001I would like to call the meeting the Prince William County School Board order approval of the agenda motions now in order for approval agenda Miss um wall I moved at the Prince William County school board approved the meeting agenda as recommended do I have a second Mr chairman of four seconds any discussion please vote all in favor raise your hand any opposed no opposed motion passes unanimous moving on to motion Ender closed session moving on to emotions or Miss wall Mr chairman 3711 and 2.2-3712 the Prince William County School Board enter closed session for the following reasons one to discuss with staff the appointment transfer release assignment and promotion of specific officers and employees pursuant to Virginia code section 2.2-3711a1 two to discuss and consult with legal counsel regarding requests for religious exemptions pertaining to
002specific students under Virginia code sections 2.2-3711 A2 and 8. three to review a disciplinary matter for a specific student that would involve the disclosure of information contained in the Scholastic record for the individual student and to receive legal advice regarding same as provided by Virginia code sections 2.2-3711a2 and 8. four to discuss with division Council and staff actual or probable litigation and specific legal matters involving specific staff and students under Virginia code section 2.2-3711a 7 and 8. five to consult with staff and legal counsel regarding the legal requirements and procedures for collective bargaining by School Board employees which requires legal advice and guidance as provided by Virginia code sections 2.2-3711a8 and 6 to discuss and receive briefings by staff members related to the security of school facilities the safety of persons using such facilities and
003actions taken to respond to such matters where discussion in an open meeting would jeopardize the security of such facilities pursuant to Virginia code sections 2.2-3711a 19. do you have a second Mr chairman I second sorry report seconds any discussion please vote you can go ahead and vote on the screen vote is seven yes one absent roster motion passed moving on to a closed session no that's it right that's it okay at this time the Prince William County School Board will move into closed session and return in price for one hour foreign [Music] okay the Prince William County School Board will now re-enter uh Open Session and we have on action a closed session certification on the agenda 8.01 Miss wall Mr chairman I move that pursuant to Virginia code section 2.2-3712 a closed session of
004the Prince William County school board meeting of September 6 2023 be certified by adopting the following resolution now therefore be it resolved that the Prince William County School Board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge one only public business matters lawfully Exempted from open meeting requirements were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification resolution applies and to only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard and discussed or considered by the school board do you have a second Mr chairman um any discussion please vote is it coming yep the vote is seven yes one absent Ralston motion passed moving on to closed session action items emotions in order Miss wall Mr chairman I move that the Prince William County school board approved
005the appointments and releases of specific employees as presented in closed sessions do I have a second Mr chairman Mr Seconds any discussion okay please vote the vote is seven yes one absent Ralston motion passed okay moving on to the next action item as well Mr chairman I move that the Prince William County school board approved the requests for religious exemptions in case numbers re 23-1 through re 23-15 do I have a second Mr chairman a second any discussion please vote the vote is seven yes one absent Ralston motion passed moving on to 903 motions in order Miss wall Mr chairman I move that for the reason programs departments some APD the letter of 2023 the Prince William County school board approved smapd's recommendation to approve the early readmission of student Ms 23-166 to Prince William
006County Public Schools do I have a second Mr chairman um second any discussion please vote the vote is seven yes one absent Ralston motion passed moving on to 9.04 emotions in order from McGuire Woods to provide legal services for specific matters as directed by the board and division council do you have a second a second Miss Jackson seconds motion any discussion please vote vote is seven yes one absent Ralston motion passed okay thank you that wraps up the closed session action items at this time we'll stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and um before I do that I'd like to introduce you all to our newly elected student representative um joining us tonight on the diocese is Bella aversano who is a senior attending Gainesville High School we also have tonight's student Representatives Fernando morante
007here this evening is the senior at Forest Park High School in arts and all our alternate student rep Jackie Garcia senior at Osborne Park High School is with us as well um Miss adversano can you please lead us in the pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible in Liberty justice for all sorry about that I screwed up in my script so let me let me let me let me reintroduce them properly okay let me go back here just happened so again tonight on the diocese who will be serving this evening as our student representative is Bella aversano who is a senior at Gainesville High School thank you Bella for joining us we'll hear from her later we also have
008student representative Fernando morante where's Fernanda right there she is from Forest Park High School a senior there and then all our alternate rep Jackie Garcia senior at Osborne Park High School thank you very much for joining us and you'll be hearing from them over the course of this year and we truly do welcome all of them and we enjoy working with them as well okay next to our first thriving Futures focus of this school year I welcome everyone to the first one and before we begin though I would be remiss if I did not share an outstanding collaboration uh between Michelle Garcia who was a Woodbridge high school graduate and current Prince William County Poet Laureate and our Communications and professional learning departments the video debuted this summer at our administrators conference the Triple E
009conference to the amazement of our staff the video excellently presents as Dr McDade would call it our why and serves as our powerful reminder of our Collective purpose and so I now invite each of you to watch the video and it is titled the value of a tassel foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] pwcs means that I'm ready to go out into the world and to pursue my dreams and what I how I want to change the world it's September 2005 the first day of kindergarten I'm wearing light up velcro sneakers that sparkle like Tinkerbell's fairy dust mom calls me her big girl plants a kiss on my cheek and waves from the curb I try my hardest not to cry I'm being brave my new teacher is nice she has a gentle voice and kind
010eyes she tells us you can change the world you can be anything you want to be I think to myself I want to be everything I want to be a Disney princess and an astronaut and a librarian the day will fade from my memory but I won't forget what I heard that morning I can change the world I know I want to and I know I will that tassel to me is going to mean a new page now turn it's going to mean that I'm going out to advance like everybody's being taken care of by the teachers principals you know staff of the school but how do they react and now they are left on their own where nobody's holding their hand and so I think that's really what that task is going to mean
011to me now I'm going to start a path that's going to really show you what I'm made of 16 now and in over my head is complicated there is talk of life after graduation I'm terrified of the future crystallizing right before my eyes each day more concrete taking shape becoming real I've determined that I want to be a writer saying it out loud makes me weak in the knees but I do it anyway to my English teacher Mrs K as she sets up a display for our high school's annual career day I don't know why I pick that moment to say it but I do in one moment of Reckless bravery I tell her I want to go to college to study writing I want to be a writer I prepare for her to laugh
012or respond with maybe you should pursue something more in demand something that automatically pays well but she opens her drawer and places a blank black and white composition notebook in my hands she says go for it I say okay [Music] in my memories now everything Mrs K said to me in reply went along the lines of go for it I had a long way to go I have a long way to go but I thought then and I'm thinking now I'm going to show you what I'm made of the value of a tassel to me is being able to step into the Adult World knowing that you've already accomplished something to be able to step forward into a new world with new opportunities harder opportunities but know that you already have something that's yours the
013value of a capsule represents hard work and success [Music] it's graduation day and Pomp and Circumstance Cascades from the stadium speakers heartbeats Ricochet off the metal bleachers packed with a proud beaming faces of our loved ones this is it there's a vacant dorm room waiting for me at my dream University four hours from here my childhood bedroom is packed away in cardboard boxes it's the end of an era but I'm old enough to know that there is joy and Beginnings to in this shapeless gown an awkward cap I find myself speaking quietly to the little girl inside of me who once dreamed of becoming something you did it I whisper you're being brave like you promised it's in a tassel for me it's the comfort of my kindergarten teacher's voice telling us five-year-olds you can
014change the world it's Mrs K's insistence that I go for it it's the composition notebook I still keep on my nightstand to write in when I want to remember why I ever even started it's permission and encouragement from my parents to relentlessly pursue what sets my heart on fire to grab it with both hands and leap forth with confidence my tassel is my own but it exists because of the hands that held mine as I took the first steps because of the teachers and mentors who listen to my voice on paper and in person who made me feel heard seen and known I can change the world I know I want to and I know I will the value of a pwcs tassel Limitless [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] thank you that was a wonderful poem
015written Again by Michelle Garcia the Woodbridge height our Woodbridge high school graduate and current pwcs poet Prince William County Poet Laureate and so um just very proud of this work our students are doing out there congratulations to the class of 22 who just left and we're excited or 23 and we're excited to launch this school year with that inspirational video I think if maybe we can have communications make that available on the website as well for others to take a look at that well thriving Futures Focus everyone is an opportunity to highlight the exemplary work being accomplished in our schools that fulfill our vision that every student will graduate with the knowledge skills and habits of mind necessary to create a thriving future for their themselves and their Community we dedicate this time during our
016meetings to recognizing students staff members and schools that have earned an honor award at the state or national level we appreciate how these honorees have positively represented Prince William County Public Schools and the school board is proud to recognize them publicly for their accomplishments tonight our first two spotlights shine on our four Project Lead the Way 2022-23 distinguished schools Battlefield High School Garfield High School Patriot High School and Woodbridge High School these schools are among only eight high schools in Virginia to receive this honor a Project Lead the Way distinguished program is a recognition that celebrates a school's commitment to helping students own their education by increasing student access engagement and achievement in their programs in other words a distinguished Project Lead the Way School teaches the knowledge skills and habits of mind necessary to
017create a thriving future for themselves and their Community we begin with the representative of the Gainesville District Vice chairwoman Jennifer wall it is my pleasure to recognize Battlefield High School's Project Lead the Way program for their recognition as a 2022-2023 distinguished School Dave David huckstein is certainly currently serving as interim principal at Battlefield high school and we are fortunate to have Project Lead the Way teacher Mike sputic here with a few program participants so at this time I would like to invite Mr swedic to say a few words actually with one participant it looks like yeah I have with me Lauren McNeely who's uh one of our great students here at Battlefield in a project project at the way program and I just want to say that I'm proud of all of our students proud
018of our teachers and uh thank you for the honor thank you Mrs wall and congratulations Battlefield High School um I will be speaking for Miss Ralston who represents in the absco district to recognize our next school the neapsco district is proud to acknowledge Garfield High School as a Project Lead the Way 2022-23 distinguished School in attendance we have principal Matt Matheson and Project Lead the Way teachers John Ruff and ardenia Lewis at this point I may I may have a member of the team to share a few words principal Mathis thank you Dr Motif I'd also like to recognize uh our assistant principal Tiffany Gresham who supervises our CTE programs which includes our outstanding Project Lead the Way team uh just wanted to first off thank Dr McDade and the board for their uh long-standing
019commitment to this outstanding program Project Lead the Way it's been something that Prince William County has been dedicated to and it's something I'm passionate about as well as an outstanding opportunity for our students to you know in alignment with our strategic plan uh you know be college career and trade ready graduates on day one when they leave our care and go off and and start their future so this is an outstanding program and something that again we should continue to Foster in all of our schools so again thank you very much and uh you know on behalf of Garfield High School I want to congratulate our outstanding team of teachers and our outstanding students on their work uh and earning this recognition thank you wonderful thank you principal Mathis next we have Mrs Adele Jackson
020of the Brentsville District who will introduce our next awardee thank you draculate the Branchville district is proud to recognize Patriot High School as the 2022-2023 Project Lead the Way distinguished School principal Dr Bishop is here tonight with a few Project Lead the Way students Stephen Lasko Ruiz Nicholas certain I'm so sorry [Music] can you say it for me so I can learn it I am really sorry I want to make sure I get it right Chris sent you David Frost and may Dr Bishop from Patriot step forward and please share a few words thank you Dr Latif Dr McDade members of the board thank you for recognizing our Project Lead the Way program Stephen David and Nicholas are all members of the program Stephen is a senior so he's a four-year completer and plans to
021go to Georgia Tech we're hopeful that that comes through for him we are happy with the development of our program as it's existed since we opened in 2011 and develops critical thinking skills habits of mind as well as communication skills which aligns directly with the Prince William County strategic plan so we thank you for this honor tonight we appreciate the recognition [Applause] thank you principal Dr Bishop congratulations once again to Patriot High School Miss Lily Jesse of the Occoquan district will recognize our final um Project Lead the Way awardee Miss Jesse thank you Dr motif the Occoquan district is very proud to recognize Woodbridge High School as a distinguished school and the project leads away for 22 2022-23. tonight we have the principal Heather Abney assistant principal Brian carbach karenback and the Project Lead the
022Way teachers Carlos Castro Tara of hilly and Adam Fredericks Mr Castro also known as The Voice would you please share a few words on this honor thank you very much ladies and gentlemen um by uh I was going to say something more flowery but a week ago literally a week after school started I got this email from our graduate to graduate in 2022. if you'll bear with me while I read the first paragraph be quick hello Mr Castro this email is long overdue but I wanted to say thank you for the incredible experience I had in high school through Project Lead the Way and all the things you did to prepare us for continuing in engineering freshman year last year was in many ways a breeze since working with CAD Arduino circuit and all the
023technical drawing and visualizations that we did was already so familiar some principles of engineering knowledge came into handy also when we did a Balsa Woodbridge challenge last year and my partner and I actually won and broke the school's record for maximum load wait uh Max of blow to wait the maximum load of bridge with the weight ratio this is the kind of stuff we've tried to pair our students for all these schools here before you are working hard to get our students ready for the Next Generation the designers the next generation of Engineers the next technical generation we are thankful we're grateful for your support we hope that we can continue counting on it and well as we keep preparing our students to become the next generation of innovators the next generation of designers thank
