Prince William County School Board Meeting - October 19, 2022

001there you go all right I'd like to call this meeting the Prince William County School Board to order pursuant to school board policy 139 School Board member participation in meetings by electronic means School Board member Diane rawston will participate in the meeting through electronic means for her home from her home due to a medical condition that prevents her physical attendance the clerk will so note in the minutes of the meeting um at this there's a motion uh in order emotions in order for the approval of the meeting agenda please read the motion Ms Jackson I move that the Prince William County school board approved the meeting agenda is recommended okay a second a second okay in discussion I'm gonna add I'm gonna ask it as long as there's no objection I'm going to ask the

002board to move 1601 which is approval of the collective bargaining resolution to a head of 1401 before the student rep so right after citizen comment time so we'll do the state of the schools after the collective bargaining is anyone have any objection to that okay I see no objection um that is unanimous to make that move and that will be part of the approval of the agenda okay so please vote Miss Ralston how do you vote yes Miss Ralston votes yes so the vote is six yes two not president vote and Jesse and Williams go ahead and please update the agenda online and and wherever okay um next emotions in order and a closed session uh Miss Jackson thank you Dr Latif I move the pursuant Virginia code section 2.2-3711 and 2.2-3712 at the Pennsylvania

003County School Board enter a closed session for the following reasons one to discuss with staff the appointment transfer release assignment and permission to specific offices and employees under Virginia code to section 2.2-3711 A one two to set the annual goals for the Ombudsman under Virginia code section 2.2-3711 A 1 3 to discuss and consult with legal counsel we go to new quest for religious exemptions between into specific students and the Virginia code section 2.2-37-11 A2 and 8 4 to discuss with division Council the staff and actual and probable litigation and specific legal matters involving specific staff and students under Virginia code section 2.2-37-11a 7 and 8 5 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

004by Virginia code section 2.2 Dash 3711 a eight and six to discuss and receive briefings by staff members related to security of school facilities the safety of persons using such facilities and actions taken to respond to such matters where discussion and open meeting with jeopardize the security of such facilities pursuant to Virginia code section 2.2 3711 a19 do you have a second a second any discussion please vote Miss Ralston how do you vote Ms Rosenberg yes foreign the vote is six yes I'm sorry seven yes one not president vote Williams motion passed came up now okay at this time the Prince William County School Board will move into closed session and and return approximately seven o'clock [Music] foreign [Music] County School Board will now re-enter or reconvene the Open Session and at this point a

005motion is in order Vice chair Miss Jackson closed session certification thank you Dr ratif I move that pursuant Virginia code section 2.2-3712 the closed session of the Prince William County school board meeting of October 19 2022 be certified by adopting the following resolution now therefore be it resolved at the Princeton County School Board hereby certifies that the best to each member's knowledge one only public business matters lawfully Exempted from open meeting requirements were discussed in the closed meeting to which the certification resolution applies and two only such popular business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting will hold and discuss or considered by the school board do I have a second Mr chairman Mrs a second any discussion please vote Miss Ralston how do you vote yes Miss Rossum votes yes

006the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed moving on to closed session action items 9.01 approval appointments releases Miss Jackson thank you I move to the Princeton County school board approved the appointments and releases of specific employees as presented in closed session do you have a second Mr chairman II Miss Williams at second any discussion please vote Miss Ralston how you vote Yes Mr Ross most yes the boat is eight yes unanimous motion passed moving on to 9.02 Miss Jackson which is the approval of requests for religious exemptions emotions in order all right thank you I'm at the Princeton County school board approved the requests for religious exemptions from compulsory School attendance and case numbers re22-8 through re22-13 second Mr chairman a second any discussion please vote Mr Alston how do you vote Yes Mr

007awesome yes okay well that's it for close action action items at this point we'll have the Pledge of Allegiance missed what oh we're good now we'll announce it unanimous motion passed all right fine motion passed that's it for closed session at this point we'll do the Pledge of Allegiance Mr Chance Williams our student representative will lead us in the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States okay at this point we will be moving to our thriving Futures focus and good evening we are pleased to continue our launching thriving Futures Focus this school year to recognize several outstanding students and employees we have one honoree this evening from the Gainesville magisterial District it is my honor to introduce Miss Jen Wall Gainesville District representative Mr small thank you Dr Latif um good

008evening it is my pleasure to this evening to recognize Battlefield High School Technology education teacher Mr George Bishop Project Lead the Way or pltw has named Mr Bishop an engineering outstanding Teacher of the Year Mr Bishop is one of only 15 engineering teachers Nationwide recognized with this honor Mr Bishop is the pltw certified to is pltw certified to teach introduction to engineering design digital electrical electronics civil engineering architecture and engineering design and development in addition to his regular teaching duties Mr Bishop is the advisor for the technology Student Association the Stellar explorers program and Seaport due to the National bus driver shortage Mr Bishop volunteered to earn his commercial driver's license so that his students would be able to participate in the multiple field trips he schedules annually his work ethic has resulted in pwcs

009outstanding educator nominations State High School technology engineering education teacher of the year and an international teacher Excellence award so congratulations Mr Bishop and please come forward to say a few words from here thank you that the potw thing is hard for me to say too sometimes uh thank you Dr Latif Miss wall school board members and Dr McDade for this recognition however it isn't just me it never has been the honor actually goes to all the students who choose to enroll in my classes and their dedication to making Battlefield a pltw distinguished school and who support the battlefield technology Student Association chapter and to the people whose leadership and friendship have brought me to this point namely Mr Doug Wright pwcs CTE supervisor who along with Mr Ryan Ferreira and the battlefield admin team provide

010the funds and the support necessary to run the program Mr Nasir Ayub our Workforce Development coordinator who dragged me through the two weeks of introduction to engineering design training and then trusted me enough to move his family to Virginia Mr Michael spudick who teaches pltw principles of engineering course at Battlefield Mr Greg quoss from patriot who originally convinced me to give potw a try Miss Carol matawar our pltw representative Mr Jared hasselbauer from Patriot my colleagues at Battlefield past and present who make this make the tough days good the good days great and finally but most importantly my wife candy who makes the whole thing worthwhile thank you so much thank you congratulations congratulations Mr Bishop thank you for your efforts to make a positive difference for all of our students in our schools um

011you know I'd just like to add this it's not part of my script but you know as we as we looked at the new environment here for college admissions and and post-secondary education and that's a large part of our strategic plan and the work that that we want to move forward with universities are maybe moving to test optional and and and not looking at the SATs and acts as much but they are looking at rigor of curriculum yes sir they are looking at the kinds of courses our students are taking so I applaud your efforts I applaud battlefields efforts in all of our high schools for the work that they're continuing to do and innovate and trying to come up with stronger courses and these kinds of really courses that weren't offered when I was

012at high school which was a long long time ago um but but we do appreciate it I'll turn it over now to Dr McDade to help conclude this portion of the school board meeting thank you Dr congratulations Mr Bishop on earning the outstanding engineering Project Lead the Way teacher of the year also I want to recognize you for expanding Project Lead the Way courses at Battlefield from one to now five so we really appreciate all of your efforts and the work that you're doing with preparing students for Life After High School I also want to thank I know that principal Ferreira is not here but he supports all of the programming and the work that you're doing I want to thank him as well as our team members Doug in the Seer for their hard

013work with Career and Technical education so congratulations again and to the entire Battlefield Community thank you at this point Mr Richard we'll invite you up to just take a picture of the board up here okay my friends can come with me sure absolutely foreign okay at this point we will now move on to the adoption the consent agenda Miss Jackson emotions in order um thank you I moved at the Prince William County school board approved the public meeting consent agenda as recommended do you have a second Mr chairman Miss Williams a second any please vote Miss Ross sorry I had a discussion um on this citizens time I'm not going to ask for a vote because on citizens this is a consent agenda but um I just want to comment that one I love the

014Saturday after meeting well people can call on Saturday I think that's good on the agenda I also like the deletion of the two separate agenda so we have an agenda item or a non-agenda item I like that and um the things that I I do not support and I wanted to make sure people knew this that I would like for us to see more time that more time be given to speakers and I know that others did not support that but I did like the idea of the two minutes instead of three minutes given more time because we are a public school and I would like to provide I would have liked to seen as providers to sign up at the door and the reason I I would have liked that is because there are

015people there are items that come up during the week or doing between board meetings and when you don't there are people who just can't get on the agenda and if we could do that down the road I'd like to see that happen and I also would like to have zoom links for people who are unable to come to the meetings because there are some people who have physical reasons that they cannot come to the meeting and others who have illnesses or other reasons that they cannot come so I just want to make those comments thank you thank you Miss Jesse um Miss Ralston how do you vote yes Mr awesome votes yes the vote is seven yes one no Jesse motion passed at this time we're going to move on to Citizen comment time those

016citizens who've signed up in advance for 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 limited one hour the first hour first half hour reserve for comments on the agenda items which I guess would have changed in the second half hour the comments on agenda items or other topics to remain to the operations and policies of the Prince William County schools citizens signed up to speak on agenda items must speak to the agenda item they have identified it'll be asked step down we have 10 speakers on gen items and 10 on speakers have three minutes to speak please use proper decorum and manners while at the podium or you will be asked to step aside we ask that

017the 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 do so the board will recess I will ask ask the room to be cleared to restore public order when I call your name please come into the podium and state your name and address for the record at this time I'll call the first five and that'll be oveta Scott Jerry Williams Maggie Hansford Joe mirabale and Tracy Blake avetta Scott good evening ladies and gentlemen on the board Mr chairman Dr McDade my name is sylvetta Scott and my address is on file with the clerk tonight Madam superintendent is going to give her perspective on the state of our schools I would like to share my thoughts on our organization staff

