Prince William County School Board Meeting - May 17, 2023

001I'd like to call this meeting in the Prince William County School Board to order I believe Mrs wall has a motion she'd like to make if I share wall Dr Latif I move to amend the meeting attendant agenda by adding agenda item 11.06 which will be recognition of internal audit month is there a second Mr chairman a second any discussion okay please vote by show of hands all in favor okay any opposed thank you that will be added to the agenda or you can put yes on here thank you um uh now motion is in order for the approval of the meeting agenda as amended Mr chairman yep I move that the principal has amended do you have a second Mr chairman a second any discussion please vote are we doing a all right all

002in favor all right any opposed no motion passes moving on to the motion and or closed session emotions in order Miss wall Mr chairman I move that pursuant to Virginia code section 2.2-3711 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 2 to discuss with division Council and staff actual or probable litigation and specific legal matters involving specific staff and students pursuant to Virginia code sections 2.2-3711a 7 and 8. and three to discuss and receive briefings by staff members related to the security of school facilities the safety of persons using such facilities and actions taken to respond to such matters were discussion in an open meeting

003would jeopardize the security of such facilities pursuant to Virginia code sections 2.2-3711a 19. do you have a second Mr chairman aye second any discussion please vote 37 yes um good that's excellent so the Prince William County School Board will now enter closed session and return Open session is approximately one hour [Music] thank you [Music] good Prince William County School Board will now re-enter Open session from closed session emotions in order Miss Wong Mr chairman I move that pursuant to Virginia code section 2.2-3712 the closed session of the Prince William County school board meeting of May 17 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

004meeting requirements were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification resolution applies and two 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 Miss Williams second any discussion please vote the vote is seven yes one absent Ralston motion passed moving on to closed session action items a motion is an order for 8.01 approval of appointments and releases Miss wall Mr chairman I move that the Prince William County school board approved the appointments and releases of specific employees as presented in closed session do you have a second Mr chairman a second any discussion please vote the vote is seven yes one absent Ralston motion passed okay moving on to the Pledge of

005Allegiance um if everyone would stand I'll go ahead and start I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you um moving on to the um our thriving Futures focus and so it's the time for one of our most enjoyable portions of the school board meetings and that's launching thriving features we dedicate this time during our meetings to recognize students staff members and schools who've earned an honor or 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 for publicly recognizing publicly for their accomplishments We Begin tonight with the Potomac District Mr Justin

006Wilk Mr Wilk thank you Dr Latif uh it's with great honor that I recognize this outstanding student tonight Baza with ubote I was at the event where this all went down uh she is a sophomore at Potomac High School and this is all about her being America's Next Great intern out of 16 National finalists bezawit emerge as one of the best in showcasing top-tier communication skills that are essential in an internship more than 6 500 people competed across the country as excuse me more than 6 500 people across the country voted for the finalists and bezowitz remarkable abilities earned her a spot in the first place tier America's Next Great intern contest was held by Reuben education a company that offers online instruction for College and Career Readiness as the winner of the con contest

007bezawit was recognized at a ceremony held at Potomac High where room and education awarded her with a stipend for professional clothing professional head shops headshots and a paid virtual internship I also had the privilege of attending as I said it was a great ceremony and it was a remarkable event bezowitz business education teacher Miss tiller was also recognized and received the 250 cash prize to support her classroom uh bezawit is here tonight with Miss tillar Brandon principal of Brandon Bowles and Dr Sarah Martin director of CTE bazoid please come forward and please share a few words good evening everyone my name is beza itabata I am sophomore in Potomac Senior High School this is my teacher Mr lard which is my economics and finance teacher and this is Mr Bowles the principal of Potomac Senior

008High School I'm very proud to be American Next Great intern and thank you guys for giving me this great recognition thank you again thank you Mr Wilkin congratulations to bedrid and Potomac High School next we would like to recognize the outstanding Deca students from Garfield High School um and um it is my pleasure to recognize the Garfield High School distributive education clubs of America or Deca for earning a gold level recertification in retail operations in honor of their school store called the wolves den the school-based Enterprise is the only one of its kind in pwcs and has been certified for the past 15 years the store is open every other day during lunch and during special events the store sells spirit wear to staff members students and their families keeping in mind the importance of

009providing quality merchandise at an affordable price on average sales are approximately five thousand dollars annually through the school store students are learning how to handle money and create budgets advertising and marketing including visual merchandising and cross merchandising they are also learning how to best build relationships through the power of excellent customer service skills the DECA sponsor is Marilyn Clark and she is here this evening with students and Noor as well as business education teacher and department chairman Patrick Hogan Miss Clark can you come forward say a few words good evening I'm Marilyn Clark and I've been the business and marketing teacher at Garfield for 21 years and my students and I would like to thank you very much for this recognition thank you thank you congratulations again Miss Clark in our Garfield High School I

010want to also share that Chuck Sullivan a senior from Woodbridge High School are in first place at the state level in sports and entertainment marketing we invited him to attendance evening but he had a conflict we've invited him to attend at a meeting in June now it is my honor to introduce Miss Laurie Williams representing the Woodbridge District Ms Williams thank you Dr lichtif I am so excited to recognize Freedom High School this evening for not one but two national awards three years ago our school board adopted a sustainability resolution and formed the superintendent's advisory Council on sustainability indicating a strong Focus of the importance of reducing the division's overall carbon footprint protecting the environment and realizing cost savings with emerging engine excuse me Energy Technologies a year later the U.S Department of Education named

011Prince William County schools a green ribbon School District Prince William County schools is only one of five School divisions in the country to earn this award this spring we learned that the U.S Department of Education recognized our School Division for a second time thanks to the hard work of students and staff at Freedom High School Freedom High School is one of only two schools in Virginia and one of only 26 in the nation that earned the green ribbon award Freedom was selected based on high achievement in three U.S Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools pillars reducing environmental impact and cost improve health and wellness and effective environmental and sustainability education let's give Freedom a round of applause in addition to the green ribbon award Freedom High School is among only 23 high schools selected by

012the American college application program excuse me campaign or the ACAC to receive the school of excellence awards for its excuse me for its ability to assist High School seniors as they navigate through the college application and admission process the award is presented to schools that support efforts to increase the number of high school seniors including those who are systematically underserved in applying to college the recognition stems from the celebration of the school's Virginia college application week VA vcaw program held on October 25th through 28th 2022 where students engaged in College and Career related activities the goal of the VC aw events is to remove barriers that help students see higher education as attainable and to prevent obstacles that may hinder them from applying for college the following staff members are here tonight on behalf of

013both words excuse me Awards chevelli Smith principal Corey Eaton director of School counseling Tasha Mason Dykes counselor Angela Jenkins counselor and Dr dwarin biology teacher and sends coordinator Miss Smith can you please come forward to say a few words and before you do I just want to say please come on I just want to say I was there when Freedom received the email notice for its counseling award and it is so impactful as a first generation college student myself I understand how instrumental it is not only having someone be there to support you but to do the things of learning how to apply to a program and successfully mentoring you through that process so these awards are absolutely outstanding Miss Smith okay thank you very much Freedom High School is honored to be the U.S

014Department of Education 2023 green ribbon school this achievement is not due because of one person we would like to thank Janine gibrara from The Prince William county energy and sustainability team for her guidance and support we would also like to thank Dr Duran our sins specialty coordinator and all the freedom students and staff that do this wonderful work every single day I would also say like to say thank you for the honor of the American college application campaign School of Excellence again we have a fantastic counseling department I would like to thank Mr Eaton I would like to thank Miss Jenkins Miss Dykes and all the counselors thank you very much congratulations Freedom High School for not only winning one national award but two national awards both tied directly to our strategic Plan before asking

015Dr mcday to say a few words I'd like to First recognize our family members of honorees here I'd like them to be standing recognized any of our family members for our students here in the um being honored is there anyone here thank you very much for sharing your kid your children with us and and making sure that they're on a great trajectory and path for success thank you all um Dr McDade thank you Mr chairman proud congratulations to Potomac Senior High School uh bezawit as well as Miss tillar job well done and the work your story really speaks to the real work that's happening at Potomac around CTE and preparing students for post-secondary Success so congratulations to you and thank you Mr Bowles for supporting and creating the conditions for CTE to thrive at Potomac

016High School Garfield Deca students you amaze me congratulations we're so incredibly proud same to you the skills that you're learning easily transfer into post-secondary success and Freedom High School in addition to the 2020 resolution that Miss Williams spoke of the adoption of our strategic plan also includes a goal to have the first school designated at Green Ribbon school and you delivered on that goal so congratulations to you we are so excited for all of your accomplishments um all of the work that you each are doing represents what we believe um students will be prepared to create a thriving future for themselves and their community in our strategic plan Vision your work represents that so we are pwcs proud thank you Dr McDade let's take a short break for some photos and beginning we'll start with

017besuit and her teacher and Then followed by our students and teachers at Garfield and then Freedom High School goodness area oh you're going to be in it too damn yeah thank you oh my God [Applause] go ahead I'm gonna take the picture worlds thank you very much continue okay thank you for that at this point we will move on to adoption of the consent agenda emotions and Order Miss wall Mr chairman I move that the Prince William County school board approved the public meeting consent agenda as recommended do I have a second Mr chairman any discussion Ms Williams thank you I just um 1103 is women's equality day it doesn't occur until August 26th but it leads me to just make mention of how we often um have items on our consent agenda that are

018either a month or a few months ahead of what our schedule is so that we make sure that when the month starts that we're prepared to honor them or in this case it's after school is out and I just wanted to make sure that our listening public is aware of that because sometimes I think people forget we do that a little bit in advance so that we have the proper time to celebrate whatever it is coming up and also I'm just a huge fan of women's equality today thank you thank you Miss Williams Miss wall thank you Miss uh Mr chairman I asked that item 11.06 be added to the agenda um because um it is a certificate of recognition um and it's for recognizing May 2023 as internal audit Awareness Month in the Commonwealth

019of Virginia um and I feel that the audit function is extremely important and I'm currently serving as the chair of the internal audit committee and Miss Jackson of Brunsville serves with me on that committee and um I take the work of the committee very seriously and I appreciate the work of the chief internal auditor Mr Maness and the audit manager Chris migliaccio so I just wanted to say thank you they provide a lot of added value to our organization and help us with so many aspects of uh all of the internal audit profession or audit um performance indicators so thank you very much thank you Miss wall and I would just Echo those statements both by Miss Williams and Miss wall especially on internal audit which serves to reassure the public on the work we

020do here in ensuring that everything we do is done with Fidelity and integrity please vote the vote is seven yes one absent Ralston motion passed okay moving on to Citizen comment time those citizens who signed up in advance with the clerk May address a school board this evening when they are called to the podium the citizen comment period for regular school board meetings one hour and citizens may speak on agenda items or other topics Germaine to the operations and policies of Prince William County Public 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 of the meeting if you do not do so the

021board will recess and I will ask the room to be cleared to restore public order tonight we have 14 citizens signed up to speak when I call your name please come up to the podium and state your name and address for the record I'll go ahead and announce the first five names and there are chairs up front if they'd like to grab a chair just to be close to the mic we have Abigail Hahn Sarah Bachmann Deanna Duarte Erica trendenic Amanda Locklear Abigail Hahn good evening my name is Abigail Han and I'm a seventh grade student at the nooksville school I want to discuss my concerns this evening regarding school security specifically at my school Under Virginia law title 18.2-50 51.6 strangulation of another penalty any person who without consent impedes the blood circulation of

