001I would like to call this meeting the Prince William County School Board to order pursuant the school board policy 139 School Board member participation in meetings by electronic communication School Board member Diane Ralston will participate in this meeting through electronic means from her home due to a medical condition that prevents her physical attendance the cloak will so note in the minutes of the meeting a motion is in order for the approval of the meeting agenda Madam chair Ms Williams I moved to the Prince William County school board approved the meeting agenda as recommended in a second Madam chair thank you can Miss Ralston if you're present nope no ma'am moving on to the motion to enter a closed session a motion is in order Madam chair Ms Williams I move that pursuant to Virginia code
0022.2-3711 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 under VA code 2.2-3711a12 to discuss with division Council and staff actual or probable litigation and specifically legal matters involving specific staff and students under VA code 2.2-3711a 7 and 8 3 to consult with legal counsel and receive legal advice regarding Prince William County schools policies pertaining to sexually explicit materials under VA code 2.2-3711a84 to consult with staff and legal counsel regarding the legal requirements and procedures for collective bargaining by School Board employees which requires legal advice and guidance as provided by VA code 2.2-3711a85 to consult with staff and legal counsel regarding the acquisition of real property for the construction of a school
003where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the school board's bargaining position or negotiating strategy as provided by VA code 2.2-37113 and 6 to discuss and receive briefings by staff members related to the security of school facilities the safety of persons using such facilities and actions taken in response to such matters where discussion open meeting would jeopardize the security of such facilities pursuant to VA code 2.2-3711a and 19. so a second Miss Jackson a second thank you Miss Ralston Miss Ralston so the vote is six yes one not president vote Ms Ralston one absent Dr Latif motion passed the Prince William County School Board will now enter a closed session and return to open session in one hour foreign [Music] the Prince William County School Board is now returning to open session from closed
004session before we begin tonight's meeting I want to share that unfortunately chairman Latif is unable to be here this evening you may be called that last year at this time he was recognized as a regional elected leader of the Year by George Mason University tonight he is expected to present this year's award and will be presenting to his dear friend and colleague Fairfax County School Board member former chair Karen Corbett Sanders they've worked closely over the years on Regional issues benefiting both School divisions okay moving on to section seven a motion is in order Miss Williams accidentally logged out thank you madam chair I move that pursuant to Virginia code 2.2-3712 the closed session of the Prince William County school board meeting of December 7th 2022 be certified by adopting the following resolution now therefore
005be it resolved at the Princeton County School Board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge one only public business matters as lawfully Exempted from open meeting 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 you have a second Miss Jackson I second thank you Ms Ralston how do you vote yes so that was a yes from Miss Ralston the vote is seven yes one absent chairman Latif motion passed hey thank you moving on to closed session action items emotion is an order for 9.01 Madam chair Mr Owens I moved at the Prince William County school board approved the appointments and releases
006of specific employees as presented in closed session is there a second Miss Jackson Miss soccer a second thank you please vote Ms Rosslyn how do you vote yes and that's a yes from Miss Ralston the vote is seven yes one absent chairman Latif motion passed all right next we have the Pledge of Allegiance uh Daniel sharifi the student representative would you mind meeting us today the United States of America hi moving on to the thriving and Futures section of the evening good evening during tonight's launching thriving Futures we will be recognizing the accomplishments of our students from three schools we will begin with the occoquine district Mrs Lily Jesse please share the great news about kerrydale elementary school thank you I would like to recognize kerrydale but before I recognize kiradil I inherited this school
007uh this year because of District changes so Mrs Roston this was your school last year so I would like to say on behalf of Mrs Ross and I would like to recognize Kerry school kerrydale elementary school as a as a National Association of esea State program administrators of the of national I'm sorry 202 022 National Distinguished School kerrydale is one of up to 100 schools throughout the country and one of only two schools in Virginia being recognized nationally for exceptional achievement in 2022 the school was chosen for their success in closing achievement gap between groups I know that part of taradel success has been a tribute to the work of visible learning one of the main aspects of visible learning is a new understanding of the enhanced roles of teachers and I'm going to stop
008here because I went to kerrydale for your back to school night and I visited several classrooms and I could not believe the consistency and I also want to say a little bit about visible learning and John had his research this is not a new finding because he has been doing this research for 15 years and it is a meta-analysis of 1200 meta-analysis on the of the influence on achievement of school-aged students the research involved many millions of students and represents the largest ever evidence-based research and when I talked to your principal she said that you guys took the that part of his research that dealt with teacher Clarity so I would like to introduce have you introduce yourselves and your principal and tonight I would like for your principal hold on because I wanted to
009make sure I don't mispronounce her name I I think I've got it at least your Pharaoh is here to introduce her colleagues and students and welcome and congratulations I'm very very proud to inherit this school and I know Mrs Roston shares our same Pride thank you thank you Miss Jesse School board chairman Dr Latif Vice chairman woman Miss Jackson the school board members and Dr McDade thank you for the opportunity to be here this evening on behalf of kerrydale elementary school first I'd like to introduce members of our outstanding team Shara Thomas assistant principal Kiera Jenkins first grade teacher Taylor Riley second grade Nicole Moran third grade Jenna Wilson fourth grade Eileen traxel and Wendy mcgrail Title One Michelle Nikolai English Learners teacher and Tasha Johnson reading specialist I'm honored to stand before you as
010the principal of carradale Elementary School a National Distinguished School I am beyond proud for our students and their families teachers and other supporting staff members who have worked very hard to earn this recognition as Miss Jesse mentioned our work with visible learning and teacher Clarity has been critical to Our Success visible learning means an enhanced role for teachers as they become evaluators of their own teaching according to John Hattie visible learning and teaching occurs when teachers see learning Through The Eyes of students and help them to become their own teachers at kerrydale we shifted our Focus from teaching to learning we used evidence-based practices to support every student's learning more effectively teacher Clarity is both a method and a mindset it's teaching that is intentional and organized through clear learning intentions and success criteria in
011our classrooms all staff are using the learning intentions and success criteria to effectively teach our Virginia standards of learning the success criteria ultimately becomes a guide or a pathway for students to learn we also have a highly effective culture of collaboration to meet the needs of our unique student population and teacher Clarity is truly the key factor in the Collaborative Learning team process we appreciate the the support of the division in our efforts and again thank you so much for this recognition we are very honored to be here tonight and we really appreciate it thank you Jackson speaks I looked at your data and ell kids you were like 20 points above the county and I think 40 points above the state I'm not sure and your your success rate has re when I look
012I look at various there is national rankings and your school was a one-star school for three or four five years you're now you moved from last year to this year to a three-star school and I just want people to know that students in all backgrounds and all levels of all all backgrounds and all are all levels of learning can learn at high levels thank you thank you Mrs Jesse wonderful and congratulations kerrydale um before I go on to Brentsville District High School would you like to take the picture now could you guys come forward and we'll take your picture thank you congratulations again foreign okay [Applause] foreign and I am pleased to share the great news next about Brentsville District High School the Burnsville District High School cheer team recently owned the vhsl 2022 Class
013III state championship title this program yeah programs want a lot of Awards this program has owned state titles in 2007 2013 2019 and 2022. in addition the cheerleading program at Burnsville District High School has owned 10 Regional titles and 21 District titles their coach today and Webb is a Burnsville graduate and a former chair team member and principal Dr Kat Mintz is here along with Miss Witt to introduce the team and coaches so if you guys good evening and thank you for acknowledging the work that these athletes and coaches have put in I'm proud to introduce to you the 2022 Varsity tiger competition cheer team Delaney Caruso Emma Champion Katie cook Charlie Edgar Ellie funderberg Maddie Harold Sammy Harold Brynn hurt Trinity Hess Kayla Huntington Caitlin Kenworthy Abby King Kylie Madison Annabelle Perry Kayla Randall
014Kira rodenheiser Grayson Sheeran manager Anaya Barner assistant coaches Emma Holland and Ashton Stein and head coach and class 3 State coach of the year Taryn what [Music] before I introduce the young woman behind me I want to take just a couple minutes to acknowledge the fact that obviously they're talented and they work hard I think any team that goes to States would say that what some of you may not understand about cheer and I'm going to take this opportunity to make sure you do is when you have a player injured or someone ill you don't get a swap out a receiver it's not how it works you get to change your stunt you get to redo your formation to make sure it's aesthetically pleasing you get to decide that someone else now has to grab
015the megaphone and now start their tumbling pass at the opposite corner and that can all happen within two to three days of a competition and you're adjusting everything on top of which of course you're also cheering on every team including our Unified sports teams and if that weren't enough they're mantras for the year were family and all in so let me explain to you what I think that means to them they're the first ones in the school in the year with the teachers helping them set up classrooms and talking to the teachers about how excited they are during the year they help it back to school night they cheer on the academic team and to be honest they give me tigers there's so much fun to watch and enjoy every time they stunt not that
016we all don't hold our breath right we all know and she's not here tonight but I want to acknowledge Anaya Barner because anyone who's run the music at a cheer competition knows that's one of the most stressful jobs on the planet because when the music is off it goes awry pretty quickly and with that I'd like to introduce to you a senior in the class three cheerleader of the year for the state Emma champion thank you all right hello everyone I would first like to start off by thanking all of our teammates parents for always supporting us and being so quick to volunteer to help us out whenever we need and I would also like to thank our coaches coach Whit coach Stein and Coach Holland for recognizing our potential and seeing our goal of