018and the learning environment as part of this post-pandemic time first let me start with how the drive for having organizational coherency has impacted our educational model under our new superintendent there has been a stream line of positions both at the administrative and instructional instructional levels assistances have been formed like instructional coach coaches an abundance of professional development and a buffet of Technology with application to enhance student learning and achievement the missteps in my opinion have been clear communication with staff not leaving everything to the principals to deliver or a weekly Community email at the close of business on Friday technology and social issues have it has had a major impact on the learning environment our students bring these topics plus life challenges into the classroom which at times can cause disruption within the learning process

019the code of behavior is a secondary exam has a secondary exam to ensure that all students are aware of the expectations on school ground this exam has been modified from 50 questions with a passing score of 90 to 20 questions with its passing score skip of 70 percent I guess rules don't apply to students when they have a voice on the DS regarding the current staff the vocabulary is pressure and time the pressure is to create a learning environment that is culturally aware enriched technology enhanced lessons that Foster critical thinking and academic success on all assessments the problem is the time needed to execute and different and differentiate instruction to the various Learners in the in the classroom instead of allowing teachers a voice the superintendent staff have been focused on creating or modifying regulations

020like 572.1 or 910 to make the working environment difficult to express our professional expertise we are supposed to be partners in education but instead staff is devalued and not treated as the Professionals in the room the state of our schools need to be modified from one size fit all Colonial structure to Modern 21st century model thank you Jerry Williams hi I'm Maggie Hansford and my address is on file so I'm sorry Jerry Williams not here right I guess oh he got it okay Maggie Hansford sir all right not Jerry Williams my name is Maggie Hansford and my address is on file with the clerk I come to you all this evening again to ask for fairness and meaningful bargaining for our Educators our Educators have done the work for our students and they've done the

021work to be here today and I want to talk to you all about the Amendments that we have been asking you all to make in the importance of why and I want to thank our superintendent Dr McDade for having productive conversations with me and being able to move the ball in several of the areas so I do appreciate that thank you so with trans transparency we do see a greater need for transparency we saw that you were able to provide that with the job title bills it's very important when we have the units identify that we are specific on who is included in each unit and who is not the removal of delays if we are going to discuss passing a resolution we need to talk about why we're trying to push the ball and

022putting delays in the first place so the delays were never should have never been put in there and I'm glad that they were removed meaningful bargaining UC Educators come every school board meeting every school board meeting talking about work rules and then it's not listed on the resolution what bargaining are Educators going to be doing at the table provide us the opportunity to have meaningful bargaining conversations at the table to be able to develop the collective bargaining agreement we need to be able to do that that is something you all have the power to do and that is what meaningful bargaining is that needs to be included with the resolution the strike language is being weaponized in the resolution it is Virginia law you all can fire staff for striking period you don't need to

023put it in multiple documents to say the same language it was put into the ordinance at the county level in Prince William and it was taken out by the board of County Supervisors and we're asking for that same Equitable decision from this board the strike language needs to be removed as well as when we talk about the election process when we talk about Fair elections there is no election in our country that puts the burden of who votes to the candidate you all were elected by majority I can tell each one of you in your District how many residents in your District showed up to vote in your election and none of you would be sitting here today if you followed your rules none of you think about the Equitable decisions you must make to

024ensure police fire and Educators have the same fair treatment thank you Joe mirabali or yeah uh Joe Mobley sorry Mr chair members of the board my name is Joe maraboli I reside in the Kohl's District uh I'm a career firefighter with Prince William County and I rise today in support of meaningful collective bargaining rights for all the school board employees whether they're Educators bus drivers or custodians they all deserve that right I spent a lot of time in Richmond advocating and fighting to repeal the ban on collective bargaining at the time we were one of three states that prohibited it and that's right 47 other states have collective bargaining in one form or another very Progressive places like Alabama and Tennessee even a red State like Florida has it enshrined in their state constitution and

025the sky hasn't fallen I stand here a little bit disappointed I stand here looking at a school board with a democratic super majority in a progressive place like Northern Virginia acting like CEO Howard Schultz and the board of Starbucks actively union busting and undercutting their own employees inalienable rights to collectively bargain if we're going to out always campaign about bringing Prince William County into Nova then we need to act like it and do more than speak Hollow words like meet and confer and dispute resolution neutral these terms mean nothing more than status quo in case anyone is noticing Educators just like other public servants and Fire and Rescue and police are leaving the profession in record numbers for many of us it's because we do not have a seat at the table we are not

026properly compensated for our work and we are not respected as employees oh and don't forget the uh the hours to quote Indiana Jones It's Not the years it's the mileage I'll also say that as a Kohl's District resident I'm particularly a little bit disappointed in Mrs argensburg you're a teacher a union teacher in Fairfax County experiencing this right across the river you are going to benefit from this at your day job you should be a champion for this for your employees here in Prince William County and quite frankly I don't believe that you are all I can say is I ask that you all do better in closing I would also like to let Mr Latif know that Greg did not endorse this message thank you Tracy Blake how you doing bored Dr mcday and

027everybody my name is Tracy Blake and I'm a proud parent advocate from DDF School District uh I just want to let you know I serve on a couple of of the advisory councils here on instruction and equity and I'm also on the mini Bill advisory Council so before I speak I just wonder about collective bargaining I'd like to thank Dr McDade and the board for uh all the good work you've done being this community's North Star during the height of the pandemic thank you for thinking outside the box put in the health and safety and security of our children first thank you for getting back in the classroom and thank you for the paper online tutoring now I believe that is critical for School Employees to have meaningful collective bargaining rights and real seat and

028a real seat at the table to negotiate for things they need to educate our students and help our families teachers are the lifeblood of our County I'm sure everybody knows they've been underappreciated underpaid undervalued and often left without a meaningful way to Advocate to protect their own interests as well as those of our children and the parents they serve it year after year collective bargaining gives educators an option to advocate in the workplace it helps teachers feel seen it helps ensure Fair wages and benefits all while improving teacher recruitment and retention Educators also negotiate better teaching and learning conditions this all helps our children receive the thriving future each of them deserve bottom line the collective bargaining process allows everyone associated with this school system to work together benefiting students teachers administrators and parents in

029the Prince William County community at Large thank you for your time I don't have any doubt you'll do the right thing have a good night Patty Koontz Adele settle Jared gay Catherine Zayn zymus and Brandi provenzano next five Patty Koontz good evening my name is Patty Kuntz and I'm from the Gainesville District I'm here tonight to once again speak in favor of collective bargaining and to request that the process begins immediately you all know we are in an education crisis in this country Loudoun County had 100 Staffing this year Fairfax had 98 percent and Prince William County was 500 teachers short and had to hire Educators out from overseas put them in hotels and have teachers pick them up and bring them to work the crisis will continue as universities are closing their education departments

030and more teachers leave the profession the race for the few Educators that are left is on and sadly Prince William County simply isn't competitive now the county is working quite hard to bring more commercial Revenue to and the school system will be receiving the Lion's shares of 57 despite the fact that board members wall and Jackson are actively working against that much needed Revenue the revenue will take a bit more time there are so many other working conditions that can be negotiated immediately and will help retain teachers I have been told that teachers do not deserve collective bargaining by a board member I find that absurd since it was recognized as an international human right by the United Nations in 1948 they stated the right to bargain with an employer enhances the human dignity Liberty

031and autonomy of the workers by giving them the opportunity to influence the establishment of workplace rules and thereby gain some control over a major aspect of their lives namely their work since then most major Democratic countries honor collective bargaining of public employees where do you all stand what do what is right and bring pwa to the table and stopped some of the bleeding of the school system Adele settle hello board and Dr McDade my name is Adele settle and I'm a resident in Brentsville with a daughter in second grade in our schools I am also a lifelong Democrat I canvassed donated appeared at events and work to elect seven of you I encouraged my friends across the county to vote for you I told my friends that electing candidates endorsed by the local Democratic party

032would mean that our kids would have a stronger school system I was under the impression that our seven Democratic party endorsed candidates supported the Democratic party's priorities which includes supporting labor and working to make sure that workers have every opportunity to bargain for better working conditions unfortunately I've seen that this board led by Dr Latif is unwilling to work in good faith towards achieving our party platform which strongly supports workers rights Fair wages collective bargaining and the formation of strong unions our national platform expects that Democrats will work to ensure that public sector employees including teachers have the right to organize and negotiate fairly to improve working conditions I am disgusted by this board's union busting tactics over the past several years and call on all seven of you who were endorsed by the Democratic

033party to reconsider whether your actions on this board reflect the values of the people who elected you to serve them I'm asking you to do better support our teachers and staff work together with labor be the people I expected you to be when I campaigned to knock doors for you our students our teachers our staff all deserve better than you are giving them thank you Jared gay my name is Jared gay and my address is on file so when I spoke a couple of weeks back I spoke a lot about how important it is for people to feel respected in the context of their employment and in context of pretty much everything in their lives and how important it was that teachers feel respected in this County and that educational Staff feel respected in this

034County I did have time to say towards the end of that speech that I don't believe that that is currently the case but I didn't have enough time to really get into why we have seen for years now at the division level all over the country people begging uh school boards to start peeling back some of the standardized testing that has been just rampant within public education since the early 2000s every school board meeting you hear about it every school board meeting you hear about reducing the amount of professional development that's being piled on teachers every school board meeting and almost every day in the Press you hear people when they talk about the context of public education they talk about removing all of these barriers to being able to actually teach our students this