022pressure to the neck of such person resulting in wounding or bodily injury of such person is guilty of strangulation a Class 6 felony in a simple Google search I was able to find that only 4.4 pounds of pressure placed on the jugular is necessary to cause unconsciousness the same amount of pressure a kindergartener uses to grab their backpack pottstown.org did a study in which it determine strangulation has recently been identified as one of the most legal lethal forms of domestic violence however I also learned on Tuesday May 9th from my principal at the Knoxville school that strangulation isn't a crime and therefore police would not be involved I have so many questions now how could choking someone and restricting their Airway not be a crime if if that was the case why do I know

023the names Michael Brown and George Floyd the law says it's a Classics felony but the principal says it's not even a crime even worse how is a student who uses deadly force on another student allowed to continue attending school in case you were wondering why I'm discussing this issue it's simple this child was placed in my sister's class because the child's previous teacher quit over the issue and since that time this child has begun bullying my sister and nothing is being done what has to happen does a child have to die for something that can easily be prevented this school district has focused so much on attention and bullying I have I have lost hours of my academics listening to my counselors talk about bullying and how it affects people teachers stop teaching class in

024order to deal with problem students which takes time away from my learning now my sister has impacted her teacher is a full-time correction officer and my sister is no longer in a learning environment and by no means a safe environment every student in my school is aware that this is the direct result of my principle focusing on protecting students with discipline issues issues that police should be dealing with when the principals should be focused on educating the students that follow the rules ironically I still remember just a couple years ago when Governor juncken protected our rights to decide whether to wear a mask or not I remember my brother chose not to wear a mask and was subsequently removed from his class spent two weeks unsupervised in a room inside of my school without any

025in-person instruction and still has issues from that trauma maybe he should have just choked his students so they would have left him in his classroom in conclusion if this board is truly concerned with school and student safety you would immediately find the school to new principal one who is diverse Equitable and inclusive of all students not just the ones committing violence Acts Sarah Bachmann hi good evening I'm Sarah Baughman my address is on file and unfortunately I'm back tonight to keep our County school board members accountable last school board meeting I spoke up regarding some ongoing bullying issues that are continuing to happen in the Knoxville School and following that board meeting I did receive a very kindly worded email from Miss Adele Jackson and I appreciate that thank you you stated that you were

026keeping all of this you know at the Forefront of your mind and you're taking it very seriously we appreciate that that we are being heard but unfortunately the following Tuesday when we were all invited to a open forum for kindergartner parents we were told that again our concerns are being taken very seriously so seriously that we were given Post-it notes about this size and told to write our concerns on the Post-it notes at which time they took all the Post-it notes and rather than addressing the individual concerns the parents had come forward with they grouped them together into like categories and broadly addressed those concerns when one parent asked about whether or not the parents could come into the school to support the teachers Dr Jack said and I quote yes yes yes yes I

027truly believe in having an open school safety you know safety but with parents open school I want the parents to come in as much as you can be we should have a welcoming experience for you when you do come in yet in an email to the staff sent earlier this week Dr Jack States parents and volunteers are not allowed to just hang out in classrooms to observe any type of observation or hanging out must go through admin admin then has to have a pre-post meeting with a parent and one of us has to be in the room as well during that time that doesn't sound very welcoming to me additionally he goes on any volunteer or parent or otherwise that exceeds 15 hours in any given week must complete an online application provide references receive

028a background check Etc like we do with hiring staff again is this very welcoming School Board policy 926 states that parents and interested citizens are invited to the schools to observe the instructional program in related activities so which is it are we welcome or are we not welcome and by speaking out against the schools and the administrators are we going to be prevented from participating in school related activities or having lunch with our five and six-year-olds I'm tired of people telling me that they're taking our concerns very seriously because actions speak louder than words show us publicly that you are taking our concerns seriously the other thing that we keep hearing is that kids are different after covid but disruptive and aggressive behavior was present before covid and it wasn't acceptable then thank you Deanna

029Duarte do you know what my address is on file good evening I come here tonight as a concerned parent who has a child in kindergarten who is in the class with the teachers that suddenly quit I called the Knoxville school to speak with the principal to get some sort of explanation on how this would impact my son's learning I was told by the principal that there was not much to tell and sometimes teachers sign up for a job that they didn't expect and they feel that it isn't a great fit later that day I found out some disturbing information about a student who has been assaulting and hurting other children in the class by the board meeting they held last time after I received disturbing information I felt that I was lied to by the

030principal there was in fact so much to tell but nothing was told I was in disbelief to find that there were assaults on multiple children I went home and talked to my son to which I found out that this little boy scratched my son on the playground and I found visible scratch on his chest and stomach I emailed the principal the next day asking why I was lied to how this child keeps hurting children and what is the school going to do to protect their children from a child who has shown repeated aggressive behavior I went to go have lunch with my son on May 4th 2023 and spent the rest of the day in his classroom as Helping Hands while on the playground the principal confronted me regarding my email I was not pleased

031with our conversation I felt as though I was gaslighted by him and was asking him why wasn't this told to the parents regarding the abuse he said and I quote I believe you are being told things that aren't quite true and that everyone interprets things differently I decided to speak tonight to let the board know that things are happening in our schools that you are not aware of and that the principal is responsible for keeping our kids safe I am still waiting to reply to my email from the principal with information on whether or not he's looking over the footage of my son getting scratched on the playground on Monday May 1st I asked the school board to look into how the principal of the Knoxville school is handing child-related behaviors because from what I'm

032witnessing and hearing it is lacking in that Administration as the board you need to hold your administrating staff accountable otherwise the schools will never be safe I ask that you figure out why parents concerns are not being handled and why I'm still waiting a month in for that email why is not why is it not a concern for the schools that my child is being hurt by a child that has repeatedly hurt others we also have and I quote we also have some squirrely stuff with the parents that we'll need to watch out for most of our parents are awesome and very helpful I am appalled that the safety of our children is being referred to as squirrely stuff with the parents and that somehow us parents who are speaking out on not awesome and

033very helpful it is because we are finally shining a light on a principle that is not doing his job this just reinforces that there are things going on in the administration does not want to be known the cat's out of the bag thank you Erica trendenic I'm Erica tredenick and I live in the Brunswick District I have a few topics I'd like to address tonight I know the school board likes to Proclaim and celebrate different months and days and I realize there are many to choose from so you may lose track I'm disappointed that the school system didn't choose to recognize Police Week especially since you have so many hair working the four officers undercover cops csos and not to mention the six other or so unarmed risk management Personnel here and there happens to

034be more officers and security here than at any of our schools each day is it more important to protect yourselves than our children recognizing Police Week helps educate our students about the sacrifices made by these Brave individuals we instill a sense of respect appreciation and gratitude for the men and women in law enforcement this week would have been a perfect time for you all to show support for the men and women you asked to come here to protect you from us mean moms dads and parents and and teachers Prince William County Police I respect and honor you and always hope our school system will do the same I'm wondering why you all continue to Over Control the process of signing up to speak at a school board meeting why is it that you ask us

035to label the topic we're speaking about and then an admin reaches out to try and speak to people who signed up to talk about an issue that may not be something you once said is that freedom of speech having your staff reach out to concern parents who sign up to speak to get ahead of what they plan to say at the meeting why not have the sign up sheet here in person like the board of County Supervisors does for being a board in School Division that says they want everyone's voices heard your harsh rules and red tape around public comment time say otherwise sounds like there's a major problem that needs fixing at the Knoxville School I've been contacted by many people since the last school board meeting I hope you can help address whatever

036the problem is the main issue seems to stem from a lack of well-enforced expectations for student Behavior little if any real consequences or discipline and zero follow through when that's lacking in a school environment it becomes a breeding ground for children to see what they can get away with even if it puts the well-being of others in Jeopardy we need to have clearer expectations for student Behavior does zero tolerance mean zero we need consistent enforcement of consequences and appropriate discipline we need to make sure that all students are held accountable for their actions which helps enforce safe and appropriate behavior with every student I also hope that we don't continue to lose great teachers to neighboring counties and that we can support and value our teachers so that they want to continue to work in

037Prince William County schools I hear a lot that the School Division as a whole is not open to criticism but I appreciate that the school board voted years ago to provide a venue for confidentiality to teachers and parents through the Ombudsman I hope that when others contact them they will have a positive unbiased experience without too much red tape I'm excited for the future of the school board and hope to be up there with other moms and dads who made a promise to protect our children and make changes for better in Prince William County schools November is coming Amanda Locklear and then after that will be Elena riffle Jessica Lane Anna Moyes magali Hurtado and Kimberly Melvin Orozco good evening my name is Amanda Locklear and my address is on file special education a I

038had no clue what this meant until about three weeks ago when I was telling someone that my son received an A in social studies yet he had only completed three out of ten assignments three 30 percent he had been excused from Seven seventy percent please understand it is also not the first time this has happened this year I would love for someone to explain how that is a free appropriate public education I'm not sure what concerns me the most the fact that my son has not participated in most of the fifth grade social studies curriculum this year the fact that he received a special education a the fact that I was not told this would be happening so it could be discussed as a team or the fact that if I had not asked I

039would not know Dr Latif chairman Latif if you only completed 30 percent of med school assignments thirty percent of your residency would you be a board-certified physician and surgeon and own your own practice today Dr McDade if you only had seven and a half years of your 23 or roughly 30 of your 23 years of experience as a principal teacher leader would you be sitting here today board members if 30 of your constituents show up to vote for you at the end of this year yet 70 percent of your opponents show up to vote for them will you be sitting here next year my son is one of many special education students in Prince William County schools a county that has received federal state local funds for their special education program my son has a

040specific learning disability he has to work harder my son is intelligent eager willing and certainly capable given the opportunity our children do not need a free handout our children need to learn how to try their hardest our children need to learn that failure is okay failure is not fatal and that it is actually inevitable that at some point in your life you will fail what's most important is how you react to that failure our children need an opportunity our children deserve and need a free appropriate public education thank you Elena riffle hi um being on behalf of to remain anonymous sorry I lost my voice today out of all days I'm a concerned parent and former teacher at the Knoxville school who along with my teaching assistant made the extremely difficult decision to resign recently

041we both felt we could not in good conscious continue under the leadership at TNS we were both physically and emotionally exhausted I personally had lost 19 pounds since starting with many sleepless nights if you know me you know I'm a people pleaser and hate confrontation I honestly wanted to try and forget this all and move on however I'm also a parent at the school and fear that good experienced teachers and staff will continue to leave either by transferring at the end of the year early retirement or sickness Etc this is because as a teacher once you break your contract you become virtually unhirable most likely ending your career in education teacher retention and morale is so important because it affects class size student safety a teacher's ability to teach well quality of services provided and

042the overall climate of the school I've wanted to stay silent but I kept thinking of my students and continued hearing personal stories of other students and their parents who have had serious bullying both verbal and physical not properly addressed minimized or ignored and have had to pull their student out of this school I also know that I'm certainly not alone as a teacher I know there are others who are suffering in silence and do not feel like they have a voice as a former TNS teacher I felt as if I did not and when I voiced it concerned even if serious it would somehow come back on me I want to be very clear this is not about a particular student and in no way should any student or parent be blamed or vilified they

043need assistance and appropriate level of services it is more about the lack of transparency or minimizing incidents and concerns with parents or having a clear systematic procedure of for handling bully concerns including physical incidents that are the issue it is also how staff is treated when they bring up these concerns I apprec appreciate Mrs Porter Lucas's attention to this and her attempt at taking correct corrective action I hope this continues and that the staff at TNS and all personal Prince William County schools will have some sort of clear training and method for truly confidentially sharing concerns without reprimand teachers need a confidential third party in these situations I think not only about how my career and family have been impacted but also of other students their families and my fellow colleagues past and present I