024you very much excellent thank you Miss Jesse and congratulations Woodward height Woodbridge High School and I think we should know why Miss Jesse calls him the voice if you didn't hear it in his voice he's got a great voice great radio voice and I think I think if I'm correct correct me if I'm wrong he's the only one of all high school graduations who announces every single name of every single student that crosses that stage there are no turns in that that school he does it all thank you Mr Castro uh congratulations again to all four of our Project Lead the Way distinguished schools and to all the principals staff and teachers for all the great work you do and the time you commit during school over and above school and the work you do
025really does inspire all of us and we're really excited to have you all here um and then I think I have one more one more final uh acknowledgment this evening from Mrs Lisa zargapore the Kohl's District I believe you have the next honor Missouri thank you Dr Latif the U.S Department of State and the Fulbright foreign scholarship board announced early this August in this uh I can't talk today announced early in August that the Charles J Colgan Senior High School science teacher Lori Ann Pollock is the recipient of the prestigious fulbright's teachers for Global classrooms program award Mrs Pollock was selected by a presidentially appointed 12-member board to participate in this program the world's largest and most diverse International educational Exchange program Mrs Pollock has been an educator in Prince William County Public Schools since
0262012 and has taught physics at Colgan high school Under principal Dr Timothy Healy since August 2020 as a Fulbright honoree she joins the ranks of other distinguished participants who have been included in nope as oh good good grave I'm choked up Lori I'm just joking as a Fulbright honoree she joins the ranks of other distinguished participants who have also included Nobel laureates Pulitzer Prize winners and leaders from across private public and non-profit SEC non-profit sectors such as heads of state judges ambassadors cabinet ministers and University presidents congratulations Miss Pollock would you like to say a few words good evening Dr Latif and Dr McDade and members of the school board I am honored to be selected as a Fulbright candidate I am going to be going elsewhere over the summer and we are just starting
027our cohort of people I think that it is very appropriate that Dr healy's video that you showed about changing the world he showed it to our faculty um is exactly what our Fulbright group intends to do we want to change the world and we do that through Global Connections with our other counterparts and education across the world and one of our requirements is that we bring it back to our school so we have a one-year commitment after our we return that we can share our information and Lead classes and create all kinds of information for you all to look at too so thank you again for recognizing me tonight it is truly an honor foreign colleagues of Mr Paul MC please stand in recognition as well so we can recognize them very good thank you
028so much Miss Pollock um we're very excited and and congratulations again um so I would like to request the honorees to come forward for a photo with the school board let's start with Battlefield high school first I miss uh I missed your text oh yeah yeah Miss Dr McDade please thank you Dr T well congratulations again to our Project Lead the Way distinguished schools Battlefield Garfield Patriot and Woodbridge senior high school we're excited about the work that you're doing and I just want to reaffirm our commitment to all of our CTE programs we recognize that CTE provides really strong Pathways post-secondary Pathways for our students and so we're happy to have the work that you're doing and that it's being reverberated throughout the school system and we're going to continue to invest in our CTE
029programs also want to congratulate Lori Ann Pollock um fun fact not only is she the recipient of the Fulbright teachers for Global classrooms program award she's also the president-elect of the Virginia Association of science teachers so we're excited uh to have our very own Prince William County Public Schools teacher as the president-elect for Virginia so congratulations to you on both fronts congratulations to you all we are extremely proud of the work that you're doing in fulfilling our mission and vision for Prince William County schools okay let's do the photographs now thanks Diane let's start with Battlefield high school first breakfast Garfield [Applause] try to take a picture [Applause] foreign [Applause] thank you foreign okay everyone again thank you very much for that and I um um thank you Dr McDade for those great comments before
030we took the break for the pictures moving on next we will head into adoption of the consent agenda which is 12.01 at this time I'll ask for a motion to adopt the consent agenda Miss Walt do I have a second Mr chairman Miss Williams a second um I just okay uh any any discussion please vote my computer signed off so I'm signing back on here um sure yes I'm voting yes the vote is seven yes one absent Ralston motion passed okay moving on to all right moving on to Citizen comment time those citizens who've signed up in advance with the clerk May address the school board this evening when they're called to the podium the assistant comment period for regular school board meetings is one hour and citizens may speak on the agenda items or
031other topics to remain to the operations and the policies of Prince William County schools please use proper decorum and manners while at the podium or you will be asked to step aside we ask that the audience please be respectful of each speaker and refrain from any clapping cheering or jeering to avoid disruption in the meeting if you do not do so the board will recess I'll ask the room to be clear to restore public order tonight we have 20 citizens sign up to speak when I call your name please come to the podium state your name and address for the record I will call up the first five if they'd like to come on up and grab a seat up front we have Jane Coburn Maggie Hansford Carl greeton Aileen Devereaux Beverly Thompson Jane Coburn
032first good evening superintendent McDade and members of the board my name is Jane Coburn and my address is on file with the clerk I am one of the faces of pwea my husband and I are both employees of Prince William County schools and together we support our family of four with the division's party team sits down at the table with our pwea team they're bargaining the contract that will determine my salary my protections and my working conditions pwea is not a faceless nameless numbers on a worksheet where people who are counting on you I've been an educator for 25 years 20 of those years have been spent here in Prince William County schools I've given a huge chunk of my life to this profession and to the school division and now I'm at a point
033in my career where I'm seven years from being able to retire and I'm counting down because we reached an untenable point in teaching and the career that I love has become so hard that I often have thoughts about leaving and never more so than in the past three years but I'm holding on because of collective bargaining because getting a fair contract is my hope that I can keep doing what I love so when I read the derogatory comments made by the chairman of this board to the media about collective bargaining comments that disparage the process and undermine the dedication and hard work of the collective bargaining team for pwea I was angry and frankly disappointed no one on the board has observed the process and no one on the board spoke up to contradict the
034negative portrayal that Dr Latif made this board and the superintendent have put barriers in place to make the process of collective bargaining more difficult time and time again pwea has done everything that was asked plus we achieved 50 plus voter participation something I can guarantee no single member of this board could do in their own elections now we need the board to step up and to ensure that negotiation is happening in good faith Hardline tactics from a union busting lawyer closing the bargaining room so that employees cannot see and the media cannot see what's truly happening and then making untrue statements to the media about what's going on during the sessions makes employees like me wonder why don't you value me enough to respect this process your highly paid lawyer told our pwa bargaining team
035exactly how the division team is bargaining when he said this quote the needs of the employees do not supersede the wishes of the superintendent end quote let me repeat that so you can really all hear it quote the needs of the employees do not supersede the wishes of the superintendent end quote that is a pretty clear set of priorities how can we as employees feel valued when it's so clear that the negotiating team is not bargaining in good faith I'm looking at the board especially the former Educators on the board to prove that statement wrong tell your team to commit to negotiating in good faith because collective bargaining is Our Hope and without hope we don't have a reason to keep going thank you Maggie Hansford hi my name is Maggie Hansford my address is
036on file with the clerk I want to first start by thanking our Educators it's not easy starting off the school year with almost 500 vacancies in our schools and I want to personally thank my children's Educators thank you from our family to be able to teach our children and my hope is is that these teachers are able to stay and they're able to live here and work here so I'm here because Dr Latif your comments in the Press are inaccurate their lies and if you were there during the bargaining session if any of you would come you would know that so I want to share with you what it looks like in this room because you all have a responsibility what it looked like in the room the first few sessions where Educators did come
037with a contract we did and we were told no because your team needed more rules your team wanted the doors closed your team wanted to hide we wanted the doors open you all have Diana gulata saying that you care about the taxpayers when educators are just merely asking for a livable wage well here when we are in that room we want taxpayers to see it we asked for that we asked for over the 11 000 Educators who believe in their contract and want to see who is negotiating what who is asking for what who is rejecting what we want them to see your team said no your team shows up to say no so please don't say that you wish Educators showed up we did we're not the ones saying that we don't have time
038for this we didn't say that we've showed up every single time and we've showed up prepared ready to bargain a fair contract and this is not happening and Dr McDade I'm publicly asking you the team shows up how you want them to show up I need you to ask for civility I need you to ask for them to show up and work with us we can't keep doing this there are people's families lives at stake people deserve a quality of life your staff deserves a quality of life your students deserve fully staff schools and a transportation department that's fully staffed ready and able to pick up all of our students I'm asking you all to show up on September 12th you believe in collective bargaining you support collective bargaining come show us Carl greeton foreign
039good evening and welcome back I'm Carl gretton of the Gainesville District well has the Prince William County School Board decided against the Virginia Department of education's guiding principles which are respect parents values and beliefs deferred parents to make the best decisions for their children and keep parents informed about their children's well-being will the Virginia governor defend Public Schools based on your violations hands off our kids is your decision a form of state-sponsored child abuse the Prince William County school board has made the decision to allow male born students to participate in girl Sports and to enter girls bathrooms you as a school board will have to make the right decisions you are setting Prince William County up for many problems with only one percent of the population as trans decide for the other 99 percent
040of the student population girls are now fighting for fairness just because other localities have made the irresponsible ruling as Prince William County going to follow those decisions toward destruction you are bowing down to hypocrisy and Hysteria there are at least eight other counties in Virginia that have read rejected your stance why does Prince William County always have to follow Fairfax County regarding the issue of trans and locker room showers the solution is to have previous gender boys wait until they get home to shower have you also thought about overnight field trips what sports will have an impact of previous gender boys playing in girls Sports field hockey volleyball basketball swim and dive track and field soccer softball lacrosse just to name a few is a decision from The Prince William County School Board ready to
041take on Title IX do you think it is fair the biological boys take scholarships away from Girls the solution is easy start transgender leagues these leagues would be like Paralympics and Special Olympics as Billie Jean King says trans youth deserve to play and Thrive I am adding correct in the proper leagues if students want to change their gender pronouns then this should be reflected in their student record if parents are not allowed to see their their child's record then you may have opening up yourselves to a constitutional amendment Amendment lawsuits Portland Oregon has made the decision that students can cheat skip homework and not show up to class is this what Prince William County wants get back to the basics of learning and to get scores higher do not lower standards to make scores easier
042the bars should rise stop the nonsense with racial and social justice Thomas Jefferson is now ranked fifth one two years ago they were the top high school in the county country if the Prince William County School boards want to act on what is right you need to stand up and reject the notion of student shutdowns mandatory vaccines and masking we see that this has caused so many mental illnesses in the last two years refused to participate please remember that fauci's science was wrong reverse your maniacal decision regarding the trans group and drain the swamp and get rid of the County's diversity inclusion and Equity division how can you support child mutilation and not ban underage transgender surgery thank you Mr gritton thank you Arlene Devereaux good evening I'm Eileen Devereaux a parent from the Gainesville
043District I stand before you today to speak about certain Prince William County employees that fall short and ultimately fail students in regards to positive climate and culture learning achievement for all and organizational coherence last week I spoke to African-American mothers who shared their experiences with Western area County Schools I also previously heard from children these statements happen just like school year teachers not recommended African-American children to Extended classes despite grades black children wrongly accused and put off school bus but white student who did it was not teacher orchestrated a slave ship reenactment in class as white students laughed and mocked teachers would not allow African-American students to take retakes but allowed whites child was merciless bullied with no action from Administration but when child finally responds the child was punished without due process Child Called
044monkey by substitute teacher in front of peers children are given appropriate IEP 504 accommodations but punished without due process children accused of wrongs but denied due process coaches tell their black children not to try out for coveted spots on sports teams counselors discouraging black children from taking any advanced classes coaches misplacing concussion forms to make children ineligible to attend tryouts children discouraged and not supported in applying for the gifted program and children targeted for alleged dress code violations but not others honestly I can speak to you for hours about the experiences of too many African-American students and it is infuriating to hear these repetitive stories but Anna frankly I'm over it but what I want to know why aren't you why is systematic racism perpetrated by certain Prince William County Employees allowed to be the
045de facto culture and experience it for some children allowing a weaponization of the disciplinary process academics and sports where is the accountability and these are not people who are in mediocre or need additional support and incompetent no these are racists people who do not recognize the humanity of children and they do not belong here they're very comfortable and empowered in this school system foreign this is this is really upsetting so I want to know in your position of power and influence what are you doing about it are we going to be complacent with racism against children or maybe we'll hold them accountable maybe we'll say you know what we want to do this here we talked about the value of the task so what about the value in African-American students I Need You To Boldly