017winning States and helping us reach that goal and doing everything in their power that they could do to help us out now this team has worked hard all season inside and outside of practice from day one we set the goal of winning States in each and every single member was committed to that goal our hard work all paid off when we got to the state competition and hit our best two routines of the Season all thanks to our parents coaches and every single teammate another thank you goes out to our athletic director Mr Cameron and our principal Dr mites for always supporting us and showing up to our state competitions and my last thank you goes out to the school board for inviting us here tonight to honor our achievements thank you [Applause] I'm so
018proud to represent you a school congratulations again to Burnsville District High School Tigers um before we go on and celebrate one more would you like to do the picture now okay so congratulations again and please step forward please how many parents don't want to walk up and take a picture girls angle yourselves and slide in a little get it tight foreign congratulations again I am excited to show that the Princeton Canyon school system has one more Championship cheer team this year Miss Lisa zakapur from Kohl's Manchester District will tell us some more let's make sure they're all in here all right thank you Miss Jackson the Colgan High School cheer team made history this year 2022 is the first time the Colgan cheer team has advanced to the state competition earning the first state competition
019championship in cheer the sharks are the vhsl 2022 class six state champions thank you Michelle bordelon referred to as coach B expects Success Through individual goal setting and encouraging each competitor to leave everything on the mat principal Dr Tim Healey and Coach B are here tonight to introduce their award-winning team thank you Miss sarapor and thank you members of the school board and Dr McDade for having us tonight I am Michelle bordelon the head cheer coach at Colgan and with me tonight is my assistant coach Miss Ronnie Owen we are honored to introduce to you the class six cheerleading state champions thank you Layla abibi Matthew Allen Bree Chandler Kylie Craig Zoe creme Christian Diaz Casey greike Hayden Harvey Maddie Haslam Lily Hinshaw Nancy James Logan Johnson Julia Kenny Presley Kaiser Charlotte coach jatara Maynor
020Tabitha misner Emily Moss Morgan mulali Riley Owen Riley posty Carly stayed Ava Wilson and Maisie zajac when I interviewed with Dr Healy seven years ago I made it very clear that I was not interested in coaching cheerleading anymore within one year of saying those words the head coach had left and I found myself sitting in his office discussing my vision for Colgan cheer for the past six years I've had the opportunity to watch this program grow by Leaps and Bounds this year was the year all the hard work paid off we started this season with a saying of one thing at a time this applied to every practice every Invitational and every goal we set as a team our first two goals as a team were to place first in the Cardinal district cheer championship
021in place in the top two of the region six Beach year championship I am proud to say we accomplished these goals and headed to States as we prepared for colgan's very first ever trip to the state championship these athletes worked harder than I had ever seen them work before they pushed through illness and injury visiting our athletic trainer many times they would not give up on themselves or their team our team peaked at the right time and executed two Flawless rounds however if I'm being honest I didn't see the very end as clearly as I had tears in my eyes I was so proud when our name was announced as the 2022 state champs while this accomplishment shows the talent skill and hard work of a team one athlete sophomore Riley Owen was recognized as
022the vhsl classics cheerleader of the year this journey could not have been possible without essential people thank you to the parents of our athletes thank you Miss Ashley Osborne our athletic trainer and Mr Nathan Staples our director of Student Activities I would especially like to thank Dr Tim Healey our principal for trusting my vision with Colgan cheer and having confidence in me even when I wasn't sure I had it in myself I would like to personally thank coach Owen for being there every step of the way we would not be here without you thank you to my family for being so supportive all season long for helping with my own children when I needed to be at practice for coming to each and every competition and listening to vent sessions when those had to be
023had and lastly thank you to Dr McDade and the school board for your continued support and for honoring us tonight [Applause] congratulations sharks again for making history a great job and we are so proud of you guys and um before we move on we can bring forward and we'll take some pictures [Laughter] bring you gotta get a little tighter all right I'm going to take several shots on three I'll take the picture ready one two [Music] three we'll do another one two three let's do one more there's always a blinker out there ready one two three great congratulations [Applause] [Music] I I would now like to turn this wonderful portion of the evening over to Dr McDade thank you so much Madam chair um congratulations again to kerrydale elementary school on their efforts to close
024the achievement gap which is a significant focus of the launching thriving future strategic plan and extra special Kudos also to The brinsville District High School tiger cheer team in Colgan High School shark cheer team for the positive representation of both of their schools as well as pwcs throughout the school year and at the state level I really appreciate all of their determination and teamwork and we are so proud of our state champions all right thank you Dr McDade moving on to the adoption of the consent agenda a motion is an order Madam chair Ms Williams I moved at the Princeton County school board approved the public meeting consent agenda as recommended is there a second Miss Jackson my second thank you Miss Ralston how do you vote yes that's right we do need to have
025discussion thank you discussion manager Miss Williams uh yes I just would like to take the opportunity um before we vote on the consent agenda to congratulate uh Miss Banya and thank her I'm not sure if she's in the audience tonight if you are don't mind standing but I appreciate her willingness to serve miss Ben on the seat committee and represent the Woodbridge District thank you so much and I'm sure that your perspective will be a fantastic addition to the seat committee and thank you also for being an employee of our School Division Mr Walker thank you Miss Jackson um on the consent agenda there are some collective bargaining changes um one I'm happy that we are moving forward with electronic voting uh to make this as seamless as possible to encourage turnout for those election
026I wanted to ask because there's been some back and forth well public back and forth but there's been some discussion about a date of hire and how that pertains to the current collection of signatures to reach that 30 threshold for classified and certified employees I wanted to have it on the record as I asked this so we have this now finalized from our attorney are we requiring a date of higher at the current process Mr Wilk no the resolution does not speak to anything having to do with data higher it says that signature cards have to be provided to the third party neutral who will verify the 30 interest threshold has been met but there's nothing requiring the collection of data of hire in the resolution next um I also have a question um on
027that topic and then I have a comment on another item on the consent agenda my question is I would like to request that division Council also address for the board and public on the topic of security measures that would relate to electronic billing or balloting and also the issue of cost related to electronic balloting if you would be so kindness to do that sure miss wall thank you um first of all just so people are uh know we have the third party neutral that has a group been agreed upon by the parties expressed a preference that we modify the uh you'll recall that in the in the board's adopted resolution we allowed voting by mail and in person and he requested because we've done some more exploration and understanding and confidence level in the ability
028to securely and cost effectively frankly do electronic voting for members and we've explored that and had many discussions with both the pwa present and myself talking with the vendors and making sure we get proposals and understand exactly what will occur we're certainly confident in the security measures in place it's sort of a closed system because we would be using our own internal email system and there's a mail component to it as well and as cost effective goes it's about half the cost of a mail ballot election so it's about probably if we had an election with all 11 000 and so employees and in the both bargain units you're talking probably about fifty thousand dollars total versus 80 or 90 or more for a full mail election because obviously the the mailing the postage is
029the biggest expense in that you're talking about almost between 750 and eight dollars per piece to do a male only election and it's about half that to do a to do a electronic election does that answer your question as well yes thank you Mr Anderson I have also a comment on a consent agenda item Mr chairman okay um I wanted to comment on the speed reduction Zone um measure 11.10 I've been concerned about safety on the roads near Battlefield high school for a very long time and those of you who know or who are familiar with route 15. it's a major commuting thoroughfare between Virginia and Maryland and even up into Pennsylvania and the road gets a huge amount of traffic and traffic moves at highway speeds often would with many students Crossing Route 15
030at the intersection of graduation drive and both um sides of the road are relatively hidden as far as the neighborhood is set back the school is set back so it's a it's a highway that an intersection that can catch people unawares there have been some very serious accidents in recent years even just as recently as two weeks ago so I've been working on this issue since joined the board trying to find solutions to improve safety at this intersection I'm pleased to see that there was a traffic study completed and that a speed reduction zone is recommended the current road speed limit on this road is 55 miles per hour that's why I said it's highway speeds oftentimes people go even faster than that it's just too fast for this area and so I know the
031community is very strongly in support of any safety measure that we can do to improve the safety of traveling to and from our school here in Battlefield high school so I just wanted to speak to that I'm very thankful for this I look forward to this I think the community needs it and the students benefit we all benefit thank you okay um Miss Jesse did you Mr work Mr thank you Miss Jackson I just want to follow up what my colleague Miss wall was talking about with cost um Mr Anderson will you explain the breakdown of that that I know you mentioned the cost efficiency in fifty thousand dollars how is that broken down proportionally between us and um the Union uh the resolution dictates that the cost to be split evenly between the school
032board and any employee Association thank you so then really uh our cost would be 25 000 right approximately yes okay thank you Miss Williams thank you and just Mr Anderson if you could just clarify for the public if they have any further questions how do they about this update or any other details regarding collective bargaining the information can be found or um yes ma'am Miss Williams the uh there are frequently asked questions posted on our website and that are available to answer sort of basic questions about the process and what's where we are in the process and we try to update those so that the public knows what the what is currently going on probably not as frequently as the board would like but we try to get them up there when we can so