044hope it's not all in vain I worry what more who else's lives need to be significantly impacted before there's a real change I would like to add in my 17 seconds left that I am also a parent at the Knoxville school who has a child that has had constant issues of people putting their hands on her the same child that hit my daughter in the ear is the same child that punched another girl in her stomach while I was chaperoning they were told I was told something was done but not what was done thank you thank you Jessica Lane hello my name is Jessica Lane and my record my address is on file last week I went to two parent forums at the Knoxville school where I found that many parents share my concerns over

045the lack of discipline and teacher support at the Knoxville school I am the mother of a kindergarten girl and so far this year my daughter has been shoved kicked punched in the head and choked by one of her classmates I'm informed that this is now considered common Behavior as my outcry for help has been met with complacency I'm told that kids are just more violent and undisciplined since covid why should my child be repeatedly attacked unprovoked in an environment that's supposed to be safe fix it please make school violence less tolerated sending a student right back to class who has just assaulted another student teaches that the attackers that there is little or no consequence for their behavior and sends the message to our children we don't care about their safety and cripples are unsupported

046teachers efforts to maintain order in an overcrowded classroom and this should not be the new normal Anna Moyes hello my name is Ann boys and my address is on file in January of 2021 Joe Biden signed an executive order that allowed students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that aligned with their gender identity this gave biological boys unlimited access to use the girls bathrooms and locker rooms this was the reason why I've taken health and PE online for the past two years which cost 975 dollars in total I was lucky enough to have this option available to me but a lot of other students are not not only is this option expensive it's also inconvenient instead of relaxing and spending times with my friends over the summer vacation I spent the majority of my

047summer sitting in my room on Zoom meetings or working on assignments I took my laptop with me on vacation and every day we had to drive up to 30 minutes for me to have access to the internet many of my peers and I have experienced massive discomforts from seeing biological Boys in our private facilities no student should feel uncomfortable or unsafe in our bathrooms and locker rooms take what happened in Loudoun County a 14 year old girl was raped in her High School bathroom by a transgender student we have no way of noting what their motivations are for using our private areas no parent should feel as though they have to either risk the safety of their child or invest massive amounts of time money and energy to homeschool them or send them to private

048school no student should feel as though their private facilities in their schools are unsafe thank you magali Hurtado is on file with the clerk I am I am parent of dual Bridge Elementary student president of rpto and an active member of my community beyond my kids school I'm here to talk about different issues so we're in different hats if you will as a parent and member of the Old Bridge Elementary Community I want to recognize the divisions efforts in planning the bell times for next year they may not be perfect but it is a vast improvement from the poorly plan and poorly communicated plan that was presented last year so thank you for taking the steps to minimize disruptions to most of our schools now speaking as a member of a larger Community I have

049heard from other Lake Richard schools that they may be considering removing guidance or counseling as part of the regular rotation so they can be available for crisis and students with specific needs that need is evident but also I am not sure if this is a site-based management decision or if it comes from central office but for students to open up to their counselors during a crisis I think they need to also have a relationship with them I know my kids and kids from other families I talked to during our afternoon activities wouldn't qualify for those one-on-one counseling sessions but they benefit from regular guidance lessons they talk to me about the breathing or dealing with small and big problems I think that's benefit beneficial for them I am a proponent of equity and we usually

050say that given some students what they need doesn't mean taking it away from others but I feel this is exactly what we would be happening if we remove guidance from the regular rotation for all students sounds like a stuffing or scheduling issue that adults need to solve not at the expense of our students I don't think an occasional pushing would be the same pushing lesson would be the same and in my opinion removing guidelines from the regular rotation may result in more kids not knowing how to deal with day-to-day issues ultimately resulting in more need for one-on-one and crisis services and then what are we going to limit counselors to only the really bad crisis I don't think so next I understand this is hearing and speech month and I would like to encourage the

051school division to review the policies for access to speech services I understand Staffing is an issue but we all owe it to our kids to be true to our value of equity a little over a year ago my first grader was successful speech services the speech issues were glaring because he was but because he was performing at grade level he did not qualify for services he could read we just could understand what he said after Railway listed he started services on a private practice he's about to be discharged from that so we're happy with the progress he's making but that's not an option available for all of our students and it is it feels like a big Equity issue to the nice Services just because the academic and behavioral impact is not evident thank you

052Kimberly Melman Orozco hello my name is Dr Kimberly momentarozco my address is on file I had prepared a well-formulated speech but I think it's better for me to just swing it given the tone and tenor of what I've heard so far um I'll start by reading a quote from a whistleblower teacher that ended up calling me over a dozen times since March of this year they have violated so many laws you have such grounds I wanted to play audio recording of what she told me on over probably six hours of recordings because I recorded every minute of it detailing how my special education daughter was having her rights violated detailing how she was being provided the answers on tests detailing how they were omitting as somebody else had mentioned omitting assignments to create a fabricated

053record to show that she was progressing I have it all on recording this whistleblower teacher expressed everything to the letter and detail and I actually sent an excerpt one of many to Mr Welk earlier today I know Dr McDade you've seen plenty of them I don't know if you've listened to them or not but they detail in in audio recording how the rights of my child are being violated so let's go through that for a moment so first your specialty programs here in Prince William County don't allow for any accommodations for any child to apply regardless of their disability this teacher in audio recording told me it's a way well-known fact that it's because kids with IEPs are not quote unquote the cream of the crop my child is not cream of the crop how

054angry how disheartened you think that I felt hearing that from a teacher who's whistleblowing on what's going on in this County that is not right that in my opinion is discriminatory and all these parents should know that Sussman Godfrey the law firm that's filed a suit against Virginia Department of Education they're currently only suing Prince uh Fairfax County but they're actually going to be looping in Prince William County after they defeat this motion dismiss and they're looking for a class action for multiple parents so you all are aware of this you know what's going on this whistleblower is on recording I've sent the recordings to your offices you've known about it for months what you do is a testament to your character and what these people that might not know I'm a very well-known and

055prominent social justice Advocate I've been published in Politico USA Today Baltimore Sun Washington Post I have two full-length books I will be writing a book about what's been going on in this County I will be exposing to the letter everything that I've gotten on recording it's not just from this whistleblower I've gotten your assistant superintendents on recording I've gotten other teachers on recording and because of all the evidence that I have because of all the recordings I've obtained now I'm on a communication plan not because I made a threat not because I used any untoward language but because I was able to gather so much voluminous evidence about what what's going on in this County thanks so much the next speakers will be Kate Olsen Flynn ovetta Scott Steven Spiker and yubo Zhang Scott Alberta

056Scott can I have it now please okay oh I'm sorry thank you foreign I may not have enough for you go ahead and start oh okay I'm sorry uh good evening ladies and gentlemen on the board Mr chairman Dr McDade my name is oveta Scott and my address is on flower with the clerk tonight Madam superintendent is going to give an update on the third quarter data for Prince William County schools I would like to share my thoughts on the way data is collected within the k eight grades you have before you are testing schedules um our testing schedules have passed Pals we the HMA and other mandated assessments that are given in addition to teaching grade level content the missing element in the testing schedule are curriculum summative assessments which are given at the

057end of each unit for all subjects so to me this reflects that our students are being overtessed on various topics which is not complement the instructor instructional material the testing schedule really affects our Elementary grades the hardest because they are constantly interrupted on laying down the foundation of educational best practices for our students with some form of assessment if you want to have an assessment bring back algebra Readiness that was the best math assessment that provided real data on the computation abilities of students now I would like to examine the current Middle School seven period schedule versus the original six period schedule as I returned to sixth grade math next year since my coaching position was defunded I've heard many of my colleagues say that the schedule is awful how are more classes better for

058the middle child especially fifth graders switching to a different model of instruction how will 24 20 sorry how will 42 minutes enable me to have small groups and differentiated material for my students especially when they are experiencing social and emotional changes as they transform into preteens when I returned to six Math I will be forced to chunk my lessons in numerous Parts meaning less time but not less curriculum and this does not include having time for technological enhanced teaching that student needs for the state exam in my opinion the data shows an increase in Title 1 schools which translate a need for more academic supports the school board is so vocal on the mental health of our students so how does multiple tests throughout the school year show proof of Mastery of the curriculum that

059is needed to advance how are 42 minutes of class time been official than a full hour of content and relationship building at the critical stage of the middle learner I ask you to consider reviewing the testing schedule and returning to the six period schedule instead of seven to find a way for more time on what is important for our students thank you Steven Spiker hi Steven Spiker my address is on file in the past several months we've discussed the budget and I've noticed that we've talked about learning loss and projections of how many years years it will take to return to Baseline and that macro level approach risks overlooking the thousands of students who've graduated during those years I've had the chance to talk with many of them and heard that recent graduates who report

060being unprepared for college in part due to lack standards in Prince William County schools right now we have several policies adopted years ago allowing reassessments on assignments on retaking tests and for Mis uh late or missed due dates the policy states that this can be allowed on reasonable guidelines set by teacher teams or made of teachers Discretions and between site-based management and individual approaches this has led to widely inconsistent standards across the county now I support a focus on Mastery of subject matter versus regurgitation of facts and I also understand that the lack of resources and other barriers that can prevent working on assignments or studying for tests I believe in grace and those of us with faith understand how much of a gift Grace is but when Grace becomes the expectation standards slip and

061we know that this is happening we know that there is an expectation that when students can turn work in late and it doesn't matter they can blow off a test and it doesn't matter we know that many students say I don't need to study I'll just retake it later this is happening in classrooms today and I've heard reports of students comparing notes on teachers policies when they choose classes based on how little work they can get away with doing to get by that's not Grace and constantly retaking tasks or scrambling before the end of a reporting period to erase zeros or fix up a half-hearted effort on an assignment is it Mastery this is happening even as we seek to close achievement gaps and as we come back from learning loss from covid and as

062we're about to find out later tonight how our schools are performing compared to others in the region this isn't an issue to be solved from the top down we have a bottom-up policy that's closest to the students and that can work I respect your teachers and the discretion that we give them that bottom-up approach that requires oversight and a minimum standard and the conversations and decisions about extending Grace and understanding of students challenges must also involve parents to have an informed perspective it's the only way to equip parents to provide the needed accountability at home as well and as we review third quarter data I encourage the board and site-based staff to have a critical evaluation about how discretion is used at their schools and have an honest assessment about its impact on kids not

063just on their grades but on the preparedness for the next grade up and the next phase of life this will take effort but it's worth as we aim for the highest achievement for our students and to accomplish our stated vision of students graduating on time with a knowledge and with the skills and with the habits of mind necessary to create a thriving future for themselves and for their Community thank you good evening school board and everyone my name is the yubo John I live in Prince William County with my husband and two school-aged children this month is the Asian American native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders Heritage Month today I'm here to represent my community and urge the pwcs central offices and school teams to increase available curriculum resources on AAA and HPI contributions and history our

064goal is to ensure that all AA and HPI students see themselves in American history through formal school education this is a long overdue inclusive action to our anhpi community katihon's book minor feelings and Asian Americans Reckoning highlights systemic barriers to our a in HPI community's sense of beeline in this country data analysis of Virginia elementary social studies curriculum standards 2015 also reviews a complete absence of an API convinced contribution to this Society a rich recent National survey by the Pew Research Center indicates that the rich Asian American history is largely unknown even among Eastern adults for those who are familiar with Asian American history informal channels like the internet plays a bigger role in knowledge dissemination than formal school education zooming into classroom level data I noticed that famous Americans who made significant contribution to

