this third point

– and Mr. DuPree can tell me if I’m wrong – knowing that there were

more sites that could be explored besides the three that had been identified

in the Subcommittee’s work. I think that’s what he was trying to foster.

How do we implement going in and evaluating other potential sites in the

Ashburn area?

J. Wood My only other question was for Jen, Jen Bergel. Jen, did you – as opposed

to the other Jen, whoever that is – did you vote? It sounds to me like you

voted on the substance in favor. On the form, you were against it in the

plan, whether or not it was practical and would it actually work. But it

sounds like on the substance you were in favor. Is that fair to say?

J. Bergel I have consistently said because I sat with Mrs. Waters 11 months ago,

arguing a need for HS-6. I firmly believe there is a need for that school. I

am very concerned about pushing into the CIP a land acquisition which

would fall under 3, because I feel like if people are asking for full vetting

of things, the Subcommittee came back with a report, yes. But when you

look at recommendations for locating such schools and present the

recommendations, the recommendations may not be completely realistic.

And we’ve talked before about sites not being considered because of

whether or not they’re going to be a tax base for the County. And we have

also talked about 30 acres of that former ISA site possibly being used for

Monroe, because of that commercial aspect. The question had also been

raised at the Subcommittee at one time about okay, we don’t want a

southern shift for Ashburn. But we did talk about if that site were used, is

there still going to be a shift in Ashburn, or are you going to bring

Lansdowne all the way down into there? Is that what people are talking

about, doing boundaries? And it was Mrs. Burk, I believe, that said we

can’t pull that into this Committee. We’re not talking about boundaries

right now, which all of us agreed, I believe. But is this going to give

people a false sense of are they going to remain at the schools at which

they current attend? Because I believe you can see the lights of Broad

Run when we were there that day. You can see Broad Run’s lights from

that school, that site, right? So, there’s a lot that goes into Number 3 that

causes me not to support it. So that’s why I couldn’t vote in favor of the

motion.

L. Waters If I could follow up on Mr. Wood’s questions. Well, the other concern we

have, we did the land studies and we were even, I think, pushing the

envelope a little bit there in that they came up with a list of what sites

would accommodate a middle school or a high school. The high school

came down to three. So, there’s not much available (inaudible).

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J. Wood At 75 acres.

L. Waters Right. At 75 acres. Even if you look at a 60-acre site, the choices are very

limited. And so if we, obviously if we go through the public discussions

of land acquisition, we could really be hurting ourselves even more on the

price side. So we need to figure out some mechanism for deciding a place

and how to deal with land acquisitions, but in the meantime we’ve got this

problem that it takes two years to even construct the high school, and if

we’re going to go through land acquisition we’re adding more time to it.

And so that means we’re pushing out an Ashburn high school even

further. And so these are some of the trade-offs that we would have to

examine and either buy them a piece of property or using an asset we

have. While it has some disadvantages, it would be the fastest thing to go.

And so, but the forum for deciding land acquisition is very challenging,

and the Subcommittee didn’t feel comfortable going there in a public

setting because of our negotiating situation.

J. Wood I understand. Thank you.

S. Kurtz Okay. All right, I guess, one last question before we put a motion on the

table.

R. DuPree Yes, ma’am. One thing I think we all agree on with Ms. Bergel, if this

were easy, we would have done it already. It’s not going to be, it’s not

automatic. Very few things are. And so, we can’t say for certain how it’s

going to turn out. We’ve all got to be open-minded, yes. We’ve got to

accept parcels that will be challenging. We can’t just simply be ruling

them out as unacceptable, us or members of the public. What we need, I

think, a clear understanding, is – the numbers prove it – we need the third

site. So that’s why I think it’s going to take some rolling up the sleeves,

get it done, and then once we get the acquisition, then we go about

working together to make sure we can fund the construction. That’s all.

S. Kurtz Okay. Mr. Reed?

T. Reed Before I can do the motion, I do have – it’s a point of order for our

parliamentarian, hopefully. If we wanted to amend the needs

recommendations, do we have the authority to do that in a motion? To

make amendments to the report?

(inaudible) Absolutely. Sure.

T. Reed Just wanted to be sure. Okay. Then Chairman, I move that the Joint

Board of Supervisors and School Board Committee forward the Joint

Subcommittee on Capital Facility needs recommendations as contained in

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the Capital Needs Planning Report. Public schools in the Ashburn, Dulles

and Leesburg planning subareas to the Loudoun County Board of

Supervisors and the Loudoun County School Board. I further move

governing boards use the report’s recommendations as they develop the

10-year capital needs assessment and six-year Capital Improvement

Program.

(inaudible) Seconded.

S. Kurtz Do I hear a second? Seconded by Mr. (inaudible)

T. Reed And we’ve really already done the discussion. I just want to thank the

Subcommittee for the work that they’ve done. I was unable to attend most

of those meetings, but you all did accomplish a lot. And if nobody has

any, I have an amendment that I’d like to propose for Item 3.

S. Kurtz Yes. Let me hear it.

T. Reed Madam Chairman, I move that we change the first sentence of Number 3

by deleting the word “and” at the end of the first sentence, and at the end

of the first line, delete the words “and Vice-Chair of each Board.” The

revised sentence will read: “Recommend the two Boards direct their staffs

to work together with the Chair or their designee to analyze and develop

recommendations for locating such schools and present the

recommendations to each Board as quickly as possible.”

(inaudible) Seconded.

R. Wood Okay. Got it. So about Chair in the area of Supervisor?

S. Kurtz Chair and area Supervisor?

(inaudible) Or School Board.

S. Kurtz Or School Board representative.

(inaudible) There you go.

(inaudible) Area representative.

S. Kurtz Area representative.

S. Miller Do we have a clear sense of which Supervisor that is? Do we have a clear

sense of which Supervisor that is?

(inaudible) It crosses jurisdictions. Or it could be (inaudible).

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P. Brown Not if the recommendation is north of the Greenway.

(inaudible) As the language is right now, the designee would be that each Board

would have a choice. So you could have the Catoctin representative and

you could have the Broad Run representative.

L. Waters I feel strongly that the person who represents the area needs to be

involved, because we’re the ones that are hearing directly from the

residents, very vocal every day, about their concerns on seats and sites and

various issues.

J. Bergel The dilemma – if I may, Madam Chair – is this, that with the

Subcommittee we had three different areas represented, and we still will

have that, because the Dulles North area is represented by the Catoctin

representative, the Dulles representative, and the Ashburn representative.

So if this motion is going to move forward with the intent I think Mr. Reed

is trying to do, I believe all people are saying they want both Chairs to be

a part of this, as well as the Chairman with their Boards picking another

designee. So it’s the two-to-two coming together. The Chairman from

each Board and a representative that’ll have to be duped out, essentially.

So it just needs to be a designee from each Board. So if I may, Mr. Reed,

I believe what you’re trying to say is the Chair from each Board as well as

another designee from each Board.

T. Reed Right. Just change the “or” to an “and” I think accomplishes this, doesn’t

it?

(inaudible) Yes.

T. Reed I’ll read the revised sentence. “Recommend the two Boards direct their

staffs to work together with the Chair and their designee to analyze and

develop recommendations for locating such schools and to send the

recommendations to each Board as quickly as possible.”

(inaudible) Seconded.

S. Kurtz All right, that’s been moved and seconded by the seconder. Let’s have a

vote on this and move it forward.

(inaudible) Mrs. Kurtz, Mr. Burton wants to say something.

S. Kurtz Mr. Burton?

J. Burton A quick comment. When this process all began quite some time ago, I

indicated I would have to be convinced that it was not, that the ISA

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property was not a good site for a high school. I still have to be convinced

that it’s not a good site. I think exists, as Mrs. Waters said, we own it.

And if you want to get there in the quickest amount of time, that’s the

approach that we probably ought to march down.

S. Kurtz All final comments have been made. Could I see a show of hands of those

who approve the motion? And the amendment. All right, on the

amendment.

J. Burton (inaudible)

S. Kurtz It was a friendly amendment on the motion. All right, that motion passes

6-1, with Mrs. Buckley absent for the vote. It’s 5:15. Could we take a

five-minute break, folks?

P. Brown Sally, before you take the break, though, staff really needs to know

whether Mr. York’s recommendation that this be turned around for

Tuesday, is the timeline wrong, because it creates production issues.

(inaudible)

P. Brown I mean, we can do it, but we need to know if that’s what….

S. York I think we should. You’ve got the report. All you’re going to do is do the

amended motion.

P. Brown No, no, no. I just want to make sure that’s where we’re going.

S. York Yes.

Back from the break

S. Kurtz Committee, could we resume? Could we resume? Mr. Ohneiser? All

right, let’s take up now Item 4. Oh, excuse me, I’m being reminded again.

May I have a motion to approve the minutes of October 8, 2009?

(inaudible) Madam Chairman, I move the approval of the minutes of October 8, 2009.

(inaudible) Second.

S. Kurtz All in favor? Approval of the minutes. We have five and two absent, five

for it and two absent. All right, our next topic is the fiscal policy

discussion, Item 4. What you have in front of you. Do we have folks at

the table who are going to be talking about this? Mr. Brown?

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P. Brown No. We’re waiting on your guidance on what you wanted to talk about. It

was asked that we provide background information. Our Director of

Finance provided a follow-up letter, and we do have staff present who can

answer any questions or participate in any dialogue that you would like to

have.

S. Kurtz I believe Mr. Reed, you’re the one who asked for this to be on the agenda,

didn’t you?

T. Reed No.

S. Kurtz No? No one asked for this to be on the agenda?

P. Brown Mrs. Buckley asked for this to be on the agenda and regrettably, she’s not

here. So, it may be that you want to defer this discussion to your

December meeting since she was the one who requested it.

S. Kurtz Well, I do know that we have had – I don’t know if you call it

miscommunication – we’ve had various opinions floating through the

airwaves, when we did the close-out of the books. So, no one wants to

talk about this who’s at the table, is that right?

J. Bergel Mrs. Kurtz? I will.

S. Kurtz All right. Ms. Bergel would like to talk about this.

J. Bergel What concerned me about this action was not the fact that we wouldn’t

have cooperated, but the fact, with the way it was handled. And Mr.

Burton did respond to that in a very quick manner within, I think, the same

day. Dr. Hatrick could speak differently if I’m not speaking accurately.