046dismantle and disrupt this apparent behavior and culture choose your side but know the inaction ineffectiveness and even bureaucracy is a sign and it puts you on the side of the racist so Choose Wisely choose children we have a problem I'm asking I'm begging choose children thank you Beverly Thompson good evening everyone my name is Beverly Thompson and my address is on file with the clerk I'm going to address my comments this evening and I hope I can appeal to your sense of humanity Dr McDade um see while individual school board members such as chairman Latif or more visible demonizing Educators in the Press Dr McDade was hired by our school board to enforce her vision for our school system and while they seem to agree on what the vision is Dr McDade enjoys a little
047level of autonomy in her role that the Educators like myself and employees she oversees could only dream off um Dr McDade you came from Chicago Public Schools where unions are in fact of life that School Division staff must contend with so when you came to Virginia we were hopeful where public sector collective bargaining had been illegal for more than 40 years but for your first couple of years of superintendent you were able to dictate terms to division employees and dictate you did for example during the first year as a superintendent the line item for professional development in the division budget increased by 90 percent parents ask your child's teacher what effect the additional professional development has had on their ability to provide quality instruction to every student they will tell you that teachers have been
048saying for the entire time the more administrative work is required of Staff the less time and energy is left for teaching but perhaps that isn't a problem for you after all the amount of standardized testing has also increased dramatically a few years ago the average student in our school's division took over five standardized tests per year Dr Smith did you have also required more meetings for our teachers taking away more planning time to devote to discussing the data from all those standardized testing and I just have one more thing documented the morale in our schools should be alarming to anyone who cares about the environment of our students please do something about this thank you the next five will be Marianne Jensen Katie Jefferson Brandi Peter Jared gay and obeda Scott Marianne Jensen over the
049past three years I have strict lower education education standards resulting in a sharp Decline and now to an all-out attack on the rights of parents to be involved in decisions affecting the very lives of their children while they attend school this happens when school boards Chase selfish goals that are not in the best interest of the students all of you have a weak record on improving educational standards instead your strengths seem to be fighting for collective bargaining staying home fighting for masks and now fighting against parents I stand here on behalf of hundreds of parents in our County because I am appalled by what I see because someone needs to have the courage to speak truth to power and demand accountability for your failure to ensure that our kids are educated and not programmed you
050recently decided to double down on political activism by opposing Governor yonkin's model policies aimed at protecting children by ensuring that parents not an elected School Board have the final say in our children's emotional health and safety while at school you had the opportunity to add your agenda that you bypassed it one of the most important topics in a generation not even discussed parents are not asking for something radical here you guys we already signed parental consent forms for field trips Microsoft requires parental consent for kids to play online games Airlines require it when kids travel alone this concept is non-controversial and allows parents to have a say in the physical or Online safety of their children except in schools because of political blindness as amazing as our children are they are not adults they make
051innocent mistakes and without guidance some consequences can be more far-reaching than their developing brains realized but now extremist agendas dictate that schools must take it upon themselves to use these children as political pawns once again during this vulnerable period of their lives instead of championing educational growth you now seek to socially engineer gender identities without any parental knowledge this is asinine if my child wants to change their name I should know if my child is being coached by an educator to pursue an unproven socially constructed lifestyle that could ultimately lead to the mutilation of their little body I absolutely must know this is not a question if my child is getting bad grades is it not my right to get involved do you show parents from seeing bad grades because it might elicit a negative
052reaction at home of course not therefore it must be it should be my right to be involved in all aspects of my kids school life Case Closed would you want to know if a cult was indoctrinating your child behind your back of course you would so let's stop the clown World posturing and adopt Governor yonkin's model policies so that the parents can once again work alongside you on the educational goals for our children Katie Jefferson good evening school board members and Dr McDade my name is Katie Jefferson and my address is on file my background is in special education and we've been trained in conditioned to maintain as much consistency for our students as possible we're told that consistency is key it's what's needed to ensure student growth in progress in the classroom educators are
053required to consistently collect data consistently monitor student progress and consistently provide effective and engaging instruction ultimately I want my students to trust me and that relationship is built through consistency because my actions match my words sadly the large majority Democratic school board has not modeled the consistent Behavior towards staff that we would be expected to hold up in the classroom with our students but there is one School Board member who out throughout this process has been consistently honest about their feelings towards staff the exclusive bargaining bargaining agent for 11 000 employees and the concept of collective bargaining and most importantly this school board member has consistently aligned their vote with their principles and that person is Jen Wall of the Gainesville District Jen Wall has consistently been against Educators organizing to have rights and collective
054bargaining as a whole she made it abundantly clear that staff does not deserve a seat at the table Although our views don't align her principles have consistently aligned with her voting record fundamentally I wish she felt differently however I cannot argue that both staff and the community know exactly where she stands given our large Democratic majority on the school board both the staff and the community thought their vote in favor of collective bargaining would align with their actions to support staff clearly there's been many inconsistencies between their vote and their actions therefore trust is breaking if not broken for example chairman Latif claims he supports School staff he claims that people who take care of our children are most valuable resource for six and a half hours a day but then he publicly disparages staff
055in the Press when they try to organize and propose what's needed to improve working conditions another example is when we told the school board the election criteria was wrong and harmful but nobody believed us now other Educators across the state are facing an even higher threshold up to 75 percent I asked the school board can your actions match your words you have an election coming up 50 to 75 percent of your district has to show up just so you can win do you think that's feasible I'll answer it for you it's not so the questions I post to the board are why did you pretend to support a process and how could you realign your actions and your principles to rebuild trust between Educators in the school board my name is Brandi Peter and my
056address is on file I'm here to provide a perspective that normally doesn't get showcased at school board meetings the perspective of a bus driver I have been with transportation for this County for 17 years and things have finally gotten so bad for drivers in our division that I am compelled to speak out I want to First address my concerns to parents in Prince William County the reason that your children are often picked up significantly late or don't get home until an hour after they were supposed to or that your child was left standing at a bus stop waiting for a bus that never came is that there are not enough of us bus drivers to keep everything running on time the way it's supposed to the question is why doesn't the division have enough bus
057drivers I'm here to offer offer a few reasons first of all the pay is admissible the diff the difficult it's difficult to convince somebody to drive a school bus for poverty wages when other counties are being offered sign-on bonuses and pay that will allow you to live in the county if the school board wanted to prioritize school bus drivers in the budget they would have but clearly that didn't happen another reason drivers that have been here for years are leaving is because of the way they are being treated hours being cut which affects their benefits being forced to do extra routes outside of their regular routes which puts extra stress on the drivers and they're not being compensated extra for that people get to the point where they start to think is it worth it
058God forbid something happens on the bus and the driver is automatically to blame it's sad that we're out here doing the best we can for our community but yet we feel unappreciated we're already considered part-time employees which includes a minimum guaranteed base of six hours upward to a seven and a half hour base with the shortage why not make us full-time employees because with all the extra routes we're out here doing we're working full-time hours but again they don't want that in our contract because then we'd have more benefits these issues affect our VA retirement it seems to me that when our school division is facing a Monumental shortage of drivers it would be appropriate to make the drivers we do have full-time employees our division apparently chooses the opposite the Staffing shortage the driver
059shortage specifically is a choice the division is making another slap in the face is is that the drivers have been here for years or only making a couple dollars more than a brand new driver starting out do our years of service not count for anything why aren't we valued another issue for drivers is having another issue drivers are having is that many schools in our County refuse to allow drivers to use use the bathrooms when they arrive and there are no separate facilities for drivers to use at the schools this issue has been raised numerous times but it doesn't seem to be a priority for the division management it became more clear to me that the division it became more clear to me that the division was making this Choice when I joined pwea's negotiating
060team for collective bargaining at first there were two other bus drivers on the bargaining team but they were sent home on the day of the first bargaining session and were pressured not to return in the bar in the beginning it had us in the beginning I had struggled to get my leave approved to attend bargaining sessions when we brought this to the attention of the division's bargaining team lead Eric Patel who told us that I think their time is better spent driving a bus tell me how we're supposed to feel respected driving buses for Prince William County Dr Latif Miss Peter Jared gay my name is Jared gay and my address is on file with the clerk so I'm sad to say that I've basically given up trying to appeal to the empathy and Goodwill
061of our school board members so I'm going to present my comments to the parents and students in our community you deserve better at a minimum you deserve to know what's really going on in our schools unfortunately it seems practically impossible to get a completely honest portrayal from your elected representatives on the school board either in these meetings or in the statements they make to local media you also aren't going to hear many employees speaking publicly publicly about this this year there was already a deep fear of retaliation from division management and school board members prior to this year during the first leg of the Collette de bargaining campaign we had members telling us that their principal asked them about emails that they had sent to school board members asking them to support collective bargaining implying
062at least to us that some of the politicians sitting in front of me responded to communication from employees by forwarding it to their supervisors fear of retaliation is greater now than it has ever been due to the fact that the School Division updated its regulations in January adding language that instructs employees to gain permission from the office of communications before making any comments to the Press staff across the division have reported their administrators began the school year by handing down new directives from division management that instruct teachers to refrain from posting on social media about anything involving Prince William County schools more than one bus driver reported to us that their supervisors were having them sign a statement that they would not speak to the press or post on social media about the division so
063what is it that they don't want you to know well for one thing many schools across the division don't have enough staff members to provide the supervision necessary to secure a safe comfortable learning environment for all students and the quality of their education is harmed by this the school division's response to this trend for one thing has been to lower the requirements to teach so many of the staff that are now working in schools this year and last year have no teaching experience or training now to be clear we obviously support these employees and we advocate for their rights alongside everybody else but this also places an additional burden on the veteran staff members who are put in the position of having to train these new employees on the job morale is virtually non-existent I
064hope that I'm wrong but I have a feeling that in the next few weeks we will see a sharp increase in the number of unstaffed positions as many of these new hires especially the ones that are coming in without any prior training leave pushing those veteran teachers closer and closer to the brink of quitting themselves parents ask your children how overwhelmed and overworked their teachers seem to them not just this year but from last year as well ask them what effect that this has had on student on student behavior and discipline over the past year I think you'll be shocked and outraged at what you hear then I hope you'll contact your school board representative and demand that they do right by your children by doing right by their teachers their bus drivers their custodians
065their cafeteria workers and every other employee of Prince William County schools thank you avetta Scott good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board Mr chairman Dr McDade my name is ovetta Scott and my address is on file with the clerk as we start another year of launching thriving Futures I come with a couple of concerns to help us move in that direction my first concern is flex days according to the regulation the selected dates and activities will take place between July 1st and October 1st of the school year one How can any teacher complete flex days in July when the buildings are being cleaned and used for summer school two how can I enter Flex time after the start of the contract if the little box is gone I thought I had until October 1st
066my next concern is summative Assessments in Mastery connect while this is a great software for Data Tracking why are the Departments creating a limited testing window when there are students who may be out sick or have accommodations for a flexible time I think teachers should have the autonomy to set testing for their students my third concern is our custodial staff as you are aware next month is designed for recognizing the awesome job that our custodians provide for each building I would love to see a change in how custodians are scheduled currently the elementary and middle schools are budgeted for one custodian during the day shift at our schools it is a Superman or a superwoman that must open the building ensure their main doorways are clear manage and clean after all lunch shifts attend to
067the students and the staff restrooms stop and answer emergency calls from the radio and assist any facilities or other individuals that come into the building so I asked you why we can't budget someone from the night shift to come in around 11 A.M or 12 P.M to help offset one custodian that works in a building with 500 to a thousand people during the day lastly I would like to reflect on collective bargaining I want to applaud the school board bargaining team for standing ground with the current bargaining agent for employees foia is a great American Tool because I was able to learn that political candidates and non-affiliates of the employees bargaining team were present during a negotiating meeting I commend your team if they had to cease talks when employees stipulated additional pay for duties