035year the division has exacerbated that problem to a considerable degree requiring now weekly lesson plans submitted and kept in a binder that we are regularly updating and to ultimately satisfy all of the requirements and professional developments that have been required of us this year we are having to meet almost every planning period that we have for CLT to make this happen which means that the planning that normally happens during that time is pushed to off work hours which means we're not taking time away from our families I know that teachers in this County and staff in this County are desperate right now and it's not just coming from the district when we come to these school board meetings and when you hear about the conversations and things that are said in the Press about teachers

036about the Prince William Education Association and our attempts to secure meaningful collective bargaining resolution we have seen from the beginning of this process nothing but deliberate obstruction from members on this board we have seen snide comments in the media and we have seen deliberate attempts including in the one that in the draft resolution that you're currently planning on voting on without amendment that are intended to deprive us of having any meaningful collective bargaining ability in this County my beautiful and amazing wife spoke at the border County Supervisors meeting last night and the like in some of the tactics taken by the board of County Supervisors but even more so by this board to allowing a younger sibling to pretend to play a video game not realizing that their controller is unplugged without binding arbitration this

037is not collective bargaining without binding arbitration this is meet and confer put in Collective bargainings clothes and I am honestly Beyond disrespected in the way that I feel with regards to all of this I feel that anybody watching this process for the last two years would have to con and everything that's happening this year with at the district level would have to conclude that this district has contempt for its teachers and staff in this board to an even greater degree has contempt for its teachers and staff you have an opportunity to prove me wrong amend the bank resolution that's what will change it Catherine zamas good evening I'm Katie zamis I live in the Kohl's District I'm a Prince William County police detective and the president of the Prince William County Police Association I come

038to you today as both a concerned Citizen and as a labor advocate in favor of collective bargaining in Prince William County frankly I should not need to be in front of all of you telling a Democrat majority board to vote in favor of meaningful collective bargaining and yet here we are I've heard disturbing rumors such as the School board chairman I voted for trying to squash collective bargaining through committee this behavior is nothing short of disgraceful and it's extremely disappointing our Educators and support staff deserve a seat at the table to negotiate for their wages benefits and working conditions this County's management and the school board have become far too comfortable with their employees not having a voice as a result we are losing quality Educators just like we are losing police officers and firefighters

039we cannot keep doing things the same way and expecting a different result as the mother of a curious intelligent young child I'm concerned when I see class sizes in this County increasing I wonder if my salary as a public servant will be enough to pay for private school if you won't pay your Educators competitive wages in order to keep them here I wonder how much larger our class sizes sizes will continue to get if our Educators keep leaving because they don't have a voice here quite frankly I wonder if the schools here are going to be good enough for my daughter that reflects negatively on you the board not on the hard-working and qualified Educators struggling to keep up with increasing demands while receiving non-competitive pay and benefits the bottom line is that meeting confer

040is a failure please stop talking about it it does not work our Educators deserve meaningful collective bargaining just as much as the other public employees in this County they deserve a seat at the table thank you Brandi provenzano good evening my name is Brandi provenzano and my address is on file there are some very important amendments to the collective bargaining resolution that must be made tonight prior to a vote the first is in regards to the election of the bargaining agent the division attorney has included language stating that any employee who does not vote in the election will count as a vote against the bargaining agent on the ballot I repeat the language in this resolution states that by not voting at all employees are casting a silent unauthorized invisible ballot against the bargaining agent

041with all due respect to division Council there is no need to circumvent the Democratic process this school board is far too interested in their employees to ever agree to such a thing an assault on the Democratic process would undermine everything this board stands for I know because I know this board personally I've eaten dinner with the amazing Lily Jesse and exchanged heartfelt concerns with her many times about Educators and struggling students I sang along to Elvis songs with Justin Wilk and even beat him in a canoe race across Lake Anna but he will probably not admit to that I've had open and honest Dialogue on the phone with Lisa zargapore for many hours many times over the years I've watched Adele Jackson evolve into a strong articulate speaker for her constituents Lori Williams she may

042be small in stature but she is mighty with her voice and her power when she is fighting for staff and students Diane rossen always shows up and performs her duties for her constituents and though we rarely see eye to eye I always know exactly where Jen Wall stands I also know that she is a firm believer in the Democratic process and Doc Dr Latif and I well we go way back this board recognizes that employees do not want pwea to represent them if that's the case then let those employees vote against us on the ballot this board would never agree to silencing their own employees and their right to a fair and democratic election I also know this board has been advised by Council to do multiple other things tonight that would absolutely result in

043more Strife with staff and with the school board this school board knows that underhanded politics and unethical decisions like these don't belong in our school system I am confident this board tonight will not allow this resolution to pass as it is written but instead will make a motion to amend it you need to make a motion to amend the resolution tonight thank you next five speakers Jen Donnelly Ken narr Bora Yoon Kira tiller Chantal Rock Jen Donnelly good evening my name is Jen Donnelly and my address is on file I would like to speak this evening on the relationship between the school board and parents while citizen comment time is an important Forum to have issues put on record it is not the best way for either party to communicate effectively speaking in front of

044large group and on camera is outside of most people's comfort zone especially mine in my experience one-on-one conversations with school board members and candidates have been far more productive give rise to Greater trust and lead to generally more collaborative conversations about improving our schools in my meetings with school board members we discussed the following test scores and rates of failure within many of our schools in the county we agreed that a greater Focus needs to be on educational Basics and more rigor in core classrooms I believe we are spending too much time too much classroom and teacher training time on subjects like social justice Dei and SEL which are not things that will help our children learn Math Science History or language arts we lost two years of education to your covid policies and we

045can't continue to fail our children I know that parents can email you about issues faced by their children or problems in schools but speaking about those issues in public isn't always appropriate when we sit in this room so far away from the school board it's hard to see if you're interested in what the citizens are saying this can be disheartening to people like me who are overcoming Their Fear of public speaking only to leave the podium feeling like they weren't heard now that you know where I'm coming from I'd like to offer a suggestion that is supported by many of the parents in our County we ask that each of you consider scheduling dedicated office time in your districts on a regular basis so that you can speak directly to parents and students about issues

046that they face and work on fixing those problems together Town Hall formats can also work well especially during election season so that informed decisions can be made in the election booth working together and exchanging ideas in person will only approve the level of trust with the school board we have elected I know that you're all very very busy and you sacrifice a lot of your times visiting schools but those events don't always encourage the much-needed one-on-one dialogue between parents and the school board as a member of moms for Liberty we want to build this relationship with the school board so that we can work together in the best interest of our children please consider our suggestions for the many parents who feel they don't have a voice in their child's education thank you cat Noir

047Ken nor Gainesville District I'd like for each of you to consider one thing as you sit here this evening and prepare to cast your vote conceptually why do unions and collective bargaining even exist in our modern lexicon the answer to these two questions is rather simple they exist because workers no matter when where or what career field believe they are being treated unfairly and or unjustly those same workers believe they're being mistreated and nobody in a willing is willing to address their grievances the fact that the requisite number of signatures were collected and verified so quickly seems to validate the need we don't have enough Personnel in almost every position in the school district our Personnel are being overworked and our children's education is being degraded because of it the fact you are demanding 50

048plus one of all employees for passage seems to also lead Credence to the need this is well beyond any super majority vote in our government I'm not aware including this elected body where this standard is utilized the United States is considered the most democratic country in the history of the world we seldom get more than one-third of registered voters let alone voting age adults to vote in any election this Draconian insistence on what is unprecedented condition only illuminates what most everyone considers unfair unjust and disrespectful the unwillingness to compromise on this and other conditions seems to illuminate the lack of any decision-making Authority addressing the everyday and Collective agrees grievances of our Workforce I'm not sure what you think the collective Workforce is going to ask for demand or arbitration is going to side decide

049would be considered so detrimental to the school district that you would be so uncompromising we trust these individuals with the lives well-being and futures of our community's wealth youth we can surely trust him to negotiate in good faith for reasonable working conditions and salaries I fear should collective bargaining not pass and meaningful contracts negotiated Prince William County schools will experience a massive Exodus of personnel Borah Yoon Bora Yoon okay Kira tiller Kira tiller Chantal Rock Amy oh so the next file will be Amy McCarthy Carolyn Carolyn um Co Coke and Wendy Marr Grace littner and Jeanette corsilius Amy McCarthy good evening chairman Latif members of the board Dr McDade I'm back advocating for employees and for teachers and saying pretty much the same things I've said before the past couple of years have been difficult

050for everyone however Educators and School Employees saw an end or a light at the end of the tunnel in collective bargaining are Educators that have stayed the course have proved their loyalty dedication and commitment to not only our profession but more importantly the students in Prince William County schools this school board knows this they know we will always show up for our kids but now it's your turn to show up for us do you trust and value your employees really trust and value US enough that we can be part of the negotiations thank you Lily Jesse David Wilk and Diane Ralston for your continued public support of collective bargaining we are not asking for a lot we are asking to live and work in the communities we teach without working two or three jobs like

051both my husband and myself and we're both Educators here Dr Latif often brings up the historic race this was long overdue barely covered the cost of living and puts us second from the bottom for teacher pay in Nova are veteran teachers who have showed loyalty and dedication were rewarded with lost steps and wage compression and yes I watched the webinar there are other members of our board who have clearly not stepped foot as teachers in a classroom but they do not want to listen to what we have to say and how we can provide best practices from our professional archives Jennifer wall often questions the cost of collective bargaining I can list just during the pandemic ways teachers could have saved Millions of dollars for this school system number one being the technology for concurrent