And I actually must have missed this. When I was going through the

meeting, this is the first time that I’ve seen Mr. Adams’ letter, which is

why I would like to defer discussion until we have a chance to look at it,

think about it. But I am very grateful for the letter.

S. Kurtz All right. That said, then we’ll defer this to the next meeting. All right,

let’s move on to Item 5. As you all know, the Committee had

recommended when we looked at the Capital Facilities Standards, had

recommended that we change the school sites, allowing flexibility by

using the words, when we talked about it, it’s 60 acres. It’s not 60 acres,

it’s 20 acres, 35 acres and 75 acres. We use the words “up to” and since

that time, the Finance/Government Services and Operations Committee

met and we had a request to have the issue brought back to us – and I

think, Mrs. Waters, you had quite a few thoughts on that – to look at it

again and see if we wanted to in fact approach it in a different way, using

ranges of sizes and the case of, since we’ve been negotiating proffers and

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use the median or mean acreage. Mr. Burton, did you have, since you’re

Chairman of the Committee, do you want to lead the discussion?

J. Burton Yes, I realize that it, I think the full Board said come back to this

Committee with the idea. And if I recall, in a moment of mental lapse I

agreed. We have made progress in dealing with this subject of size of

school sites. The mere fact that we’re willing to look at different size

schools, this Joint Committee and both Boards are willing to look at

different size schools at the various levels, they’re documented in the

reports that came out of this Committee, and the fact that there are

different sites, I think, in my own opinion, it would be unwise for us to

budget for land acquisition for a mean size of acreage for a particular

category of school. I think that would put us in a bind in any negotiations.

We have the language in here now that we’re willing to consider sizes up

to a level. That means anywhere below there in negotiating and searching.

And so, although the vote was to send it here for reconsideration, I would

hope that the reconsideration would be very short and say “Thank you, we

agreed with what we sent forward. Press on.” Because I would not like to

budget a certain amount of money based upon a mean-sized parcel and

then go out and try to negotiate with someone on a larger-sized parcel and

not have the money to make that deal.

S. Kurtz All right. Mrs. Waters, I believe that you had a different opinion, so could

you let us know where you were coming from?

L. Waters Well, particularly in looking at, I think it’s called Attachment 1. And it

has the charts. And you can see on the following pages I charted out the

schools that we have now. And the elementary and middle, I’m not going

to spend really time on. It’s the high schools that gave me pause in that if

you look at the program capacity of schools and even enrollment, we’re

accommodating 1,957 students as of September 30th at Stone Bridge on a

site that is less than 60 acres. I just need to have some confidence that as

we are looking for sites, that the 75 acres isn’t going to be the automatic

standard that’s used every time, because we are going to extraordinarily

limit ourselves by doing so. But more importantly, in the chart, when we

talk about a 1,350-sized high school and a 1,600-student high school.

Why would we use 75 acres as the standard, when just a couple of years

ago, the standard on a 1,600-seat school was 60 acres. And yet, we’ve

been able to build a number of them on parcels of around 60 or even

slightly less. So, particularly, I’d like to see the acreages on those two

lines for a 1,350 high school? I don’t know that you’re ever going to build

another one of those, but to have it in our documents representing 75

acres, that means extra money is going to get budgeted. Okay, we have to

think of it not only as proffer negotiation, but the amount of land

acquisition we’re going to do, but there’s no reason to have 75 acres for a

1,350 and 1,600-seat high school.

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S. Kurtz Ms. Bergel, I believe that you had your hand up first. And then Mr.

DuPree?

J. Bergel I see that Dr. Hatrick was willing to take that on, or Dr. Adamo, or

anyone. I just wanted to say we’ve addressed some of these, Mrs. Waters,

if I may speak through you, or to her instead of through you. For example,

some of the things that have come into play are the environmental factors,

the storm water management, all of these things that we have to do with

the site now that we didn’t have to do even 10 years ago. Also, the

compliance of athletics with girls’ sports, boys’ sports. And sometimes,

you just frankly get a site like Heritage that can do what you need it to do,

whereas in other areas, you don’t have sites that can do that. And so that’s

why we have spent several meetings, I thought, coming up with this. And

even, I think – John had to leave – but coming up with even figuring out a

way to make sure that we were covering all of our bases, which is why just

the words “up to” I think was three meetings’ worth of language to try to

get there. So I do really appreciate Mr. Burton’s support in keeping things

the way we have at this meeting. And I do appreciate the effort that

you’ve put together, because this document does now show our program

capacity and everything very easily.

S. Kurtz Mr. DuPree?

R. DuPree Ms. Bergel hit on most of the key points, and I think that is, I mean we

have beat this up on about three or four meetings over the last year. The

key is “up to.” The fact is, yes, we will look at and possibly seek to secure

parcels that work under the limitations, the upper limits you see there.

That’s just the way it is. And in fact, but if we limited ourselves, we

might be excluding a pretty good site that’s just a little bit over a hard-line

threshold. I think Mr. Burton was absolutely right. I looked at the item,

and I think it gives enough flexibility that we will get the school sites.

Because at this point, as we know, there are not too many school sites

anywhere in the county that we will be considering for high schools. I

mean, it’s not hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of sites. So, we have

to make sure we’re looking at the right, we have the flexibility to look

within our range. And that was something that we have stressed

repeatedly. We look at a range. If a developer were coming in, yes, we

would like them to give us 75 acres because we would like the practice

fields to be on-site. But we’re not in that game right now. So, yes, we

look at whatever it takes to get the job done.

S. Kurtz Anyone else? Mrs. Godfrey, did you have a comment?

P. Godfrey I would just point out that students have come and come and come, and

their needs grow, they don’t diminish. At Loudoun Valley High School, I

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think at Loudoun County High School, and at Stone Bridge, we are unable

to serve the needs of those students on-site, and we have to go to the

expense of busing them to practice fields. And the inconvenience of

having them practice in areas where there are no lights. So there is a cost

that is associated with not having a proper-sized site, and that cost is

affecting our students in their plans for their future.

S. Kurtz Mrs. Waters, did you have any other points that you want to bring up?

L. Waters I see this as a losing battle, so I will carry on another day, another topic.

S. Kurtz And another topic. Okay. That said, I’m assuming the Committee wants

to take no action?

J. Burton Madam Chairman, I would offer up by consensus, you report back to our

Board that we discussed it and we are happy with the way things are.

S. Kurtz Okay. Thank you, Mr. Burton. I shall do so. All right. I think we have

pretty well covered, and we do not have time to cover Number 7. And I

would. And dinner is here, but that’s beside the point. During the

upcoming time before we meet in December again, Mr. Reed and myself

and Dr. Hatrick will need to meet so that when we re-visit the MOU, that

we can offer some sort of language for you all to vote on that implies a

policy. So, we did need to do additional work. Are there any other topics

anyone would like to discuss? If not, I’d like to adjourn the meeting.

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JOINT MEETING OF THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS AND THE SCHOOL BOARD

DECEMBER 10, 2009

ADMINISTRATION BUILDING

Members present: Sally Kurtz, Chair, Tom Reed, Vice-Chairman, Supervisor Jim Burton, Supervisor

Susan Buckley, School Board member, Warren Geurin, School Board member

Jennifer Bergel, and EDC representative John Wood.

Guests present: Dr. Hatrick, Superintendent, Loudoun County Public Schools, Bob Ohneiser,

School Board member, Chairman Scott York, Tim Hemstreet, County

Administrator, and Paul Brown.

The meeting was called to order at 4:05 p.m.

Kurtz: I call the Joint Meeting of the Board of Supervisors and the School Board to order. As our first

order of business we like to hear from the public. I have currently four speakers signed up and

this afternoon I’d like to limit your remarks to three minutes please. The first person is Leah

Parks.

Parks: My name is Leah Parks, and I am a Loudoun County resident and I have two children in the

Loudoun County Public School system. I’m here this afternoon to talk about the CIP. I

specifically wanted to address and applaud the work of the Ad Hoc Committee, them as well as

this Joint Committee, in looking at the school sites and as well as the school overcrowding in the

Ashburn, Dulles north area. It has come to my attention that there is somewhat of a lead at the

Loudoun County water site, and I wanted to specifically address that. I’ve been pretty clear in

my remarks previously that I think at this point in time in our economic situation, that we should

not be purchasing land at this time. Given all the things that I heard a couple of nights ago from

folks concerned about programs being cut out of the budget that seem to be very important, I

really that we should not spend extra capital in this phase. Similarly, I understand that there is

a possibility for leasing the land from Loudoun County water site. If we lease the land against

the operating budget, the operating budget affects our teachers. The teachers are the core of

the schools. We’ve got great teachers, and has been recently pointed out, we are not paying

our teachers in line with the teachers in the rest of the counties. So I do not agree or support,

nor does my community, using operational budget funds for this site. Thirdly, it is my

understanding that this same site, there is no other place for a water reclamation site within the

county. This is important note because where this site will be sited elsewhere is an issue. Our

county is still growing. We have another thirty-five thousand homes to build, and we need a

place to do this work. So, with those three reasons I urge you to please, as you consider the CIP,

put your monies toward the teachers (inaudible). We do need capital in the budget to fill the

high school, but do not need to also buy land.

Kurtz: Thank you Leah. Our next speaker is Kirsten Langhorne.

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Langhorne: Thank you. I would like to address need for your two boards to address what the future

Loudoun County should look like. There are two issues about which many of us are here today

and will be here tonight to comment on, school construction and operating budgets. Both are

controversial topics that evoke both passion and politics. I believe that the two issues frequently

both coincide. In the interest of time, I am going to list a few of the implications. Where schools

are to be built, they should be built in the most cost effective way possible. New schools

increase the demand on operating budgets. Those of us who are advocating for the construction

of new schools, also need to advocate for operating budgets that will accommodate new

schools without jeopardizing the quality of the education being provided. Since most of the

children who will be filling the seats of the new schools currently reside here, we’ve not

assumed that the increased operating budget will be supplied by new home buyers. If schools

become strictly neighborhood schools, economic disparities between the have and have not

neighborhoods will likely increase. This will have implications for the tax base. Another Ashburn

high school needs to be built and opened within the next four years. You do not need to spend

your time and energy engrossed in another land battle. Land is available. Make the decision to

commit county owned land to a new high school, put that battle behind you, and move on to

the critical budget discussions through which you will determine the future of all Loudoun

schools. Thank you.