065our society often include representatives from very seismic group but not Asian Americans these reasons questions have any nhpi's individuals never made any significant contribution to our society that was written into history are there no role models for our and HPS students such Omission sends negative message to all students and affect not only a nhps student self-perception but also helps students perceive them as well at High School level Asian American history is limited only to abuse events negative events such as Vitamin War Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese incarceration leaving little room for our students relate position themselves within broader historical events on discussions to First inclusivity and Equity we request the following action all the existing teaching resources to ensure representation of all ethnic groups develop Partnerships with the A and HPI Community for curriculum and

066professional development resources encouraging cooperation of these resources into formal school education last but not least review pwcs Staffing and various committees representation to include a and HPA members and amplify their voices I appreciate your time and consideration let's work together to create a more inclusive and Equitable Community thank you thank you and that concludes um assistant com time we will move on to the next part of the board meeting that'll be student representative time tonight we have our Donya sharifi from the Gainesville High School senior Don sharifi soon to be graduate Donya sharifi sharifi I apologize because my printer didn't work so it's on my phone um but good evening to the Schoolboy Prince William community and students as you know the year is wrapping up so students are well underway with exams SLS and

067finals which is a bit of an overwhelming time but we're getting there to the home stretch senior with graduations are starting within the next two weeks and it feels like the year flew by I just like to highlight an action on the agenda item about August 26 being the women's equality day for Prince William County this is something that I really like to see because I'm really big on women equality so I hope that this can help educate students about the inequalities for women and then the significance of the holiday falling on August 26th as a Ode to the implementation of the 19th Amendment on this day I'm happy to see Prince William County adopting this recognition and I encourage Educators and students to get involved in teaching and learning more my only concern I'd

068like to point out that's just applicable to this upcoming school year is that for the 2023-2024 school year the 26th falls on a Saturday so I I know that that previous week will be filled with icebreakers and students getting adjusted to going to the first week of school so I would just like to see that during that following week from August 28th to September 1st students are definitely going to be able to reach material and teachers will explore the accomplishments and teach about female equality onto something I'm excited for the new representatives are going to be announced June 7th we thought I believe is at the next school board meeting I'm excited for what they have planned and for those that are chosen feel free to contact me or the other student represents from now

069or the previous years and along with those student Representatives which will serve on the school board next year we do have a group of student leaders in the student Senate while the student representatives represent us the students on the school board the student centers each present one from each other counties high schools and serve as a connection between the superintendents students and student reps best of luck to those important students it's been a great experience you're going to learn a lot I also want to highlight I do believe that AAA HPI and other Eastern literature and education history needs to be more implemented in the curriculum you know growing up I didn't really see representation within my own South Asian culture until I got into later 11th and 12th grade high school literature and that

070was through AP curriculum so I would like to see see that you know just growing up especially in the Middle School level that wraps up my portion of tonight if you have any questions or concerns feel free to reach out thank you all and have a great rest of your night thank you Miss Dania appreciate it moving on to superintendent's Time Dr McDade thank you Mr chairman May is better hearing and speech month and our teachers certified interpreters and speech language Pathologists are fulfilling the theme building a strong Foundation by ensuring students with hearing and speech impairments are identified learning and achieving at high levels the wonderful and transformative work of our Specialists do every day for our students reflects the commitment pwcs has made to learning and achievement for all so thank you to

071our speech language and hearing staff for your transformative work National physical fitness and sports Month in May brings awareness to health activity and consistency for a better life I encourage everyone to take just one small step toward improving your health and wellness for yourself and others as the school year wraps up and families begin planning for summer I encourage our students to take advantage of the many learning opportunities available to students this summer pwcs offers both launch and academic recovery program and discover an enrichment program for students in grades kindergarten to grade 12. registration for both launch and discover are in high demand and selection is limited to one enrichment program per student registration concludes May 26th so please visit our website at www.pwcs.edu select academics and programs and then summer programs in order to

072register as a reminder our summers school age child care also known as Sac provider is Alpha best education which provides two summer programs specialty enrichment and Excursion students can balance the relaxation of Summer with the excitement of Discovery and I encourage families to take advantage of this program as we prepare for the next school year pwcs continues to actively recruit bus drivers teaching assistants Finance Specialists cafeteria workers custodians substitutes and teachers filling our current vacancies with highly qualified candidates requires the support of the entire community and you can help by spreading the word about available opportunities or registering for our upcoming virtual instructional job fair which will be held June 3rd registration can be found on our human resources webpage please refer your family friends recent graduates or consider applying yourself next it is my

073pleasure to welcome Dr Tim Neal our director of research accountability and strategic planning he will present our 2023 quarter three overview report Dr Neal thank you good evening Dr Latif school board members and Dr McDade and tonight I'm going to provide a quick overview of third quarter performance data and attendance data as well so this is a presentation you are all familiar with the general format for we're going to look at enrollment very briefly to establish a little bit of context we'll look at some of our attendance patterns and then we'll conclude with an examination of our performance data so when we look at enrollment what we see is fairly consistent with how we started the year the numbers are pretty similar but we do see some fluctuations up and down across various groups but

074overall the total number of students has remained relatively the same in terms of attendance this table shows the percent of average daily attendance for each quarter and what you can see is at the very bottom you see the total attendance for the school division for for that quarter and you can see starting in the fourth quarter we had or the first quarter rather we had 94 percent average daily attendance by the third quarter um it was down to 93 percent which is up a percent from the second quarter so there is a lot of volatility in this and it becomes much more apparent when we look at the lime plot which shows the average daily attendance rates from the very beginning of the year to the very end of the third marking period And so

075what you see here is the day-to-day fluctuation of average daily attendance rates as we discussed in the second quarter it was much more volatile largely due to holidays and you can see that that volatility is somewhat reduced in the third quarter that Stark dip at the very end was the Friday before spring break which was the last day of the quarter so consistent with what we saw in quarter two right before a holiday we saw a drop in our average daily attendance rate when we look at this by patterns um when it comes to the number of absences this table shows the percent of students each quarter that have missed one two three four or five or more days in that quarter five or more days would be considered more than 10 percent and that

076would be a high absentee rate for that quarter and so what you see in quarter one we had about 18 percent of our students that were missing that that 10 percent Mark or more we had a pretty dramatic increase in the second quarter to 29 percent of our students missing a high number of days and by the third quarter that had had dropped again closer to the first quarter Mark although it was still slightly higher now this becomes important because the attendance um rates the number of days that are missed contribute to the chronic to Chronic absenteeism and so briefly want to cover what chronic absenteeism means and differentiate it a little bit from attendance chronic absenteeism is a state defined um metric that basically says if they have missed 10 percent or more of

077the school year regardless of whether those absences are excused or unexcused so the the reason for the absence doesn't matter it's have they missed more than 10 percent there are some caveats to this students on homebound instructions students on home-based instruction are removed from the calculation and students who have been a member less than 50 percent of the school year also excluded from the calculations so this graph shows our chronic absenteeism rates by quarter for 21 22 as well as 22-23 so 22 23 is the gold 21 22 is in blue and what you can see the general shape of chronic absenteeism patterns when this is cumulative is pretty similar there is a smaller rate in quarter one a peak in quarter two and then a decrease in quarter three what is interesting about this

078data is the decrease from Quarter Two to quarter three was much steeper this year as compared to last year so you can see last year in Quarter Two we had a high of about 19 almost 19 and a half percent and it dipped very slightly in quarter three to eighteen point nine percent this year the peak was higher at twenty three and a half percent in Quarter Two uh but the the uh decrease was much more dramatic uh to a 18 point roughly 18.7 percent so there was a much sharper decrease from Quarter Two to quarter three this year when we look at these chronic absenteeism patterns um by various groups a couple of patterns emerged we've seen these patterns before high school tends to have the highest chronic absenteeism rate so if you look

079at the table in the upper left what you'll see is there has been a decrease from Quarter Two to quarter three across all levels but the decrease at the high school level in chronic absenteeism rates is smaller than the others we also see similar patterns of high chronic absenteeism rates for our English Learners our special education students and our Hispanic students and those patterns are consistent with what we saw in Prior presentations so this is a different breakdown we've done in the in previous presentations these are the chronic absenteeism rates by grade level and what you can see um as we go have gone throughout the year there has been a decrease um from Quarter Two to quarter three across all grade levels with the exception of our 12th grade students where we had we

080did have a small decrease but it is substantially smaller than all other grade levels moving on to grading just as a reminder for our for context Prince William County does use a standard-based grading practices which means that students can score a mark subsequently demonstrate master and have those marks replaced this means there can be changes after the fact in those grades so the next two slides are showing our elementary grade distributions so as a reminder this is grades three through five and what we see when we look across the entire grade distribution the patterns are pretty similar to what we saw in previous quarters there are small fluctuations up and down across all subject areas and across all grade distributions so this is Reading Writing and math and this shows science and social studies and

081again the same patterns manifest Neal on the um the reading recorded three that's a big drop on A's it's not a small job in third quarter from third 34 41.11 to 33.6 number of A's where am I at third quarter Elementary student three to five so for third quarter under reading I am looking at uh 34.47 what my slide presentation that's in my deck is different than what you're posting here is there a reason can we get the right one up all right so carry on mine's different than what's on your slide so that that's fine stick no I mean so no it's right here the slide you have up on reading A's for quarter one is 41.11 uh yes sir in quarter one seven yeah Quarter Two is 34.47 and quarter three is 33.60

082is there a reason any any idea in the drops in as from quarter one to quarter three yeah so I would maybe if I were to speculate they all became bees and some of the C's if I were to speculate the drop came in quarter one to Quarter Two and um I would hesitate to guess as to why that could be um it could there could be a variety of reasons for that however when we look from Quarter Two to quarter three um it's very little change it's hard to Dr Latif is hard to when it comes to student grades it's so individual by you know content coverage in a class and pacing it's hard to say for us to say concretely exactly why a student's grade might uh drop in everything we would deposit

083here tonight would be speculation um of course in the first quarter is typically review so a lot of the content that's covered in the first quarter when students are coming back from a summer break is a lot of material that they've seen before so the first part of the the quarter is a lot of review work so you probably would see you know Higher Achievement there and then as the year progresses students get into more complex content that they have not seen before so and again that's all just you know Theory and the only reason I'm bringing it up is if you look at all the blocks of this you know the numbers are really very much the same except that one area for q123 for A's on reading every other set of blocks is

084pretty much the same percentage as all the way through so that was the only reason I was just pointing that out as an aberration you know something you may want to dig deeper into yes something that we should explore thank you Dr Latif I'm not sure if it's helpful and my my household I have a third through fifth grade student who experienced exactly what is on this slide I may be one of you but um it was due in part two uh for us new material deeper material that is being presented and then some little bit of just mid-year fatigue um I'm sure it's not the same replicating all households but that is exactly what my fourth grade students grade reflected as well so not for lack of trying but definitely from changing material and

085and that nature one of many households though I just want to to say that Dr mcday's observation is very true my experience of 20 years of being a principal and many of my friends the first quarter is a great deal of review I'm not sure there's research on it but there's enough data on it from observational data that teachers tend to review the first quarter and then they hit the more difficult work as I would get so many honorable students the first quarter I thought my God what's going on so I asked the question are these kids going to be 500 on the sols and the teachers wow but they said this is just just we do a lot of reviews so I'm not sure the research is on it but there's a lot of

086observational data that says that that does happen so when we look at the third quarter reading you might recall in quarter in the quarter two presentation we presented mid-year Pals as well as hmh literacy those benchmarks are not done again until later in the spring so what is reflected on this slide is just teacher reports based on their multiple assessments given during that quarter and what we see from Quarter Two is a small uptick in some grade levels and relatively low changes in others moving on to our Middle School grade distributions similar to our elementary school we see very small fluctuations from Quarter Two to quarter three across all subject areas and across all grade distributions and coming through to high school I recall that high school also has semester grades in here so in