033that's an easy place for them to go and ask and get their questions answered and of course they're welcome to email the superintendent's account or whatever account on through the website and if they have specific questions as well and one other item on the consent agenda is internal audit plan I just want to say I want to commend the committee for working on this the Auditors for working on this um I think it's a really good plan and I wanted to mention that it's designed with flexibility in mind depending on divisional needs and budgetary considerations very comprehensive plan and gives us flexibility to do what we need to do so I wanted to thank the Auditors and the audit committee for their hard work any further discussion okay please vote and Miss Boston how do
034you vote yes that would be a yes from Miss Ralston the vote is seven yes one not president but I'm sorry one absent chairman Latif motion passed thank you Miss Simpson moving on to the citizen comments those citizens who have signed up in advance of the clerk May address the school board this evening when they are called to the podium the citizen comment period for regular school board meetings is one hour and citizens may speak on agenda items or other topics Germaine to the operations or policies of pwcs 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 cheering to avoid disruption of the meeting if you do not
035the board will recess and I will ask if the room be clear to restore public order when I call your name please come to the podium and state your name and address for the record so I'm going to call the first four because we have eight speakers today and then I will say you name one to approach the podium so the first four we have Augustus site card Randy provenzano Maggie Hansford and Heather overly so the first Speaker would be Augustus site card ready hello my name is I guess to save code I am a seventh grader at Benton Middle School my mom and I searched on Google how many deaf and hard of hearing students there are in the United States there are about 300 000 students between ages 5 to 17. I have
036learned that each deaf and hard of hearing students need to in-person certificate huge language transliterators clts or sign language interpreters per student so we do not have six hundred thousand in the US we only have ten thousand I want to change that for the better I would like others to give to me and cue with me so we can have more in our country and in my school who can queue and in US many schools as possible I need to speak up for myself and all the children who are deaf and hard of hearing who needs services like clts and sign language interpreters I have my own right I love speech helping others beside me and seeing cute speech I don't like queuing speech to others yet please teach me cute American English and school
037and others who need it too I need to have two clts so they can switch in the CLT that I was using could have a break to solve the problem of not having enough clts we can have my sweet toned TV or YouTube the people who are watching might want to help and learn 2q and those who want to learn great to help fix those Jose oh no not another thing I have to learn to queue speech to turn their thoughts around to want to learn how to cue there could be two methods One the good way that we always think of is about God and everything around you and respect love him and lovers as it is two they could be struggling so hard that they don't want to do any more but with
038court we help them get through the pain and back thoughtful things and get rid of the mud thank you for allowing me to speak to you tonight [Applause] all right thank you next we have Brandy provenzano foreign school board members and Dr McDade my name is Brandi provenzano and my address is on file tonight I would like to talk about our classified staff but first a moment of clarification the form provided to pwea from the division required a date of hire and that document must be printed out and signed as opposed to the digital card which was previously allowed and extremely successful this was a concern from the very beginning and school board members publicly commented that they would look into it this has unfairly prevented many of our classified staff from signing as the
039process to find their date of hire is cumbersome walking around with paperwork before and after contract hours has been difficult to say the least from the very first day that we launched our collective bargaining campaign classified staff were included Maggie Hansford stood at the bus lot in Sub-Zero temperatures to collect their signatures she visited custodial workers and cafeteria workers they have always been a part of our plan sadly I am not sure they are part of anyone else's plan it should be easy to collect signatures right if they actually wanted collective bargaining rights of course they would sign today I spoke with a custodian who asked me shyly if I would be willing to write her name on the form for her I told her that I could not tears of Shame welled up in
040her eyes and she told me she could not read or write she has been working for Prince William County schools for 15 years 15 years and she has never missed a day she said proudly straightening her posture and pushing her shoulders back I watched her grow inches before my eyes never missed a day they gave me an award for that she told me proudly it's easy to sit from our point of privilege and say that anyone could sign it's almost like saying anyone who wants to vote should just be able to go vote there couldn't possibly be barriers systemic barriers preventing them from doing so it's much harder to take a good critical look at ourselves and the systems that we participate in and ask why would we deprive these rights of any employee I
041asked the custodian if she would watch the meeting tonight and she laughed she works a second job cleaning Office Buildings in Herndon but she did sign very self-consciously with only her initials she hugged me tighter than strangers do and thanked me but sadly she walked away believing that it would not change a thing I hope that it does thank you next we have Miss Mackie Hanford hi my name is Maggie Hansford and my address is on file with the clerk thanks B um I would like to start by saying I have three amazing Boys in our school my oldest is Brunsville tiger who went all the way to Phoebus last week played against Phoebus my middle one is a proud marceler basketball player and my youngest is a member of the stage group with the
042drama team that performed last night at T Clay Wood that's personal my friendships are personal collective bargaining talking to you all not personal and I'm asking you all to do the same collective bargaining is about following rules we want consistent rules and we want communication that's all we've asked for and I want to talk about a little bit about what it looks like when you all are not speaking with us it's miscommunication it's not being able to understand the infrastructure that's laid out because there is no lack of there is lack of communication when I meet with division Council it's two attorneys representing you all that can't make a decision without consulting with you all with me and our attorney why do you all need two attorneys to do to meet with me we're having
043a meeting right now there's one attorney handling all of this it seems like over and over again there just needs to be more and more and more that other County Employees aren't having to face and I ask you all if you really do want to think about tax dollars in this think about that it isn't just fifty thousand dollars we're paying for a neutral that costs every day so that's on top of the 25 000 that you all will be responsible for and that's on top of the twenty five thousand dollars that these our educators are responsible for when you collectively wrote the resolution and you all agreed to it you basically said teachers can do this if they can afford it I'm lucky enough to be able to live here because I'm married and
044we have a we have two careers coming together not everybody can do that not everyone can live and work here and you all are saying not twenty five thousand dollars for teachers to do this you're saying close to fifty thousand dollars for teachers to do this that's what you're saying so I want you all to take a good take a deep breath and realize you're asking educators to spend nearly fifty thousand dollars for collective bargaining next we have Heather overly good evening Dr McDade and School Board my name is Heather oberley and my address is on file Prince William County schools Vision 2025 core values indicates Integrity as one of the I believe it's number three they claim they will do what is best for students through effective interpersonal relationships dependability and doing the right
045thing in all circumstances even when no one is watching Prince William's County schools has a long way to go in achieving this that core value at the end of the year 2022 2021-22 school year there are over 1 000 positions posted as needing to be filled because people were leaving not because we were getting new positions created in the county we are currently short bus drivers custodial staff Food Service workers secretaries and licensed teachers for those who have remained that means there is more expected of them to cover the open positions having so many new Personnel needed to fill such positions in a school district even one as large as Prince William County schools does not allow for the effective interpersonal relationships dependability and does not show that Prince William County schools are doing the
046right thing in all circumstances for this core value to come to fruition Prince William County School needs their employees to stay working for the county to be able to live in the county and to use the same public spaces as the County residents unfortunately this isn't happening bus drivers are being rerouted which is lowering their hours which is cutting their pay since they aren't full-time this has led to at least one bus driver to face evictions this month another possibly next month we are short bus drivers but we don't have enough roots for every driver we have to be able to afford to stay in their home teachers who work for Prince William County cannot afford to live in Prince William County this means we cannot organically create relationships with our neighbors who would then
047become part of our school Community I live in Stafford my son attended Stafford schools my students ask me all the time to attend various events but with my commute and family priorities I am not able to return to school for a late nine gate late night game or production and my family does not know anyone at the school where we might be able to make it a family event this core value is an alignment with what pwa believes we want stronger relationships with our students and school families we are Dependable we are the ones who stayed during the worst of the pandemic we are also doing the right thing by fighting for collective bargaining for all Prince William County Employees we know what we need to make Prince William County schools the best in the
048world why don't you want to work with us and this board sat here last year and said you would forgive the date of hire on the cards that we had already collected but said anything in the future had to have date of hire thank you the remainder are Julie cantos Chantal Rock Kate Olsen Flynn and William Deutsch so the first Speaker we have is Julie Cantor good evening board members and Dr McDade my name is Julie Cantor and my address is on file I will be reading part of the response to your letter to Educators written by the pwea attorney on our behalf dear Wade I am in receipt of your December 2022 letter the fact that your correspondence was disseminated and there's a footnote I take you at your word you did not give
049a copy to any journalist and do not at this point know who did pwea does not wish to waste time and resources investigating who on the school board is trying to sabotage the collective bargaining process to Media Outlets hour hours after you raised your voice I'm Maggie during a December 5th phone call with an election vendor is chilling it would be a waste of time and resource to address every Point raised in your correspondence pwea strongly disputes your accusation that any delay in getting an election scheduled has been caused solely by pwea I am a product of Martin Luther King Jr Elementary bevel middle and Dale City my mother spent most of her teaching career working for pwcs at Woodbridge Middle Ripon Middle and Woodbridge High School I do not collect checks from Suburban Richmond