Kurtz: Thank you Kirsten. Malanie Fondaco.

Fondaco: I’m here to speak on behalf of getting a new high school built somewhere in the Ashburn/Dulles

north area, and opening by 2013, in the fall. To do that, I really believe that we need to use land

that is currently owned. And we need to get started right away. Looking for other land, or

selling the ISA site for money to buy other land is going to delay construction, and that is an

additional problem. The high school need is so great, that I made this little spread sheet, which I

did not make enough of, that I passed around and just used as the current projections in the CIP,

and it shows you that if you add up all the seats in the Ashburn and Dulles north area, we could

fill a high school in 2013-14, and we could fill a second high school in 2016-17. I also did a

calculation for the middle schools, and that one shows that we could fill a middle school in 2017-

18. This one has some little fudging of the numbers, I suppose, because Stone Hill Middle

School is included (inaudible) three high schools, and currently the numbers that are included in

Stone Hill, of course, include kids that will be moving to MS-5 when it opens in 2011. And so I

backed them out of the numbers, but I can only use last years’ data because Dulles south data,

the break out, is not currently available. So I had to use last years’ projections and that got me

through 2013-14 and those numbers averaged about thirty percent of the Stone Hill population,

so I just used thirty percent, and projected it forward. They are a little fudgy but basically the

purpose of this was to show that we desperately need a high school, if not two, before a middle

school, and I don’t want you to forget that the Lansdowne community is still part of the Ashburn

area. We need a place to bring us back to. This whole process has been kind of hurtful, I feel, to

our community. The finger was pointed at us that we were the problem. We are fine with going

to Tuscarora, but we are worried about what kind of (inaudible) we are going to have from

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parents from Tuscarora in 2012 when their school is overcrowded and their saying someone

needs to go. Or 2013, or 2014 as it gets worse. It will be some kind of dezavou for us. So we

don’t want you to forget about us when you are looking at the numbers. We need to get a high

school open soon – 2013 – and there is no money or time to do that other than what we

currently have. Could I ask you a question about the CIP?

Kurtz: Actually Melanie, we don’t deal with specific question and dialogue. We listen to what you

have to say. Michelle Detweiler.

Detweiler: Good afternoon. Thank you. I will acknowledge I didn’t know until I got here that there were

public comments at this afternoons’ meeting, I had been busy writing my speech for tonight.

But I would like to thank each of you for the great work on both boards and this joint board, to

work together to get good solutions and good planning (inaudible) of Loudoun County. We

appreciate so much your recommendations and the votes of both boards, which strongly

endorse the work of the Joint Capital Needs subcommittee that helped us all to recognize and

acknowledge the pressing need for an elementary, middle, and high school here in the Ashburn

area. Of course there has been a lot of attention of late on the need of a high school north of

the Greenway, but I would like highlight the pressing need for a middle school and an

elementary school identified by the subcommittee. Interestingly, those two schools could each

be built for less than (inaudible) debt cap restrictions. Perhaps we could do that even before the

high school. But as you work for our area, we appreciate your interest on the attention of the

middle and elementary as well as the high school need in our area. Thank you.

Kurtz: Thank you. That concludes our public input. Let me acknowledge our committee members who

are here and other members of both boards who are attending. With us today is Tom Reed,

Vice Chairman, Susan Buckley from the Board of Supervisors, Jim Burton from the Board of

Supervisors, Jennifer Bergel from the School Board, Warren Geurin from the School Board, and

John Wood, from someplace in the county, mostly economic development commission. Also, we

are delighted today to have Ken Hemstreet, our new County Administrator who has joined our

committee this afternoon. And as ever, Chairman Scott York, Supervisors, Stevens Miller,

School Board member Bob Ohneiser, and also our two wonderful liaisons Dr. Hatrick, and Paul

Brown. Welcome everyone. What I would like to do for committee members, because you

have received two pieces of work, one that we will be working off today, and we also have just

received from the school board system, I guess that’s from Jeff and Kevin Lewis, and so you may

have to help us as we try to coordinate the language that you just handed out with our working

draft. You have in front of you a working draft. And you will know that it is a correct one if you

turn to page 21 and you see several colors of language. There’s green, and there is red, and

there gray, and there is blue on the next page 22. So if you have the multi-colored version, it is

the correct version. What I would like to do today is to take some things out of order. We have

already approved and have ready to go to both boards sections three and four. We have Section

1, that lays out the purpose of a document that we are working on. Section 2, which describes

the planning process, Section 12, which describes the public participation, and Section 9, which

we worked on quite a bit about co-location of facilities. I think that we are in a position,

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because there are no controversies generally associated with these four, moving to include

them in the document, and moving that to what will be approved to send to both boards.

Section 1 – Purpose, Section 2 – Planning Process, Section 9 – Co-location of Public Facilities,

Section 12 – Public Participation. If you all would like a couple of minutes to look at that, I’m

willing to give you about three. No new language in any those four. Everybody comfortable if

we take a vote here?

Hatrick: Would you like some comments for questions?

Kurtz: Generally I didn’t, but I’ll take it. I wanted to move, but that’s alright.

Hatrick: I know you do but in Section 1, the final paragraph which points us only toward Silver Lead

certification is not consistent with what the school board is considering in terms of design

criteria. And the Silver Certification compliance, its’ all changed, so this is not an accurate

description of Silver Lead for school buildings. The point structure is different, and the school

board is looking at multiple criteria in a policy discussion that they are having right now for

school construction. No just Silver Lead, Energy Star, and trying to take the best of each of these

standards that are being set, rather than only setting ourselves one target.

Kurtz: Well, if I look at the language here is says, “Design, construction and renovation of all Loudoun

County Public Schools will strive…

Brown: I need to remind the committee that this is the language that came straight out of the resolution

with the joint committee (inaudible) both boards. So this was actually by your committee’s

wording about what you wanted, not only the schools, but the county. Now, I agree with you

silver lead standards have changed, but this is actually straight out of that motion and resolution

that you adopted, so if you could make it more general, instead of being with specific points,

because I wanted you to know the source of this text.

Kurtz: And I would say that this is a living document and it will probably be reviewed next year. If you

are saying that this is not a base line or the striving isn’t a base line?

Bergel: If I may, we have a policy that was just brought forward to us by the Financing/Construction

Committee that we have had out in committee that has now come to full board as an

Information Item, and has not been approved by the board, but has opened it up because

Energy Star is the only national certification whereas Lead is not a nationally certified program,

so it’s because this policy is a new policy, I don’t remember the date that it came to us, was it

October? After we did this in Joint Committee and that’s what I think that Dr. Hatrick is trying to

address. So, you are right, it is living, but if we could make a note somehow that the board is

currently undergoing policy (inaudible) to suggest that this is already changed for us because it

is up for Action at our first January meeting.

Hatrick: I realize that these are guidelines, but I think some might say if you are not going for Lead Silver,

you are not complying with the agreement. And we may not be going for Lead Silver. We are

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not sure that that is the best way to go either from cost savings, or long term energy

consumption reduction etc. This only speaks to one possibility.

Wood: I have a question for Jeff. I’m not an expert in this certification stuff, but I am assuming that you

are?

Platenberg: I wouldn’t term myself as a expert, but I’m fairly knowledgeable.

Wood: Let’s put it this way, compared to me, you are definitely an expert. So my question to you, Jeff,

is if you have this language in as a standard, is this standard lower than the standard that you

are looking at as it relates to these items that Dr. Hatrick is pointing on the table?

Platenberg: They are different standards. I consider them lower to be honest with you, because the way I

view it is that a broader federal standard, a Energy Star standard is annually reviewable about a

comparison with building types that have to be certified by an engineer. So, to me, they are

more operational savings ongoing. They are tied to the EPA standards, so therefore, I believe

that they are a higher standard, if you will. The origin of the Lead program, which is a very good

program, was brought together by people who were members of the building community. Now

this has evolved because the environment was ripe for people to be concerned about the

sustainability, environmentally conscious, and so forth. But since that time, and it first came out

for commercial buildings, but since that time it’s evolved and kind of morph into that, and is

currently under review as well. We mentioned that even the point structure has changed

already to a hundred points. I do believe that the Energy Star program is much more beneficial

in the long term for tax payers. And I do believe that tied to the EPA standards is broader over-

arching federal embodiment. I think that it is a better program.

Kurtz: Alright, then I might make a suggestion and in order to move some base line here, perhaps we

just leave the last sentence in: The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors and the Loudoun

County School Board urged both budgeting and funding of public facilities by the Loudoun

County School Board and the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, to reflect cost containment

and life cycle costs. Meanwhile, in January or February, you all have a standard that you are

going to use, send us a copy, both boards can agree, we throw in a document at sometime

coming up. Everybody in agreement? Alright, let me move to delete on page 3, the last

paragraph, the first sentence, which is a very long sentence.

Geurin: Second.

Kurtz: I have a second for that. All in favor?

Bergel: If I may, I’m sorry, just a quick recommendation, Sally, because I still think that you could still

have that environmental protection that some of your board members and some people are

concerned about it, by saying that design, construction, and renovation of all Loudoun County

public facilities will strive not to have significant adverse effects on the natural physical

environment.

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Kurtz: Alright, I’ve thrown my motion on the Table, throw your motion on the table.

Bergel: If I may, may I make a Substitute Motion?

Kurtz: Absolutely.

Bergel: Okay, my Substitute Motion is that changes to the last paragraph be as following: Design,

construction, and renovation of all Loudoun County public facilities will strive not to have

significant adverse effect on natural physical environment.

Kurtz: I’ll Second that. All in favor? That motion passes 7-0. Alright, anything else anyone wants to

bring up for discussion?

Hatrick: We had a question on number two Ms. Kurtz. Over on page 5, the six year Capital Improvement

Program, and I think this may reflect what is in the General Plan, but in the first paragraph the

statement that public schools should be located at the focus of their respective attendance

areas and linked to adjacent neighborhoods by sidewalks or trails on both sides of roadways and

cross walks. That’s pretty restrictive and would not describe most middle and high school sites,

old or new, in the county. It is a goal for elementary school sites. I think that if there were some

language like to the maximum extent possible, middle and high school are regional schools, so

don’t serve a neighborhood or a subdivision. This language focuses more on elementary schools,

I think. And again, it depends on how you assume this document will be used. If it’s guidelines,

it’s fine, but if somebody at some point says no you can’t look at that piece of property because

there are no sidewalks, that would be different.