068when these when individuals have been released from educational duties for these efforts I am ecstatic that talks ended when the president of the employees team sought personal gains I hope that the school board bargaining team continues to maintain their professional demeanor or let it go since I didn't vote for the employee bargaining agent anyway thank you the next five Jennifer Roberts Chris funderberg Genevieve Yvonne Josh quill Alan Baker Jennifer Roberts good evening Dr McDade Dr Latif Vice chair wall school board members and District leaders my name is Jennifer Roberts I reside in the Gainesville district and my address is on file the American writer James Baldwin is credited with saying I cannot believe what you say because I see what you do this quote perfectly applies to the conversations I have had with school board
069members and District employees alike about the educational malpractice that continues to be carried out on black students as much as I'd love to believe that you are interested in addressing racism and ensuring that black students have an equitable experience I can't because I see what you do I see what your priorities are and they are not the black students in the Gainesville District far too many black students including my own children continue to be emotionally abused at the hands of pwcs employees the adverse experiences of some of the black students and their families in the Gainesville District contradict what is printed in policies like policy 738 which refers to harassment and discrimination this policy states on paper that these behaviors will not be tolerated but it is not being enforced at the school level in
070the Gainesville District this neglect of our black students is a huge problem pwcs employs more than 12 000 people and serves nearly 90 000 students and their families in a district of this size and with a thriving good old boy culture educational predators are causing repeated injury to black students and are not being held accountable racism is embedded in and tolerated in our country and sadly our district reflects this we need a substantive approach to from the district at every school in the Gainesville District that identifies and minimizes racism it is not enough to have anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies they must be enforced and all stakeholders must be held accountable we must treat racism as the epidemic that it is and stop asking black students and our families to be responsible for our own triage
071just like we prioritize identifying and sharing our achievements like we saw today we must prioritize identifying and being transparent about our deficiencies I am asking you again to actively hold all pwcs employees accountable for enforcing policies that protect black students thank you Chris funderburg my name is Chris funderberg and my address is on file we have two prevailing issues that I believe will be pivotal in the upcoming election both of these issues you have patently ignored or only given lip service to the first is the updated transgender model policy released by the Virginia Department of Education that requires you to adopt a policy that meets or exceeds the model the current policy 738-5 does not meet the current model number one it defines Virginia law section 1-240.1 rights of parents that says a parent has
072a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing Education and Care of the parent's child additionally the policy requires teachers and staff to lie about the gender status of a child to the child's parents if the child does not want the parents to know this is antithetical to the parents rights law if there was a situation which is often cited but never warranted that a child might suffer some abuse that his parents knowing of his gender status then there are child abuse laws that cover that possibility and teachers are already required to notify authorities in the case of suspected abuse second it requires compelled speech by forcing students teachers and staff to use a name and pronoun decided by a child and ignores objective reality other students and staff are at risk of punishment punishment
073by misgendering or dead naming another student Virginia courts have found this illegal and it puts Prince William County at risk of lawsuits third six of y'all aren't even willing to discuss this publicly and allow it to be put on the public agenda what are y'all afraid of additionally while you have required schools to inform parents of any sexually explicit content you failed to identify all of these sexually explicit books or remove them from circulation paraphrasing regulation 796-1 Virginia law defines sexually explicit content as any description of a lewd exhibit of nudity sexual excitement or sexual conduct instructional materials shall not be designated as sexually explicit based solely on the sexual orientation of the characters they're in however The List released by pwcs does not include the following that have been identified in the libraries a
074court of mist and fury and several other books by Sarah J Maas anatomy of a boyfriend by Darius nadowski crank people kill people perfect tilt and tricks all by Ellen Hopkins Maybe not maybe now maybe someday November 9th all by Colleen Hoover based on this I doubt the veracity of the list that was released there are some 40 books that are not on your list that are sexually explicit and should be removed from the school libraries stop hiding from parents and stop trying to indoctrinate our children Genevieve Yvonne my name is Genevieve Ivan and my address is on file with the clerk when teachers first began organizing for collective bargaining I like a lot of their employees had a lot of hope that this process would see our division unified in support of employees and
075students I always expected that both sides sitting at the negotiating table would be committed to working at a compromise that addressed the needs of employees instead I see the actions that seem designed to overwhelm staff at a time when they are at their most vulnerable I want to believe that is not an attempt to weaken our Union's ability to organize but I don't know how else to interpret it especially when I read the comments made by the chair in the division personnel there has to still be an opportunity remaining for the division to change course and come together with the pwa in a spirit of compromise and good faith I implore you please tell your bargaining team to work with our Union if the issue is funding you have already seen how effectively we can
076organize work with us and maybe we can put that energy towards securing a larger allocation from the board of County Supervisors I know we can do better for our employees and our students thank you Josh quill good evening my name is Josh quill I live in Gainesville Virginia I stand before you today as a concerned parent urging you to consider a matter of the utmost importance the well-being and upbringing of our children the Virginia Department of Education has set forth model policies that require by law schools notify parents of all matters related to their child's social and psychological development to include any requests by the child to change their pronouns or to engage in any counseling or social transition at school that encourages a gender different from their child sex this policy which is grounded
077in transparency and with the understanding that parents have the right to make decisions with respect to their children should be adopted immediately your current policy specifically section two of scoreboard policy 738-5 requires school staff to accept a student's transgender status and offer multi-disciplinary support team to among other things support the students gender transition authors without the requirement to notify the student's parent so let me just state that plainly Prince William County schools can transition students without their parents knowledge let me share something with you you probably already know multiple studies show that at least 50 percent of trans youth have considered suicide and the percent of those that are bullied are even higher and what is your solution to this problem remove parents from the picture so tell me by keeping secrets and refusing to
078keep parents fully informed how do you expect us to make the best decisions for our kids the fact that I need to come here and raise that question is absolutely ridiculous these policies should align with core values of our education system and your current policies scream parents don't matter your policies are set in political ideology with zero respect for parents and negligence towards our students at the end of the day these model policies comply with the equal protection clause Title IX of the education Amendment Act of 1972 and the Virginia Human Rights Act and are required by law to be implemented for once please just be the adult in the room put aside your political beliefs and comply with the law and implement the model policy thank you Alan Baker hello my name is Alan
079Baker and my address is on file with the clerk plenty of others have talked about their disappointment in the school board with a democratic super majority using union busting techniques instead I'm going to focus on How Deeply betrayed countless teachers in the school division feel towards three of those Democrats in particular I'm talking to Adele Jackson Lisa Singapore what's up sorry it's argopore and Justin Wilk all three of which have experience as Educators all three of you Ryan for school board on your first-hand classroom experience many teachers and division employees volunteered and voted for you because you knew that this job what this job is like you were supported because you claimed you'd represent the interest of employees on the school board I for one appreciated when you defied the dangerous whims of Latif and
080declined to send employees back into school buildings in the middle of pandemic pandemic before vaccines were released sadly when push came to shove over collective bargaining the three of you seemed to have forgotten about the profession you learned you leaned on to get elected it is confusing to me that you seem to trust the directives of a board chairman who has never taught in classroom throughout this process despite your own experience bowing to Latif you hired a union busting attorney to ensure that school board and superintendent held on to as much power as possible in the resolution that he passed a resolution which established a process designed to weaken Prince William County Employees ability to organize for example in order for pwea to bargain on behalf of the employees more than 50 percent of staff
081had to participate in the election for the result to be accepted I can't help but wonder if all three of you would be sitting here tonight if your elections have been held to the same standard but I suppose in the end it doesn't matter because far greater majority employees both licensed and confidential voted to support the collective bargaining process but still the same union union busting attorney now leading the vision bargaining team tells us the need of the employees do not supersede the wishes of the superintendent denying us the ability to make bargaining sessions a matter of public knowledge a decision that makes it more difficult for teachers parents and students to stay informed but does make it easier for politicians like Latif to lie to the Press about what occurs at the bargaining table
082Adele Lisa and Justin why do you remain quiet while Latif continues to lie and insult the staff I understand he seems to play in school plays for costume a bid for lieutenant governor but are the three of you willing to turn a blind eye towards the dignity Dignity of your colleagues and profession to support Petty political rivalries or do you actually believe those teachers who helped you get elected and work every day for the betterment of Prince William County's Student body are not worth the support in turn thank you next five Jeffrey Fuller Emily Kubiak Patriots Prater Jalen custis and Kimberly Melman Orozco Jeffrey Fuller low board Dr Latif Neighbors I'm Jeff Fuller from Gainesville District I have a a number of things I'm going to go through quickly the Strategic plan is basically a
083straightforward critical social justice Manifesto it's got social emotional learning all over it it's got the requirement for um restorative justice or a restorative practices you don't have to be a rocket science scientist to figure out what we're talking about here the people that wrote that are all Marxist professors proud Marxist professors the origin of that so when you get translated into straightforward language at this level as miss hubner explained to me uh it sounds pretty good I'm very suspect of it the aim of our plan is to create Global Citizens not U.S citizens who are productive and capable of defeating and working with others to to defeat the CCP no the trans model debate why are we talking about um putting staff teachers and counselors between the parents and the students in what world does
084that make any sense I don't think this will stand on school safety I think the division has made remarkable progress and I think you should be proud of it I followed it with some interest but why can't you put an armed officer in the 62 elementary schools which are most vulnerable most vulnerable to a school shooter attack covered era missteps failures travesty I think all those words apply now I don't blame this school board for all of it certainly the federal government the state government but the school board had the bottom line on terms of implementing policies that were mandates for Mass mandates for vaccines sending people home sending kids home putting all kinds of restrictions I remember this room with 80 people able to sit in it and you still got this ridiculous standoff
085to protect you from what bananas being thrown by the moms really um I ask that you consider a resolution of apology for your coveted era Behavior so you don't make a mistake again when we get two little cases thank you Mr cold thank you Emily Kubiak my name is Emily Kubiak and my address is on file this goes out to the community members parents taxpayers and working people of Prince William County based on the tone of recent comments made by the board I'm going to make some predictions I predict that over the next few weeks you are going to see more articles coming out containing quotes about collective bargaining from school board members division personnel and union leaders I predict that management will claim that the Union is being unreasonable despite the fact that they
086have put the School Division in a dire position in which they can't hire enough people to teach our kids a historic Staffing shortage 392 openings as of this morning exacerbated by the school board and division action and inaction has created a situation in which there is a lower supply of Education professionals increasing their demand the value of our labor has increased you would think the board and division would want to do everything they could to attract the best Educators to Prince William County I'm truly at a loss as to why the board and division are working hard to make pwcs less attractive yet I still predict that they will tell you that it is unreasonable for teachers and staff to insist that they should be able to afford to live in Prince William County or
087be paid comparably with neighboring divisions or police and firefighters in our County I predict they will double down on their insistence that treating teachers and staff with the dignity dignity they deserve will harm our students as if our students are not already being harmed by going to schools where they sit in classrooms with 34 other kids and an overwhelmed adult who may or may not have a teaching certificate as if our students are not already being harmed by the unchecked behavior of other students who have learned that their teachers lack the authority and are too overwhelmed to actually discipline them almost every school in the division has a decent number of students who have far exceeded the number of disciplinary referrals to qualify for alternative school sometimes for violent offenses against other students and yet
088they remain the reason for this is that we do not have enough room in our division's alternative school for additional students or enough staff to manage them and let me tell you this school system hates to spend money on anything other than required professional development for staff new software that employees don't want or union busting attorneys but it is this prediction that I am most confident of unless community members parents and voters stand up to the school board and the superintendent and tell them to negotiate with their employees in good faith the problem will get worse before it gets better Patriots Prater good evening Dr Thief Dr McDade school board members and Community I'm pedrus Prater a resident of the Neapolitan district and I'm here to talk about the legislative priority documents it was March
089of 2023 I dedicated uh my speech at that point to a former student now his name is Chance Williams and also Jalen waith I said in a couple different Community engagement opportunities there and I heard the students talk about mental health it's that top of mind for a lot of students and in that that speech here I ask for you all to take a serious look at the legislative priority document the 2023 for example didn't mention Mental Health at all I'm happy to come before you all today and and I see in 2024 it mentions increased student mental health supports for the first time in Pennsylvania county history so this is just a thank you thank you for the collaborative partnership that you all have made with the students and addressing their concerns from for