052teaching which we all know was not a great success however the most disappointing members of this school board are those who were in the classroom or currently in the classroom one School Board member is currently reaping the benefits of her Union in Fairfax County while denying employees in Prince William County the same rights it is shameful do you value your employees it's really a simple question we are professionals and we deserve to be up there making the decisions about our work environment Carolyn um how do I say your last name okay sorry good evening I'm Carolyn kochak I live in the Gainesville district and my address is on file I'm speaking tonight as both a parent and a pwcs staff member it is coming to my attention that the Virginia governor and therefore the Virginia

053Department of Education plans to make changes to the current guidance regarding transgender students in Virginia I am pleased with the current policy that pwcs has in place policy 738-5 and want to urge the school board to do everything in its power not to amend this policy the new guidance would allow students to be called their preferred names and pronouns only if a parent or Guardian Signs off the student would have no say in how they are addressed at school the new guidance goes on to say that if a student does ask a teacher to use different pronouns and the ones indicated on their birth certificate the teacher is required to check with the parents effectively outing that a student that may need to keep this part of themselves from their parents for their own safety

054and well-being right now every student in Prince William County and Beyond are figuring out who they are do they like boys do they like girls do like do they like both or neither do they like wearing dresses or pants or shorts even in the middle of winter do they want to wear jewelry or nail polish or black clothes all the time are they demi-romantic asexual or pansexual it may take some time but eventually kids figure this stuff out and it's usually not something you discuss with your parents right away if at all but giving the kids the language to be able to discuss it to be able to figure it out is the best way to help your kids remember if I explain what nearsightedness is and speak of the mechanics of it how it

055may affect a student or my child or or what kinds of supports are available to that child it does not make them nearsighted it is something a child is or is not in fact keeping that label a secret from them not discussing it with them will likely do far more harm than if that child is aware and knows they can get support both at school and at home similarly if you talk with your children about being transgender or anywhere on the lgbtq plus Spectrum it won't make them lgbtq plus but if they are it will only give them the language they need to understand themselves and what the current policies at pwcs they will have the ability to thrive like every other child if you care about your children if you truly care about all

056students in pwcs and Virginia schools it's time to acknowledge these children exist within our communities they deserve our support and our understanding not roadblocks to being who they are and it's time to realize we are all humans that deserve equal treatment from our Public Schools our government and our neighbors thank you for your time Wendy Moore good evening everyone my name is Wendy Marr my address is on file I haven't been up here for a couple years now I would like to share with you um uh some parts of what happened with me last year um and it is regarding bullying and today was anti-bullying day that's why everyone wore Orange um last year um another colleague verbally attacked me and threatened me that person and I never had dialogue no mediation and something needs

057to be done about that that person is still we still are at the same school so I see that person almost every day I was also um physically assaulted by a young person one of our students um and it is my hope that that young person is getting the help that they need uh but the safeguards for educators and has to be leveled up every day we put ourselves on the front line to assist our students and we do not hope on any one of our colleagues especially ourselves to be assaulted or treated unfairly by our colleagues um I implore this school board to come up with some programs and strategies that will Force mediation um have that mediation with those individuals in a school so that there isn't just one person or the victim

058that is continually being victimized when they see their the person that did that negative behavior to them or forced that negative behavior on them I hope that you take this to Heart I cannot be the only person that has experienced this but I wanted to bring it to the attention of everyone um at this point as you start making some other rules thank you so much for your time thank you Grace Lindner foreign good evening chairman Latif superintendent McDade and School Board I'm Grace lintner Kohl's District resident of Prince William County since the mid-1960s having grown up here and having received the benefit of a public education here I have been active in giving back to the school Community for the past 20 years once I had children of my own I wanted to give

059back to the schools as a volunteer so I began by volunteering in my children's elementary school by assisting teachers in the Thurgood Marshall Elementary volunteer room I also volunteered with classroom activities and went on a few fun field trips I served as president of the Brentsville High School parent teacher activity Council for the school year 2014 to 2015. tonight I come here as an advocate for teachers and School staff I am here to implore the school board to put pass a collective bargaining ordinance which gives teachers and School staff a seat at the bargaining table this can be done by including all amendments all of them submitted by Educators to be included in the Prince William County Public Schools collective bargaining ordinance requiring all staff to vote and Counting not voting as a no is

060unfair please rescind this I ask you to pass the final ordinance tonight Prince William's School Employees are watching their morale and reason to stay hinges hinges on your actions tonight this County needs to retain the teachers who remain and we need to attract New Bright teachers if we are to retain our world-class status which we have enjoyed for the past several years let's show Virginia and the nation that Prince William County values its Educators thank you Jeanette coursely corsilius greetings my name is Jeanette corsilius and I'm a music educator in Fairfax County Public Schools and a member of my union the Fairfax Education Association why do I care to show to a school board meeting in a neighboring County because when my fellow Educators in the struggle when we went to and most importantly our

061students will benefit the most when we retain and attract high quality Educators with higher pay better benefits and safer working conditions our students will learn more and thrive I am here to speak in support of collective bargaining a collective bargaining resolution for Prince William County Public School Educators is sorely needed however it is unsatisfactory in its current form there are at least three major pieces that must be modified number one the election process is unfair and not standard practice for certifying a union anywhere in this country the participation quota for the election must be changed the change must and should simply allow for a majority vote to count for Certification Number Two we also find the decertification Clause unacceptable if the staff want a union and they want to be represented by one let them

062decide number three the scope of management rights is terrible Educators should be able to bargain over disciplinary procedures working conditions benefits pay wrap around services and more ensure that these Educators have a seat at the table with a meaningful broad scope permissive collective bargaining resolution and stop the union busting now thank you okay that wraps up citizen common time we are going to move on to um so we had changed the order around of the agenda next up will be the collective bargaining um discussion and that is now under 14.01 I'll turn it over division Council and thank you thank you Dr Latif um can you introduce sure I'll introduce the board to Eric paultel who's one of our uh attorney advisors that's been helping us through this um and he's going to do a

063brief presentation and then uh answer any questions the board may have great thank you Mr Anderson thank you members of the board as you all know about two weeks ago Mr Anderson was here to present on the first uh draft of the resolution that was introduced and posted on October the 4th uh since that time Mr Anderson and I have worked together in my capacity as outside counsel Mr Anderson as division Council we've worked together with the attorneys representing both the prince of William Education Association and the Virginia Education Association last week Mr Anderson and I had a several hour-long Zoom meeting with the attorneys prior to that meeting the attorneys shared with us a redlined version of the October 4th draft of the resolution where the the pwea and the vea attorneys had marked

064it up with suggested changes we tabulated there was about 33 changes that were requested by the vea and the pwea again we had a very healthy long conversation and we were able to reach agreement on approximately half of the proposed changes and what I would like to do is why walk the board through those changes that we have incorporated into the resolution which is now the version that's posted on the uh the Board website and explain where those changes are in the resolution and again these were all done at the suggestion and partnership with Council for both the pwea and the vea so the first change was a request to add lead lead teachers or grade level Chairs into the bargaining unit we agreed to incorporate that change in section 681 the second change was

065a request to allow for the unions to meet with either groups of employees or individual employees after getting some permission from the school either principals or HR to come on premises we added language in section 4 point B which is very similar to language already in place in regulation 593-1 which allows for representatives of the unions to come on premises with advanced notice basically 24 hours advance notice to the principals to come on premises and meet with employees or groups of employees next request was for access to the division's email systems and that was not in the prior resolution we added in language which again is consistent with Section regulation 593-1 allowing for the unions to use the division's email system to communicate with employees in the bargaining units the next request was a relatively

066minor one there was duplicative language referencing the board's right to establish the budget this is something which is codified in the enabling legislation passed by the general assembly in 2020 which says that only the board can set the purse and appropriate funds and we remove duplicative language regarding the board's right to appropriate funds there were some concerns raised by the unions about the ability of the board to suspend the terms of any CBA without advance notice to the unions we heard those concerns we made changes in Section 5 point d uh which requires the board to give at least 24 hours notice to the union prior to any suspension unless it's not practical to do so if we had some extreme terrorist type event it may not be practical to do so but otherwise we

067would have to give 24 hours notice and thereafter meet with Union representatives to discuss or to solicit their feedback and receive information from them about how to proceed going forward uh there were some concerns raised by the union about the ability of another Union to intervene in an election the pwea and vea were concerned that if a different Union wished to get ill onto the ballot they had a lower showing of Interest requirement than the initial 30 percent showing of Interest so we made it consistent any intervening Union will have to have the support of 30 percent of the employees to get on to the uh the ballot and be part of the election process uh there were some concerns raised by Council about the presentation of the authorization cards or petition directly to the

068board's human resources personnel as we know there were some issues with that and the first go-around and we removed that language and made it clear that the only thing that the union would need to do is provide a statement that they have the support of 30 percent of the employees in order to get an election and then the uh the neutral who was retained oversee the election process would be the one who would actually review the cards and ensure that they are authentic and uh and legitimate uh there was a request by the unions to allow this neutral who will oversee the elections to contract with an outside vendor to actually administer the mechanics of the election and we agreed to that request as well we've heard some concerns the citizen comment denied about the

069timing of the election and uh or the timing of the certification process and we agreed to remove language which precluded there being any certification request prior to January 1st 2023 that language was removed from section 8 B1 we added some language that the uh excuse me the PW PW I'm sorry that both the school board and the union now have the ability to be flexible on the voting process the initial version of the resolution required that any voting be in person now we have amended section 8b6 to provide that the election process can either be in person by mail or a combination of both mail-in and in-person voting so this could be something that's determined by mutual agreement of the union and the school board in the event the school board and the neutral are