087addition to Quarter Two we also have the semester and then quarter three our quarter three grades are more similar to the quarter two grades than the semester grades although we do see some small again some small fluctuations across all grade levels content areas and across the entire grade distribution foreign so the other analysis that we did consistent with other quarters is a failing course analysis so here you see our high school and our middle schools on the same table at the top of the table see our middle school students quarters one two and quarter three and for middle school students you do see a small uptick in the number of students failing one or failing two or more courses at the high school level when compared to Quarter Two you see a small decrease of

088students failing two or more courses um and a very small increase in those failing one course when we break this down by race and ethnicity at the middle school level the similar patterns occur to what we've seen in Prior presentations where our English Learners and our Hispanic students tend to have a higher percentage of students that are failing one or failing two or more courses we also did analysis by grade level for this presentation and what you'll see here is the is the percent of students in grades six seven and eight who are failing one or failing two or more courses grade eight stands out as having a higher percentage of students that are either failing one course or failing two or more courses these same patterns are replicated at the high school level so

089this shows the percentage of students that are failing one or failing two or more courses broken down by race and ethnicity and student group again the same patterns manifest where we see higher percentages of students failing one or failing two or more courses that are English Learners Or Hispanic students and we also did a breakdown by grade level here and what you see is at grade 12 we actually see a smaller percentage of students that are failing one or failing two or more courses in terms of the support strategies and the quarter two presentation we shared several strategies that um our long-term attempts to address the issues and so the division is continuing to implement our unfinished learning plan and the continuous Improvement plans across all the schools there is a consistent and persistent uh

090engagement with our families and students at both the middle school and the high school levels one to engage students and families so that they understand what they need to do to make progress and understand the academic supports that are available this can be anything from tutoring to Extended Learning opportunities to before and after school help at the high school level there is a focus for all students but also focus on our 2023 cohort to make sure that they can get back on target for graduation and this can again can include things like Credit Recovery high dosage tutoring and after school remediation in terms of grading practices the division work group that was started to look at our grading practices and Norm them across the division is continuing every school is continuing to have a specific

091and targeted attendance plans and really focus on on getting the message out that students need to be in schools to learn the attention to attendance which was in its early phases in Quarter Two has been amped up and so more schools are implementing that to help improve notifications to families about chronic absenteeism and the importance of attendance and our multimedia campaign is continuing uh especially with a special focus on schools with high degrees of absenteeism rates and to address um some of the challenges with helping our English Learners there has been more focus on helping develop the academic the academic language necessary for success with our English learners and that concludes the quarter three overview thank you Dr Neil um Mr chairman that concludes and we are open to any additional questions that the board

092might have related to the quarter three grading Miss William thank you um first I thank you for the presentation and for all the work that has gone into this presentation when it comes to attendance I just want to since we're on the topic give Featherstone Elementary a great big kudos for having a six percent absentee rate I love my title in schools and they continue to be a shining star they were all over every media Outlet talking about the success that they've had um one of the things that I don't understand enough um even and I think maybe our general public may not also know when we look at information like this is regarding our English language Learners like how is the impact to them when they have to not only attend their regular classes

093but then you know receive pull out services or be in special classes to learn English is there maybe in the future some deeper dive that we could do to educate ourselves more as board and the public because when we see numbers like this it's very hard and it almost makes it appear as if you know English language Learners are just struggling amongst out there flailing by themselves and I know that not to be the case because I've I've been in schools and I've seen them in their in their different level of English classes but I also know that there's a lot of barriers that aren't put on especially specifically for us like the state requires them to graduate within a certain period of time they have to take Sol's in English within a certain period

094of time and all of that impacts their ability to form well in school and I think that that's something that we don't talk about enough and I think it would be very helpful if we could maybe spend a little time in the future discussing that because if we can be some more more educated as a community I think we can be more supportive of that and I think it would also give the teachers and the staff who have to assist special education students a little bit more Breathing Room on exactly what it is that they do and they're not often spotlighted and I'm particularly sensitive to it because in my district I think I'm one of a few people who does not speak multiple languages um so I think it's always good to continue along

095that education process in looking at these grades do we have any comparison to um to say if we're sort of normalizing or are we still seeing Trends from last year and returning to school is there anything that maybe isn't quite explained in here that we should be sort of delving deeper into or providing a little bit more depth too I think only thing that to address too the two questions that you had the first one around our English Learners we have a lot of supports that we've been putting in place for our English Learners all the way through the Continuum into 12th grade we have our high schools have hosted El parent sessions this year which you know we definitely want to see more engagement with those so you'll see more of that coming up

096in the upcoming year we've increased the number of the parent engagement series to educate RL our students English Learners students families around what supports are available and then we've also especially at the secondary level have put a lot of changes in place to support our English Learners around scheduling check-in Tech out processes one-on-one you know conversations with counselors so there's and then we did the district-wide training on seven steps which will also continue into next year as well so quite a bit has been done but we certainly can at the start of the school year do a deep dive into the supports that we're providing and the work that we're doing for our L students the the only other thing that I would say in regards to to grades you know this is a snapshot

097I would caution taking too much stock in this because um you know the grading policy I do believe needs to be amended we do we do need to take a look at the grading policy I know that there were changes that were made um during you know covet and we do we we're out of that now it's time to take a hard look at that and some of the practices that are occurring we also do need to look at how we're ensuring that we're norming practices across the School Division so from you know one school to the next you're making sure that there are some consistencies around you know grading practices so I would just caution the board this is one snapshot of a student's performance and so we can't put all of the eggs

098in grades because I do think that there's some norming that needs to be done around grades I do think that we need to and we have a task force now that's looking at that with the goal of updating and making some changes to the policy thank you and I just my last comment is I I do I was able to see um at Freedom High School the um special evening they had to bring in parents and family members for students who were failing two or more classes and the attendance was high but I do think that those type of programs bring that special extra sort of needed attention it's sometimes it could be hard to make parent-teacher conferences they're also not sort of lengthy in time if you have something else to discuss so I

099want to appreciate that focus and seeing it live in action I was there ample time was given to be able to explain how our grades work how it's cumulative and the extra supports that are put into place at a high school level so I do appreciate that being rolled out that was something new and I think as a parent and as a board member that that just sort of gives you the extra time needed with your school staff and having them all on site at one time is extremely helpful so I valued some of the feedback that I received from the parents for that as well because we do need above and beyond time for especially at the high school level for those 15 at conferences so thank you we we do have a tiered

100approach for looking at students who may be off track for graduation and the high schools have been utilizing supports from our post-secondary office under the direction of Ms hebner this year they created a robust tiered process for really tracking cohort graduation students that are off track from freshmen all the way not just looking at the 2023 cohort but also looking at our students from the time they come into high school I get a regular update on that to show if we're moving the needle for students moving from tier three to tier two to tier one or getting back on track and we also can see all of the conferences the one-on-one conferences that have been held at schools with with counselors with students so a lot of work has been done I do want to

101just acknowledge the post-secondary office and all of the work that's been happening out of Rebecca Slater's shop working with counselors and giving guidance around you know the best way to approach approach students who may be off track to get them back on track towards graduation Mr Wilk thank you I'll be succinct um yeah no thank you Dr McDade for mentioning the consistent practices I know there is a big discussion and a committee task force looking at site-based management and I here throughout I'm going to resonate with what you were saying inconsistent policies with standards-based grading even from like Department to a department building to building sometimes discrepancies with teachers to teachers and I think that's something if we could better standardize across the board I think that would be something very helpful with overall grading

102and success with these students one area and and I'm hearing this more and more when it comes to like The Chronic absenteeism you know outside of well kidding the law involved or something there are a lot of families and students that I'm finding out more through my conversations with teachers and stuff where there's really no accountability at the home like kids are not being sent to school and for whatever reason maybe you know again people are working multiple jobs I'm not going to discredit that or something but just kids are not coming to school what what can we or what have we done as a division to really try to get those kids in I mean for the ones where we're having trouble reaching the parents uh you know who I think have the onus

103to have their kids go to school of course but in the responsibility but what can we do further I guess yeah there's limitations to what we can do as a school system we we are doing everything that we possibly can to prioritize attendance push attendance and get students in school we did we do have attention to attendance now so that's taking some of the burden off of the schools with all of the documentation and paperwork so families are now receiving regular notification the 10-day notices you know just making sure that parents are aware of the impact that you know a lack of attendance has on students education we're doing incentives we're you know we're doing everything humanly possible within our locus of control but you know as a school system ultimately um there's a limitation

104to how much we can do to get students actually in seats in in the classroom but we've exhausted all of the possibilities thank you I was interested in just following up on this excuse versus unexcused absentee are we still looking at accreditation tied to the attendance or or has something been done to to modify that response from at the state level so the state the board of education did discuss chronic absenteeism and they have decided to uh keep it as a factor for the accreditation process so it it will be included in the calculations for next year so a school could have Sol data that's high but if they have a poor attendance they would get a conditional accreditation it says that how it will work without looking at all the specific indicators for a

105school I'm not going to answer that with a yes or a no but that would be a factor so a school could have high performance data and still have an indicator for chronic absenteeism that would be a level two or a level three have you looked at attendance and the impact on grading the student's grade have you done I'm not asking you to do it but have you done that I've looked at that we have we have looked at correlations between attendance and grades what did you find so as would be as would be consistent with what is in the literature we do see a moderate association between attendance rates and academic performance so um the adage is we can't teach kids if they're not in school our data supports that the the better attendance

106kids have the that is associated with a higher grade point average I was looking at the attendance of African-American students and they are like 14.36 they have the lowest you know problem in terms of that but when you look at their failing grades then the two failing grades there there doesn't seem to be a correlation so I think Dr McDade said it best when you say you can't really draw conclusions from all of this data but sometimes you can look at it I'm wondering uh have you looked when are we going to get the preliminary data have you gotten any Sol data I know you don't have it in it have you seen any Trends or are we improving just based on your preliminary I don't want you to make a major but I know

107God have you looked at some of that data so thank you for asking that question we are currently in the process of testing across um across all of our schools so it's really too early to look um at an aggregate level to see if we have any patterns across the division at this point when we get the prelimitary world as a board will we get a chance to look at the preliminary data so the first testing window will close in the next I want to say week or so and then there'll be expedited retakes after that and then there'll be some additional processing with some preliminary um from data available in in June what's going on with 12th graders I guess they're just seniors I don't know I think uh we were just Donnie and

108I were just sitting here you know kind of looking at the data and she said to me you know senioritis you know at some point once they're kind of submitting final projects and things like that um you know attendance will take a hit have the last question I have have we looked at why kids stay home you know when I was a kid there was nothing to do at home so who wants to stay home but I I just think that there's something with the social media where you can stay home and still be active because students have interactions outside of school so I'm just wondering if that has some correlation when you do your root cause analysis would you look at that so our department has not done an investigation of that I'm not

109aware if that has occurred in any of the attendance checks that have have been done Denise why are you standing do you have something you'd like to share I will say that our team in student health and wellness has conducted some focus groups talked with students and we don't have any formal we can't answer something like that there's a lot of different reasons but I think the best thing that we can do is continue to encourage parents and adults in the building to encourage students to come and be engaged in the academic so we have talked with students and we will be doing that but there's not going to be one size fits all answer it varies from Kid to Kid and I I'd like to also remind I think I talked to Dr McDade