090mental health this is I think just the first step of many the next step is as a parent perhaps what I can do is contact my state legislator the name that comes to mind is Jeremy mcpike house delegate Michelle Maldonado those names come to mind because as I as I reviewed the the other dockets when it comes to the general assembly their names are usually attached to educational building funding my next thank you is for Mr Jim Council who's sitting behind us we've given him a lot more work to do what I'd like to see when this is all said and done is bullet points identify how we can specifically Target mental health challenges in our schools versus just a snowball effect of funds that are coming this is signaling something that's going to I
091think benefit us for for years to come additional funding and support for our students my last 30 seconds I'm going to say this the community is hurting and I say that because at some point we're all going to retire we're in good health now but what I'm hearing out in the community as I'm working to serve on the board as the next the next neopical School Board member is we're having retired teachers we're having retired bus drivers retired cafeteria workers who are no longer able to afford the cost of living in this community what we're finding is that some of us finding our parents having to go into senior citizen centers but they can't put the parent in this community because they're out priced so we have to really take a serious look at our
092future and let's put whatever whatever kind of support we can behind to ensure that our people have a fair and livable age thank you Jalen custis good evening Dr mcday chairman Latif and school board members my name is Jalen custis and I reside in the Woodbridge District last year I attended many school board meetings and I've heard several times from the board members calling on parents to be involved in their children's education rightfully so because parents engagement is crucial in a child's education and upbringing so I was appalled when this board rejected Governor youngin's policy which would strengthen parents roles in their child's education in life parents or Guardians are required to sign permission slips in order for schools to take their child on a field trip parents are also required to fill our emergency
093contact forms at the start of every school year so why would Prince William County not require parents to know that their child is possibly suffering from a mental illness I've spoken with parents and they told me that they would be devastated to find out that their child was suffering through something and weren't made aware of it I'm sure many of you who are parents here would want to know what's going on inside your child's School this policy is simple and makes sense parents deserve to know what is going on in their child's life for this board to not even consider it is a slap in the face to the parents I humbly request that this board bring the governor's policy up a consideration and implement it my name is Jalen custis and I reside in
094the Woodbridge District thank you Kimberly Melman Orozco good evening my name is Dr Kimberly malman Orozco my address is on file um I had about seven or eight pages of a speech where I wanted to talk about the audacity and who hubris that you all had to put a recognition for disability awareness month and dyslexia Awareness Month knowing full well in the fast past four months you've repeatedly been found in violation of federal and state law by the Virginia Department of Education I was planning on focusing on that but given uh I'm reading the room and given what I've heard from some of the teachers I'm going to segue a little bit Midway through my prepared statements so I I'm guessing you're going to cover this later on in the agenda you're going to be
095celebrating disability awareness month and dyslexia awareness month when just four months ago the Virginia Department of Education found that you had a fundamental misunderstanding of your responsibility and you systemically denied IEP accommodations with students and with disabilities that's a Verbatim fighting from the Virginia Department of Education instead of accepting that learning from it changing you all had the hubris who actually appeal it and in your appeal you said that the Virginia Department of Education had a fundamental a misunderstanding of the way schools operate you pointed the finger back at the Virginia Department of Education in an independent evaluator denied your appeal again instead of fixing this issue providing redress for these discriminated against children instead of fixing it I suspect that the one agenda item that you discla that you kept from the public was
096that you had to vote on it in this board meeting of what you're going to do with these kids that were discriminated against but I'm not going to focus on that I'm going to challenge you to read the room you heard from a lot of Educators here today you've heard from a lot of parents as a sitting board member the content of your character is reflected by how you treat your students your teachers and your staff I'll say that one more time the content of your character is reflected by how you treat students teachers staff you have discriminated against students you have denied benefits and services to our Educators who are one of the most important professions in this County and should be competitively paid and treated fairly and not retaliated against when they complain
097just as you retaliate against parents and Dr Latif while you've said they are very nonchalantly sipping on your water and smirking at times I am curious to see what you're going to do on Monday during our debate because I'm one of the three candidates that's running for school board for chair and of those three candidates imagine my shock to find out that two out of the three candidates running for school board have their kids in private schools two out of three and why is that because we do not have happy teachers and therefore we do not have happy kids treat teachers fairly okay moving on next we have agenda item 14.01 I'll turn this over to Dr McDade regarding the office of Chief Financial Officer thank you Mr chairman we have with us this evening
098Shaquille Youssef our director of financial services and so he'll come forward now to discuss the proposed sale of Virginia Public School Authority bonds for the fall of 2023. good evening Mr chairman school board members and superintendent McDade um I'm pleased to recommend that the Prince William County School Board receive the fall 2023 vpsa Standalone board funding project totaling 141 million three hundred eighty thousand dollars the CIP program the capital Improvement program was approved as part of the FY 2020 full budget process a copy of the CIP was previously submitted to the Prince William County Board of Supervisors for projects totaling 162 million dollars thank you Mr Youssef board members if you have any questions we'll take those at this time questions Mr Youssef so just for everyone to be clear we're going to put out
099um this this what are we doing are we voting or this is just for information today your information we'll be voting next time correct correct on approving the sale of um what are we doing bonds totaling 162 or 141 141 381 380. and those bonds will go to the construction and the projects listed below so if anybody in the community wants to take a look at the projects that we will be funding um that will be from this Bond sale that will go out sometime in October provided the school board votes on this next time correct okay wonderful thank you and I really appreciate it any other questions concerns okay uh two weeks from now we will bring this back up for a full vote and if you have any questions or concerns in the
100meantime please email Mr Youssef for the superintendent's office and or bring those questions to the next meeting Miss Williams thank you thank you Mr chairman um I noticed in the description it says that this is less than what we previously submitted to um the bocs could you expand on why it's less uh yes I can um part of it was we were able to utilize um some cash savings we had within our debt service fund and we also were able to defer some of our projects these projects do not need funding at this time but they will be funding funded with future Bond sales when when Bach can talk about what projects we deferred I have a list here but I think he could give you more reasons why we deferred some of those we
101deferred the funding for those projects that'd be great I think it's always a good um idea to inform the public uh how about our physical responsibility and um how important it is because we do have a fantastic finance department but I remember when I first started on the board it was quite a complicated subject for me um and so I I remember that when we talk about finances and if you could just explain a little bit why this is a benefit or a good thing I think that'd be helpful and any projects yeah thanks Miss Williams happy to answer that good evening Dr Latif board members and uh Dr McDade just a few uh big projects that have really impacted this savings uh obviously we came to the board seeking permission to delay the 14th
102high school for a year the rationale and reason for that was to we've been implementing um a um a model building and we want to get away from doing that a prototype and we want to fully engage the community and deliver a high school on the on uh you know this 14th high school that really does have stakeholder input involved and really driving the design of that process so that was going to take a little bit longer so that deferred a tune of about eight million dollars there we are going through the facilities condition Index right now helping us prioritize our Renovations of greatest need as you know as a board Benton Middle School was uh on the docket this year to be be renovated we wanted to delay that and have go through 40
103schools this summer and prioritize our Renovations based on true need so that deferred of about 10.5 million dollars in savings and then finally the other major project that we decided to defer on was the turf and lights at Ripon Middle School we recognized that we still have two Middle School sites at bevel and unity Braxton that do not have irrigation and meet the standards of the rest of our fields and we wanted to bring those two Fields up to standards so that we had Equitable facilities across our middle schools and that will include irrigation at those two sites as well as Bermuda grass installation so those are the three major projects there was some other sprinkled in there but that's I think those are major projects yes I appreciated okay um any other questions go
104ahead Ryan you know I'm going to ask this because um it's been a topic of conversation for years can you tell me I see Ripon and HVAC here and I know we spoke um frequently about HVAC conditions throughout the School Division I understand there's multiple challenges everything from being able to receive the right equipment to the condition of the equipment in a building how old it is all of these wonderful facility things that I completely nerd out on please can you um is this a new hva system for Ripon yes it we are in the design phase currently obviously if we could speed it up we would but obviously we're going through the architecture and engineering phase currently we do have all the funding allocated for that and we'll be embarking on that very soon
105so that's going to be coming thank you I I just harp on that because I think oftentimes the public doesn't quite understand that um you know you could have staff members or board members or public describing to you the condition and don't fully understand the amount of behind the scenes work it's not quite the same as when you own a home and you can just go get a few quotes and if you can afford it a new HVAC system or airs unit in your home it's quite complicated especially when you have older buildings and things of that nature to consider so I just um hate to harp on it I know Ripon will appreciate it but I wanted to use that an example of sometimes it's not always a quick fix you can't always get
106something done in 90 days or a year or just because you approve it in the budget there may be extenuating circumstances so um I just want to say from a few retired teachers I can think of off top my head who regularly emailed me and some staff there I'm sure European will appreciate it and thank you for your understanding and not allowing me to use that as an example any other questions comments concerns okay thank you folks Mr Youssef thank you Vern thank you we're going to move on to um 1501 legislative priorities Dr McDade thank you Mr chairman we have with us this evening um our Chief Information officer Mr gilfoyle who's going to share information on our 2024 legislative priorities we also have our lobbyists Mr Jim Council who is here as well
107um so I'm going to invite both of them to come to the uh you could come forward Jim good evening it's my pleasure to present this to you this evening for information our pwcs legislative priorities for the upcoming General Assembly session that begins in January in fact the general assembly just finished their work today on the last session so we are already focused on our next session which will be coming up in January and I am pleased this evening to be joined by Dr Donna eagle and by Mr Jim Council our representative in Richmond this the full Suite of legislative priorities can be found in board docs this evening we're just going to Spotlight a few of those this year's legislative priority priorities maintain priorities consistent from previous years many of these are focused on
108increasing funding for Education maintaining local school Authority and preventing unfunded mandates no matter how well intended uh we also are seeking continuing support for programs such as our Virginia star initiative this is a program that pwcs administers on behalf of the entire state in which we provide refurbished laptops to families in need and students Garner the I.T skills necessary by repairing these laptops last year alone this program provided laptops to students across the state valued at almost three million dollars in additional legislative priorities this year have been revamped to focus on high priority items that we believe will Garner bipartisan support for our schools these are primarily focused on increasing teacher Recruitment and retainment and I'm going to ask Dr Eagle to just share a few examples of those now thank you Mr gilfoyle good
109evening so just a couple of areas that I'll Spotlight that are new to the legislative priorities this year first off we certainly support anything that the general assembly can do in terms of providing Financial incentives to those that pursue teaching careers enrollment and teacher education programs throughout the country is down 30 percent so anything that we can do to incentivize individuals to pursue teaching including free or reduced state tuition to teacher education majors and programs additionally we're asking the state to take a really hard look at the elementary endorsement requirements it is absolutely the most difficult endorsement to obtain and is unable to be done so with a Praxis test and requires extensive content knowledge and coursework in order to obtain an elementary endorsement furthermore as you all know we have a number of international
110Educators here in Prince William County that we're really proud of and they bring you know tremendous diversity and culture and culture to our classrooms every day we are interested in the state allowing for a renewable International Educator license similar to what North Carolina does so right now Educators have to actually go back to their home country for two years and then they're unable to return to Virginia many of our Educators actually returned to the United States after two years in their home country and actually work in North Carolina because North North Carolina allows an unlimited renewal period once they've satisfied their two-year Home Country requirement as part of their J-1 Visa um also we're asking for support to allow teachers endorsed in special ed and deaf and hard of hearing to actually teach American Sign
111Language this is also a very difficult endorsement and we feel that those teachers actually have the skills and competencies necessary in order to teach American Sign Language um we did make progress this past year in the general assembly but uh in shortening the required break in service for return to active service for critical shortage for our vrs retirees it prior to last year's General Assembly it was a year they did reduce it to six months and we are continuing to Lobby to hope that they reduce it even more the required break-in Service as it is in other states many other states only require 30-day break in service um also in terms of our bus drivers one barrier that we have to employment often for those relocating to the areas that it requires actually two moral
112character references that have to reside in Prince William County for anybody that's relocating that's a difficult um can be a difficult thing to do to have to produce by the applicant if they're new to the area we do obviously check professional references excuse me that's a state law yes sir yeah it actually requires a statement signed by two reputable persons who reside in the school division in the applicants community that the person is of good moral character and so they require it in the county um and so we're going to suggest or actually introduce legislation we hope to to repeal that provision and finally um the last one I'll highlight is the 90-day limit for Teacher substitutes currently we have to actually file and request an exemption from the state superintendent anytime a substitute is