Adamo: The other thing that we have heard is if there are not people or residential units that are either

located adjacent to your school community, than it’s a poor choice for a location. And again, if

you look at what’s available from a land perspective, we have very few sites that would ever

meet that criteria.

Hatrick: For middle or high. Elementary is a little better, although that’s getting tougher too.

Burton: That we insert the words in general after should, should in general be located at the focus, and

that gives some flex ability and wiggle room.

Geurin: Second.

Kurtz: Alright. We have a motion that the sentence reads: Public School Sites should, in general, be

located at the focus of their respective attendance areas and linked to adjacent neighborhoods

by sidewalks or trails.

Bergel: I would make comment and the a possible substitute motion, because the first part of the

sentence, ‘Public Schools sites should, in general, be located at the focus of their respective

attendance areas,’ I think that that is the goal of any school site, you want to live in an

attendance area, but whenever possible, you want to link it to adjacent neighborhoods by

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sidewalks, so I would suggest that the first part of the sentence is fine, but after the ‘and’ say

‘and whenever possible linked to adjacent neighborhoods’, so that you are always focused on

getting in the middle of that respective attendance area whether or not is it linked by a

sidewalk, you are still within the middle of the attendance area.

Kurtz: Mr. Burton, do you accept that as a Friendly Amendment?

Burton: I think it is fine.

Kurtz: Okay, any further comment of this?

Platenberg: On page four, where it says (inaudible)

Kurtz: Can we clean up this issue before we go to your issue? Alright, Mr. York?

York: Question in the language. You are assuming, that we are going to pick a property to the effective

area that we are serving when the boundaries are not done until after you purchase the

property. So correctly it is a misnomer, Ms. Kurtz, until the school system decides the

attendance boundary, and then we go after the piece of property within that attendance

boundary. And we are going through that very issue right now with what is going on the side

with respect to the overcrowding in Ashburn. We’ve gone through it down in Dulles south. So

you can’t put language in that doesn’t occur. Until the boundary process is done first, you can’t

begin to proceed forward to finding a piece of land in that boundary district. Right now, the way

we do it is sort of happen stance, we get the property where we can, where we think, and then

the boundary lines are done after that, and sometimes the neighborhood that is closest is not

going to that school.

Kurtz: But what I think we are talking about here are planning goals, best practices that we hope to do.

I’m not seeing this as an absolute lock-in, but I would think that most times folks think that it is

kind of good planning to try and locate a school in the area where the students are going to be.

York: If it is a good goal, but just understand that’s not how we have done it, and until we get into the

future where the reserved happens, it is going to be very difficult to maintain the goal.

Hatrick: The language also, and I know where all this came from, it’s very specific, for example, you don’t

require builders to put sidewalks on both sides of the streets because VDOT will only maintain

one side, so to require us to build only where there are sidewalks on both sides of the street, I

don’t believe would be consistent with the county plan.

Kurtz: Let me read the sentence again as I understood it had been altered: ‘Public school sites, in

general, be located at the focus of their respective attendance areas and when possible, linked

to adjacent neighborhoods by sidewalks or trails.

Hatrick: You took out ‘both sides of the road way?”

Kurtz: Yes.

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Ohneiser: I don’t really care what you write because I think that the reality is what we do now we are

going to continue to do, but I really think that guiding principles would be valuable. And if you

are not prepared to dictate, that if we have sidewalks that join you to the schools to the

neighborhood, that they are used for walking, then we miss the point. If you are going to give

guiding principles, then you should direct that both boards agree that for all secondary schools

they should be designed that so within a half mile of that school, people walk to it. And

however you walk to it, whether a it’s a path, a fly-over, a tunnel, people walk there. That has

value because then we have to design it so that people can actually walk to it, and the buses can

drive to it. Belmont Station is a good example because you can’t walk to it because the buses

drive where the kids would walk, that’s way we need a sheriff there. So if you are going to give

guiding principles, then I really think that they should be long term operational. You should

walk to a secondary school if you are within a half of a mile, or a quarter of a mile. However you

get there can be however you get there.

Kurtz: Do you see that this sentence satisfies a long term goal?

Ohneiser: I think that it is bull shit.

Geurin: If this is a long term guiding principle, that’s one thing, but if it is a requirement, you are going to

have to change your county plan and require property owners to put in trails and sidewalks on

both sides of all the streets that VDOT requires them to build.

Kurtz: I scratched it out.

Geurin: That’s fine. The requirement comes from the County General Plan, not this document. This is

not a list of requirements.

Kurtz: We did not make this language up.

Brown: As you say, the revised general plan as you developing your projects is what’s going to be the

overlay for review of your projects, so the question is whether you want make reference to that

in this document or not.

Bergel: I was just thinking that that sentence could be taken out based on what Mr. York and Dr. Hatrick

said.

Wood: I have a question for the two staffs. I always assume that when things come up, at least with my

company, it’s Telos by the way, staff has reviewed it and would typically support it. Is that the

case here, or not, because I’m sensing that that is not the way it is here.

Hatrick: I think that it would be fair to say that staff might like a little more time to comment on some of

this and Paul is right, a lot of this language comes right out of the General Plan. When we re-

state it here though and make it part of these guidelines, we are sort of giving it a double dip

to it and I just think that as guidelines, if there were generalized more, they would be easier to

live with.

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Wood: So basically, since you don’t really have concurrence with the staff yet, now what is going to

happen is that the boards are opting to help out and maybe it’s better to refer it back to staff

until they figure it out.

Burton: I think that the sentence Amended by you is perfectly acceptable: Public school sites should, in

general, be located at the focus of their respective attendance areas and whenever possible,

linked to adjacent neighborhood by sidewalks or trails.’ How could anyone object with that?

Kurtz: Mr. Miller, do you have a comment that you would like to make?

Miller: I’m not going to be as colorful and Mr. Ohneiser, but I think that he and I are kind of looking at

this the same way. Dr. Hatrick basically just told us we all are going have some of these choices

out there and we are going to be stuck with how well they match this or how well they don’t.

And one of the things that really came through the exercise that we conducted with the sub-

committee is that you can talk about guidelines and criteria and what makes a good school site

and what makes a bad school site as long as you want, but when you go back on the ground and

look for places to build, there are only just so many of them, and some of them might comply

with this, and some might not, but we are going to have to build a school somewhere. I get

increasingly anxious about guidelines that reflect an ideal universe that we know that we don’t

live in, because we are going to build these things and if we build them in ways that don’t match

this, people who have ulterior motives or express opposition either way, to our choice of site

law at this in addition to come to us and say you can’t build it there because you told me that it

would comply with these guidelines, and then we will have the usual discussion about is a

guideline a guideline or is it a rule or is it bullshit.

Ohneiser: Well done well done. Another Pugamp.

York: I would hope, Madame Chair, that we would watch our language here in a public forum.

Kurtz: Mr. Burton has a motion on the table, and it has been seconded. Could I see a show of hands

whether you support that motion in the document or not. All those in favor, raise your hands.

Alright, that passes six – one.

Wood: I’m against it as well.

Kurtz: Alright, that’s five - two. That is something, that particular topic that we can bring up at the end

of the meeting.

Hatrick: Madame Chairman, is there is particular reason that it is going to go forward to the boards in

parts rather than as a complete document?

Kurtz: I guess that’s because I’m tired of it, frankly. We’ve been working on it for a year and getting

information, getting it all organized, getting it here, getting both staffs to work on it on a certain

direction, has been tough. It seems to me that , I know some members have expressed a desire

to move on to something else, Mr. Wood being one of those, moving on the 21st century

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education, so if we could pull a document in, continue to work on it at the pace we’ve been

working on it, that seem reasonable to me. I’d like to get something before both boards, and the

end of the year, seemed like a reasonable time. So I guess, Dr. Hatrick, that’s why I’m trying to

push it forward. This is not a term paper. It’s compiled from information that you all already

do and you had your policies in certain places, we were just trying to combine it all in one

document. And that has proven to be a little tough, so unless the committee tells me that they

want to keep it over into the next year, I’m going to suggest that we work on through this and see

what we can get to both boards. Alright, are there any further edits to any of this?

Bergel: I have just a comment and want to say quickly that I am not comfortable sending it to my board

until it’s (inaudible) and I may be a minority vote, but I just would like us to have finished because

of reading it as a document rather than a (inaudible) I’m agreeable to just plugging along.

Kurtz: Does the committee want to vote on sending it all as one complete document or sending what we

get done today to both boards?

Burton: What do we have left to do?

Kurtz: Unfortunately, what we have left to do are some of the more contentious things, frankly. The

sections listed on the agenda. Let me review with you what we have done. We’ve only approved

two sections, and we have a total of twelve sections. Were we able to move through Sections 1, 2,

9 and 12 quickly today, we could have gotten back to both boards. And I figured that Section 5,

which is Capacity Thresholds to Trigger New Schools on page 21, was going to trigger a lot of

debate. Then we have Student Enrollment Projections. All new language to look at that has been

handed in recently. And now an Amendment to come in today. So, you can see why I’m thinking

this could go on another year. Now, back to the topic, do you all want to keep it, or do we want to

send forth what we get finished today. It’s up to you.

Burton: If I may? I think the committee talking together for the past year has been useful. There have been

shifts in outlook on both sides, and I think that’s been helpful, useful, whether it has been

documented or not. There have been some changes in perspectives. I see changes in how we are

going about dealing with future schools and site sizes, whether we have agreed formally to adopt it

or not. Most important to me, the dialogue should continue and what appears to be a meeting of

the minds in some areas, it would be nice to have (inaudible). I’ve already written it down in my

mind to say that we agree on this and that.

Kurtz: So are you telling me that you want to keep the document and not move it forward?

Burton: It matters not to me, because there are certain sections in here that are more to me than others.

The one you mentioned on capacities, projections, and sizes of schools, and sizes of sites, we’ve

already agreed to some kind of understand on language that says up to we now have more than

one size high school and one size middle school that we can think about and talk about. To me that

is tremendous progress. I think that both boards have in essence accepted that. I don’t know Sally.