110about this earliest at some point that there appears to be this perception that there are just so many tests that it is impacting instruction and I I know you guys are looking at it I really would like you to look at that because I see that uh consistently get this concern about the amount of testing they're doing versus instruction testing is good when you that test data changed your instructor but all that testing the testing some of it I think is overwhelming so I I'd like you guys to look at that we do have a working group that that is representative of the entire County across section of the county I'm looking at assessments a lot of Assessments we can't eliminate but just looking at where there are redundancies where for example with the VGA

111which is a growth assessment hmh also is a growth assessment but with VGA we don't have and I don't know if is is Tim still there I don't see him but oh um we don't have it just correct me if I'm wrong Tim we don't have readily available data that teachers can use for real time um you know determinations of next level of instruction and so that's where hmh comes in that's a that is a redundancy so things like that we are looking at where we can streamline there there is a lot of Assessments that are required that do overlap in terms of the timing of when they're given that can be burdensome and so this working group is looking at developing a balance grading grading and assessment system for the county that gives guidance

112to all schools and Norms practices not just for assessments but also for grading so when you hear and we heard a teacher tonight talk about you know end of unit assessments and um you know formative Assessments in the classroom how does all of that play into the assessment cycle so looking at the full range of Assessments both formative and summative to make decisions that we can give schools guidance on on how to create balance in the assess assessment system which goes hand in hand with grading so we we also need to at the same time not just look at adjusting or making changes to the assessment cycle but also looking at improving grading practices as a whole across the county I think that's that's great I think that I've heard so many consistent concerns about

113the overwhelming testing that if you are looking at ways of modifying or re-looking at what we can eliminate I think that needs to be somehow conveyed to the teachers I'm not sure teachers know that we're really looking at it so if you guys could let teachers know in some way that we are really looking at it it would I think it would help with some of the concerns that teachers have a this wall thank you Dr Latif um I had some questions that I wanted to ask do first with attendance do we have additional evidence that our efforts um to encourage students to attend class are working I know we have a pilot right and we're going to expand we're expanding the pilot I know and we saw some of that but what we saw

114is that we had the second quarter a big jump in absenteeism and then it seems like it's returned to Baseline but it I I just wondered if you could speak just a little bit more like to some of that data that we have that to the programs that we have recently implemented are we seeing that it's helping or do we need do and my second question would be what are we doing to combat the high rates of chronic absenteeism in that in high school and and specifically with our Hispanic population which seems to be an anomaly or an outlier I'll I'll um Denise I don't know if you have something to add here but what I will what I do want to impress upon the board is that what we're seeing in Denise does share

115I get an opportunity to see a regular update on what's Happening by Elementary's all elementary schools middle and high schools and what we see sometimes is a mixed bag where like uneven results right so you'll see some schools that are continuing to improve in their attendance rates While others you know may get some movement and then all it takes is a few holidays to to fall on a Friday and and then that shifts right so what you see today looking at the whole system it probably would be beneficial to look you know at individual School movement because it tells you know a more detailed story of what's happening in terms of whether or not something's working or not or not working but I do know that um a lot of support has gone out from

116Miss huebner's office to schools on how to address attendance from whether it be you know even home visits phone calls parent meetings incentives and like I said around the the documentation that's being sent everything humanly possible for us to do around attendance is being done but there are limitations to what we can control when it comes to attendance ultimately you know families are are responsible for getting students to school and so we can provide support we can have our parent Liaisons find out what barriers might exist and and offer resources and support but then there's a point where the school system no longer has control over the situation so that's what's happening with attendance and it's happening across the Commonwealth across the country you know even in our superintendent's meeting today that was the big

117topic around attendance um so I'm not sure what more we could be doing uh in this space but for some Schools they're seeing a return on the meetings with parents um the phone calls the home visits the incentives the notifications and then others may get some results but then they fall backwards um you know from quarter to quarter so it's really uneven results I don't think that the needle is moving as sharply as we need it to so we're seeing some incremental movement and then we get excited and then I get another report and it looks different and it fluctuates from school to school thank you that's that gives me a greater or depth of understanding of what we're up against and I I do know that you know we Face a lot of challenges

118in our communities economic struggles um you know other problems social problems drug abuse or drug acceptance violence social media Etc things that are kind of fraying at the social Fabric and in homes and communities and those do affect our students and um those external factors you know we can't necessarily control for those and so all of those kinds of stresses in children's lives or in their communities do make it difficult for students to show up stay focused and get their work done you know and make that academic progress so I suppose it is a very significant challenge that's going to require a lot of effort so I do appreciate the additional um knowledge that you've shared um I wanted to go to slide 11 um where we um the one that discusses how we will

119be the task force to I think it's yeah we'll get we'll get there um how we're evaluating and my question is how are we I'm glad to hear that we are evaluating um the grading policies and regulations and I would include maybe even the philosophy and approach that we're currently using using for standards-based grading from um because um I guess my question is what as we look at those things if we can evaluate some of those key indicators and um anecdotally I've heard that a number a number of concerns about our current philosophy and we heard about it a little bit tonight I've heard about it from my schools and from teachers that I talk with um you know to be honest I'm not really sure that the switch that we made five or six

120years ago I'm not sure how many years ago we did make the switch I'm not really sure that it's yielding the results that we thought we were going to get I think we're getting a lot of especially at the secondary level a lot of gaming system uh students who are smart and lazy maybe um you know not quite getting the work done I and as evidence you know I'd say looking at slide 18 you know almost 30 percent of our high schoolers are getting a d or an F in math and a quarter of them are getting a d or an F in science if you add up the D and the F categories together and that's with our philosophy of allowing liberal remediation and grade replacement we're getting those kinds of grades so to

121me that's concerning um you know where we have this liberal philosophy where you can change that grade and here we are third quarter and we still have that many decent apps I'm very concerned um you know that 34 of our high schoolers are failing at least one course in only 66 percent are passing all their courses so I don't I don't know if I get the philosophy that we have in place but I don't know if it's actually working for the teenage brain um and that we might be reinforcing the wrong set of behaviors anyway I know there that's a conversation from another time but I would encourage the task force to to really ask some of those hard questions and really look into that um because I I just don't see this moving in

122the right direction um I would say you know part of what has to happen is evaluating implementation um you know standards-based grading is a research-based approach that a lot of school systems are moving towards however we have to start with what's happening with implementation across you know it like anything we can't say whether something's working or not working if we don't evaluate the effectiveness of it and part of Effectiveness comes with implementation with fidelity so we would need to first start look by looking at you know the Fidelity of implementation throughout the school system to then evaluate whether or not it is the actual approach or is it the implementation but either way I agree with you that you know we do have to and it is a part of the um the task force

123for balance assessment and Grading to take a look at that implementation to like take a look at the policy and practices and to make sure because implementation consistent or inconsistent depends on you know from one school to the next in the system so we have to look at those things and then make sure that you know schools do have Norm practices that they're following so that's all a part of the work of the task force and it is representative of you know teachers are on there um you know central office of folks in teaching and learning administrators so so there's a there's a a diverse body of stakeholders that are on the task force really taking a look at what is actually those individuals that are in the schools doing the work implementing the practices

124coming back to look at this to see what needs to be done and so the hope is to first do that evaluation provide you with an update on what the current state is and then identify what the problems of practice are and how we move forward with both making changes to practice as well as to policy I just wanted to follow up on the standard base grading is not a philosophy it's really research oriented I remember when Bill Bixby brought in the uh trainers and we learned a lot about uh standard-based grading and when you look at the retakes that kids are allowed to take you know it's like you take a driver's test if you feel that the first time the whole idea is that you you learn how to drive I think we

125need to look at it but it's not a philosophy it is research based and I think that maybe we need more information on why what research what standard-based grading really is so maybe that's what we need I'm not sure thank you Miss well um I yeah I I was reading off of slide 11 where it said um that has been developed using the philosophy and approach of standard space grading so I just borrowed that from that um but I guess maybe one thing that might be helpful is to look at where we were before also I mean I understand the implementation piece I understand like we have to see like are we actually implementing this Fidelity and then what right so let's say we are and we still see that we're not moving the needle

126um and and so I've had kids in this in Prince William County schools a long time and I do see a difference between my 2018 graduate and my now 2023 graduate so some of this is probably just my experience but you know anecdotal thing and I don't I'm not really you know a research scientist or anything like that but maybe this is something that George Mason or one of our other university collaborators could help us with um and I think one of the things that might be interesting again I'm not a research scientist but to take some of that hard data like that the SAT data Maybe or the Sol data things that don't change a whole lot and compare it to like how are students performing on those like really broad assessments now as

127cohorts and how did our students used to do and is there a difference um and and how do our graduates go on and succeed in college now as opposed to how our graduates like before 2018 went on and and how did they succeed right because I mean this is the span that I see in my students and I do see a difference in their commitment to getting things done on time you know the hot the quality of the work their Dedication that even doing homework you know my 2018 graduate was really those kids you know they were they had to get their homework in or their grades would fall but that's not necessarily the case with the 2023 graduate a lot of them aren't even doing the homework because it's only worth 10 of their

128grade so they know like well anyway they're playing their game in the system as smart high schoolers do but um I'll I'll let it rest but I do appreciate um the um this topic and I am glad to hear that we are going to be that we have a task force of diverse Learners who are looking into this because because at the end of the day this these are really important questions and I think if we're going to move the needle on student achievement then we do need to really look into this and again I would encourage us maybe to reach out to our University partners and researchers to help us thank you so much Missouri thank you Dr Latif actually um Ms wall said a lot of what I was I was thinking about

129she and I've had this conversation a lot too and and I've said that my own child would game the system she would figure out exactly what she needed to do or not do and then decide from there and she was not motivated by grades um different child anyway so um so I mean so so this stuff is pretty complex because we know our kids are motivated differently they we know that they have different goals for themselves but I do like the idea of um if you want to use that word philosophy maybe just using our own um um strategic plan where we talk about having the habits of mind and skills to be successful when they leave us that's really really where we want to head toward I think so that's all Miss Williams thank

130you I just I think we also just need to keep in mind when discussing this that no matter which way we go there will be students who will game the system my son was in school when you had to do a lot of homework and busy work in order to account for most of your points in your system and then it switched over to where your tests were weighted differently so then he was like I'm not doing homework when I was in school we had a completely different system trust me I spent hours as someone who was not grade motivated to figure out the best way that I could expend the least amount of energy and still pass so I think that there's always going to be some of that and I don't say that

131to minimize what we should be doing but um as someone who has an elementary schooler assists with the middle schooler and two high schoolers I think it really depends upon the student and I think it also depends upon the goals that we have for those students but the level of understanding of the topic Since switching I think has been um most impactful especially in the students that I run across and again it's not every student but then for them to be able to explain back to me what they have learned in class and and in a way using their own words which demonstrates Mastery which I think is the goal is what I'm seeing more and more frequently and I do think that language and how we describe this is very important what Miss Jesse

132said about you know this being research based is critical we don't want to unduly influence the public in thinking that this is something that we're not um using best practices for there hasn't been an extensive amount of research I know Alexandra city schools just switched to this style of uh grading so I think it's very important to respect the researchers in the in the hundreds and thousands of hours that went into making this determination about how we grade students I don't want to sweep it under the rug with incorrect language as well so no matter how we what the outcome is I think that it's worth being respectful to those who develop this practice and that we respect it as such Miss Jackson all right thank you Dr Chief um how we have discussed data

133has changed considerably and since I joined the board and I just want to say I'm thankful for the different data but I also want to recognize that it doesn't tell the whole picture of a student so since we were talking about standard based grading I'm just going to start with that question and then go backwards so referring back to 11 11 and we going back and revisiting the Senate space approach grading are they discussing how homework as part is as part of the task force are they discussing homework and the well they'll be looking at the entire policy and so homework is a part okay of the regulation I should say the full regulation is being reviewed will be reviewed the task force Just Got Started they started looking at all of the assessments and