113employed for more than 90 days in the pandemic they give us an automatic waiver and they did pass legislation it was actually a tagged on to another bill last year to allow an exemption for the next two years but we are going to request that it be a permanent exemption many of these letters go unanswered by the vdoe and so we feel like it's an unnecessary bureaucratic step we make sure that our long-term Subs you know have degrees and have experience working with students so we're going to ask for legislation to repeal that provision be happy to answer any other questions that you might have regarding any HR related matters Donna is that two letters from A County resident only law for school bus drivers and yes no one else correct like not school teachers
114not Subs correct it's only school bus drivers anybody know the logic behind why they did that we don't know okay Jim you got to fix that come on I mean that seems like an easy one all right sorry Mr chairman I was just shocked you asked for logic though very good very good we'll go to miss Jesse and then miss wall okay I um I don't have a lot of questions I just want to comment on the new legislative agenda now Jim you and I have been in this County for quite some time and this these priorities are really different don't you think than we've had in the past yeah I can so we have tried to take a fresh look at them this year again we looked at them through a strategic lens we're
115looking at the priorities of the organization and then also looking at what we felt was reasonable and could be achieved in Richmond obviously and I'm going to actually ask Mr Council to talk about the situation in Richmond here in just a moment but things have changed obviously in Richmond but we still feel like these things these are priorities that we can have statewide support on and would benefit multiple School divisions across the state well I've been to Richmond several times and every time when we talk about the legislative agenda we always talk about Coca am I right but I've noticed that there's there in this list there are so many things that relate to teachers employment Personnel so I want to list coursework International licensure retirees to return bus drivers teacher substitutes uh and they're
116so and collective bargaining and I've never seen a legislative agenda that has these kind of items in it I want to applaud Dr McDade and her staff for re-looking at how we look at our legislative priority because these are very relevant you heard people tonight talk about teachers not have enough teachers not having enough bus drivers and I did I'm not responding to the citizens comment but I do want to applaud this Administration for re-looking at the legislative of priorities and I do have one question you wanted to change how Lottery funds are used could you explain to me how they're used presently yeah I don't know if I can ask Mr Youssef if he's prepared to talk about that this evening I'm not an expert in that Mr wallenford's not here but well he's
117new but he doesn't he's not able to answer tonight he can get back with me okay yeah we I think we'd be better if we get back to you with the details make sure we have it accurate thank you I just want to applaud you guys for what you've done thank you thank you so yeah what I'd like to do now is just to wrap it up I'm going to ask Mr Council just to step up for just a minute oh I'm sorry Jen Wall uh thank you thank you Mr chair um on number 13 the extend the 90-day limit for teacher substitute um I wasn't clear on what we are advocating to be extended to is it being extended to like a six-month or a year no we'd actually like the requirement to file
118to actually be uh repealed the requirement right now you have to have approval of the state superintendent to allow a substitute to remain in their position for more than 90 days okay and so we would ask for that provision to be repealed do you know historically why they that provision was in there or how long it's been in there or anything like that I don't have historical context I'm sorry okay no problem thank you the 90-day sub s Miss Williams thank you Mr chairman um I also would like to congratulate everyone on the uh renew the new lens to which we are looking through these legislative priorities um I am really excited about the focus on Mental Health um I also am excited about school construction renovation and modernization but through the lens of sustainable
119sustainability um I think that that's a those two things are direct response that we heard from every facet of our community board members staff teachers students I'm really excited that we are able to better capture everyone's voice in those legislative priorities I'm also excited to see um I don't know if excite it but quite the right adjective but I'm encouraged that we are still advocating for increased funding for for Coca I think it like Miss Jesse said I I think it's been on there as long as I've been on the board was probably on there before I got on the board um I don't think the general public really understands how limited that we are budgetarily because we aren't a generate Revenue generating entity and how much what occurs in the general assembly actually affects
120what we do here our budget and our ability to pay our staff and um how much funding of that comes from the state level I know I've said in years past that it's important that when we advocate for things that we do it at the local the county and the I mean the school level the County government level as well as the state level because it is sort of like a partnership if one of those things is misaligned it absolutely impacts our ability to do whatever the task is at hand whether it's paying teacher staff more getting solar painters on a roof or something I can't wait is electric buses I mean all of these things have to work together in order for us to proceed down that path and I just want to get
121the school year off started by making note of that um I think it's important we go down every year in January to lobby with our legislators but I think it's a conversation we should all be having all year long with our legislators to remind them of the things that we feel are priority 30s so I just want to apply these new legislative priorities and when Mr Council gets up there if you could just talk to us a little bit about what you're hearing on from some of our surrounding School divisions and if there's any opportunity for us to work collaboratively on some of these priorities with the divisions because I know that's important too it can't just be Prince William advocating for things within the general assembly and standing alone it does take a lot
122of collaboration so I ask you that every year so whenever you get up there Mr Council good to see you again sir thank you um real quick question Matt just semantics can we make a number three so the so paragraph three and section two on in addition sport cap that limited state fundings for support positions needs to be removed can that be its own Standalone I mean we've always had that as a priority no problem yeah if that's possible Just Because unless you have it somewhere else I was looking I don't think I saw it now we can I mean if we want to call that out more expensive yeah we can do that yeah I mean they made some progress and I guess Mr council is here to tell us what what progress they
123made there's another question first oh oh Adele I'm sorry um thank you for the presentation and I agree with what Miss Jesse said about um it's not the changes in the legislative priorities I really address from my perspective some of the things that parents and staff members have mentioned um including um what the you know individual doing citizens comment time said and then they were staff members at one of my high schools talked about um like helping teachers who come here from other countries to stay because they become part of the culture and it feels like we're Advocate listening to staff so I appreciate that um I I also appreciate the ASL um the number five and I just want to just clarify a point on that um because I did have a number of
124parents reach out at one point about losing classes because not having staff to teach ASL although we are advocating to increase Avenues to for teachers to become to teach in American Sign Language we although it's not clarified we still are asking that they be that teachers be proficient in ASL and knowledgeable about Deaf culture right just to clarify even though it's not specifically stated that it's still what we need right okay and I'm getting a nod so yes okay thank you okay so I'll ask Mr Council to give some remarks just to wrap this up Mr chairman school board members Dr mcgai good evening good to see all of you again uh as Matt indicated as of lunchtime today we finally have some overdue good news from Richmond uh the Senate and House have agreed
125upon and passed a budget Bill a mammoth one actually and it's one the governors indicated he will sign so for Mass perspective uh it adds about 600 million dollars in direct day to K-12 education and that's 600 over top of actually the 300 million and some that we got in the skinny budget in April so we're doing pretty well on that front in addition to the consecutive five percent uh teacher salary increases it adds another two percent increase of course it requires the local participation match but at least there's more money there authorized and then finally another significant report and one thing you know we've been working on for years is the expensive support cap we didn't get rid of it for good but we got the ratio improved to the extent that it will
126mean about 152 million more in state funding to the locality so just using broad math that would just on the support cap we should realize probably another 9 million dollars in Prince William just on that issue so I can answer anything you like about the bill that was passed today or I can move on to what I hope might happen in the upcoming 2024 session Jim just real quick we've always pushed for the removal of all the support caps what would the removal of the support caps eventually net Prince County or the state uh how much more do we have to go it was about 300 million when it was installed in around 2008 to actually do away with it at this point would uh cost the state save the localities about 400 million so
127the state would have to come up with another 400 million yes year to year so you figure you got about 152 million now so you'd be at another 250 in order to do away with the cap altogether okay great and then and then Jim just I know in the in this uh the general assembly this year and stuff they they have done some monies towards things for recruiting and retaining teachers and and making it easier for people to become teachers in the state is that correct I know the governor's behind a lot of that the governor's behind a lot we made some progress in the last session and in terms of the bill that they just passed today I just mentioned the big items uh that actually a lot of 15 17 million dollar items
128in there uh among other things that are designed to help and improve teacher recruitment fantastic that's great well Jim tell us what's coming up in the future yeah it's going to be an interesting session uh I will tell you about one thing that occurred in July that could have a serious impact and a favorable one upon the 2024 session in mid-july Jay Lark released a comprehensive 130 page report that focused strictly on state funding of K-12 education and it's a remarkable document it really is it it covers everything Coca how soq positioned the benchmarks are calculated teacher compensation uh the local Composite Index the support cap it focuses another section on special ed at-risk students and also esls so it it virtually covers every category of K-12 where they have some State funding and good
129news or bad news but j-lock is nonpartisan highly respected and in virtually every category that I just mentioned they recognized and concluded that the state was not living up to its funding obligation so taking an optimistic approach this j-lock report really gives us a good blueprint starting with this session to just see how much progress we can make in getting more funding from the state now of course it's dependent upon Virginia continuing to be very prosperous as it has for the last three years but finally we really have a recognized independent study that basically tells the state what we've all been talented for the last 10 years so it you know it's not going to all happen at once if you read through the entire study at the end it breaks it down into short-term
130fixes and puts a price tag of approximately a billion on that and then long-term fixes uh it has another price tag of about two billion dollars so everything's not going to happen this year but it's a good starting point for a lot of the issues that we've been trying to accomplish in the last three or four years the bad news as to the j-log study as comprehensive as it was I have to tell you in classic legislative fashion and the bill passed today the general assembly set up a committee to study the Jay Lark study so a couple other items uh Miss Jesse I can't give you the real details on how literary fund funds flow but the problem has been that originally in order to get the lotteries through uh we were sold on
131the fact that the funds would be dedicated to education and gradually they've diverted funds they've used the funds to offset Monies to K-12 that we would be entitled to anyway so what what we're really saying when we talk about literary funds is go back to the original promise and give it give us the money we're entitled to from day one yeah I mean I don't know if they'll ever do that Jim Mr Council that looks like every state that approves a lottery just uses that money to to um you know substitute cash rather than uh add cash um but but but but but thank you so any predictions on so you know what we've seen is a 600 million dollar uh compromise in this budget um the elections are going to come in November and
132there can be any permutation of any sort of mix of who controls what but do you see another push for another you know significant increase to K-12 in next year's budget well of course I think the Democrats are going to maintain control of the Senate the house could go either way but but even so I think either way and particularly given certain sections the j-log study as long as money is there I think ultimately the support cap is going to be repealed okay I mean I think that so many legislators that actually understand that and agree with it on both sides on both sides that if I had to make a laundry list of success items I would probably put repeal the support cap right at the top so so Matt let's let's pull that
133out and put that right and if you think uh you know even after today's action in Richmond if it's 250 million dollars and I know John wallenford usually says about six percent of any state amount the newest of Prince William so that gets you up too that's just what 15 18 million dollars right there don't trust my math we'll wait we'll wait for the we'll we'll wait for the state calculations and the official official calculators but thank you very much any further comments question Miss Williams oh Lisa I love the jaylark report I can you help refresh my memory though because it's been a few months and as school started um I recall reading that the LCI is like 50 years old and it's never since its Inception ever accounted for the fact that we
134have growth in population growth and need in our schools changes in educational landscape that's made requirements put on a public school system that has required us to hire different positions so there was a whole was that that was a am I capturing that correctly you're correct it okay it really criticized the current methodologies being totally outdated right and and if 50 years 50 years like nothing's changed everything's changed so um I I really appreciate that I really encourage people to look at this jaylark thing because uh when we when we have teachers coming into our boardroom talking about their jobs being difficult they want things taken off their plate the job is a little bit harder now than it was X years ago this is part of that story this is this is a whole
135piece of what's been going on in the in the you know over the years and to recognize that we are asking more of our education system than we have before we require more of our students and our staff and then just looking at Prince William County's population about I'm just going to go about 40 of our student population gets free and reduced lunch about 25 or more are English language Learners and our English language Learners are growing in population there are requirements that we have to uphold by the state by the federal government that our system must do but if the state is not funding us accordingly that becomes a little bit of a local problem so I want people to understand that there that these things are interwoven as well so correct me on
136anything there I think everything you said is accurate I would not expect anything to be done with the local Composite Index yeah because you know anytime you tamper with that formula you have serious winners and losers right and and actually dependent upon that what changes they might contemplate uh Prince William could be a loser yeah let's not let's not do that right but uh but I I just want to make sure I mean it's worth looking at that report it's got some great graphs and charts and interest interesting money values at that it really does these costs thank you they're going to be a lot of legislators that are going to hear too much about the j-log report this session thank you Mr report you brought up a really good point I'm just going to