050like pwa's members the collective bargaining process in Prince William County is personal to me you and the school board have caused delays when representatives of pwea met with you sorry I met with the school boards outside Council pwea pushed for the resolution to allow for secure safe electronic elections pwea recognized the cost of in-person voting could be prohibitively expensive after speaking to election vendors you and the school board conceded that in 2022 it is possible to conduct conduct an election with an electronic component per year December 4th email I understand that is your anticipation that an item will be added to the school board's December agenda to address electronic voting it would have been easier to address this issue the first time around your attempts to police pwea's press release and limit their voice with
051pressed leaks and veiled threats regarding defamation defamation is even more concerning considering your behavior during the verification process in April and May of 2022 you sent pwea and vea letters asking that they stay out of the press so that the parties could amicably amicably work together you further cited pwea's social media posts in contacts with PW with board members now you and the board are engaged in the very behavior for which you chastise pwea pwea discrete agreed to the dispute resolution neutral that the school board proposed and agreed to the third party election vendor that you introduced pwea stands willing ready and able to move forward with the certification election process instead of raising your voices and taking cheap shots at the media at pwes let's try to work together thank you next we have
052Chantal Rock Chateau Rock yes good afternoon school board members and Dr mcday my name is Chantal Rock and I reside in the Woodbridge District this is my first opportunity to speak directly to the board and I'm thrilled to use this opportunity to talk about Freedom High School I am confident that you have read in the newspapers seen on the locally Nightly News are heard through rumors only negativity surrounding freedom the students the football players the football program and his coach but on this day I Spotlight freedom is football program it's players and its head coach Daryl Overton let me tell you a little bit about these young men better known as young kings to their mental strength coach Pastor Karen they are tremendously supported by their parents some who are here with me tonight their
053family their head and assistant coaches their student body and those in the community community who believe in them they Faithfully attend study hall a requirement instituted by their coach as a result every player has at least a 3.0 GPA they perform Community Services recently handed out 250 turkeys and bags of food to families within the community for Thanksgiving this is done annually I am very grateful that my family including my adopted and Foster boys three who attend Freedom were able to participate over the last two years every senior member of the football team received a college scholarship to continue to play football at the college level offering them the opportunity to achieve a college degree all made possible by their head coach Daryl Overton who exposes them to colleges by taking them to college tours
054across the United States currently 12 members have scholarship offers of these 12 the majority are sophomores and juniors the great Nick Saban football coach for the University of Alabama personally spoke with Cam Courtney and EJ Reed this is remarkable We Salute the football team for their undefeated season and for becoming Regional Champs I know this was not an easy achievement because as the wife of a former Freedom football coach we have seen the time over the last few years that this team worked to get to this point waking up at the crack of dawn to participate in weightlifting training and workouts early Saturday morning football practice putting in a nursery work done off season and studying congratulations but we are not finished yet this Saturday the team will participate in the state championship against Madison
055High School at Old Dominion University at 4 30. please come out to support this awesome group of young men to the boys bring home the state championship Fly Eagles Fly thank you next week next we have Kate olsenflin good evening Vice chair Jackson School Board and Dr McDade my name is Dr Kate Olsen Flynn and I thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight equity and excellence in school is contingent upon the welfare of our students and teachers and I say this because after listening to our to our community I hear things about how our kids are struggling and our teachers are struggling and to solve this problem I see that the solution school systems are choosing is to do more require more curriculum more online training more tests more mental health surveys more data
056more more more I understand the impetus of doing more to make up for time loss and to meet the expectations in our strategic plan however implementing more all at once doesn't mean providing the help that struggling students and teachers need it just means more for example in elementary school we have Kinder classes in Title 1 schools that have teachers assessing so much that they have no time to teach we have required scientists science tests that close online before units have been taught and Esau teachers that have been pulled from instructional time with English Learners to score another language test and for what reason do more require curriculum and more tests do anything to help these kids learn their ABCs science or the English language believe me as a professor of Education I understand this feeling
057of urgency to assess but to what end there needs to be some cross communication between curriculum departments in the division about how to strategically Implement new assessments so that teachers have time to teach you can't make up for learning loss by testing your way out of it and the welfare of our teachers is at risk for the time for for the first time my first year education students at George Mason are writing papers on teacher burnout and they aren't even teaching yet they question the profession profession because they witness how deflated teachers feel if this talk of stress and lack of agency is so pervasive then we have a serious problem that will affect teacher quality for years to come if Equity is contingent upon the welfare of our students then is dependent on our
058teachers well-being too teachers need a voice they need to feel empowered to make pedagogical decisions so the more that they are doing is Meaningful for our struggling students and you know that an important way to improve teacher agencies through collective bargaining this means the process for bargaining and the product for the for for which to bargain is fair and relevant to teachers working conditions election processes need to be like every other election we have in our County and teachers need a voice in their employment we cannot achieve equity and excellence in schools if our students and teachers do not feel their needs and interests are valued please uplift our teachers who are working to alleviate our children's struggle in school right now and Achieve as excellence they are the backbone of our schools and Equity
059matters for them too thank you next we have William Deutsch William Deutsch thank you madam chair members of the board I'm here to speak to item policy proposed policy 796 sexually explicit materials which is up for board matters discussion uh this item is a result of a general assembly law that was passed the required boards to pass model policies by January 1st it appears that the school division is dragging their feet as far as possible because this item is now up for first reads on December 7th there is no scheduled meeting of this board for later in December so either this board is going to pass it after January 1st or maybe you'll rush and pass it tonight and minimize the notice to the public uh that that appears to be the path that we're
060on I would like to focus uh just quick clerical error for y'all under your regulations your sections you skip a section c you go Section A B and then D you also have that in your second definition as well where you skip a letter so I would do a little clerical cleanup on this before you pass it as well but moving on to to the heart of the regulations well one more Point as well the bulk of this item is on the regulations you're not actually passing a policy you're passing a policy telling the superintendent to implement a regulation and so you're bypassing actually passing the policy that the state law requires and the importance on that for the public is that superintendent can change the regulations with much less notice and with much less
061broader involvement so the the meat of this is just being passed off by the board but under your regulations where the heart of this is two huge problems first your second definition is called harmful to juveniles and this board strikes this definition your regulation and doesn't replace it so this lays out the bare minimum on what somebody thought would be harmful to juveniles and this board doesn't even believe that that counts so let's hear it harmful to juveniles means that quality of any description or representation in whatever form of nudity sexual conduct sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse when a predominantly appeals to the Peruvian shameful or morbid interest of juveniles is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what a suitable material for juveniles and C is
062when taken as a whole lacking in serious literary artistic political or scientific value for juveniles so items of prurient deviant interests that aren't even meeting an educational value this board doesn't believe it's harmful and so presumably would still be allowed to be passed on to students next you have a whole definition of sexually explicit content this definition includes terms I had to look up that include um people who are interested in fecal material and urine it's a very graphic definition of sexually explicit content this board's response though is not to ban it this board's response is simply to go ahead and let parents know about it but the interesting thing about this definition is that this definition the other place that appears in state code is under um so thank you can I finish my
063sentence no time is up thank you sir okay that wraps up the citizen comment time moving on to 13.01 so does student representative time tonight we have senate representative Danielle sharifi joining us on the diocese sharifi good evening everyone the community of school board superintendent um my name is Don shrefi and as you just said I'm one of the student Representatives this year I just want to briefly talk about an opportunity that I had to experience yesterday the student leadership Workshop which was held here at the Cal Leadership Center we kind of planned this as a way to really connect with high school students across all the 13 schools and we had students that were sort of told nominated by the principals saying hey this is a great opportunity for you to voice your opinion
064attend this workshop and if the students want to participate they were eligible so we did have a few students I think it was around 30 35 students across the high schools they were typically a majority of them were Juniors and seniors but we did have a few freshmen and sophomores so it was really nice to see inside across all grade levels we started off the night with the explanation of why this Workshop would be essential to really connecting to the Strategic plan and the thriving Futures it's really important as Dr mcdades said she really wants the students to have a voice and not just be you know here up here me thing I'm representative but really connecting to the students then bringing that to the board to the student Senate and really discussing how can
065we go forward with all these things that we see within our schools both good or things that can be improved then we moved on to the student voice committee's discussion of how that would look like and for those of you that don't know the student voice committees aim to be sort of a collective unit of student leaders within the school both self-nominated and teacher nominee so we can get a full spectrum of students whether they're already in leadership positions as part of the student council or Key Club or any other of this type of student organizations or even nominated by teachers because we want to get students that maybe they're not specifically ones that will go in front of the room and start talking about things but we want to still hear their voice so