134doing the inventory um you know just kind of collecting data from schools to do some mapping across the system and so the stage they're in now is all of that has been synthesized and so the next phase would be looking at you know what the next steps are and one of those next steps is evaluating the full policy and regulation that goes with it okay thank you and then when we go and we discuss the supports for students it's I I hear that it's been extensive at the high school level and um that um I can't see what I've written I'm so sorry the high schools are providing family information nights to student supports for the 2023 graduation cohort does does that mean that it's entire families are joining and if so other exit slips

135to gain to gathered feedback feedback to improve that's a good question about exit slips I'm not I'm not sure I can't say every school may do something different in terms of how they're capturing feedback from families um some schools are using QR codes for family engagement some of our pilot schools but I'll have to that's something we'll have to explore what each school is doing to capture feedback on the actual engagement event that they host right I appreciate that and then um I was looking through the slides in preparation for the meeting and I I think we've talked about it before but the data on the dually identified students the ones that may be both Specialized or um you know um English learner you know gift like multiple demographics um when we revisit this again

136for the fourth quarter could we get data on how that specific group has changed it or you know yes ma'am we can include that and then um I think I know the answer to this but I'm just last time I briefly discussed the VGA and my concerns that there weren't any like there wasn't guidance yet from the vdoe and how to read it I haven't missed any memos right there has there been any guidance on how to read the VGA specifically as it correlates to reading the Sol scores so that as a parent I can look through and see how people did progress you know in the point of the test so they have the video we has published their winter um quartiles but I it is still considered or what I would consider their

137beta year once we get through the spring testing they'll be a more complete analysis and that will give us a better picture of how the vgas can be used to guide instruction at the macro level again at the teacher level there are the student detail reports that they can they can look at and say okay here are the specific areas we need to address with this student but as a big picture yet that guidance is still coming and we're still working in that direction hey thank you for the update and again thank you for the presentation and taking the time to answer my questions okay thanks just a couple comments um Dr McDade I think it's correct to say that at least as far as I know in the five years I've been on this

138board they implemented standards-based grading probably eight nine years ago there's never been an evaluation or a look back to see how it's been implemented the Fidelity and integrity of it across the division and so with your efforts on site-based management looking at that and then also this task force to assess where we are how are we implementing this is the first time we're really looking at this is that correct well for the two years now that I've been here I don't know what happened before me but this is our first so I can reassure you that this is the first time okay okay if this is what we're doing but but I what we appreciate this and and I think it's really important to to have the task force look at I know Mr Wilkin

139brought up homework a few meetings ago that's uh that's a real concern um you know that that there may be a lack of at different grade levels and I'd be interested to know what the task force thinks about that and then you know um you know and I and I asked this before um you know can you break down the absenteeism by GPA especially at the high school level can we do that aside from the correlation I don't care about the correlation I just want to know that do we have like a group of kids who are up in the 375-3842 ranges who are just skipping school left and right because they figured out how to game the system with canvas so we straight up have um broad clusters of kids now so when we

140look across the GPA distribution we see it is consistently across all of those groups oh so you're saying that there's no there's no Peaks and valleys meaning like you're seeing absenteeism across all groups I see absenteeism across yes okay all right well I mean that's good to know um okay and then um and and then just again Dr McDade I really do appreciate this I think this is long overdue um some of the work that needs to go into just making sure we are doing the right things right and and while it is a research-based practice and I recognize that and you know you're hearing about Arlington looking at moving forward with standards-based grading last week they talked about it you know I think it is important with any practice that we do that it

141it be reviewed and updated on a regular basis and and and so for the first time we're going to do this and I think it's critical and I really do appreciate this um thank you all for the great work that you continue to um to bring forward to this board and Dr McDade for your commitment to making sure that we're doing the best we can across the board and whatever Featherstone is doing let's um export that all the way across the division um thank you very much I mean moving on to the next topic is going to be just the first reading tonight what are we doing oh committee updates all right um sorry yeah um so what do we got who's up first for this uh Miss Jackson you will update us on um

142what are you updating us on joint environmental task force with Prince William County thank you I serve as a school board appointee to the Joint environmental task force with Ms sakabor as the alternative alternate when I'm not there you're the altar the mission of jet is that Prince William County school board and the supervisors will join have created joint environmental task force with the design to collaboratively unify the political operational and administrative capabilities of the county and School Division proactively and equitably across climate change to address climate change and environmental sustainability the jet will provide a form for informing advising collaborating and addressing county-wide issues and aligning institutional policies and practices pertaining to climate change and environmental sustainability through an equity lines being continually applied by both the county and the schools The Joint environmental

143task force has met three times so I'm just going to provide a brief update the meetings have been mostly organizational in nature the first meeting at first of the task force we reviewed foia and the conflict of interest drafted by laws and discussed the history behind the task force during the second meeting a more in-depth discussion of procedure and priorities was held and during the April meeting the team worked further on narrowing down a list of topics that jet during environmental task force would cover and PWC the county and pwcs provided a report Ms Weimer provided an update last meeting for pwcs or on pwcs including Freedom High School owning the green ribbons achievement partnering with members of the community to host there'll be parts of events at Expo or exhibit she also discussed the

144major product projects including environmental literacy sustainability education and the energy climate and LED conversion upgrades Miss Mano who's with the county provided an update on the community energy and sustainability master plan which I believe is holding a virtual town hall tonight to receive feedback from the public on what should be prioritized the task force is scheduled to meet every third Thursday of every month and then next meeting is tomorrow is mono tomorrow we'll be providing a presentation of the community energy and sustainability master plan and Miss Weimer with pwcs will be presenting um on the compost program so all of the minutes and the agenda is posted on the web PWC County website so if anybody has any questions they can also email me and again we're just getting up and running thank you um

145the second committee update is um an update on the Governor's School at Innovation Park and it's this chairman Latif and he's not here I'll take do you want to say something Ms Williams okay thank you you're welcome so both Dr Latif and I serve on the Governor's School Innovation Park board at the last meeting we continued with our student presentations um there were four groups of students who presented their end of year projects in addition to that we had informational updates on current uh students enrolled in their accept and they received their acceptance to college I did bring my little highlighted list over 83 schools were represented and we should have uh the annual scholarship dollar totals coming for shortly we also talked about a student update for the 2324 school year as well as

146the calendar Prince William County schools will again have the most amount of students attending the Governor's School and with that they're very representative from all of our high schools across the county we voted on updates to the Governor's School of Innovation Park policy manual and Constitution Constitution and bylaws this was the first time in 10 years that this was done I am very proud to say that I made a motion to have the non-discrimination policy updated to mirror Prince William County schools and be more inclusive for all of our students and staff at the Governor's School and then we talked also about school calendar highlights the research Symposium was held on May 12th um and just a little update on that the research Symposium this year was moved to the Freedom Center Gymnastics gymnasium because

147we ran out of space at the location where it used to be there were over 95 yep 95 projects uh that were on display from students they ranged from behavioral animal Sciences behavioral social sciences chemistry sustainability and then there were Innovation plants and astronomers astronomy plant Sciences robotics intelligence machines and then of course my personal favorite because I'm a little biased but the Innovation project displays where students are given a set amount of money to solve a real world problem I highly encourage anyone to make this event it's usually held in May and it is open to the public it's just mind-blowing a lot of these projects students have received patents for over the year I think we're up to maybe seven or eight student groups which have received patents I know Dr latif's son

148was part of a group last year that either received a pattern or is in the process of receiving patent for their work with construction concussions the gov schools graduating class will graduate on May 20th this Saturday at 10 A.M at Osborne High School every year the location rotates between the three School divisions and that's pretty much it thank you thank you Miss Williams we are going to move on to item 16 on the agenda board matters um and agenda item 1601 is on for information tonight and is the revision of policy 180 Office of the Ombudsman this policy has been updated to reflect the administrative oversight of the office of the Ombudsman by the board chair and vice chair of the school board is there a presentation or anything on this tonight it's just on

149for information so I suppose if you have any questions um reach out to staff or we'll have it again in the first meeting in June for action and so now moving on to 16.02 board matters so last meeting we started with Mr Wilk I believe at least that's what it says here did we okay did we start yes we shall so we'll start with it would be Miss Jesse okay in in the in here it says that Mr Wilkes started the last meeting so miss Jesse can we go ahead with you okay I appreciate not following Mr will uh first of all I want to congratulate uh careydale Elementary it we receive the national certificate for a visible School award and that's John Hattie's research on what works in school and he does meta-analysis which

150include longitude and cross-sectional studies and they were selected as a national model I visited aviation maintenance program a specialist program at Woodbridge High School there are two specialty programs in the county aviation maintenance one is at Woodbridge and other ones at Stonewall and they have over a hundred applications by the way for next year very successful program and I was instrumental in bringing that program to the county and I'm really pleased with it the art show I visited middle and high Cogan had a dance performance in his Psycho Broadway production you know they are so good at what they do so I want to see that decision day my door is involved in that but I also visited Woodbridge High School's Freedom Day decision day and and decision day at Freedom and I think I

151have some slides for my next part of my presentation Okay so this is the committee of people who put together the naming of of the Traditional School non-traditional School ad or Dr Robert icon he was a founder and then I think I have another slide of those persons no do I have the slide of the persons attending that okay we we had several people attending that particular program superintendent of Staff VOC Kenny Bowden Victor angry I mean Justin wilken Lori Williams and if you look at the mural in the back you'll see that the wolf is really prominent but in that first slot you'll see the actual muralists I also attended I don't know to be to get the one with the next slide with yeah this this was done we didn't see this but

152uh they muralist did this entry into the hallway so I want to show that the second item I want to share with you is the hold on I think I've got it here future kings and I just want to say this is a phenomenal group and these kids are are involved in all kinds of uh of science projects and they are middle schoolers and high schoolers and it is designed by it was founded by Dr Eric King The Ninth Annual scholarship program there these kids are cyber security computer came designed in bioscience drone and engineering and I think we had a picture of persons attending but it was attended by Dr Carol Bernard and Justin Wilk and several people from the Board of Supervisors I'm going to stay within my time thank you Miss Williams

153thank you thank you um that was a great award ceremony I was there as well um it's nice that we have so many different organizations outside of our own School Division that come and sell support and celebrate our students future kings is one of them that leads me right into my um program attendance I was able to attend Featherstone my newsworthy title in school for six percent absentee rate um fourth grade pink space Theory graduation that was held the program is is um great g-r-e-a-t math Minds great math Minds is a program that brings in Bright Young students and exposes them to steam it was started by doc by Excuse Me Miss Monica Nichols Miss Kane a fourth grade student teacher at Featherstone hosted the event and it was held with most of her students

154Dr Nichols was a student who struggled with math who now is a I.T professional and is paying it forward by having this program at Featherstone and also at neapsco last year I was able to attend the event at niabsco families are celebrated and brought in they are encouraged to participate in these activities with their students and this year celebration was just as amazing as last year and I'm always excited when students create games for the um the the things that they are learning and it was really impressive to see some of these handmade board games and with that have woven in esteemed topics outstanding event thank you to miss Nichols and Miss Kane for hosting I did attend the Forest Park suicide awareness walk on the 8th I was honored to also attend the Kathleen