137ask you again Mr Council because I know a few years ago the LCI was something that Fairfax was like had a bullet focused laser focus on it are you hearing anything that like we're all in alignment with um educate you know with legislature in terms of Education from some of our surrounding School divisions it doesn't have to be anything specific but I just know sometimes it's not just Northern Virginia but a Statewide thing all of a sudden this is the focus of the year you know for probably about 15 years that there's been a K-12 lobbyists Association and we've worked closely together it's grown to the point that it's almost unmanageable it's more of school divisions have added lobbyists so most of my work in terms of with colleagues right now is a little group
138we call the Super 8 which are the eight largest school divisions in the state and I mean you know we we are in the sessions together every day we meet every Friday morning uh also including in that group is vsba and the vast lobbyists so there's a lot of concerted effort going on among those lobbyists of school divisions that typically have aligned interest thank you I appreciate that because I think often the rhetoric we hear is that when school division is following another things of that nature and I think it's just important to remind the public that we all do work together in order to provide provide the best outcome for our staff and for our students and then you don't have to answer this now because I'm sure you don't have an answer but
139I am aware that there was a Diversity Program I'm not sure that somehow or another got cut I don't know who's responsible diversity teacher program it was designed to um bring my more minority teachers into more minorities into the teaching profession and I think there was a disconnect somewhere that the program was cut but there's still funding is there going to be something like that maybe you can fill us in a session starts if we're going to see an increase in any of those programs to try to benefit um individuals coming from Minority backgrounds or other marginalized backgrounds to increase our teacher diversity because we know when students see individuals who look like them then they learn or have similar experiences in them I'm going to really have to check on that because I agree
140with you I don't know what happened to it I suspect nothing's been done but well if you find out I'd be interested to know especially since we're all about teacher retention so thank you that concludes our presentation for this evening so our next steps is that this will be on for a vote at the next session it'll be on the consent agenda and then of course we will present this at a legislative breakfast probably in late November early December time frame following the election we are also working in the spirit of coherence to potentially do that with the county as well as opposed to doing two separate events like we've done historically so we'll share that information of course with all board members as soon as we have that locked in so thank you all
141for your time this evening thank you again and echoing the board members Mr Council always a pleasure Matt thank you guys for so much for working on this um all right if anyone has any changes concerns get them to those folks um the next couple weeks otherwise we will be as Matt pointed out voting on it next week uh next we are on what is this 1801 no 16 16. oh okay tonight we have our student representative Bella aversano senior at Gainesville High School Miss aversano we're getting pretty close to my bedtime here uh good evening to the school get used to it sorry uh good evening to the school board superintendent and Prince William County Community my name is Isabella aversano and I'm super excited and grateful to be a student rep this year
142um to put it simply I like to be where the action is so as a student leader in the county working with the literal School Board I think is as close as you can get I served on the student Senate last year and I've never experienced a leadership position quite like that one it was incredibly valuable to me to work alongside students from every single high school across the county I gained so much perspective and insight that I wouldn't have come into contact with otherwise and it has shaped my leadership since a particularly beneficial experience was the student leadership conference that we hosted in December I was placed in different groups of students from across the county and as I interacted with each person I gained more insight into the array of struggles that students
143face in pwcs I'd never heard about cases of sexual assault lack of mental health support or economic and academic academic disparities between different regions of the county from such intimate testimonies until then I've carried that vast Ray of student input with me since especially throughout the initiatives that the student Senate started that past term one of our primary goals and my personal favorite was developing the framework for student voice committees at the conference I was part of the team that presented this idea and gathered feedback referencing student input we identified even more concerns that student voice committees and the student Bill of Rights hope to address equal opportunities and access for advanced classes miscommunication between students and staff grading policies and more student voice committees will give students the opportunity to provide input on issues
144that they feel are important or unique to their schools and to give feedback on District level ideas and policies as well plus we're on track to implement these in every high school this fall applications will be released soon and all students are invited to apply and apply to the committees or attend the town halls that we intend to host I hope to continue to see these initiatives through and offer support for their success most recently the implementation of the Evolve weapons detection systems has especially garnered student feedback I've heard a lot students have shared that they are ready to protest that they feel criminalized and that they feel caught off guard and that schools haven't introduced the systems correctly throughout these varying opinions I've noticed a lot of common fears and misconceptions these detectors aren't
145bulky students won't be as late as they think they will be because multiple people can just walk right through them etc etc but I've also had the privilege of hearing presentations directly from evolve so I've been able to use that as a resource when discussing this topic to assuage these fears My Hope Is that this knowledge can be distributed more universally in a clear manner across the county to improve what students have perceived as failed communication and to clear up confusion today's agenda item detailed um included details about national security officer appreciation week so I think the timing is pretty spot on regardless of how students May personally feel about evolve protocols I think we can all agree that we want to learn in a safe environment so our security teams are crucial to that
146thank you and that concludes my remarks thank you so much Miss iversano um we look forward to hearing from you each board meeting next moving on to superintendent's Time Dr McDade thank you Mr chairman I am excited to share with the school board the division updates for the new 2023-24 school year first Welcome to our new student Representatives I know this is probably your fifth welcome for the evening but we're so excited to have you joining us for the new school year from Gainesville High School Bella avasano from Forest Park High School Fernanda moronte and our alternate from Osborne Park High School Jacqueline Garcia welcome student Representatives we're excited to have you here eager to learn from you and we want to hear your voice throughout this year and every year on August 21st pwcs
147successfully opened the doors to our more than 100 Schools and centers to a brand new school year welcoming over 90 000 students back to school I believe that authentic engagement is vital for Student Success and during the first week of school I had the privilege of visiting and engaging with students and staff at 31 school schools during the first week and we are off to a strong start back to school always proves to be an exciting time in Prince William County in Prince William County schools our vision is to see every student graduate on time with the knowledge skills and habits of mind necessary to create a thriving future for themselves and their Community which makes achieving our goal of 95 on-time graduation rate by 2025 critically important as a School Division and drives every
148decision and action we take in service to our students no matter the grade level as we begin this school year our first Focus will be on improving the connections between our students our teachers and our curriculum what we call the instructional core we are staying committed to the instructional core doubling down on supporting and strengthening teacher knowledge and skill ensuring all students have access to rigorous content and most importantly increasing student engagement our second Focus for the year is to stay committed to the work of continuous Improvement throughout the School Division The Continuous Improvement plan serves as the vehicle for school Improvement at every School site departments have also developed continuous Improvement plans in service to school priorities and goals every school and Department are expected to rely on their respective continuous Improvement plans which
149must be aligned to our four-year strategic plan Vision 2025 which is our Collective North Star this year we will ensure greater collaboration between and among departments and schools as we work together to achieve our goals third we will be intentional in our efforts to bolster literacy to ensure stronger readers and writers at every grade level we must fulfill the commitments of the Virginia literacy act by 2025 this year's Focus will provide Educators with professional development safe practice authentic feedback and collaboration to build teacher self-efficacy this is our year to support our primary teachers to develop their expertise and skill set in the science of reading with support from our our literacy Department inclusive of coaching and feedback at the secondary level in literacy we will focus on media literacy including students opportunities to research and
150read technical texts and authentic Reading Writing and speaking experiences for students across various content areas our fourth emphasis for this new year will be on family student and Community engagement we must serve as trusted partners with our students families and communities by ensuring that they all feel a part of a welcoming and inclusive environment to do this we must increase transparency through communication and remove communication barriers with our students and families as our families speak multiple languages and we do not want language to ever be a barrier all schools are expected to utilize School status which is equipped with two-way translation capabilities via text and voice and email after implementing School status at the end of the past school year at the end of December of last year we logged more than a million emails
151and sent over a million text messages and we will continue regular and transparent communication with our families we are beginning the year focused heavily on student attendance to date our attendance rate for the first two weeks of school is 96.42 which is a very strong start and we want to maintain this we want to maintain this momentum throughout the school year by continuing our efforts to address chronic absenteeism we Define chronic absenteeism as missing 10 percent or more of the school year so for a school year with 180 days of student attendance a student with chronic absenteeism would miss 18 or more days of school we will work diligently with our families throughout the school year to improve our division's overall attendance rate year over year and reduce the number of students identified as chronically
152absent and as we can see within the first two years it is possible to have High attendance in Prince William County in-person student attendance is a priority because we know that a student who is in class on time every day will be on time for graduation this year we're excited for the opening of our newest Elementary School Innovation Elementary School home of the Falcons we look forward to seeing Innovation live up to its namesake because our students must be ready to adapt pivot and invent with the evolving landscape of our technological world the official ribbon cutting for Innovation Elementary School is scheduled for September 21st and we're looking forward to celebrating our newest school with our families and community student safety continues to be a top priority and you heard Bella talk a little bit
153about the new detection security detection systems that are in our schools in addition to adding the security positions from last school year it's a part of an ongoing multi-layered security protocol we will be implementing safety screening technology on a staggered basis to all middle and high schools including traditional and non-traditional Schools starting September 19th back to school nights have begun across all pwcs schools and will continue into the month of October I wish to personally invite our families to attend not only back to school night which is one of the first family events of the school year but also the many school-based events and activities throughout this school year and I encourage you to get involved in one of our school advisory councils also be on the lookout for two-way communication as I spoke about
154earlier from our teachers that are translated directly through school status via phone email or text message we're excited for this tool because together we have the greatest chance at improving Communication in support of student achievement when the division is working together as a unified school system with common objectives goals and vision the outcome is success for all thank you to everyone who has worked so diligently to get this school year off to a successful start Mr chairman that concludes my time in the superintendent's report thank you Dr McDade okay um I think that leads us to board matters um we have policy 18 and where are we at and it will be a first reading for from division Council Mr Anderson thank you Mr chairman uh the first policy up for first reading tonight is
155changes to policy 211 which is the board's policy regarding valuation the duties of qualifications and authority of the superintendent and there used to be a regulation that governed the right the superintendent's evaluation process which as you know is agreed to between the board and the superintendent what we've done is take that regulation out and make it essentially just make it a attachment to this policy the board as the evaluator should be the policy holder of the evaluation process and it's easier to change if the agreement between the board and the superintendent changes that's really the the main change to 211. any questions okay next one 1802 also in your yes um this is a change to um uh policy uh sorry 891 and this is near and dear to um Miss Jackson's heart I believe
156she's been a good a Big Driver of this um and so uh the real change here is to add Universal Design playgrounds uh to our facilities policy and it will require that all playgrounds and new schools employ Universal Design which means the playgrounds will be designed to be usable by all students to the greatest extent possible without the need for adaptation and specialized design any questions Miss Jackson I just want to say that this policy is a great example of collaboration amongst board members and I'm just really excited to see it on the agenda and I want to thank Deputy division Council Merchant for working helping work through all of this and I will speak forward to it at the next board meeting and after I have time to review and reflect and again I'm
157just really grateful for the collaboration of my fellow board members yeah and thank you Mr Anderson thank you and that's the first reading of that policy it'll be up for adoption at the next meeting thank you Mr Anderson thank you Miss Jackson okay that concludes um business will move them board matters uh Mr Wilk why don't we start with you I haven't heard much from you this evening yeah no uh thank you Mr chairman I would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone as we embark on another school year filled with promise here in Prince William County uh to be honest the initial meeting feels a bit different for me as I don't have an exhaustive list of events I attended over the past two weeks I know however I did have the pleasure
158of participating in both Potomac and Forest parks back to school nights as well as attending the opening football game at Forest Park the varsity team it's also a delight to reconnect with families and provide support to newcomers as they navigate our school system on the first day of school I did visit schools within the district including Covington Harper Montclair Elementary the Dumfries elementary Potomac Middle and Mary Williams Elementary yesterday I was invited to participate in the morning celebrations at Patty Elementary School in conclusion I eagerly anticipate future conversations with our families and the exciting upcoming events in the schools within my district wow look at that time outstanding this is our my goodness that was fast all right welcome back to the school year as the new academic year begins we are thrilled to welcome