066we do want to have them also involved with the student voice committees and the ways that these will be set up is that they will meet once or twice a quarter maybe once a month depends up to the school but they'll discuss a variety of topics that they see within their school and then report to their student Senate and the student Senate will report to the representatives and we will all discuss the things that we see and we kind of just talk about feedback of what they specifically see within their schools some stuff that the student voice committees at each High School can talk about and discuss and report back on on and then we also hope to bring this to the Middle School level as well and then we had input from Dr Neil
067and Dr Rojas about eliciting eliciting and synthesizing shareholder input we just kind of just like surveys and feedbacks and was really interactive for students to know you know poll versus surveys how effective one can be how to effectively analyze that data and that can really be helpful for students who want to see how prevalent certain issues are within their schools and then we talked about specifically we broke out into different small groups and that we had Prince William County School staff facilitator and we all spoke for 18 minutes per each topic about what they saw within their schools and then a big topic was diversity equity and inclusion which is something that we really want to bring back to the schools in the student voice committees because it's very important and I think that a
068lot of the schools have really been making lots of movement toward especially diversity equity and inclusion and then we just it was a really great opportunity to connect with students across the schools I personally met with you know a bunch of amazing students and it's really cool to see like how they you know see things through their own lens you know coming from different backgrounds and going to different schools so we definitely hope to have more of these type of workshops or these student voice committees to connect those students directly to the board to different policies and then at the end we had Dr McDade wrap up with remarks and I'm sure the students really did enjoy meeting her and learning about her vision for Prince William County so thank you all have a good
069rest of your night and make sure if you're a high school student or in the future middle school students we will have these student voice committees set up so definitely when that opportunity comes along I definitely encourage that you get involved thank you and have a good night thank you very much moving on to the superintendent's Time Dr McDade thank you so much Madam chair good evening in addition to the schools we recognized earlier this evening I wish to extend my congratulations and acknowledgment to the 10 new pwcs schools that have earned the Virginia Department of Education purple star a purple star is awarded to a school that understands the unique needs of military families and is equipped to address those needs with empathy care and concern those schools are Battlefield High School Bennett Elementary
070School Bull Run Middle School Charles J Cogan High School Grand Park Middle School Marshall Elementary School Heine Branch Elementary School Potomac Shores Middle School T Clay Wood Elementary School and Westridge Elementary School the addition of these schools brings our total number of purple star schools to 28. establishing more purple star schools in pwcs helps us work toward continuity in the way we support positive School transitions for our military connected students and how we support them throughout their time stationed in our area our pwcs vision 2025 strategic plan includes an emphasis on the importance of building a welcoming and supportive environment for our military connected students and their families I would also like to congratulate our freedom high school football team whose win last Saturday qualified them for the state championship in class six we wish
071the Eagles the best of luck this weekend versus James Madison High School the game is scheduled for 4 30 p.m this Saturday at ODU go Eagles I know the Princeville District High School football team is disappointed that their trip to the class 3 State final ended last weekend in Hampton however I want to congratulate the team for advancing to the state semifinals and add that the seniors on this team in fact have made history they earned three District titles two Regional titles two trips to the final four and an overall record of 36 to 11. good job tigers in keeping with our commitment to continuous Improvement and becoming a more unified organization with a consistent high level of excellence in every school for every child we are embarking on a review of our current site-based
072management practices site-based management is the idea that individual schools should have Independence for decision making to determine what is best for their local operations for an effective review of our site-based management practices and to Define what is managed centrally and what is managed at the site level we have established a 25-member site-based management steering committee additionally 39 members comprised of students parents Community stakeholders teachers principals assistant principals and division leadership we're invited to serve on working subcommittees our site-based management task force is led by our Deputy superintendent Dr Carol flynar the committee's goal is to Define and document site-based standards and requirements for operational excellence to achieve high levels of academic achievement in every school we look forward to providing you with further updates as the work progresses and together we will achieve organizational coherence
073for a stronger School Division for everyone next it is my pleasure to welcome Dr Tim Neal director of research accountability and strategic planning to present on the 2022-23 quarter one grade overview good evening Vice chair Jackson school board members and Dr McDade I am pleased to be here tonight to share with you some data regarding our first quarter we are very familiar with this type of report we received it last year so tonight I'm going to go over a few data points with you covering enrollment our attendance I'm going to briefly cycle back and look at our Virginia growth assessment which is a new a new test as of last year and then I'll I'll finalize with our elementary and our secondary performance so this chart here shows our enrollment for the first quarter this
074is our active students and you can see in the total count column that is a total number of students we have in Prince William County right next to it is the count of students that are currently enrolled in our virtual Learning Academy and then the percentage of students that are are attending virtual classes so you can you might recall we had high numbers of students in Virtual courses when the pandemic hit that number has steadily decreased and right now we have a very small percentage of students in those virtual classes full-time the two cables on this slide show attendance rates so the table on the left shows the tenants rates for school year 2122 school year 22 23 and our virtual attendance rates for 22.23 this is broken down by um grade level and is
075the for to clarify it is the first quarter only um in general the patterns of attendance looks fairly similar this year to last year Elementary School with kindergarten being exception it hovers around 90 to 95 percent that pattern persists through Middle School by High School level the attendance rate has dropped until the low 90s 92-93 the table on the right shows a percentage of students by absence totals so you see 0 1 2 3 or 5 or more absences for the quarter and again we have a comparison for school year 2122 and school year 22-23. in general the attendance absence patterns are fairly similar we did have a four percent drop in the students who have missed zero days of school and that percentage is equally distributed amongst the other categories to clarify we did
076have 44 days in the first quarter so that five or more absence by technical definition is the number of percent of students who would be considered chronically absent if it were calculated today with four 44 days moving on to the Virginia growth assessment just as a reminder this is a new assessment that was established in in the fall of 2021 students were administered this test in grades three through eight and the goal was to establish a baseline performance and to uncover any unfinished learning patterns the students were tested on the prior Year's content so a in third grade you were being tested on second grade content fourth grade on third grade content and so forth they did establish cut scores for this or um but they didn't have passing or failing designations because the intention
077was to measure growth additionally these scores are reported on a vertical scale score ranging from 900 to 2000 so the attention again was to be able to look at growth now this year we have a couple of changes that have been made the most obvious is that instead of just the fall Administration now we will have both a fall and a winter Administration so students have already taken the fall Administration that was conducted earlier this year the winter Administration will occur in January unlike last year this year's test current focuses on the current content material so a fourth grader will be tested on fourth grade content what this means for us is that the scores and the benchmarks that were established last year are no longer usable with the current test data last week Thursday
078or Friday the state did release some guidance in terms of interpreting these scores my department is in the process of taking that information and translating that into guidance for our schools to use so the next two slides are going to show the vertical scale scores for fall of 2021 and fall of 2022. the first table will be for reading the second will be for math the big takeaway from these is that performance is fairly consistent from one year to the next in terms of where students are again we don't have benchmarks designated to interpret these scores but very Loosely what we can conclude from this is that a third grader last year is performing fairly similarly to where a third grader was performing this year in the fall and so these are the um the
079math scores one thing to note about this is if you are in Geometry Algebra 2 you are not taking the Virginia growth assessment so we do have some middle school students who are in accelerated math courses who do not participate in this if we move on to grading for context Princeton County does use a standards-based grading philosophy and approach what this means is that if students do not perform well initially they are have the opportunity to undergo remediation and then take be reassessed for grade replacement what this means is that the the scores or the grade distributions that we pulled for this report can change in the future if a student does undergo remediation and then demonstrates mastery it's also important to note that teachers have the professional latitude by regulation to override a mathematical
080average if they believe that the student has demonstrated Improvement in Mastery over those content standards during the course of the year so if we look at our elementary grade distributions as a reminder this covers grades three through five so students in the primary so kindergarten through second grade don't receive letter grades the grade distributions are fairly similar to last year especially when you keep in mind we're dealing with a different cohort of students so the current year is shown in bold text with a comparison year directly beneath it and this is broken out by content area additionally at the elementary level we looked at patterns regarding where students were reading at and what reading level they were on is assessed by their teachers so this is a on the report card students receive a designation