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Buckley: I think that there is a lot of value in continuing on and addressing the issues in this document. I

think that our colleagues on both boards will have a difficult time voting for something without

seeing the larger agreement. We have the benefit of having that agreement, they don’t. So what

would recommend at this time is if we go through the sections, we could take a vote to not deal

with them any further like we have on Section 2, that passed, and why don’t we move on and go to

Sections 9 and 12, or our time might be better used to move on to different sections. Let board

members talk about the policy aspects of it. Give direction to staff at the end of the meeting to

implement those policy directives and just kind of go along that way.

Kurtz: Alright, Mr. Geurin, where are you?

Geurin: I think that I agree with Mrs. Buckley.

Kurtz: Ms. Bergel?

Bergel: Let’s keep going.

Kurtz: Mr. Reed?

Reed: I agree with Ms. Buckley. What I think that we would want to do, is looking at our schedule is look

at the idea of completing this work by our February meeting. We have a deadline, the we have

something more to work for. If you don’t have a deadline, you meander all over the place. We

meet on February 11th and right now the topic is TBD.

Kurtz: Okay, does that sound good to folks? It would make me happy to have a deadline.

Wood: I would just say that I concur with Tom, I would just say one thing that’s it arbitrary to end at six.

We just work until we get it done, if your objective is to get it done.

Burton: We have another meeting today that is probably going to be more exciting…

Wood: I don’t mean today.

Ohneiser: What Tom is saying is an example, if we have the meeting done by February, we should say in our

own mind we are going to work until we get it done. If it takes us a hour to get it done, it takes an

hour, if it takes six hours to get it done, it takes six hours.

Buckley: Let me just add to that. I think that if we are committed to doing this, it is going to require some

time outside of the committee meetings, were we do spend the time looking at the language,

getting in touch with Sally and Tom, giving our input, so that we are not trying to do all the work

right here in the committee meeting. We need to discuss it, we need to propose ideas, working

with staff, so that when staff does come back with what we think that we have directed you to do,

there’s consensus in the room. I think that we will move along a little bit quicker.

Brown: I’m going to have to disagree with you John, because it’s not staff’s position to be developing

policy. We are to be drafting it in the form of two political bodies retooling. And one of the hard

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parts for us is that it is uncomfortable for us to put policy words in your mouth without having

direction on the general tone on where you want to go.

Wood: I think just the opposite. I think that we need to be relying on listening to the experts who have the

knowledge. You guys as school board members, supervisors and school board people can defer in

some part, with at least a recommendation. You can argue around a recommendation.

Brown: Let me take capacity triggers as an example. County staff is not comfortable speaking and directing

to school staff about their (inaudible) meetings and when they need to trigger and build their next

school.

Wood: Of course, but I would turn to Jeff and say what did you do in Fairfax? Because in Fairfax, they went

through a lot of growth, and I’m sure that they had a board that had all kinds of discussion about it.

We could bring that to the table, and say that this is what they did in Fairfax, and we can decide

whether it applies to Loudoun, as an example.

Brown: No, I was just using that as an example of something that we are not going to reach a consensus on

because that’s outside the spear of our world to say ‘Oh yeah, that sounds like a good point,” when

from our financial side I could argue that their capacity trigger is too low. I have enough school

districts that wait until 105% capacity before they trigger the next school. That’s a sticky wicket,

there has to be some over lying policing direction about the comfort level of the policy makers

about what direction you want that to go in. We could work on a consensus narrative to bring back

for everyone, but I think you put us in a difficult position.

Buckley: But I think the process is that staff has to bring us the information, just what we’ve discussed, what

the pros and cons, what the different options are. When that topic is on the agenda, staff has to be

prepared to bring that information to us. We have the policy discussion at the meeting, and then

we give you direction to come up with the verbiage to implement that policy, it comes back before

the committee, we see if you have done that, or tweak accordingly, and then vote to move on, and

go on to the next section.

Hatrick: And I would say with that particular item in mind, triggering, I think that school staff absolutely

ought to make a recommendation of when we believe from an instructional stand point, a new

schools need is triggered. Now, you might decide that from a financial standpoint, you can’t afford

that. But I think you ought to know as part of your decision making process, when does a school

get so crowded that we can no longer assure parents and others that their kids are getting the

same quality education they would get if it were not so crowded.

Buckley: I would agree and I would suggest that we move on to that topic and let’s hear the information and

recommendations from staff. I’ll be interested in from Mr. Brown as to the financial aspects of that

recommendation, and that’s how we get the discussion going.

Kurtz: Seems reasonable to me. Alright, have we pretty well decided that the word smithing for Section

12 and Section 9, that the committee members will do that outside of this particular time, and get

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your language changes that you think needs to be to Mr. Brown, so that we have this before the

next meeting? If so, then I’m a happy camper.

Reed: Vetted by both staffs, would be a better term. We are making changes and we want the staff to

vet what we are going to propose.

Kurtz: Alright, as Mrs. Buckley said, let’s go to Section 5 which is one that we have not reviewed at the

committee. On page 21 is where you see green language dealing with that. And you also see

additional input from Mr. Platenberg. Can you explain the difference between the two?

Platenberg: Yes. The bottom line is that the green that you have on page 21, if you could draw a line through

that and the supplement that you received that says Section 5 (inaudible).

Geurin: The trigger is 115%.

Hatrick: The trigger is 115. We have to get to the last line to find that. I just realized that.

Kurtz: Okay. Excuse me?

Wood: Which is spitting distance at the end of the day.

Burton: Okay, we are back to the discussion that we had earlier about how much of a mandate the State

gives, is it an absolute mandate or is it a general guideline?

Kurtz: Let me remind you that these are guidelines that these boards agree on. It’s not the code.

Ohneiser: Can I ask you a question about guidelines?

Kurtz: Yes.

Ohneiser: I read Section 5,6, 7 and 8, and I challenge you to show me where the guidelines are for expanding a

building, not renovating, not adding a trailer, not building a new building, but where you describe

with any degree of detail the guidelines for expansion, because we have a whole slew of schools that

make a lot of sense to expand. Some of them, the walking community can’t even get to them

anymore, like Little River.

Burton: It’s right here.

Ohneiser: There’s no details on expansion. No guidelines.

Burton: It says when additional capacity is needed.

Ohneiser: That’s the four words, that’s it. That’s all it says. That’s not a guideline.

Kurtz: Well maybe that is something that the school staff needs to come back with, what are your

guidelines for expansion.

Ohneiser: There need to be details about expansion.

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Bergel: If I may, we did speak to this also in our Curriculum/Instruction Committee, and it’s been spoken of in

our Finance & Construction. And in order to expand, some of the facilities will probably be expanded

in the future as soon as we can afford a full day kindergarten program. There is expansion capability

on some sites. Staff is evaluating, if I understood our directive correctly, they are going to tell us

which facilities can be expanded and which can’t. Right, Mr. Platenberg?

Platenberg: Well, we will take a look at that.

Bergel: Right, and you are going to speak back to us so that we can bring that into this committee, at some

point, right?

Platenberg: The questions have come up time again about expansion, capacity , availability.

Bergel: Can we stay on Section 5 right now, with the triggers?

Kurtz: Yes.

Ohneiser: Just sharing an observation that expansion is not detailed in your guidelines.

Kurtz: Okay, thank you for the information. We are back to Section 5, does anyone have any comments on

that language?

Buckley: I think that it would be helpful if staff gave us a short briefing on what this means, what went into

your decision, what the practice has been, what some of the issues that are involved in using the

percentages you have listed here. And then I’d like to hear Mr. Brown speak from a financial

perspective and see if we can get the discussion going.

Hatrick: I think that, in general, we would tell you that our recommendation for the 115 % and you want to

have the school ready to open when you are at 115% is experiential. We have built forty some

schools over the last fourteen years, and what we have found is that you can over load a school, but

you reach a breaking point. When you are suddenly doing classes in the hallway, and there is no

longer a teacher work room, and you’ve used the available space you’ve got. And our experience is,

is that if you take the program, and we’ve looked at several schools to verify this, if you look at the

program capacity of a school, you start stripping out the things that take up space, because we move

Special Ed classes to other places to increase capacity, but if you get to about 115%, that’s when we

are starting to overflow kids to other schools because we can no longer accommodate them within

the school context. And so it’s not magic. I mean in one place it might be 110% and feel a lot more

crowded than somebody else at 117%, but it’s in that range at about 115%. Stone Bridge, this year,

is at 121%, and I think that the school board has just taken actions which, for the most part, reflect

the unhappiness with that situation. And of course, we are opening a new school next fall. You can’t

just peg a number. The other thing that we looked at is what is the effect on the core facilities,

because if everybody is going to eat lunch, you have to look at how many lunch shifts do you wind up

running. And in an elementary school, where the kids start school at ten of eight, are the first kids

starting to have lunch at 10:15 and the last kids aren’t eating until 1:15, in order to get all the kids

through the lunch room. You look at the library. The cafeteria, it turns out as we talk to principals, is

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a major choke point, if you will. Are new schools, not our old schools, have wider corridors that

accommodate more students. They have better circulation patterns that accommodate more

students, but there are some facilities within the school that reach a limit. The cafeteria seems to be

first among them. So, we took that experience that we’ve had, we talked to principals, I think you

went out and talked to principals about when did you feel like you were at the point of no return, and

that’s how came up with 115%.

Kurtz: Could I ask an additional question about your use of the word program capacity, because the other

places that I’ve looked at when they start dealing with capacity, just listen to this sentence: Long

range capital planning will be based on a target of 95% utilization of permanent elementary, middle,

and high school seats. I’m having difficulty understanding building capacity and program capacity.

Hatrick: Well that’s probably why you see the other one at 95% because it’s 95% of, if you will, an abstract

number. An architect assigns a capacity, the State assigns a capacity for a school. We say that we

build new schools for 875 elementary children, that reflects the programs that we put in to those

schools.

Kurtz: So your number that you say, I’m building for 800 children, let’s say, that reflects 800 seats in that

school?