155seedfeld Awards typically the teachers and are celebrated at this award ceremony in the vein of art um on the 12th I did mention our governor School update that I attended the governor School Symposium it is absolutely amazing to look at all the different projects that the students come up with my favorite project this year was a clothing design project it's an app students are working on where you'll be able to input the type of clothes that you like down to the fabric and it's made right now tailored to stores and so you would walk in an essential day with your app plug-in which you like and whatever is in the store's inventory it would find it for you and match it up whether it be a trend or a particular outfit that you're looking for

156for someone like me who absolutely despises shopping in malls that I thought that was fantastic and then the other projects ranged and everything from school safety to environmental Sciences again it's one of my favorite things to participate in on 513 I spent all day at the Lego first Lego League fun day I want to thank all of the coaches and the teachers and the staffs and the parents and the following volunteers who were there for over eight hours to celebrate Elementary School robotics big shout out to chance who was there with the Yellow Jacket team for robotics they made Elementary schoolers shine and especially thanks to Miss Denise Carroll who was there planning the event and then last but not least I just want to encourage all students to maintain their School attendance get proper

157rest that school year is almost over but we're not quite there so hang in there Jackson thank you Miss wall the end of the year is fast approaching with many school activities and graduations last night I was fortunate to attend the spring concert at Unity read High School congratulations to all the students last night who won awards and to those who received their varsity letters thank you to Mr malachak for all of his hard work and dedication I always enjoy hearing the Lions play including the marching band this past weekend I was fortunate to attend the first Lego League fun day it was a great morning thank you to miss Carol for including me and Miss Williams here in the fun at the start of the day the excitement was contagious and I'm so grateful

158for the students with Excuse me so grateful to school so through bus robotic programs I know it's a lot of work and I'm just beyond grateful to staff families and mentors I also attended the joint audit committee yesterday morning in the internal audit committee last night so I just wanted to make sure that I take a moment to thank all internal Auditors and those who work in collaboration with them like Finance staff and uh risk and all that they play a vital step in safeguarding our schools last week I attended outstanding Educators award night and I want to congratulate all those who are nominated including Madame frame of the Patriot Pioneers for winning secondary teacher of the year happy Teacher Appreciation Week again I know it said last meeting and Miss agapore said it a

159little while ago like a month ago that every day should be teacher appreciation day so I just again thank to all educators thank you to Forest Park High School for inviting us to participate in the annual suicide awareness walk it was a poignant day which I firmly believe took concrete steps to bring awareness to mental health and reduce the stigma Associated thank you to audiologists hearing itinerates speech pathologists for staff for all of your work good luck to all the students that are taking Sol's these past few weeks I know firsthand the stress these take tasks place on students and teachers alike I want to just take a moment to recognize that these tasks are heavy burden placed on our youth Soldier shoulders and Advocate to the state to consider that when they're rolling out

160new standardized tests and also when we are selecting summative tests and diagnostic tests and I appreciate the formulation of the working group lastly as always thank you to those who came out today to show your concerns and feedback I've appreciated hearing the many voices from my community over the last few weeks I followed up on all concerns I have received either through email meetings or phone calls I know the division has taken all input into consideration and has a plan for follow-up the division has kept me informed on developments and actions taken to remedy the situation and I have confidence that this will continue to work towards improving the positive climate and culture that supports all students and staff at the Knoxville school thank you and have a good night uh good evening Prince William

161County I want to talk a little bit about the outstanding Educators awards ceremony we had 38 Educators who were recognized as national board certified and these were the ones from the Kohl's District we had Audrey Baldwin from Loch Lomond Michelle bordelon from Colgan Susan Bowden from Westgate winter Gannon from Yorkshire and Elizabeth Marlow and I did not write where you were from I'm so sorry but national board certification is a rigorous program it was created by teachers for teachers it's relevant and impactful on student learning so the work that these folks did wasn't just a little coarse it was like doing like a mini degree like a degree program it's it's a lot of work so they should be congratulated and if your students are in their classes you're very very lucky there were five

162outstanding lead mentors honored as well as 13 outstanding mentors we had 11 novice teachers who were nominated and our Kohl's teachers were Janelle Brown from Osborne Park and Michael Kim from Hilton there were 12 teacher of the year finalists and our coals finalist was Claire Gillespie from Colgan and of the six principal finalists both the primary and secondary winners were from the Kohl's District that was Catherine forgus from Kohl's Elementary and Lisa Marie Kane from Osborne Park so congratulations to everyone who was nominated that was a great night I also got to attend the um the suicide awareness walk and one of the things I want to make sure I mention here tonight is there's a an organization called to write love on her arms I learned about them last year when I was at

163Hilton High School and this organization does um if you look up their website they have a lot of information about mental health but one of my favorite things they have on here is that they really work to connect you to resources and they offer scholarships and those scholarships are for therapy to pay for therapy for a significant amount of time to help people see that there's help available there's an application process but take take a look at it it's on t w l o h a.com so I think that's a an outstanding organization and if you take a look at our student services on the Prince William County website we have many things listed there as well I want to wish everyone good luck on their sols for whichever ones are left for you and

164just hang in there we've got a few more weeks of school thank you very much Mr will thank you a couple things I want to highlight and just a lot of great things I've seen not all my visits and things I've done in the last two weeks but just some really exciting things on Friday the 5th I did go to get the four different schools that day during the school day and you know I went to Swans Creek Dumfries had the American Legion Riders attend the students thanked them for their patriotism and service I went to Covington Harper that day went to Rooms kids were playing uh with the mud you know the chocolate pudding and the worms that was fun it was like a flashback and a fly swatter game and ended up at

165Grand Park for Cinco de Mayo event so it was really cool to see engage Learners all across the Spectrum from really the morning to the afternoon in all those schools kind of in that corridor route one the next day um went to you know of course the suicide awareness event was phenomenal hosted at Forest Park thank you to students of course the sponsors of community members Miss Jesse Miss Williams Miss Jackson Wallace Dr Portlandia all of you actually I think the first time every board member was there so at one time it was a great event all the elected to who came great there um that evening Potomac High School we launched their athletic Hall of Fame event their dinner they'd put it on pause since the pandemic but it was great to see alums

166from Potomac High School I don't know 20 30 years come back and to you know be a part of that event and induct people in that evening wow uh Potomac High School's theater program had kind of been disbanded for a number of years and I went and saw Adam's family that night the musical and it was phenomenal I love seeing that because yes we have the Colgan out there but I love the Fine Arts programs and all of our schools and it's great to see Forest Park Potomac thriving and bringing back their programs there uh five eight um I went a former colleague of mine who I taught with at Woodbridge Middle School she's now the varsity head coach of the Forest Park Boys team she was the one that worked with me in Partnership

167to get those new Courts for those kids and she invited me to the senior night and it was really nice to go back and be there um and see you know the those courts in use and see kind of just the overall morale boost for those students to have those state-of-the-art facilities thank you um and 512 let's see visited uh Patty where I want to congratulate Mr Luciani for his nominee miss kerbaugh the outstanding educator was not there that day so I have to go back and see her again I went to Montclair that afternoon too and principal A.P Miller took me around last thing we want to highlight 5 13 the a street prom it was a great event Forest Park High School does it for our special needs Community puts on a prom

168for those students promoting inclusion and just giving them a night to really shine and it was great to be part of that and be an attendance set event last Saturday so thank you very much Miss wall thank you Mr chairman I want to first of all Begin by congratulating Emily Sayer from Unity Braxton Middle School on being named the novice teacher of the year at the outstanding Educators Awards night I think that is a great accomplishment and a big shout out to Emily Sayer I want to highlight some of the events that I have attended I also attended the suicide awareness walk and the students there did an amazing job there were so many great Community then resources there and I think it was a really positive message so great job everybody I also attended

169the sea felt Arts Council Awards night on May 8th I always love to see the Arts promoted and there were a number of students who were in a couple of groups that performed that were our Prince William Kennedy students so that was really fun I attended the battlefield High School spring choir concert they called it this 70s Show and it was awesome fantastic so fun to hear some really great songs from the 70s and I will have to say their costumes were amazing so good job to Mr bernian everybody in the choir program over there at Battlefield the robotics first Lego League fun day was as usual a sensory overload with so many kids just enjoying the day so very much there's so much stem learning going on and so much excitement I love that

170we have robotics at all levels of our schools and I enjoyed seeing Tyler and Gravely there those were the two Gainesville schools that came to this event and good job to the metal jackets for putting that on the internal audit committee was last evening I'm excited about the work and the value that the office is adding and I'm happy that we could commend them for May being audit awareness month today I attended Battlefield senior awards ceremony it was a very nice ceremony students who would receive scholarships and academic awards were honored one you know individually one by one it was an honor to be on that stage with such a distinguished group of students and they in total received over 11 million nine hundred thousand dollars in scholarships which was like a pretty high number

171and it was it was really impressive I'm looking forward to attending spring musicals at Mountain View and Haymarket Elementary I have a golden ticket for Wonka this weekend and Governor's School graduation this Saturday looking forward to that so I wanted to say um my I appreciate the third quarter update tonight I thank you very much everybody who worked on that uh I know I sometimes ask hard questions but I really just want to help things improve my goal is a great public school system not just for the benefit of individual students but for the strength of our entire community so despite my concerns I do remain committed to making sure our schools are supported and that we prioritize academic success and in closing I leave you with this thought be not weary and well doing

172for you are laying the foundation of a great work and out of small things precedes that which is great what is required is the heart and a willing mind and thank you and have a good night thank you madam Vice chair all right um congrats to all the outstanding nominees for and winners for outstanding teachers of the year and for our National Certified teachers congratulations all them I also had the opportunity to go to the Arts Council annual event and see those Awards and our students perform there the suicide walk as always is a very well done event by our students at Forest Park and our faculty and staff there put on a this year was a tremendous program very moving and I recommend it for everyone each year if you have a chance to

173go um you know in line with our you know this is Dr mcdade's um she'll be closing in on um two years here um on the school board she's um in in I think it it should be said that you know we've she's outlined uh an ambitious strategic plan um we have some movement in the Strategic plan already you know if we take a look at um creating positive culture and climate there's a lot of work that's gone into making our School Division a better place for our employees there's commitments uh you know around the division on efforts to do that we have made um a strong commitment to Safety and Security so much so that you know um there was tremendous coverage on the work that we're doing um last week with the weapons

174detection system the governor's office actually announced a similar program in Grants for 16 and a half million School divisions who would like to pursue similar programs um so um you know I think um I appreciate the fact Dr mcades arrived she's worked hard and she's a leader in the division and a leader in the state she attended and hosted an event for the nine Regional superintendents a couple weeks ago at George Mason University to work on issues that may require collaboration across divisions um things like mental health in in drug addiction very important again you know raising the level of Prince William County schools as a leader on some of these things while we have our challenges we should not shy away from those those are critical but we are a great school system I

175moved here because of it it has been good to my children and the children of the school division we will continue to make it better and the Strategic plan is there for that other highlights in the Strategic plan you know we have even specifics down to winning more awards at the national science fair and international science fair this week alone there's I think about a dozen Prince William County students participating in the international science fair in Dallas I expect to see some winners we have the Virginia Junior Academy of Science which actually specifically stated in our strategic plan that we're committed to putting out more winners and more students in schools competing in that and their Awards ceremony is tomorrow and many Prince William County students participated in that so we're hopeful there and then

176um you know last as we talked about earlier today you know there are significant efforts and concerns underway on looking at site-based management looking at um you know our grading system and and just doing a good review all of that's in line with the Strategic plan and the effort we are doing here to make sure the School Division moves in a positive forward Direction it's being done in a thoughtful methodical way sometimes it it may not be fast enough for some and for others it may be too fast but it's the way change goes so with that I want to thank Dr McDade for her two years so far we look forward to many more years and I think with that being said I think the we can adjourn tonight thank you all