081in first through fifth grades of below grade level on grade level or above grade level and so again you can look at the the patterns here of the percentage of students that are below grade level it tends to hover around 35 36 percent with some variations across those grade levels roughly 44 45 percent are on grade level with about 20 percent above grade level and again there are variations amongst the grades in terms of where they fall moving on to our Middle School again with with the understanding that this is a different group of students different cohorts the table is set up the same way with the content areas down the left side the grade distributions across the top with the current year in bold and again the pattern is very similar to last year
082in terms of grade distribution at the middle school level and the same would hold true for high school so when you look at the grade distributions for high school again they are largely mirroring with some variations again based on different cohorts to how they looked last year and the last piece of analysis that we did was failing course analysis and we have this broken down by Middle School and High School level so the Middle School level again the current year is in bold type you can see that we have 87 percent of our students are not failing any courses compared to last year where it was about 80 86 percent so we did do have fewer students this year failing courses at the middle school level and you can see how there has been a
083corresponding drop in the percentage of students failing one or failing two or more courses when we look at the high school level although there are some fluctuations here for all intents and purposes the percentages have remained pretty similar to last year and that concludes our overview of first quarter performance questions if the board has any questions at this time thank you for the presentation thank you Dr McDade are there any questions Miss wall thank you Miss Jackson um I asked a lot of questions in my board briefing in preparation for this meeting so I won't ask a ton of questions tonight I'll just ask some of the big ones um to kind of keep this um not going really late but um just for the Public's benefit I was wondering I I can see from
084these numbers that a significant portion of children are still reading below grade level at all grades in the elementary school level and I assume that's normal I I'm assuming it is but I am also concerned about it um and so my question I guess is can you speak to um the division's progress with implementing the Virginia literacy act and our efforts to improve reading instruction like where are we on that maybe for the Public's benefit because I know that was kind of a big deal and may um inform where we where we're going with this to try to get movement in the in the number of children who are reading at grade level or above grade level which I think is a really good indicator for how well they're going to do in later years
085we are certainly implementing the literacy act we have been doing the training on Phonics and phonemic awareness so that in early literacy they are receiving direct phonics instruction um and so teachers have been being trained on that as well so we have been implementing and um you know it will take some time to start to see some of the progress but we are seeing some promising practice in the classrooms okay that's that's great that's great to hear thank you um can I ask another question okay um I was wondering um if um when we get those results from the winter growth assessment that you said will be in January or February January if we're going to be able to see more accurately the proportion of students in proficient and advanced categories so I can't speak
086to how vdoe is going what guidance they're going to offer for that what I can say is that those scores will allow us to look to see what kind of trajectory students are on in terms of mastering some of that content material and it is something that our supervisor is testing is well aware of and he is well versed in and we are currently in the process of looking at all the information and determining the best method of providing guidance to our teachers and our principals in terms of using this information and on a the Virginia growth assessments just for the public Public's benefit is that primarily reading and Mathematics or is it other content areas as well yes thank you that it is only reading and Mathematics okay thank you um my last question
087um is I um know that some of our schools are in the accreditation process are accredited with conditions because of science instruction and I was curious I know in our previous budget cycle there were support positions in central office that were um identified but I wasn't sure if we had yet filled those positions in the science department and how are we doing with addressing some of those science scores here they they're comparable it looks like at least the middle and high school year levels to math which isn't saying a whole lot as far as like grades CD and F but I just wondered if we could have a little bit more I'm concerned about science instruction and I would like to know what we are doing or having the works as far as support staff
088to help our teachers our science teachers do we still need more people do we need or do we can give me an update thank you we'd have to get you an update on sapping I don't have exact numbers on Bill rates so we can follow up with that information but we do have a focus on science the teaching and learning office does have a strategic plan where they are working on um Ibex for a strategic plan for a continuous Improvement plan for every core content area we did deliver science materials Hands-On science instructional materials to schools as well as ensuring all schools are utilizing the updated standards for teaching science and those schools where there's a significant Gap have plans in place for science plans and action plans in place that are being monitored so
089we we do have a heavy focus on science we're looking at the data and supporting schools and tracking progress over time all right thank you I'm glad to hear that and I suppose those are the action plans that are at the school-based level right every every school every school has them but some schools are focusing of course are doing well doing better than others those schools where science was clearly the the lowest indicator in measurements of success those schools definitely have science plans in place all right thank you thanks very much thank you Miss Jackson actually I want to just tag on to what the last thing that you said Miss wall um you guys were just talking about the continuing continuous Improvement plans and how schools have action plans um I've been a couple
090of parents that I've spoken with lately in general understand that there's gaps and things like that all over the place if you are a parent where at your school can you get this information or how should they be able to find out what's going on so that they can be more informed about either what's going on locally in their own building or what they could be expecting for their child so they should reach out to their school administration to find out when the CI team meets so that they can learn get updates on what's happening with their continuous Improvement plans of course you can always reach out to to your teacher to get more information about at the local classroom level what what work is coming forward so I would say start with the school
091first and those CI plans are publicly available for them all right Miss Williams thank you I just wanted to pose this question so that our public is aware is there a resource or a place that's sort of a condensed version on what different tests mean and where they come from and if we don't have that could is it possible that we could look into at some point in time like a cheat sheet because I think it's very confusing for parents to understand the difference on which test is a state test even if it is a state test why it's a state test when we administer it versus say a regular assessment in your math class for example that's questions I often hear there's a lot of confusion about that and then when we revisit this
092after the fall test if you don't mind just reiterating that there the benchmarks won't be clear because we did it last year but then they changed the test this year so that does skew data and I think that's very important reminder that we keep at the Forefront when we discuss these test scores and I appreciate that thank you Mr Walker thank you I'll be brief and succinct so I just have a couple comments uh one I appreciate the level of transparency I think that's very important I know there was a study done on the amount of minutes at Fairfax County uses on academics and it's not very high proportionally on their board meetings so I think these are very important to have these presentations and be open with the community you know and looking at
093these patterns I think again these observations very interesting that the changes not a lot between the previous years looking at the vga's this is just a general observation that I think is obviously not in our control because their state but having a fall and winter I have some further concerns just about the sheer number of testing that teachers will be doing now that we'd be adding that onto the caseload as well um uh last thing you know and I know I don't you know looking at other jurisdictions I'm sure they're looking at different standards and scores but is there any way to get any type of regional benchmarking or comparisons especially in the areas of students who are on or below just to get an idea of kind of where we're at in the Greater
094Northern Virginia area is this in reference to the VGA no I'm sorry I moved on to like the the well yes I'm sorry yes it is about yes so I'm not sure what uh data is available regarding the Statewide VGA that is something I can look into okay thank you thank you any further I appreciate the presentation today I just have our clarifying question um I had some questions about the testing but it sounds like what Miss Williams and Mr Wilk um discussed and also ask for we'll cover my questions um there is one thing you did not touch on tonight that I don't necessarily need an answer now but if you could someone if you can't answer tonight follow up with me with material that I could share is whether or not you could
095elaborate on a new test or amended test for fifth graders in addition to the Sol the VGA comes at the end of the year it's a field test for the spring of 2023 for reading and writing integration I've had a few constituents reach out to me about what it meant and how it would change Sol's so um if you could either address it now or email me something that I could share I'd appreciate it thank you I I would rather than speak off the cuff I will look into that and get something to you okay I appreciate your time tonight and you informative presentation and um then that's it thank you madam chair that concludes superintendent's time all right then um just make sure we're moving on to Boyd matters agenda 1501 the proposed the
096policy 796 sexually explicit materials which is on by division Council this item was placed on the agenda by division Council who we will turn this over to Mr Anderson yes thank you madam chair first I want to thank Mr Deutsch for catching the Miss lettering I always like to have extra proofreaders so I'm going to fix that the other point I'd like to make and just for clarification on the red line as I was as often as the case I was going through the agenda today again and realized that the most recent version of the policy and the regulation had not been updated so what we uploaded on Friday with the agenda item was not the most recent version and so that's the red line was just to make be entirely transparent to the public
097that what we the difference between what we had posted on Friday and the actual version that should have been posted and was posted today so as has been noted it's the first read and so therefore I just want to be clear that the two items that are well in the policy the only change was making the change from parents to parents and Guardians and in the regulation the reason those two definitions were taken out is because they actually aren't terms that appear in the policy and again this that had they had already been taken out and wouldn't even have been included uh this is the final version um and so they are not definitions that are required uh by the model policy the model policy has lots of definitions um and they are come from