070unable to reach agreement on the mechanics of whether it's a mail-in or in-person ballot then the neutral would step in and make that decision there were concerns raised about the grievance process under the resolution and this interplay with employees statutory rights to file grievances under Virginia law concerning certain uh disciplinary matters and other terms and conditions of employment we added language at the request of counsel to make it clear that nothing in the resolution would preclude the employee's ability to file their grievances under state law but it does require that the employee elect one form or the other they could not go under both state all and under the terms of any collective bargaining agreement they must go one or the other there was some concern raised by Council about the ratification process in the

071event that the parties reach an agreement on a collective bargaining agreement and is presented to the union membership for a ratification vote the prior version required that it be ratified by a majority of the employees in the bargaining unit that language was removed Now it only need to be ratified in accordance whatever they bought with the procedures set forth in the Union's bylaws and again regarding the strike language we heard some discussion tonight about the uh concerns of a union being decertified in the event of an illegal strike we remove the language in section 13c that would result in the desertification of a union and the dissolution of any Collective boarding agreement as a result of the uh the Union's participation in the strike that language has been removed now the only requirement is that

072in the event of an illegal strike the union is required to publicly disavow that strike within a 24-hour period And if they've done so then they have met their obligations under the resolution so the the before I started over the questions I do want to comment uh briefly on the the 50 requirement that we're hearing so much discussion about and be sure that everybody understands what the thought process is and the mechanics of that so let me discuss the mechanics first so what the resolution says is that in this is in section 814 that in order for an election to be a valid election at least half of the employees in the bargaining unit must participate they don't have to vote in favor of the Union they just have to participate in the election and

073if you step back again the participation could be it could be a mail-in ballot or it might be in person or it might be both that's going to be worked out so half the people would have to participate so let's just use Simple numbers assume we had 7 000 eligible employees in a bargaining unit 3500 of those employees would actually have to vote in order for it to be a valid action in order for the union to win that election the union would need to get 1 751 of the votes that were cast that would be the majority of the people who voted in that election if 1751 employees vote in favor of a union then the union represents all seven thousand of those employees even though more than five thousand did not indicate that

074they wish to support the Union so while this may to ins to some uh seems a somewhat onerous threshold let's look at what's actually happened here the pwea uh has presented the board with signatures from 3529 employees stating that they wanted collective bargaining if all three thousand five hundred and twenty nine of those employees actually participate in an election then the 50 threshold has been satisfied and if they vote in favor of the pwea or or any other labor organization the union is going to win that election so this requirement that employees actually participate in the election is consistent with Virginia law Virginia has a statute section 40.1-54.3 which requires that employees who vote either for or against a union have the right to do so in a secret ballot election and what the board

075has done in this draft resolution is ensure that we actually hear from half of the employees or more in the bargaining unit in a secret ballot election in casting their votes again they all don't have to vote in favor of the Union they just need to participate in the election process so the final thing I want to say about that is that while there may be cases in smaller bargaining units which only involve several hundred employees where it's just the majority of the people who vote in the election determine the outcome that's somewhat different in this situation we're talking about a bargaining unit for the certified Personnel that's actually in excess of 7 000 employees and if only 500 of those seven thousand were to vote and only 251 voted in favor of a union

076they're going to represent all seven thousand so the 50 percent participation threshold is really intended to to make sure that the board hears from the employees and the secret ballot of action before recognizing that Union and sitting down at the table and beginning the collective bargaining process so that's my overview I'm wide open as is Mr Anderson to any questions the board members may have about any of these amendments uh to the resolution questions it's Williams um yes I just wanted if you could briefly talk about we've heard this evening uh binding arbitration I know that we discussed that in the past but I just want to make sure that our listening public is is clear on that sure that's a very good question Ms Williams and uh that has been something which has certainly

077been discussed and actually last night at the county side uh there was a straw vote at least to incorporate binding arbitration but the school board is different because there is case law from the United States court of appeals for the fourth circuit indicating that a school board cannot commit itself to binding arbitration this case law indicates it's a violation of What's called the Dylan rule I think Mr Anderson went into the to the nuances of the Dylan rule two weeks ago and that is why there is no mechanism in our resolution for binding arbitration thank you and my last question is we often hear the combination of collect embarging at the county and the school level and I was just wondering for our listening public if you could go over some of the nuanced differences

078between the two um specifically we heard a lot of people refer to either resolution or ordinance and I think there's just um so everyone is well informed if you could speak a little bit to the differences of them and maybe like why we can't do an ordinance and we're doing a resolution those kinds of along those lines sure Ms Williams so so the most significant difference is unlike the county the school board has no taxing Authority the school board is 100 percent dependent upon the appropriation of funding from the board of County Supervisors I believe right now the school board is receiving 57 percent of the budget and hopefully that number stays where it is and maybe even goes higher but uh unlike the county there is no authority to Levy taxes or otherwise raise

079funds for collective bargaining so any commitments that the school board makes in the collective bargaining process ultimately have to be funded by money coming from the board of County Supervisors so that is one dramatic change as a one dramatic difference I should say compared to the county the second as I just mentioned a few minutes ago is that inability of a school board to legally commit to a binding arbitration mechanism so uh in in the case of the school board any kind of dispute resolution process must be non-binding some describe this as meet and confer it's not meet and confer it's substantially uh more legally binding than meeting for although it's not binding arbitration the difference being that you have mechanisms such as an unfair Labor practice charge proceeding built into this resolution which gives

080both employees and unions as well as the county a legal mechanism to pursue alleged violations such as bad faith bargaining or retaliation or discrimination in illegal forums so although it's not quite the same as The Binding arbitration that you may have for impasse resolution on the county side it's still a legal process greater than that which is available under meet and confer so hopefully that answers some of your questions it does thank you very much I appreciate that you're welcome Jesse I have two questions I wanted to have you talk about the um 50 percent situation if if in the first vote if they don't get 50 what happens so there is a mechanism in the resolution for in the event that the 50 threshold is not satisfied there is an opportunity for the union

081to have what I think we have actually called a makeup election so in the event that the uh the union is unable to meet that 50 threshold has set forth in section 14 this is going to be section eight uh paragraph 14 if you are to look at the very uh the second sentence of that paragraph it says in the event the 50 threshold is not met uh the dispute resolution neutral May upon a showing of good cause order a makeup election to be held within 30 days so there is this chance for the union to come back and and establish that uh there's a need for another opportunity to have a second election uh to um again give the employees a chance to vote okay the other concern I've I've heard is whether or

082not if you have by mail vote that's going to take some time will there be I know you can't say right now because that's probably something in negotiation would that be ample time for the mail-in and the in person will there be multiple sites in multiple days for for teachers or people who want to vote to vote so miss Jesse the although this is not spelled out in the resolution uh the the thought process is that the school board and Council for their or participants for the union would work together to establish if it's mail ballot a period of time during which mail ballots can be submitted oftentimes what we're seeing right now is two weeks I think even as we speak I think Fairfax county is conducting its election for its firefighters via mail

083ballot I think they have a two-week period for those ballots to be submitted I would Envision something like that being agreed to here between the board and the unions and again if we couldn't reach agreement then the dispute resolution neutral would make that decision with regard to the in-person voting the the thought process of the board here is that there would be multiple locations spread throughout the county where individuals could participate and it would probably be on multiple days again we're a large County the only other jurisdiction or the only jurisdiction which has had in that action up to this point has been the city of Richmond for its teachers and they did not have uh multiple locations but again Richmond geographically is much smaller than as Prince William County so our thought process is

084there would be multiple locations throughout the county over a multi-day period this wall thank you Mr paldel I really appreciated your presentation on the changes that were made I have two questions my first question is um my understanding is that there are additional Provisions in Virginia state code that govern School divisions and what we can and cannot do such as grievance procedures and other things like that because Virginia developed a lot of state code because we were not a collective bargaining estate is that correct that's correct as somebody mentioned earlier there were only three states in the country until recently that did not have Collective boarding in Virginia was one of those three so while other states had collective bargaining Virginia developed these parallel procedures for grievances to be addressed statutorily so wouldn't it would

085it be correct then to state that there are many things that are in our state code already that in maybe another state might be handled through collective bargaining agreements but in Virginia it's already put into the code to govern different things like employee grievance procedures Etc that would be a correct state but yes we have a pretty robust grievance resolution process for disciplinary proceedings that are already in the Virginia code and would I be correct also to assume that or to state that if we um if there was anything in a collective bargaining agreement that conflicted with state code that state code would uh govern that's correct in the event that anything in either this resolution or the body of the collective writing agreement was inconsistent with state code state code would supersede that and

086do you know if some of the things that are in state code have to do with like duties testing professional development or any of those kinds of things evaluations of teachers do you know if that is or is that something that is this might not be a question for you I'm not sure or is that something that is handled on the School Division level so that is one that's outside of my bailiwick I can throw like ask division Council who knows the answer to that but I guess the evaluation process is governed by vdoe protocols and evaluations okay thank you very much I have one more question um the strike provision in the state code you mentioned that the state of Virginia prohibits employees from striking that's correct and it's clear that there is no

087right to strike in this resolution that we're giving it here can you address um that a little bit more for the benefit of those present how Virginia governs you know the right to strike or not to strike and what does strike mean um it's that might be something that would be been of benefit to those present so great great question and a good point because although this may be intuitive to people like myself who play in this space regularly it's not intuitive to to most folks um so Virginia has a statutory definition of what is a strike and also what is the penalty for employees who strike so we have in our definition section which would appear on page three there is a definition of strike which is taken directly from the language in the