159back all our students parents teachers and staff to another year of growth learning and achievement and as we step into this new school year let's carry forward the lessons that we've learned in the past carry them as strengths to make our our students and our schools even better our schools have always been a Vibrant Community of more than just buildings they are communities where young minds are nurtured and dreams take flight so let's continue to create an environment where curiosity is encouraged talents are honed and values are instilled earlier this evening on our consent agenda we had a number of things that were approved by the board unanimously and one of the things was a new person to the equity the superintendent's Equity Council so I have Keisha strand who I nominated she is a
160parent of two kids out at Signal Hill Elementary School and she is on the N aacp health committee she's their chair she also works for the keep Prince William beautiful board of directors Secretary of solid waste Advisory Group at large appointment leadership Prince William emerging leaders program and so I know she's going to be a fantastic addition she also just as a side note as a harpist and a self-published children's author so I can't wait to have her join us and have all of her ideas and input and all that she was fantastic when I met her so welcome last thing I want to Monday is September is Monday night September 11th we're already into that week right um September 11th is Patriots Day and that's the day where we remember the lives that were
161lost at the World Trade Center on flight 93 and at the Pentagon so that's also a day where we will honor the First Responders service members and civil servants who worked on the rescue and Recovery efforts so take a moment on that day to remember these these people and before I move on I want to just thank everybody at Colgan high school and Hilton High School at their back to school nights and I got to see the op Hilton and um Hilton an OP football game and I look forward to meeting with people at the back to school nights that I'm able to attend and um catch some more football games and theater Productions and concerts and all that good stuff I hope you all have a great week peace out Miss Jackson thank you
162Dr Latif I truly hope everyone had a restful summer break and welcome back I want to start just thanking all staff who work to prepare Prince William County schools for students and staff to atone those who work summer school and for just everyone for a great first few weeks I also want to thank Prince William County families for their partnership in studying this new successful school year last week I attended back to school nights at Gainesville High School Unity weed and Princeville District High School this past weekend I kicked off the sporting events with a football game at Gainesville High School and I'm scheduled to attend many of the back to school nights at various and various extracurricular events throughout the fall it is a great opportunity to celebrate the start of the new school
163year get a feel for different School cultures and most importantly connect with the community and staff I want to thank Miss straud for giving me and Miss wall a tour of the new innovation Elementary School that that school has both the Gainesville district and the Brentsville District students and families that attend and it is was beautiful and I just I'm look excited for the women cutting just a gentle reminder that evolve will still go in live in many schools soon the best resource to find out when is your school I'm just thankful for the video so this summer Prince William County schools completed a video that allows for some students to preview what it is like to go through evolved and if you have students like my own that are a little nervous about going
164through the video is was very helpful I that want to thank staff and school counselors for reapplying and newly applying to the ramp designation that we was listed in the consent agenda and I want to just take a moment to recognize that September is designated as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and the statistic listed on the resolution is sobering that one in 285 children in the U.S will be diagnosed with cancer by their 19th birthday 43 per day are diagnosed with cancer annually and the average age of diagnosis is is six compared to 66 years old for adults it is my sincere hope that all stakeholders take a moment to support and recognize Childhood Cancer this month also thank you to the national uh thank you to all security officers that's this week or not in
165a couple weeks is national security officer appreciation week and I just I don't know if I say it enough but thank you so much and of course thank you to school resource officers but I just appreciate keeping all of us safe both here and in school so thank you and I just wish I'm almost out of time that everybody has a safe drive home thank you for coming and have a great new school year Miss Williams thank you Mr chairman I just want to pick up where Ms Jackson left off and say thank you as well to our school security officers at every level because we have so many um but welcome back to an exciting school year excited for the start of another year in which students have an opportunity to once again Thrive
166I just want to take a moment to welcome our new student representatives and to celebrate and thank all those who supported our students learning and fun over the summer whether it was launch or through Discovery programs or many of the activities that occurred around the county I appreciate the fact that a lot of people think that school's out in June and we don't come back until September but that's often not the case for most of us including the board this year summer we also participated in some meetings and conducted business also would like to just uh give a special thank you to all those who helped organize and set up and plan out and Implement things like the Triple E conference the new student welcome all of those conferences that happen over the summer time
167that are dedicated to our school division staff I had the privilege to have a little Justin over here Mr book had the approv I had the privilege to attend the Prince William County uh Foundation greater Foundation back to school event at Freedom I think just about everybody was there this year and it was just nice to see our students be welcomed back from the community there it kind of rotates around last year it was more in the navsco district this year it was at Freedom I know next year it'll be even bigger and better event and it was excited to see so many Community Resources I was able to attend the vsba conference on education the African-American history festival and so many more events I would highly encourage Prince William County School families to check
168out the school board newsletter it's a great way to keep track of what our school board members feel is important and all of the activities that we have participated in I will be having a first of many office hours this year on September 23rd at 10 A.M please email me if you'd like to participate I just wanted to take a slight moment and update everyone on the Governor's School we did have our very first meeting on August 31st Manassas Parks is the hosted division this year I wanted to say congratulations to Dr Shantae Jones on being voted chair and I have been voted Vice chair for this school year I would like to also congratulate freedom on a packed house for their back to school night I think that it was the most amount of
169people I've seen at back to school night at Freedom ever uh congratulations to principal Smith can clearly engage Community engagement is working wonders for the school I'd also like to give a big thank you to Ed futuro and the partnership they have with freedom I think they're their wonderful uh program and I look forward to a continued partnership with that organization of freedom for years to come hope to see everyone at the remaining back to school nights for the rest of the Woodbridge district and if anyone is interested in volunteering on the equity committee the Woodbridge district has an opening thank you Miss Jesse okay okay thank you first of all I want to thank Dr McDade and your staff for the eee conference it was wonderful and uh I also wanted to the panel
170with the students I thought that was really a unique idea and uh the the ju the way that was hit was really it gave the students a chance for us to look at Through The Eyes of students uh I had a I've met with I didn't meet with teachers as students at the beginning of the year what I did I went from school to school and I don't know if we have the slide or not but this is my Eminem tour uh because and uh because it's just for teaching is a very stressful job and the first week the first day I'd never go on the first week of school because I know it's very stressful and I have this little I said Eminem a day will keep stress away and I gave all those
171teachers of Eminem's and you know teachers are very easy people I don't know you guys they just love the M M's they anything you give them they love it doesn't replace the need for salary adjustments and things of this nature but I wanted to to make sure they felt good about coming back to school I also visit with Dr Mark Dr Cindy the maidis I hope I could pronounce it correctly and Marlene Coleman I have two new schools and they're often write two new principles and they're off and running and I want to talk about something that was really very impactful and was well done Vernon Bach and he's not is she here I just want to thank you guys for that presentation on the net zero School many of you know that we're getting
172that aquan will be getting the first Net Zero School in the county and many people have asked me what does Net Zero mean I think I know what it means but I asked them to put together presentation for the community later on and I want to thank Mr John Mills the supervisor and whoever planned that school it is genius in the work and and I saw the beauty of the school it's a genius that has gone into it the environmental features it is designed with Occoquan is the oldest school in the county is a hundred years old and it is that Community aquacorn was on part of the Indian reservation and it's the agaquan it's called the I think it's dog egg I looked it up but this was a the tribe and this school
173is going to have a tribal Environmental theme and I want to thank and congratulate Mr Buddy Lynn and his staff for showcasing this school in a way that the students design everything and parents and I want to thank you and I'm looking forward to that visit thank you thank you Miss Jesse Miss wall welcome back everyone it's been fun to be back in school and start attending sporting events and meet and greets and back to school nights over the first two weeks of school I took the opportunity to visit each of the 12 schools in the Gainesville District in the morning to welcome students back to school and that was a lot of fun and you have some great students they're very polite I'm so glad to see that traffic at Battlefield High School is
174moving well thank you so much to our staff and um here in the KLC and also at the school to everybody who's involved with the changes it's it's working nicely and people are really pleased I want to extend a warm welcome to the three new principles in the Gainesville District um principal Boynton at Unity Braxton principal Bowles at Sudley Elementary and interim principal Mr huckstein at Battlefield high school so welcome to each of you I'm also looking forward to the upcoming report on the state of the schools academic data Sol results and where we are in our pursuit of academic Excellence these are some of my very favorite favorite topics I can't wait to talk about it um and now if I can take a moment I want to address a topic that has been
175top of mind for many of the families that I represent let let me be fully clear I I fully support the governor's policies on ensuring privacy dignity and respect for all students and parents in Virginia's public schools it is my position that we should be telling parents all relevant information that concerns their children in our schools this includes information about gender identity parents need to have confidence that they are our partners and that they can trust us to keep them not only informed but involved in the decision making with what is happening with their children while at school I do not like this idea that schools could be in receipt of important information about a child and not tell the parents in practice I know we try to do this but under our current policy
176and regulation parents do not have assurance that we will tell them and that is what they need from us letting parents know keeping parents informed these are common sense principles and the foundation of solid public policy in our very own strategic plan through our commitment to family and Community engagement we pledge to build collaborative meaningful Partnerships and trusting relationships to Foster the success of all students we state that quote bwcs will ensure honest transparent and two-way communication with families schools and the community to Foster trusting relationships how can parents trust us if they feel like they may be kept in the dark about their child because of the existing language in policy 738 and regulation 70 38.5 moreover the language in section 22.1-23.3 of the code of Virginia is very clear and the official opinion
177of the Virginia attorney general makes it clear as well local school boards are to adopt policies that are consistent with the model policies that are currently in force so I believe we should follow the law that's the rationale offered by this board in 2021 and that's what we should do in 2023 lastly parents thank you for support and encouraging your students to show up to school and if your school has gotten more strict with cell phones thank you for your support in encouraging your children to keep off of their phones while in school to close students and staff it's been a strong start I'm hearing great things keep up the good work have a great evening everyone thank you madam Vice chair moving on to my final comments or my comments um welcome back everyone
178we are excited to be back congrats to the class of 23 for one last time um they've been dropped off to college or starting their new job or joined the military since we've seen you last and so I'm very excited on my themes of Student Success thank you Dr McDade for that report on 96 percent um attendance this first couple of weeks of school that's great we had record numbers of scholarship dollars last year and announced it during our commencements and during the end of the year and so that's another Mark of this school division's record achievement I want to also um talk I mean you've heard from some of the school board members back to school nights have been extremely well attended from some of the principals I've talked to um and I've gone
179to one for my child's attendance has been really really off the charts and so that's been fantastic and so that just tells us our parents are engaged committed and are working towards Student Success number two on my efforts for salaries you know we have good news coming from the budget from the governor and from the general assembly on the compromise and some more money coming for salaries and we'll see how that works out and that'll be on top of the maybe the five percent salary raise we gave last year we might see some more and on top of 30 raises I've overseen since I've been here as School board chairman moving on to number three my my policy my commitment to Safety and Security you will all be seeing if you you're not everybody but
180many of our schools will be implementing the Evolve system starting later this month and we have high hopes for that being a strong detection and deterrence system so I'm very excited about that moving lastly to space and infrastructure tonight you heard of the vsba bond sale we'll put out in two weeks and all the projects that are listed in there that we will be funding I'm proud to say that over the last three years we've reduced our borrowing reduced our debt servicing over the course of the last few years with a very strong commitment to fiscal responsibility clean Audits and continue to have a AAA Bond rating this Bond sale will help help us as you've heard get back to some of the projects that we had delayed in the past we are now moving
181those up and we're going to be funding those in some of those projects were delayed from prior years and so there is a little bit more we're doing this year but this is based on the savings that we have encumbered over the last three years that have been fantastic both from a standpoint of a low interest rate and from the fact that we've just dropped our borrowing and made a strong commitment to pay down debt um lastly um this week Freedom High School State defending football champion will be playing DeMatha a private high school from Maryland which is uh in it of itself a football Powerhouse they are opening Gates early this will be a well-attended game so I encourage folks to go out and see it and and to be safe it's very important
182we're very excited to see how Prince William County and freedom Freedom High School Stacks up against some very strong competition so we're very excited about that and that is I think the game of the week for the region lastly the um if you haven't seen it the the you saw the video tonight the value of a tassel the value of Prince William County tassel Limitless thank you very much everyone have a great evening the meeting is adjourned