098various parts of the code so what the general assembly did was say past v2e you make the policy they made the policy and they in order to get definitions they imported definitions from various statutes in the code and uh the heart even though harmful the the definition for harmful to juveniles and juvenile actually appears in the code it's not doesn't appear in the policy so I just want to make sure that that was clear to everyone that that's not um it was not a substantive change it just wasn't in the policy at all um uh also I want to make clear that the implementation of the policy the same the model policy issued by Virginia Department of Education is very clear that prior to the out to the start of the academic year is when
099we will be required to have all this implemented right so you pass the policy now in January and then prior to the next academic year in August we need to be ready to have all these things in place as you can imagine it's quite a task to sort of go through and identify and assess all of our materials across the division uh every kind of material written pictorial art anything that might meet the definition in here of sexual explicit materials catalog that and make it ready to be available for the public to see on the websites and all the things that the policy requires so I just want to kind of lay out the time frame for that and make sure everybody understood I'm happy to answer of any questions obviously this is the first
100Street it will be passed on January 4th I think someone maybe said the seventh earlier it will be the fourth as soon as we're back from the break all right so this is um is there any discussion I want to thank division Council for clarifying those points um those were some good clarifications and some of the questions that I had raised previously to or prior to this meeting so thank you um I know that community members are very concerned that our um that we be thorough and comprehensive and transparent as we go through our materials and um obviously they there are concerns that I have been hearing about how this implementation will proceed and what the timeline is and everything else like how this will be rolling out so I do appreciate that um my
101um question I had a question about paragraph six and um I think it might be of the policy um does that last sentence mean that content will be available to review in person or hard copy pull it up here um policy uh yeah the final sentence the process shall include Provisions requiring students to have instructional materials including sexually explicit explicit content available for review by parents is that yeah the the policy requires um the model policy requires that there be a process for online access to these okay as you can imagine though of course there's an exception for things that might be copyrighted um things that you just can't literally get on a you know if they're in I don't know and I don't pretend to be a teacher so I'm using words I may
102not know uh what they mean but canvas or some other content management system that you can't then give access to for whatever reason so there would be ways to make that accessible uh in person if it wasn't able to be some content that could be shared online an example might be readily available if there were content curriculum content from a teacher's class on family life for instance right if it's a page and a description of some activity that would meet the definition then that could very easily be shared as a PDF to with the parent right so that's that's an easy example but if it's an artwork that might be be copyrighted or it's a some other sort of proprietary from we have so many content management and curriculum Management systems that have content readily
103available for teachers and I know Justin as a former teacher sitting here thinking oh you don't know what you're talking about Wade but um but but there is lots of content that you know for whatever reason might not be able to be electronically available and there would be a way under the policy for people to still see that okay thank you thank you for that clarification any anyone else Miss Williams thank you madam chair I just want to um make sure that we cross references with other existing policies or regulations when we come back in January to vote on this because there are some caveats already in existence in our system and I would not like to see duplicative work on behalf of our staff or our parents um for example if you're a student
104is taking a health class as a parent you receive notice for opt-in or out we don't want to then 30 days before the material is presented have another notice I don't want to be careful that we don't overburden our staff while we're meeting the requirement or overburden our parents um it's important that this information is available to them but we want to make sure that we're not sending out so much that things start to get ignored because that does happen because this is very sensitive material for a lot of our Prince William County School families so I want to make sure that we're doing it in a manner that is comprehensive and not duplicative so thank you Miss Williams I'll make sure that we add some cross references there are some as you note things
105like the family life policy which are separate code Provisions that talk about family access right nothing in this policy is really going to supersede those or impact those they would run sort of side by side and parents would have rights to the family life and of course the Family Life curricula certainly lots of that curriculum might not meet the definition of sexually explicit so it wouldn't you know some of that a lot of that material wouldn't fall under this policy regardless so just wanted to clarify that but we'll certainly add some cross-references thank you I just wanted to make sure that also my parents are reviewing that that they're aware of the other um policies that are in existence especially if you are a parent that has a student matriculating up through the system and
106you haven't had experience with this type policy before so I appreciate that Mr Walker thank you madam chairman um I I think again the parents and Guardians definitely have a right to be notified notified in advance or child's education as evidence last meeting we began further codifying notifications on what type of school-wide events parents should be notified about the Commonwealth of Virginians kind of goes with what you were saying has historically done a great job posting curriculum and standards for all grade levels and subject matters I do not feel like the ability for parents to review that material that may be sexually explicit is any different from what all jurisdictions should already be doing in the Commonwealth parents have had the option to seek alternative instructional and related academic standards like family life parents and
107Guardians have had the option to seek those alternative educational options however I do ultimately believe schools should defer to parents to determine whether the use of sexually explicit materials is appropriate for their children I would suggest for those who do not agree with these model policies please email your remember of the general assembly thank you any further comments one further question I think what Mr Wilco was saying I kind of reminded me that I did have this additional question you know I do think that in these matters especially with such a diverse County as we have in various um belief systems and backgrounds and standards and and everything that can all be so different for different families the parents should be you know at the head of the table on this not just you know
108sitting at a table bed at the head so I think um we my question is if if there is is there and I I've read the regulation I don't think I've seen it in here but if parents if there's an opportunity is there an opportunity for parents to raise an issue with material um that has that perhaps isn't on our list I guess what is what I'm saying is we miss something or they feel like something is objectionable I know we have this process where books um through libraries but is that part of the contemplation of this that we would have a process like this for something that we may have missed if a parent wants to maybe have an alternative assignment or something like that yeah I'm sure and a lot of that depends
109on what the material might be um but yes there so if it's a book we have a process already outlined for books and challenges to books and things of that nature um but certainly if a parent came and look we're a division within 100 Schools and the task of cataloging and making sure because it includes remember not just pick pictures but also any written description of an event or item that might be sexually explicit under the definitions that's a tremendous amount of content to go through and is it possible that we'll miss something yes I think it's possible but it's also possible that somebody might see something that they think is uh in their mind sexually explicit but actually doesn't meet the the technical legal definitions in the policy right so um just with any
110concern that they would have about a curriculum item I would think they would bring that to the principal and have that resolved however we need to do that thank you very much any further discussion okay so that tonight's the first reading for proposed policy 796 um additional information on this policy can be found in Virginia code section 2.21-1608 60 16.8 excuse me um Mr Anderson you discussed the next steps uh earlier could you just review them really quickly and then if there's no more questions we can finish the discussion sure we'll be tonight's the first reading as has been noted we're going to go back and probably make a couple changes in adding cross references and that kind of thing and then when we bring it back we'll put up a red line again of
111showing the differences that we've we don't expect there to be any content changes just maybe at the addition of cross references um and and I'm going to fix the lettering and so we'll bring that back on the fourth for approval height being no further discussion on this matter we will move on yep to avoid matters I don't I don't remember oh Mr Wilk you're on Deck I'm I think that we started with Miss Jesse last time sir thank you oh one second four members could stick to the three minutes or whatever um so I just want to recap some events that I've attended uh since the last board meeting and recognized some schools for that on 1117 Montclair Elementary had their book fair uh I wanted to also recognize on 1118 Potomac High School kicked
112off their basketball season uh with the blue blood Madness uh it's a great event great turnout from the community I got to reprise my role as the panther mascot I should challenge one of you to take on one of your high school mascot uh it's a fun time being in that hot suffocating um costume so you know anyone who's up for that I think Mrs agapore might be my next one the Bulldog um at 11 19. I was honored to be invited to speak about civic duty and service for the Cub Scout pac-289 which represents students that attend Henderson person Patty mostly those two elementary schools on 11 20 I was able to briefly speak and attend the Mom's demand action event where I highlighted a lot of the achievements and new hires that we've
113done as a division to amp up our school security and that just the Ft positions that we've added to better support school security on 11 21 a little bit after veterans week but I did my last veterans event Forest Park did their muffins for military which was honoring their military families during the breakfast period so it was great to be there and great to be invited to speak um I also at that time had a school day visit to Mary Williams Elementary they have an outstanding pre-k program housed there and uh probably one of my favorite events that I'll probably have for the history here is being able to attend their beauty shop um they um they did a great job with the hair and they were fake shaving me and the kids kept on
114saying God you have so much hair so you know fun times um uh 11 21 11 22. I want to thank chance uh you know for bringing up during the last student times about um his experience at Potomac Middle School I was able to attend back to back uh 11 21 and 11 22 I think principal Preston's doing an amazing job at that building she's kicking butt um and she's phenomenal um 12-1 attended Grand Park basketball game on 12-2 I was at the Montclair Bingo uh game taking tickets and selling tickets I also attended Forest Park's fall play which as you know is my wife's program uh great job there 12-3 Potomac hosted breakfast with Santa which was brought back and then last but not least last night I was at the Henderson book fair