088Virginia code it's two or more employees working together for the purpose of now I'm quoting obstructing impeding or suspending any activity or operation of their employing agency so that's what a strike is defined to be under Virginia law Virginia law also this is again in section 40.1-55 of the code go goes so far as to say that if employees do engage in a strike as I just defined it then they must be terminated from their employment and they are ineligible for re-employment with these any agency or any governmental entity in Virginia for the next 12 months so all of that is spelled out by the code okay and there's nothing that we could do could be put in a collective bargaining agreement to supersede that or cancel that right because that's going back to the

089conflict of laws question that's the previous question you raised where something in the code would govern and and uh and overrule any conflicting Provisions in our resolution or the body of the collective parking agreement all right thank you very much I appreciate it you're welcome Miss sargeport um I wanna kind of discuss a little bit about Virginia code uh should something change in the code that would allow us a little more flexibility as a board to put in some of the things that employees have been interested in Just For example the um evaluations would that be something we have to officially go back and revisit or is it something that we just amend as a little minor thing um if a Virginia code thing were to change so so we already have language at the

090very end of the resolution it's the part that only the lawyers ever read uh it's section 15 that talks about conflicts between the resolution and any I'm looking at 15a right now in the event of a conflict between this resolution and any state local or federal law or regulation State local or federal law or regulation shall Prevail so that's again kind of the point Ms wall and I were just discussing so legally speaking if the if the general assembly were to amend the code to create new rights for teachers that are not already here in our resolution the teachers will get those rights automatically because the code would supersede we could certainly go back and then amend our resolution or amend the body of any Collective writing agreement to be consistent with that because there

091are things that um that's another this is nitty-gritty stuff not really technically a question for tonight but like Miss wall mentioned um uh like duties and things like that I believe you said yeah and and that's not that's not something that's regulated by the state that's kind of a situational by school so I think there's probably things that are very generally bargained for and then things within your building is there um maybe Dr McDade can answer this is there going to be a mechanism for uh addressing issues that do come up as they come up maybe in school-wide or things like that does that make sense um yeah I'm not sure I understand what you're asking well because we know a collective bargain agreement is supposed to cover sort of a broad base of things

092correct um but if there's something going on in an individual building what's the mechanism then I mean we are right I mean we already have mechanisms for addressing situations that happen in individual buildings um that's not going to change we're not going to eliminate any processes or regulation or um you know protocols that we follow in accordance with Virginia law to address whether it's a grievance or you know problems with evaluation Etc so you know we'll continue to be responsive to concerns that may arise thank you I just want to make sure that's clear too thank you all right should work no okay okay any more questions okay for a division count um Miss wall yeah all right my last question I I don't know if this is a good question or not but um

093if if right now collective bargaining is permissible because of a state statute that was passed in 2020 I believe that's correct um if if the state legislature were to repeal that permission what then happens to any existing collective bargaining agreement do you happen to know the answer to that so Nolan void or would it continue until the end of its term and that has been the source of much conjecture I I spoke on a panel on this subject that the Virginia Bar Association meeting and I would not say there's consensus uh I think it's certainly safe to say that no agreements could be negotiated after that decision by the general assembly what's unclear is the effect upon an existing Collective board agreement that's in place that has not yet expired what would happen to that

094it's I mean certainly many people think it would expire because the underlying authorization has been taken away by the general assembly there are others who believe no it would continue till its expiration okay and I suppose that it could also be addressed in the legislation and and that that is something which could be addressed statutorily as well that's correct okay thank you I have no further questions okay um I think comments or any further questions okay um at this point then I think uh the motion oh we didn't make a motion I'm sorry we do need to make a motion we had the presentation so emotion is in order actually Miss Williams Mr chairman I move the Prince William County school board approved the collective bargain resolution as presented do I have a second second

095Miss chairman mazargapore a second zorgapore seconds of motion okay discussion okay Miss wall well I've always believed that it's important to have a multitude of voices represented so tonight I'm going to share what I would call my dissenting opinion um about collective bargaining so many who have heard me speak on the subject of collective bargaining over the past several months understand that I do not agree with the direction the board is going on collective bargaining philosophically I disagree with Union unionizing public sector professionals um I especially given the school board's unique constitutional basis for and legal obligations to direct the operation of its schools I disagree with the board's approach to collective bargaining on several grounds first on a purely fiscal basis I approach I oppose this approach the school board does not have taxing

096Authority as we've heard tonight we cannot raise revenue to cover additional costs that may result from any bargaining process second from a public policy standpoint unlike Union negotiations with a private Corporation Union negotiations over wages and benefits with publicly paid School teachers is at its heart negotiating against the taxpayer we should never forget that it is hard-working Prince William families who are the pay yours and the source of the money over which we have stewardship finally there are Provisions in this resolution that I do not support on principle and if I had other four others on the board who would support it there are a number of additional Provisions that I would include but um I wish to speak a little bit more um from a little bit broader lens in past board meetings from

097this dice I have offered many reasons why I oppose collective bargaining and I'm not going to go through all of those now but all of those reasons roll into one undergirding principle which is that I do not believe that collective bargaining is in the best interest of children in fact I believe the opposite I believe it will have a negative impact on our students and based on what I've seen so far in Prince William County from our Union leadership and from other school districts Nationwide that have implemented collective bargaining especially during the pandemic I believe it will also negatively impact our teachers sorry bear with me this is my dissenting opinion at the Peril of carrying a popular medical a popular metaphor to its logical end I note that the board has given pwa a

098different kind of seat of the table than they had before and before that chair can even be scooted up to the table the division is graced with these boorish table manners and demands to set the menu and even the grocery list needed to create that menu what I've seen so far gives me great concern especially over the last two weeks the current environment has become increasingly toxic despite calls for Unity ironically deriving from the same root as Union and pledges of working together and acting in good faith this push for collective bargaining has been nothing but divisive in short I fear that this contentious approach to cooperation that we've seen over the past several months is what we can expect from now on I hope I'm wrong I don't believe collective bargaining will benefit our

099Workforce in fact based on this deleterious and toxic communication that I've witnessed and experienced thus far collective bargaining will lead to a decrease in employee satisfaction and in its current form and Leadership will hinder and not help constructive communication between the division and employees furthermore since last spring I fear the further negative effect collective bargaining will have on the relationship our schools have with our communities and on the reputation of our School Division in addition to the previously mentioned adversarial relationship that collective bargaining creates between teachers and tax paying parents conversations in the community and especially over social media in particular have become extremely toxic not once have I heard a serious argument about how collective bargaining will help our children and the families of Prince William County and yet for any who have not

100read it the school board's code of ethics reads I will refuse this is ethics number 12. I I will refuse to surrender my independent judgment to special interest or partisan political groups or to use my position for personal gain or Prestige or for the gain of friends or political allies I have personally witnessed disturbing use of power and influence to hyper politicize the collective bargaining issue and to influence elected officials I know this board collectively wants to fulfill their obligation to do what is best for our students I commend every member of this board who has resisted the efforts to thwart prior to politicization of this issue and prioritization of children and the fundamental responsibility we have to make sure that they are learning you know School boards are not like other political bodies and

101we have talked about this tonight we are a non-partisan board when each of us was elected there was no D or R or I next to anybody's name and yet because of collective bargain because collective bargaining is a foundational plank in one party's platform and I know that a tremendous amount of political pressure has been exerted on this board to the point of demanding that they act against the best interest of the ones they were elected to serve I speak specifically of individuals with a clear political agenda who have been quote hustling hard behind the scenes quote to pressure the board to amend this resolution to fit their purposes but again our duty as a board is not to any individual or any party it is to the children and the families of Prince William

102so lest anyone think that I only have theoretical or general objections to collective bargaining let me turn now to the merits one my first issue of concern is the participation threshold my question is why wouldn't we want to hear from the people pwa claims to represent why wouldn't you want to demonstrate widespread or at least a majority support an estimated 27 percent of our employees currently belong to bwea approximately five of five percent of our employees both belong to pwea and voted for current pwa leadership five percent talk about a seat at the table what about 73 of pwcs employees who do not belong to the union that purports to represent their interests of arguing against a participation threshold in the election of the exclusive bargaining representative is to me an attempt to disenfranchise the

103majority of our employees giving giving that 7 73 giving that 73 percent a seat at the table should not be in question you cannot let 27 percent of the employees choose the course for all arguing against greater participation is to me a red flag and let me be clear if the union is serious about representing pwcs employees then it should be able to show leadership sufficient to convince those it represents that what they're proposing is worth it that's the Union's job that's the role of the exclusive bargaining representative put another way if a majority doesn't think it's broken then what business do you have fixing it for them if employees are not engaged in this issue or Worse don't know that a collective bargaining resolution is being proposed which is likely the case for some

104of our 73 percent of the employees who don't belong to pwa if employees are not engaged or unenthusiastic despite their best efforts to call for a seat at the table then that is on the union it is not the division's responsibility to do the Union's work for it by allowing the 27 percent to dictate what happens to the other 73. if we are making the substantial change to employer employee relations we should have a clear indication that this is in fact what our employees want and as the union should and the union should know that they are in fact who the employees want as their exclusive representative and not just a small subset of employees it is important to their success too to know that they are the right ones that the employees want it's

105the responsibility of any group seeking to represent our employees to inform and engage these very employees engage them on the issues not just the slogans start with engaging them on whether they agree with giving you the power that you seek my second issue of concern is fair and open elections I would like to see the elections remain in person this is because as a matter of principle I believe that people need to trust the process and adjust trust us on this is not good enough for me there must be measures in place that on their face protect the Integrity of the election my third issue of concern is semantics I've repeatedly heard that the attack line of pass a meaningful resolution again one of those illustrations of vitriol and the adversarial approach this leadership group