Hatrick: Yes Mam, but the State would count those seats differently. Now it doesn’t reflect 800 seats in the

school because if the State says to you that you can put as many as 30 children in a classroom, then

the capacity goes up. Program capacity goes up and down based upon the class sizes that we have

agreed we want to have. Are we using, for example right now, we are trying to bring our autistic back

into the school system rather than sending them to private schools in Fairfax and elsewhere, we may

have an autistic classroom that has 5 children in it, but it is using a regular size classroom. So the

State says to us, literally, the State says that every regular classroom you build, we will rate at 25

students. We rate that classroom at 23 students because that’s the class size that we strive for. But

when we take that room and put an autistic class that has 5 children, all of a sudden, that capacity

has gone down. So what we try to say with program capacity is this business of describing a 70

passenger bus, is a 70 passenger bus is a 70 passenger bus. If you put 3 kids in a seat, it’s 70

passengers. But school buildings don’t work that way. Depending upon the programs that are in the

schools, the needs of the program, they go up and down. We increase capacity in some of our

elementary schools right now by moving special education programs out of the school, so that we

can replace a class of 10 children, with a class of 23. It artificially inflates the capacity, but the

children who maybe should be there, aren’t there. It’s just not a fixed number.

Kurtz: Can I say that I find this sentence, ‘The program capacity represents a 90% utilization of the facility

necessary to accommodate the multiples classes…”, if I’m reading this a part of john q public, I’m

wanting to know why I built a new for x number of students and all those millions of dollars and you

are only using it 90% of the utilization. So I’m wondering why you aren’t it more for utilization.

Maybe this needs to be cleaned up so that people can understand what it means.

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Hatrick: The references to middle school and high school, Ms. Kurtz, not elementary, if you are looking at the

document we submitted today, and that is because you don’t get a perfect mix. If we went into a high

school and counted every classroom as having 23 students in it, that isn’t the way the schedule works,

you may only have class that only has 15 students in it, so across the country, we didn’t invent this

standard here, across the country, as you schedule middle and high school, the standard that most

principals are held to is really 85%. We hold our principals to 95% because you just have to account

for the fact that there are fluctuations in use in the building. I don’t know any other way to say it. But

we didn’t invite it. This is not a Loudoun County invention.

Bergel: Will it be helpful for us to reference that then? Is there a document that references that, Dr. Hatrick,

where we could say that nationally that 85% is the program capacity, but here in Loudoun we use

90%. Would that help that, do you think, because then I would make it clear in that sentence that it is

not us determining 90%, it’s actually us saying that we can’t operate in (inaudible).

Hatrick: Or maybe, Ms. Kurtz, maybe you hit the nail on the head. Maybe we don’t need to be talking about

90%. We just need to be talking about what the program capacity is. If you go to the CIP, you find a

chart for every school that shows exactly how we calculate the capacity of that school based on its’

use. So maybe rather than having a generalized statement that needs a lot of explanation, we ought

to just say the program capacity is, and then see the current CIP for the calculation of program

capacity for each school.

Kurtz: But you remember we had a major fight here, or not a major fight, a discussion, all the numbers came

out from all the schools. I remember adding them up myself, it took me a while, and I was thinking,

gollee, look at all these hundreds of seats that we already paid for and are not being used. So I think

this needs something here.

Hatrick: You also know that this is a 550 square mile county, and when you have the seats in Lucketts, and you

have the kids in Sterling, that may not be a match. Or you have the kids in Middleburg, you know,

we’ve been through this before. We can’t gross the numbers up for all the schools.

Kurtz: Hopefully this document was to clear up so we don’t have these continued, every change of the board,

it’s the same fight. And Mr. Burton, you’ve been in on that little disagreement.

Burton: Yes, you can make the argument and when you talk about just program capacity, you are not in

essence not talking about the building capacity. And if the program changes in one school, it changes

the program capacity numbers. But the numbers of seats that are actually physically available in each

building, that’s a pretty fixed number.

Wood: Sally, I have a very specific question. Jeff I said earlier and I want to make sure that I am accurate. So

when you do the math, this says that you will be in actual capacity of 103.5% which is 115% times

90%, so that means that you are going to have 3.5% more seats than the school can actually take. And

that’s going to be at the time when you are going to saying move on to a new school, open up a new

school. Is that how it was in Fairfax? I want to make sure that I am doing the math right.

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Platenberg: I don’t totally understand where you are going with that.

Wood: If you read the language: Program capacity represents the 90% utilization of the of the facility

necessary to accommodate the multiple class changes, etc., and the it says: Additional school facilities

are triggered and planned to be open at such time in the future when a particular facility will reach

115% of the program capacity. So again you have the (inaudible) term up above of program capacity,

which says that it is 115% times 90% which is 103.5, so my question again is that when you said that

Fairfax is 117%, was it 117% an absolute, or was it like 1.03.5%?

Plantenberg: I apologize I don’t know the answer to that. The only thing that I get confused on is I’ve never

multiplied percentage time percent. I got what you were headed to and I know what you are asking,

and I don’t recall the answer.

Hatrick : Well I think that Fairfax uses in general John, and I lived through some of the Fairfax overcrowding as a

student, I think that Fairfax uses the same scheduling guidelines that we do. This doesn’t affect

elementary schools by the way because there we have an absolute number, it affects middle and high

schools. Two major changes between Fairfax growth period and ours, when Fairfax was growing very

rapidly, you could pull a trailer up on the site with the bus garage wrecker, put a few cinder blocks on

it, put a set of steps, hook it up the electricity and the PA, and you were good to go. Now that’s no

longer the case. No you have meet all the ADA requirements, you know they have to be permanently

located. So the ability to just create a sea of trailers and take it away, is much harder now that it was

then. I think their trigger points probably very much like ours. I know that their scheduling points

were because when I was in charge of Guidance, I know that was a long time ago, but we met with

Fairfax Guidance people, and they were using the same, and when I was a principal, I met with Fairfax

principals, we were using the same kind of guidelines.

Ohneiser: Ms. Kurtz, I think that might make it a little clearer is the school board provides the guidelines to the

Superintendent on the class size averages that he has to meet, he balances that capacity through the

system. We do not match the State’s standards of quality. We have a higher quality of school system.

Wood: I totally understand that. I do.

Ohneiser: Because they don’t have the option, of course, as we have. The capacity is dictated by our qualitative

level, not absolute.

Wood: I’m just looking at another good system asking what another good school system does.

Burton: This is just a guideline, and we will forever until the end of time argument about capacity, program

capacity, building capacity, so why don’t we just accept the guidelines.

Kurtz: Is that a Motion?

Buckley: I agree to extent that program capacity, Dr. Hatrick explained that’s going to change and that there is

multiple reasons for that, but I think that the issue here goes back to when the trigger occurs. And this

whole exercise is about saving money. And so is the issue using trailers, which Dr. Hatrick just talked

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about, is that really the underlying issue here as well as the trigger. Can we come up with an

operational plan that would involve trailers that would expand the time before the trigger in order to

save money. And I know that you are shaking your head no. and let me just add, in the best case

scenario, nobody would want to do that, but it might be time that we might have to look at other

options. So that’s the question first.

Hatrick: I’m only shaking my head no because unlike the elementary school, you have to add a significant

number of trailers to a high school to effectively increase that high school’s capacity. Westfield went

through this. Westfield opened at the same time as Stone Bridge. Within a couple of years, Westfield

had a sea of trailers outside, and you know that they could have re-boundaried, but there was no

appetite to do that in Fairfax County, so they let Westfield over crowd and over crowd, meanwhile a

few miles away, you had empty seats, until the new South County High School opened, and then they

did the re boundary work. You do just pull four or five trailers onto the site, you probably have to pull

twenty onto a high school site to have an significant impact, maybe buy you an extra year. And those

are pulled on at a cost now of about one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars apiece. So you wind up

spending two million dollars to buy a year, maybe two years. At the end of the day, you still have build

a new school, so the question becomes is it better to spend that money on the trailers, most of which is

set-up costs by the way, not the cost of the trailer itself, or is it better to go ahead and build the new

school? We use trailers, I mean we’ve got them at Broad Run, we’ve got them at Valley, we’ve got

them at Blue Ridge, but we try to use them just to try and get us to the next school. I don’t think

realistically you buy more than a couple of years by adding trailers, and you pay a lot of other prices in

order to do that. That’s just kind of the bottom line.

Ohneiser: There is a second answer that I just have to give it to you. If you really have a financial emergency, and

you want to look for a way to save money immediately, you can’t change the average, and you are not

going to save money by adding trailers, you established a minimum class size that for a period of time,

there will be no classes below a certain level. So the utilization per teacher is set at a level, you can’t

have eight kids in a class, other than autistic and Special Ed, I’m excluding the Special Ed, but normal

classes, so then we are forced to combine Latin III, Latin IV, ASL 2 & 3, you have to have 25 teachers

and 25 kids, that’s the way you get the capacity raised immediately. It’s not fair because it does

compress some kids that only have a few kids in class, but that’s how you do it without cost short term.

That’s one way to do it, if you want to alter that guideline. I ‘m not suggesting that you want that to

happen, but that’s how you save money immediately without adding capacity, because there are a lot

of classes, especially in the ESL community where they are reducing, and it’s a decision we make. I’m

trying to answer your question.

Buckley: No, that’s a good point. That’s an option, and that’s why I think that the committee should be looking

at is options, and then weighting the pros and cons. That’s something that, at least in my presence, had

never been raised before, and I think you’ve made a point.

Hatrick: With all due respect, may I say that there is not agreement among everyone on that suggestion.

Geurin: Exactly correct.

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Buckley: No, but I think that’s the point, there is an agreement starting off, but in the fiscal situation that we

are in, we have to look at our options. There’s going to be no best option. There isn’t. But we have to

weight or pros and cons and then decide what we are going to do. Fiscal situation is getting worse, it’s

not getting better.

Hatrick: But in the case that Mr. Ohneiser sights, we don’t assign teachers to middle and high schools buy the

size of the class. We assign teachers based upon a formula. X number of kids, you get a teacher. It’s

up to the principal and his/her staff to figure out how are you going to use those teachers. Sometimes

when the enrollments are low, what they do is say is that they will only teach this class every other

year, so that we get enough enrollment to have a decent size class. Sometimes we make a

commitment to having a class, Mandarin Chinese being a good example, because that’s a program we

want to start, the board’s invested in. Some classes lend themselves to combinations, and so if you

look right now you will find Latin 3 & 4 being taught together. You will find advanced level courses

being taught together. It’s much more difficult to combine Mandarin Chinese 1 & 2 into one class,

because of the needs of the kids is so intense at the level at which they are being instructed. I guess

that all I’m saying is that we are doing that right now. If a principal says look I want to have twenty five

classes that only have ten kids in them, so I need extra teachers, we say no. What you get is an

allotment of teachers based upon your total student enrollment and you work that out. And so you

walk into any of our high schools now and you may find a first year foreign language class with thirty

kids in it so that you can support a fourth and fifth year combined class of eighteen, because the

average class size has to be twenty-five. That’s done right now, I guess that that is all I’m trying to say.