115and had the ability I think again to present with Dr linmara colon our specialty programs at donbury's Town Council so there we go thank you thank you Miss agapore thank you Miss Jackson um so it's been a while since we've last spoken hasn't it uh we went to the Virginia School Board Association um uh conference and I got to attend some workshops on education law which is always very interesting uh public record hey it is public records act uh redesigning the high school experience which was a really uh Miss wall and I were at that one that was a really fascinating um talk to to hear about um I also attended the Northeast region meeting and met colleagues from Manassas City Manassas Park loud and Fairfax Stafford and Spotsylvania to work through our legislative agenda
116I believe I mentioned this before but I get to represent the congressional district 10 with our for Virginia School Board Association so I'm excited about making some more advocacy efforts on our national level uh this weekend I went to voice which is Virginians organized for Interfaith Community engagement it was on Sunday they're uh their talk this time was on Mental Health in our communities uh as you may know in Prince William County we are getting a crisis receiving Center I believe it's supposed to be open next year and I've been rather vocal about making sure that our students and our children 18 and under are being considered in mental health because uh if anybody's ever had to deal with mental health issues with your child you know that it is very hard to get a
117bed uh if they need one dominions often packed we don't have anything locally here uh it's hard to get therapists psychiatrists psychologists so anything that we can do to advance the cause of getting better Mental Health Services for all of our citizens is a great thing but particularly I advocate for our children so uh if you are listening to this please make sure you reach out to our Board of Supervisors to see if they can somehow secure some extra funding so that we can consider our children our adolescents and our youth have a little bit more regulations surrounding them they're not allowed to be in the same exact places with adults so we do need to be considering what we can do for our children I went to some basketball games it's basketball season so
118I got to see the girls play at Hilton and at Osborne Park teams looked great I I get tired watching them you girls are oh gosh it's so amazing I wish I could move like that um I don't know what Justin was talking about I about this costume thing I I would like to do it yeah heck yeah um so I look forward to I don't know uh a a mascot thing with with uh Mr Wilco here Center Court yeah be there all right um got to go to a couple Book Fairs please invite me to your Book Fairs I have a grandson and he needs more books in his Library I went to Rosa Parks and Westgate I hope everyone gets a beautiful restful break and we'll see you back in January thank you
119as well awesome um congrats to Bull Run in Battlefield for earning the purple star designation um I think that's a great accomplishment on November 16th through 18th I attended the bsba conference in Williamsburg as well um and I appreciated the school law update and legislative Outlook and some of the other great things that I present are attended and also had the opportunity to present on the trauma of redistricting which was timely since we have a redistricting coming up in that affects the Gainesville District on November 18th was the Boosterthon at Tyler for fundraising and I'd actually it's been years since I'd seen this kind of fundraiser and it was impressive um I've never seen so many kids move so fast for so long in the same direction I should add November 19th was the first
120Lego League competition at Osborne Park and Al Alvey and Tyler Advanced to States this coming Saturday so good luck to all the teams November 22nd was a Turkey Trot at Tyler they do lots of running over there at Tyler my favorite part was seeing how the fourth graders ran with The Kindergartners and helped them you know understand what they were supposed to be doing and it was just so heartwarming to see the older kids help the younger ones November 29th was the legislative breakfast with the Prince William County legislators which was very good December 2nd I attended a fun and extremely well organized winter event at Alvey Elementary put on by the PTO there so great job to the PTO I also was able able to meet the new principal at all the elementary Mrs
121Johnson so welcome to Mrs Johnson to the Gainesville District also on December 2nd I attended Puffs it's a it was a theatrical performance at Battlefield Loosely based on Harry Potter um and it was told from the perspective of the hufflepuffs which was hilarious um and um they it was the debut performance for the new theater director there at Battlefield High School Megan codling and it was just so well done and um the the playbill was professional quality so I also kudos to the families who did that congrats to Battlefield students who earned their academic letters at the awards ceremony in November to receive that academic letter students needed to have a three-point GPA overall last year with a 3.0 in each individual class so no lower than a b and this year there were 944
122students who were recognized which I think is awesome and tremendous I'm so proud of all the students um we have a community meeting coming up tomorrow night for the Rosemount Elementary boundary um redistricting process so if you live in that Community please tune in and my parting thoughts on the first quarter data it's my highest priority to see that our students achieve I know it takes a whole lot of hard work and there's still a lot to do but to quote a Zimbabwean proverb when there is a mountain in your path Do not sit at it down at its foot and cry get up and climb it I am along for the climb and I appreciate each and every one of you from the lowliest kindergartner to our superintendent and all the parents and teachers
123in between who are on this climb together as we tackle student achievement in Prince William County schools Miss Williams thank you madam chair Miss well I think that might be my favorite quote or proverb yet um so uh I'm myself like the rest of my colleagues up here attended the vsb annual convention in Williamsburg and uh also attended many sessions my biggest takeaway from that was a keynote speaker who addressed the audience on the upcoming AI programming that's out there and how that could possibly affect our Young Learners in the future as well as the way that their brains function in diff excuse me differently than many of us who have already graduated from school found that very fascinating in addition to that I was able to attend a Woodbridge Middle School Multicultural night on
12411 21 at the annual legislative breakfast as well was attended where the school to board and our superintendent highlights our legislative priorities to the delegation that we send to Richmond from Prince William County it's a chance for all of us to interact and ask questions and clarify our legislative priorities and what we value is important as a School Division and addition I attended a webinar by the path forward on mental health and its impacts on students reading and math night at Bellaire at elementary on behalf of Miss Ralston family excuse me I also attended the fall play Camelot and camel little at Woodbridge Middle School on December 3rd which I think in my nine years might have been the most fun that I've had at a middle school play and the best reception by the
125greeters I have ever had I don't think I've ever seen students that excited to see a school board member show up for their play that was fantastic I am also heavily into Robotics and happy that I am again a robotics parent unlike my fellow school board members I was at North Stafford High School on the 19th of November for their Lego first Lego League competition I want to congratulate uh featherstones Blockheads on winning The Innovation award and also neapsco Stars 2 for qualifying for state championship in addition I was able to attend pwea's racial and social justice town hall for parents of color and how they feel they their students are doing in the school Division and I want to give a special shout out to George Mason University's 2022 Community change makers and innovators
126Mr Alan Johnson won this year he works with AJ Keller Realty and volunteers and many of our Prince William County schools and as myself being a 2017 recipient it was my honor to be able to drive him home his award this year upcoming event I will be hosting a meet and greet at Toto's in Woodbridge this weekend from 9 A.M to 10 a.m I will be hosting office hours 12 14. please email me for res for excuse me to reserve your time slot or if you have any questions the governor School Innovation Park will be meeting 12 8 and lastly I just want to thank excuse me congratulate Freedom football team for making it into the state championships and thank all of our teachers especially our elementary school teachers who help students shop and get
127ready for the holiday seasons I think that's a lot of work that goes unnoticed so enjoy your holidays thank you Miss Watson I'm just wishing you a happy holiday is she not okay I'm okay Miss Austin do you have any nope no nothing else have a good okay good weekend hey that leaves me all right um thank you to the schools for exciting invitation to their holiday festivities or various celebrations since last meeting as able to watch the Turkey Trot at Ellis Elementary and listen to Mr talk about talk to interested job candidates at the future school at Rosemont Lewis site um there are also a number of events over the next few more weeks I also attended a town hall yesterday I think it was yesterday with supervisor Lawson as she discussed the number
128of housing communities coming into Burnsville District although land usage is not within the purview of the school board I continue to encourage residents to familiarize themselves with the upcoming Pathway to 2040 comprehensive plan vote which is next Tuesday according to town Harbor of the Alternatives and the vote next Tuesday will increase density in Brentsville and will impact schools I see a school board member I do I do have concerns about the thousands of homes coming to the district rentsville district and whether or not current schools can absorb the current schools and current boundaries can absorb the new potential students I enjoyed rooting for the Tigers and the Pioneers this past month at the original games both teams played exceptionally well and I heard reports of positive sportsmanship congratulations again to the principal cheer on a
129winning another award and an extremely proud to represent all four high schools in the Brunsville District I am so thankful to coaches athletic trainers and all the staff members who support our student athletes congratulations to coach white for winning the 3B Regional coach of the year the division held the first boundary meeting for proposed boundaries for the site being the school being being built at Rosemont Lewis Miss wall myself then spent a few hours a few hours driving around boundaries and submitted questions last week to the division for Crow vacation I was recently reviewing the portal and I saw there was another proposed planned so I would continue to monitor that if you're an impacted district there are a number of schools who are in the in the impacted area and neighborhoods that are involved
130in this boundary so Community involvement is essential there's another meeting tomorrow and links to the meetings are posted on social media mine Miss wall and Miss agapore along with the division and I believe pwcs has a Twitter account with just for boundaries um I maintain concerns about the trainings for staff and testing for students I've relayed any concerns expressed me to the administration I know I've said this before but I just want to end on this note so it doesn't get lost in all the other wonderful things that are happening but I ask Allstate elected officials to consider the impact of workload on staff when creating new laws or training mandates this workload also extends to high stake testing we should not test the tests we should test to assess and apply data there's no
131time to review data and teach them then there is no time to learn have a great evening everyone