106has decided to take let me say clearly that if anyone thinks that what this board has come up with is not meaningful then by all means let's postpone this I said before and I'll say it again that I am certainly fine with keeping to the meet and confer process that has served us well and allowed us to give our employees the largest raise in pwcs history last year and raises each year that I've been on this board lest anyone doubt my commitment I have supported all of those raises and all of those improvements that have been proposed to working conditions that have come before this board if this resolution is not meaningful as alleged then let's not waste any more time on it let's use the countless hours we've spent on this issue instead discussing

107what we can do and need to do to help improve student achievement rather than this supposedly not meaningful collective bargaining you know a synonym for not meaningful is inconsequential to argue that this resolution is inconsequential inconsequential defies reality if any it is anything but inconsequential it represents the most consequential decision that this board will have made besides Hiring Our superintendent For Better or For Worse the jury will be out in the coming years on which it will be if the conflicts over verifying signatures last spring or the present conflicts now have anything to bear on the determination then I fear it will be for the worse and finally as for being done behind closed doors without a seat at the table there are these are nothing more than empty campaign slogans I know for a

108fact that there have been regular sit-downs at the table face-to-face meetings with pwa leadership have occurred throughout this process so it is clear that there has been at least as much seat at the table before this resolution passes as there will be once it does for all these reasons I am not in favor of this resolution and as they say in the legal profession I respectfully dissent Mr Wilk es yep no okay thank you um foreign so where to begin um actually start of a Neil Diamond song um so first I do want to say I'm proud of the collaboration work our team has completed and the fact that we are on the brink of passing Collective uh collective bargaining resolution um this started a while ago um I know this was something initially pushed

109on my end and I know Miss Jessie was active at the beginning and the onset of it Miss agapore was helpful as well so I want to add as a board we are a collective body of individuals representing constituents across this County these constituents include parents non-parents teachers non-teachers conservatives moderates liberals Democrats Republicans Independents however many subgroups you want to put them the definition of operation with good faith according to the American Bar Association has been been defined as honesty in a person's conduct during the agreement the obligation to performing good faith exist even in contracts that expressly allow either party to terminate the contract for any reason collectively our team including Dr McDade and our legal counsel worked in good faith with the Teachers Association our board members have been diligent and participated in

110multiple trainings on collective bargaining although some of us had specific changes or areas we wanted to see improve with the resolution we as a board need to work collaboratively and effectively to pass the proposed resolution unlike other jurisdictions that are doing absolutely nothing with collective bargaining or Fairfax County Schools who have literally buried it to Oblivion we are moving forward by setting the floor for collective bargaining in this resolution I want to mention that by operating in good faith our legal team worked with both local union and state union to discuss their requested changes in all we have been told that roughly 33 changes were requested by the other side I am pleased that the majority of board members were able to come to a consensus with about 15 of these changes some of these

111changes have already been reiterated but in the resolution include clarifying the lead teachers grade level chairs are in the bargaining unit allowing for Union use of pwcs email systems increasing the showing of interest for an intervening Union from 20 to 30 percent one I lobbied for eliminating was the automatic Union decertification language in the event of a strike but also requiring the union to publicly disavow any support for the participation the strike this has been popularly called the poison pill granting the neutral third party the ability to contract with the vendor to assist with elections another I actively engage my colleagues with was giving pwcs and the association the option of holding elections in person by mail or a combination of both I will mention that these elections as stated earlier will be held in

112multiple locations throughout the county for ease of access another example of one I lobbied for changing was the eliminated elimination of the provision that says no request for certification could be filed before January 1st of 23 this was following last meeting where this issue was one of the top issues I was told because they felt like it was the union felt that it was boxing them out of this upcoming Year's budget discussion as everyone knows the full list is available online for transparency and for all constituents to see this website also includes questions and answers and everything the community at large needs to know about this process teachers both members of the association and those who are not have been able to view these updates and have their questions answered online as stated many times

113before I have personally worked on collective bargaining for well over a year with the goal of stability in mind and having an acting working relationships with my colleagues and the superintendent I'm willing to support this resolution as it stands for one we have collaborate collaborated successfully with multiple stakeholders involved in this process although certain parties may not have received all the requests in the proposed resolution language I will remind the community that this is a floor and not a ceiling the community my fellow elected officials and the teachers I see three to four times per week in my school visits which I have increased now this year versus previous years that I know they know I've advocated for them they know that I come to their schools consistently because I'm a present fixture and pragmatic

114my constituents appreciate and respect my advocacy for all stakeholders no one group was ever going to be completely happy with the full language of this resolution and I was never going to vote in lockstep with any group I ask any teacher who's watching tonight if you are in one of my 15 Potomac School buildings to please continue approaching me like some did last night at Triangle Elementary in other buildings and talk to me about this I'm open there's no retaliation I know how that goes from nine years ago so I'm open and collaborative and we'll and we'll hear you I all in closing I want to reiterate that I'm satisfied with the overall collaboration of the board on this language even though this resolution will not please everyone as evidenced here this is the floor

115and not a ceiling I look forward to continue collaboration with all stakeholders including Association members and non-association members Miss Jesse thank you you all know that I am and will continue to be a strong advocate for teachers uh the the pwa is a part of teachers but I'm an advocate for teachers and everything that I do is geared towards supportive teachers I'm back to school night the teachers at Vaughn will always tell you that I have the same introduction welcome to meeting the best teachers on the planet it's what I say is because what I mean and guess what when you tell teachers they're the best on the planet they become the best on the planet I I think Dr McDade remembers me talking about uh supporting teachers I'm very concerned with the turnover I'm

116very concerned with the stress levels and all those things but one of the books that I I read a great deal and I do some presentations and I've done presentations throughout the United States and the book is called love I'm a loser and I believe that you either love people or you lose them at the end of the day the teachers do the work to remind more than three years three decades of tenure I've seen everything and I've seen everything in classrooms and this may sound a little bit gross but it happens in classrooms every day I remember walking in a fourth grade classroom one kid was blowing spit bubbles and the other one was picking his nose and the teacher just kept teaching and I thought this lady puts up with this every single

117day and she doesn't complain I had a student who had some intestinal issues that required us to modify and the teachers and the staff work to make sure it happened I have always supported this organization but for the life of me I cannot understand why any of you would expect me or any member of this board to so to allow a substantive change in policy that affects every teacher bus driver teacher assistant business system be implemented without us requiring some documented evidence that they know what they're voting for and that they're active participant one of the reasons you want collective bargaining and you know I've supported you I've been out there with you I've talked to you on Zoom I've tried to do everything I can to support you to have a seat at the

118table because during my tenure as a principal I know that there was no we talk about this whole thing of there is this seat at the table and there is uh we're gonna have these people come up and talk to central office and I know it didn't happen teachers came to me all the time because they knew that I would advocate for them but if you want to have a seat at the table you want your voices to be heard that I'm in the total agreement I think you need to think about the fact that this is not an election of an official for an office this is a policy change at a building level you know who the people are I as a principal if I had something this substantial happening in my school

119there would be no way I would let 20 or 30 percent of the people in that building make a decision for all the students in that building all the teachers in that building so my I think that when you think about seed at the table I think you guys also need to think about having other teachers have seats at your table I don't see this as a big pull because I don't see it as a major problem because when you have a seat at the table your food is good you've got the right thoughts people are going to support you I don't think you need to worry about the 50 maybe you guys are I'm not sure why you're worried about it because I remember when we first came to this board and we were

120talking about this process and I finally said why don't we look at a different certification process why don't we have a another cert and because at that point this thing was going down the tubes and Justin and I can verify that and I wanted to bring this back so we'd have an opportunity this is not a perfect solution but I have honestly I'm sad to say I have honestly been threatened more or less about my position on this board as an elected official unless I do certain things and I can't work with that I can't do that so I want you to think about the image because if you guys are concerned if you're not going to get 50 percent that's going to go out to all the other teachers out there and you have

121a you need Collective bargain and I think that if you would stay with that thought one of the most difficult things that I experienced as a principal we'd have math night nobody showed up and I would say did you Market it and they would say well you know we sent out an email and whatever and then I would say come back with a better plan when they came back with a better plan marketing is a very difficult thing and I'm not sure why your leader is telling us that she can't Market this to get people to vote I think that some people may have misinterpreted their certification as meaning that they have collective bargaining I'm not sure they understood the second step and I think that needs to be presented meet and confer I've been

122here forever and I will tell you there was no meat and there was no confer but I think that the resolution as it stands we are ahead of other counties and we can modify and adjust down the road but you guys have to get out there and get these teachers to know that they need this and I support you but I cannot support having a few people make a decision for everyone because it's going to affect all these teachers so I thank you for coming I love hearing your voices I just I'm just having problems understanding why all of this this vitriol and pressure has been put on people and it's not who you guys are and as you go forth I think a positive approach would be better to bring in the staff and

123teachers and I'm repeating myself but I support collective bargaining and your teachers will support Collective bargain I may not support this whole thing if you guys have to have this you have to have that but I support it thank you thank you Miss Jesse Miss Williams thank you Mr chairman um I am a question person that's what I do most when I sit up on this Dice and I have found it interesting throughout this entire process that most the time when I ask questions it's been interpreted as my lack of understanding or information I ask those questions because we are the second largest School Division in the state of Virginia we have 91 000 students which means they're even more adults that belong to those students and that there are even more members of our

124public who may not even have students in our Public School System but still pay taxes it will always be who I am to ask questions and to do the best that I can to inform those listening of the details and facts and whatever it is that we have discussed I found it quite disheartening that my process has been attacked as a lack of information or as a misconstrued way of trying to move things one way or the the other and I've heard that pretty much from the beginning of this entire process I just want it to be perfectly clear that that is why I do what I do and to mention I come from a district that isn't often the most vocal which is why I ran on providing a voice for those who often