Kurtz: Okay, were we discussing this on Section 5, or have we move on to Section 7?

Burton: I’d like to offer a comment on 5, 7 and 8. All three of them appear to be related to each other. They

are somewhat intertwined. Having just received this just this afternoon, I myself would like a little

more time to study the three of them and try to figure out how they work together.

Kurtz: Okay, I think that that’s a good idea because if you look over on number 7, in the colored thing that

you got, Modular Classrooms and Cottages, were provided as information for alternative facility

models to address capacity.

Hatrick: They still are, Mrs. Kurtz.

Kurtz: But it’s not in the one you just handed us.

Hatrick: This 7 only refers to the first paragraph. The 7 only replaces the green. The blue stays. All that

discussion of Modular’s stays.

Kurtz: Okay, then I would suggest that you come back with your policy and when you do throw in the

Modular Classrooms and Satellite Campuses. What triggers you to go to that mode. I was

wondering…

Hatrick: Same with 8. For everybody, this language replaces green only. We probably should have printed it all

in green, but we are trying to save money the cost of printing.

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Kurtz: I would request that you come out with your policy that lets everybody know when it is that you make

that decision to drag in the (inaudible) first.

Hatrick: Okay.

Kurtz: Anything else in 8 that anyone initially would wants to talk about?

Burton: No except in my mind it does address the notion of when additional capacity is needed for major

renovations, or even minor renovations. Renovations are an option.

Kurtz: And I believe that you brought up you thought maybe that expansion, whatever policies you have for

expansion, should come under this one?

Ohneiser: I think I do. There are situations where would analyze expanding a school that has nothing to do with

constantly renovating it. It’s because there is the need for extra capacity. Tolbert is overcrowded.

Selden’s had an addition. Little River is an interesting challenge with the walking community can’t fit

into the school, the school is below the 875 level. Mercer might feed HS-7, so Mercer needs to be a

larger middle school. We can’t find land in northern Ashburn. Farmwell and Belmont Ridge Middle

Schools perhaps should be expanded. The expansion decision is different than: we have an old school

we have to fix the HVAC, we have to fix the roof. I’m just saying that there is different guidelines,

there is different criteria. And the justification maybe just cash flow purposes for delaying a new high

school.

Kurtz: Alright, then I would suggest that we re-title Section 8 so it says: Renovations of existing schools and

expansion of existing schools. And then come back with the information that says what triggers you all,

what your policy is, when you expand.

Hatrick: Again, if you want to get a flavor for this just look in the CIP and, is it still there for each school? The

dates of renovation?

Adamo: Yes.

Hatrick: If you look in our adopted CIP, you will see the date of construction, and then you see a series of dates

after that, each of those dates after that is the date that the school was expanded. A great many of our

schools have been expanded over the years.

Kurtz: And so you have a mental….?

Hatrick: It comes for various reasons. Absolutely.

Kurtz: So that would be helpful to have written down here.

Hatrick: Okay. Sure. Program addition is a key example. When the county added Kindergarten to elementary

school in 1975, many of our elementary schools had additions built to accommodate kindergarten. If

we go to full day kindergarten some day, we will need to expand because we will need to double our

kindergarten rooms.

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Bergel: I would almost prefer that renovations to existing schools be one and adding on whatever title you

were using because to me they are very separate. For example, on this year’s voter referendum in

Fairfax County, renovations to the tune of over a hundred million dollars to renovate one of the high

schools in Fairfax, our high schools new construction don’t even cost that at this point in time. In

fact, we are building two high schools for about that price tag right now. So I think renovation needs

to be from the additions. And another thing is that we as a committee have agreed not to go too

large with our school buildings. And if we are not careful about how we add on, then what you could

have is a real disparity throughout the County of this here, this here, while for so long many of you as

policy makers have fought so long to keep consistency throughout the county so people don’t say that

this pocket doesn’t go because of this and this pocket because of that. And that was part of our

discussion in the spring, where we don’t want to be saying this part of the County only gets this, that

why we work toward those ranges. So I just would like to caution us moving forward as well.

Kurtz: On second thought, perhaps Alternative Facility Model to Address Capacity and Expansion of Existing

Schools more fit together.

Reed: So where would you throw in, because you see sometimes we look at schools and we decide well

renovations is a certain price, expanding is only going to go so far, so we abandon and essentially

demolish and re-build.

Kurtz: Well just explain how you make that decision and that’s fine by me. Whatever.

Buckley: I think that we have to move the discussions further. One option is to have you bring back the policies.

What I would suggest, or at least put on the table for discussion, is that I would like hear your

recommendations as to the changes in policy to address capacity, looking at expanding schools,

looking at using modular trailers. And when that information would come back or if you come and say

that you don’t recommend any changes to your policy, then you have to prove to us that the way you

are working now is the most cost efficient way. So then we all, both boards, are in a position to

looking at the pros and cons of each and how it impacts quality. Because without taking that

additional step, the next meeting you are going to come back explaining your policies. And I agree

I think you had great policies for a different fiscal situation that were in. But I think that we need to

move the ball further down the field. I’m looking at some recommendations as far as changes, not

that we will go there, but let’s get that information and do the cost benefit analysis.

Wood: And at that point, the only reason why I joined this committee in the first place, and we’ve never

gotten there, is to talk about how do we take the education system, and where it is today, to world

class? And that means investment. So, where I am coming from is in, a way the same place, but it’s a

different place. You are sitting there worrying about the fiscal situation that we are sitting in, and I’m

sitting here saying to myself, how do I get mathematicians, engineers, technologists, scientists, and

artists, which I need to build my company and our business ecosystem? Because I think that we have a

disaster on our hands coming, at least I think, from the standpoint of not having enough of those

people. So I hear you loud and clear. I’ve been sitting here now for a year and a half, while we go

through capital construction costs issues and so forth, which is all very interesting, but at the end of

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the day, business people, out there, are very interested in making sure that the school system goes

from here to here. With all due respect to you guys, and I understand all of the issues that we have

been dealing with here, but there other ways of looking at the situation. Like magnet schools. Like

charter schools, like contract schools, like private schools. School boards don’t like to hear about

stuff, that’s competition. But at the end of the day, that competition will help, I think, drive the cost

down for the Supervisors, on the one hand. Now the other hand, if you say to the Superintendent,

hey buddy, we are going to give you a hundred million bucks to go build the best school there is,

period, so that we don’t send our kids to Thomas Jefferson. Instead we send them to someplace in

Leesburg or Loudoun. So you will see if you have that kind of conversation, if you open up the market

to competition, god forbid, you open up the market to competition, people will start sending their

kids to those private schools, that means it’s a cost avoidance for the system. There’s a school right

next to my building, pastor (inaudible) has a school there. Parents pay eight thousand bucks a head.

There are 750 of them. 80% of them live in Loudoun County. That means that we don’t have to pay

for these kids. These people still pay taxes. Do that math, 750 times eight thousand. Our in our world,

I think you said it’s fourteen thousand. 750 times fourteen thousand is a lot of money that we don’t

have to pay. And if you encourage that kind of an ecosystem when you’ve got competition, we are

going to see the stress levels on your school system come way down fast, a lot faster than you are

talking about right now. And then if you say to the school system we are going to add a differentiator

for you bud, even though we are going to encourage competition on the one hand, on the other hand

we are going to tell you we want a world class school system. We are going to tell you that we are

going to invest in that. And that will make him hopefully say ‘yeah, I’ll support that.’

Burton: You leave him with the children who can’t afford to go to the private schools.

Wood: The funny thing is that the kids that go to the private schools, and that’s the other thing that I found

amazing, 75% of them are not Christian, they are Muslin and Indians.

Burton: But I find this irreverent to my comment because the ones who go to private schools can afford to go

to private schools. Our public school system has a requirement to educate every child within the

county, whether they have any money or not.

Wood: But my point there is, Jim, that whether they have money or not, there are lots of people who are

choosing to pay both sides. They are choosing to pay taxes on one side, and they are choosing to pay

tuition separately on the other hand.

Hatrick: Well, I don’t think that there is something that I’m aware, John, that discourages the establishment of

private schools. The Ideal School opened up in Sterling and they did it in a flex space. They charge

eighteen thousand dollars a year to go to school there, and people enroll. I don’t think that there is a

dis-incentive. I mean the short answer to Mrs. Buckley’s question, nobody wants to hear it is, let’s just

adopt the State’s standards for class size, and we will have thirty kids in each first grade, and up to

thirty five kids in second, third, fourth and fifth. But that’s where the big money savings is. It really is

not in trailers versus bricks and mortar.

Woods: That’s not cost effective. That’s reducing cost, it’s certainly not improving our costs.

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Hatrick: No, obviously not. But, if the criteria for change is to be cost effective, that’s the quick way you get

there. I know that you don’t want to do that.

Buckley: I don’t mean to imply that at all.

Hatrick: Right, I know you don’t.

Buckley: Superior education has to be a priority. But I just think sometimes that information has to be reviewed,

it has to be analyzed. I don’t think that we are in a situation to keep doing business the same way. And

what I think we find frustrating is sometimes different options aren’t preventive.

Burton: I have to say one other thing in response to my good friend John Woods, who lives in my district, had

he been at the Excellence in Education Banquet last Sunday and evening, and listened to the

accomplishments of those students who were honored, I would find it very difficult to criticized the

quality of the education in our system.

Wood: I am definitely not criticizing as my kids go to this school system.

Burton: I get the impression that you are not happy with the product that is coming out of the school system.

Wood: I can tell you in no uncertain terms Jim, we do not have enough people graduating with degrees in or

interested in mathematics, engineering, technology, science, period.

Brown: More money wouldn’t necessarily change that.

Wood: Sorry?

Brown: More money is not the way to change that.

Kurtz: Alright, I have to interrupt our lively and interesting discussion. I do want to make sure that Mr. Brown,

Mr. Platenberg, you will be coming back with the information that has been requested back. And what

do you think it is, spout it out to me.

Hatrick: We will come back to you.

Kurtz: I doubt that!!

Hatrick: I can commit the staff. We will come back to you.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:30 p.m.

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JOINT COMMITTEE

NEW BUSINESS - AGENDA ITEM #4

LOUDOUN LYME DISEASE PREVENTION AND AWARENESS

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Date of Meeting: March 20, 2012

#10 BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

ACTION ITEM BOARD MEMBER INITIATIVE

SUBJECT: Loudoun Lyme Disease Prevention and Awareness ELECTION DISTRICT: Countywide CRITICAL ACTION DATE: March 20, 2012 STAFF CONTACT: Juanita Tool, Staff Aide to Vice Chairman Clarke RECOMMENDATIONS: Vice Chairman Clarke, Supervisor Reid and Supervisor Higgins recommend Board approval of this item ______________________________________________________________________________ BACKGROUND: Lyme disease is a serious health care endemic in Loudoun County. Lyme is a tick-borne illness caused by an infection of the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria transmitted through tick bites. In 2011, there were 261 reported cases of Lyme in Loudoun County. In 2010, 223 cases were reported, representing approximately 18% of the cases reported in Virginia that year. Despite mandatory reporting of Lyme disease cases to the Virginia Department of Health, experts say that Lyme is underreported because of the vast array of symptoms that lead to misdiagnosis and the fact that doctors forget to report Lyme cases to the state. Loudoun County is at the epicenter of this health care endemic. Not only do ticks transmit Lyme Disease but they also transmit a long list of co-infections such as Ehrlichiosis, Anaplasmosis, Babesiosis, Tick Paralysis, Tick-borne Relapsing Fever, Tularemia, and many others. Many individuals and families in Loudoun are suffering from the effects of this devastating disease. DISCUSSION: After months of gathering information and speaking with Lyme experts, staff, and citizens, Vice Chairman Clarke, Supervisor Higgins, and Supervisor Reid are putting forth a Resolution and Proclamation Recognizing 2012 as Lyme Disease Awareness Year as well as a 10 Point Action Plan to Mitigate Lyme Disease in Loudoun County in an effort to bring this health crisis to the forefront. The plan is as follows:

1) Create a Lyme Disease Commission, appointed by the Board of Supervisors and made up of Loudoun citizens and health care professionals with an acute interest and expertise in Lyme disease prevention and education. This group will be charged with implementing the 10 Point Plan with the assistance of county staff as well as enlisting the help of citizens and organizations whose focus is already on Lyme disease.

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2) Create a Lyme survey, as a follow up to the 2006 Lyme Disease in Loudoun County survey, to determine the current key risk factors for contracting Lyme disease as well as any other relevant statistics that will enable a better determination of where work and funding should be directed.

3) Add a high-profile link to the front page of the Loudoun County website that will direct viewers to the County’s web page which contains comprehensive information on Lyme disease prevention and treatment.

4) Develop a set of educational materials targeting different age groups, including elementary schools. Work with Loudoun County Public Schools to provide students with educational materials that can be disbursed through their health classes as well as consider sending out information on Lyme in children’s backpacks, as has previously been done. Suggest having a contest for school-aged children to create a tag-line (for example, “It’s Time to Know about Lyme”) and a logo for this effort.

5) Organize a series of Lyme Education Forums within the County that include a panel of experts that can field questions from the public regarding Lyme, provide educational materials to the public as well as help facilitate the formation of Lyme Support groups in underserved geographic areas of the county.

6) Work with the local newspapers to place a series of monthly articles concerning Lyme

once a month for the first year, with quarterly articles thereafter. These articles would keep the public up-to-date with advances in prevention and treatment, inform citizens of new resources that are available to them, as well as publish a spraying schedule for public parks.

7) Establish a list of doctors that specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease and provide this information on the County’s Lyme webpage in addition to any new educational materials.

8) Develop information for homeowners on the costs and benefits of spraying their yards for ticks.

9) Provide a Lyme education awareness briefing to all children enrolled in Parks and Rec outdoor programs. There are approximately 10,000 children enrolled in these outdoor recreation camps.

10) Study the cost and feasibility of implementing two types of insecticide applications that

will immediately begin to mitigate the spread of Lyme disease in Loudoun: spraying county-owned properties and licensing and placement of 4-poster deer feeders on private and/or public property. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) states that broadcast spraying of areas of concern once a year, reduces the tick population by 65%. a. Spraying County-Owned Property: In addition to studying the cost and feasibility of

spraying county-owned properties, immediately begin a pilot program that targets six western parks that have been identified and selected based upon their small to moderate sizes, geographic locations, and logistical ease of spraying. The suggested parks are:

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Franklin Park Lucketts Community Park Mickie Gordon Memorial Park Nell Boone Park Philip Bolen Memorial Park Woodgrove Park

b. Four Poster Deer Feeders: Work with the VA Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (DGIF) to study the feasibility of developing a county pilot program for the issuance of permits for the application of acaricides to deer via four-poster devices for the purpose of controlling the tick population and reducing the spread of tick-borne Lyme disease. This program has already been initiated by the Executive Director of DGIF as a follow-up from legislation introduced during the General Assembly session. The program should explore the cost, feasibility, and safety of placing four-post feeders on rural county owned property in addition to assisting private citizens in obtaining and legally gaining permits to safely locate them on their own property. The '4-Poster' device is specifically designed to kill species of ticks that feed on white-tailed deer and especially those for which white-tailed deer are keystone hosts for adult ticks. As deer feed on the bait, the design of the device forces them to rub against pesticide-impregnated applicator rollers. The rollers, in turn, apply acaricides to their ears, heads, necks, and shoulders where roughly 90% of feeding adult ticks are attached. Through grooming, the deer also transfer the acaricides to other parts of the body. Studies have shown that use of four-poster technology has resulted in the control of 92 of the 98% of free-living tick populations in areas around the devices after three years of use.

FISCAL IMPACT: Vice Chairman Clarke, Supervisor Higgins, and Supervisor Reid understand that there will be a financial cost associated with the implementation of this plan that is yet to be determined. It is their preference that the Lyme Disease Commission implements this plan with assistance from County Staff from Parks and Rec and/or the Loudoun County Health Department. It is essential that the Commission, currently existing Lyme Support Groups, and members of the public that are dedicated to Lyme awareness work together to help solve this health crisis. Orkin Pest Company, who previously treated Algonkian Elementary School property for tick control, has provided an estimate to treat six public parks using Talstar P®, a professional, EPA approved insecticide that contains the active ingredient, bifenthrin. Talstar P®, would be applied to transitional areas (where normally mowed grass meets taller grass, hedge rows, wooded/shrub lines etc.). This pesticide would not be applied to areas that are within 200 feet of streams, ponds, lakes, or other areas of water. The product will not be applied if it is raining outside. ALTERNATIVES: N/A DRAFT MOTION(S): I move that the Board of Supervisors pass the Resolution and Proclamation recognizing 2012 as Lyme Disease Awareness Year, and I further move that the Board of Supervisors direct the County Administrator to implement the 10-Point Plan to Mitigate Lyme Disease in Loudoun County in an effort to combat Lyme disease, and

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I further move to direct parks and recreation staff to solicit requests for quotes for the spraying of a bifenthrin-based insecticide by a Virginia licensed pesticide applicator at Franklin Park, Lucketts Community Park, Mickie Gordon Memorial Park, Nell Boone Park, Philip Bolen Memorial Park, and Woodgrove Park and to authorize staff to enter into an agreement with the lowest bidder to spray at these sites this spring (2012). ATTACHMENT:

1) Resolution and Proclamation

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COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

COUNTY OF LOUDOUN BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

Resolution and ProclamatioN

“Recognizing 2012 as Lyme Disease Awareness Year”

WHEREAS, Lyme disease is caused by the spirochete (a corkscrew-shaped bacteria) called Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted by the black-legged tick. Lyme disease was first identified in North America in the 1970s in Lyme, Connecticut, the town for which it was named. This disease has since been reported from many areas of the country and its spread is essentially global, having been reported in 30 countries on 6 continents and several islands. Thus, Lyme disease is not "rare" and 25% of its victims are under 15 years of age; and

WHEREAS, Lyme disease mimics many other diseases and is called the second "great imitator" after syphilis. Patients are often misdiagnosed with more familiar conditions, including chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's Disease, and Parkinson's disease, for which there is no cure, only palliative remedies. Manifestations of cognitive and memory impairment from neurological Lyme disease are commonly misdiagnosed as depression or other mental conditions; and

WHEREAS, prompt treatment with antibiotics during the early stages of Lyme disease can cure the infection and prevent complications of progressive Lyme disease. If diagnosis is delayed, treatment can be difficult and accompanied by progressive debilitation, and recovery will take much longer. Lyme disease inadequately treated can lead to death; and

WHEREAS, the lack of "Lyme literate" physicians in clinical practice in Loudoun County has resulted in frequent misdiagnosis and under-treatment of patients. This marginalization has led to broken families, financial hardship, job loss, increased numbers of people on disability, and death. We have a public health epidemic in need of greater resources to bring a greater awareness about Lyme; and

WHEREAS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made Lyme disease a nationally notifiable condition in 1982. Over 125,000 cases have since been reported nationwide; making Lyme disease the most frequently reported vector-borne disease. In 2002, the number of cases reported increased by 40% over the prior year to 23,763 cases. The CDC estimates that only 10% of Lyme disease cases are actually reported; and

WHEREAS, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors is initiating a plan of action to address Lyme disease prevention and treatment through prevention and treatment education targeted toward all age groups in addition to conducting field spraying at targeted public parks: and

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors hereby proclaims the year of 2012 as Lyme Disease Awareness Year in Loudoun County and commits to mitigating the devastating effects of Lyme Disease on the citizens of Loudoun.

__________________________________________

Scott K. York, Chairman, At-Large __________________________________________ __________________________________________ Janet S. Clarke, Vice Chair, Blue Ridge District Eugene Delgaudio, Sterling District

__________________________________________ __________________________________________

Geary Higgins, Catoctin District Shawn Williams, Broad Run District

__________________________________________ __________________________________________ Suzanne Volpe, Algonkian District Ralph Buona, Ashburn District

__________________________________________ __________________________________________

Ken Reid, Leesburg District Matt Letourneau, Dulles District 92