125don't speak up I don't have a district that loves template emails or even enjoys coming to to little meet and greets and things of that nature I have to go to them during this process that is what I've done I've stopped teachers and other Educators and bus drivers and custodians where I found them whether it was back to school night Walmart homecoming games anywhere that I knew I've called and talked in person correspond email to find out what do you feel about collective bargaining and my question has been I have a responsibility to make a decision what do you think how should I vote according to what it is that you understand overwhelmingly I've heard much misinformation that collective bargaining is any and everything that people can strike that people can do this I've even

126heard we're doing collective bargaining um this has been a really long process it takes a lot to get in well in foreign public and in the years that I've been sitting here as a school board member I can tell you we do our we do a really good job I've often said the only thing we don't do is knock on doors and literally read policy to people and I know on occasion I've actually done that when asked this has been a challenge because I think over in most part people think that collective bargaining and negotiations is a nice process it's not in its nature it's adversarial I know this not just because of what I've learned and studied since the bill was introduced in the general legislation and through all of the trainings that I've

127been through but I also actually went to school for conflict resolution peacekeeping and integrated studies degree so I'm very familiar with being a neutral picking aside whatever the case may be I support collective bargaining because I overwhelmingly believe that most of our educational staff believes that this is a symbolic action that we as a board can take to validate their experience not because of all of the information that they have been given provided understand or don't understand I think that's important because our Educators do deserve to feel heard and validated this overwhelmingly seems to be the number one action that they have asked this board to do to substantiate that it doesn't seem to make a difference for much of a period of time no matter how many raises we give that we are able

128to give because again we don't control the first strings it doesn't matter that we've hired Ombudsman Ombudsman or put forth policies or try new programming this has been the number one ask and as an elected representative I have no problem with that what I do have a problem is when people decide or we hear from the public that whatever our private political affiliation is that it is the ruling Factor of our decision making like it or not the law requires us to be nonpartisan period We Are Who We Are some of those affiliations are embedded in us as a person they are part of our moral and value makeup that's often why people group together but when we sit up here we have an obligation to be non-partisan that's important and it's not the first

129time that I said that and it will not be the last time that I say it because I mean it from the bottom of my heart this board has worked collaboratively through our differences our disagreements to support each other to do our best to come to agreement to provide the best that we can do for our our constituent base I have not sat up here and been with a more collaborative board in all the years that I have been in this seat I also want to make it clear that at no point in time and I know it's been said repeatedly but it doesn't seem to stick that nobody in this process will get a hundred percent of whatever they ask I also want to make it clear that that should not prevent anyone from

130asking it's your right to do so but I will draw the line and being receptive if those asks are made in an uncivil or threatening manner this is not a full-time job but we all put in full-time hours all of us understand what it's like to work multiple jobs because we do all of us up here have either had students in the school division or have students in the school division I don't think there's a single board member up here that does not value teachers or does not deal with education support staff or people in a building on a regular basis for our own needs and our own families it's it's this is an important decision that we face it literally affects every single person employed in the school division in one way or another

131in our outlying community it should not be taken lightly but I also want the public and our Educators educational staff to understand that each of us has a different role and a hat to wear in this process and it's your duty and our duty to be as informed and educated on what it is that we're supposed to be doing at all times I am very pleased by the by the requirement to have participation I said that initially when we approved the certification process that I would like the maximum amount of voice in this process because that's how it should be at no point in my time to service has has that been a problem if there's an issue before this board people show up in droves it should always be that way in my opinion

132whether I agree or I disagree with the people that show up you have a right to do so and should I hope that when this resolution passes that all of us take time out to really ask each other what it is that we really want and be very clear about that because one of the things that have bothered me the most about this process and I've asked a lot is what is what is your definition of meaningful there's been a lot of moving of the goal post on that a lot of last minute it could be or it might be this or that this is a very serious process just like most of the things that we do and it's important to make those definitions clear so that everybody on any side of the table

133can understand the ask and I hope that as we continue down this road that we will all do our due diligence honor our responsibility to be as educated as possible to continue to dialogue with each other before we sit down at a table and negotiate and it becomes adversarial such as the nature of collection collective bargaining I want to thank the people who did Reach Out for questions and did take time out to speak and learn more about the process I greatly appreciate that from those who said they were in favor and from those who said they were not um I hope we move move forward in good faith on all sides and I hope that our employee base does feel validated by the process and does feel heard and I hope that that whoever

134the elected representative is does their due diligence to continue to dialogue with their constituent base so they understand the needs a hundred percent before they come to the table thank you Miss argopol thank you Dr Latif I'm going to Center myself for just a moment in this I heard several people bring up the fact that I am a union member and I work for another Division I mean that's true which I think gives me a little bit more um responsibility to ask a lot of questions and make sure that this is absolutely the right thing to do I've never been anything but consistent in terms of saying we need to know what exactly is involved in in this process we need to know what we can do in this state we need to be able

135to build capacity to be able to make sure we get the things we want eventually when I've listened to teachers I've heard everything from I just want to get collective bargaining pass it to hey can you do something about making sure in retirement all of these things are taken care of for us well you can't do that one thing without building capacity so I've been very consistent in saying we need a good strong agreement a resolution that we can build on and I believe that is what we have now centering the staff here in the county I know Prince William is always ending on the bottom of the pile with funding and all of that and when I joined this board I was very excited that I had like-minded board members who were in our

136own capacity doing the things we could until we got to this point expanding the the baby bonding thing making sure that we got a reliable raises not just some little little thing aside from the pandemic I get it that was rough whenever people have brought up their issues in their working conditions the amount of trainings that have been put upon you this year the changes of everything that we went through in the pandemic I have been there nagging this School Division on your behalf I do it quietly because no one wants to be called out publicly and we can move things now we can get collective bargaining and it sort of changes things a little bit it does invite more voices to the table so I'm asking tonight that we think about how we can

137work together continue to be collaborative continue to grow what we need to do to make everything more Equitable and better for all of the employees as we work through this process I'm keeping it short tonight because I know we got things to do Miss Jackson did you have anything to add no I'm just going to listen okay wonderful Mr Jackson all right thank you Dr Latif um one thing I have observed over the past two and a half years is those who are very invested for or against the cause find it hard to put themselves and other people's shoes or to observe active listening or compromise before I go further I know that there are some people who are new here tonight so I'm going to Briefly summarize the last two years Virginia especially banned

138collective bargaining for public employees since 1977. during the 2020 legislative session the general assembly considered several bills seeking to repeal the Commonwealth's prohibition on collective bargaining for public employees ultimately the general assembly passed and the governor signed a bill that gave School divisions the option of adopting a resolution effective May 1st 2021. the bill came with no additional funding in March 2021 the school board adopted a proposed a resolution that identified the need to research collective bargaining further the end of that resolution read resolved that Prince William County's School Board hereby renew its commitment to the established pwcs meet and confirmed process and defer his action on whether to implement collective bargaining until such time as a division is able to return to normal operations and that the school board has had sufficient time and

139resources to assess feasibility of implementing any form of collective bargaining in the Prince William County School boards at that time pwa leadership advocated for the removal of this proposed exploration of collective bargaining and characterize the actions of this resolution as voting against collective bargaining and re-committing to meet and confer this was not accurate but the resolution was removed from the agenda fast forward to July of 2021 when Dr McDade started the Intensive process of ensuring in smooth transition and listening to all stakeholders including staff all during a pandemic in March of 2022 pwa toned in a petition and affidavit requiring the board to vote on whether to allow collective bargaining effectively changing as they were told then and has been reiterated again recently how the board communicates with this Association simply put it is imperative

140in situations like this with legal ramifications the communication be thoughtful and accurate and have one central point of contact familiar with the Practical and legal ramifications from this decision next the school board voted an open session to adopt procedures for the submission for certification of the petition and pwa was promptly told they would not need to be doing any additional work to collect signatures although attorneys from vea Virginia Education Association and the School Division were communicating throughout this period other parties were Distributing a lot of misinformation accordingly the Boyd published a set of frequently asked questions to share with the public pwa expressed concerns about the verification process and the board made further concessions and amended the procedures it had adopted related to the verification of signatures and supported their petition evidentially the signatures were

141verified on June 15th and excuse me we're verified and on June 15th the school board agreed to adopt the resolution providing for collective bargaining during this time constituents and staff emailed for and against collective bargaining some were concerned that the teachers could strike that it would impact evaluations and impact parent voice others expressed the need for their voices to be heard in a greater context than meet and confer at the June meeting the Boyd requested a division staff draft a resolution which was posted on September 30th 2022. between then and now the school boards of Tony met with attorneys from vea and most recently with the new lawyer that pwa has hired moreover pwa leaders have met with division staff about their concerns regarding this resolution labor has been consulted and involved this is seen

142by the 15 changes made to the resolution presented at today's PW excuse me presented today at pwa's request additionally in my opinion this board has made multiple good faith efforts to negotiate and address pwa's concern including the promptness of this vote further concrete evidence is seen throughout the timetable I just detailed however I will remind everyone collective bargaining is bargaining listening to both sides so that leads to me to what appears to be the major concern asking staff to participate in an election I understand teachers and staff are busy I get it but you are asking to be the bargaining agent for all employees to represent them at the table to know what they need this is fundamentally changing the relationship and our ability to Advocate and you will hold the livelihood and well-being of

143our staff in your hands and too many don't even know that this is happening and they deserve a say and encouragement to participate in 2019 I left my classroom so that I could bring a teacher's voice to this board and we have done that we have brought raises baby bonding a new superintendent focused on climate included retention in the Strategic plan advocated for countless other concerns and negotiated throughout this process one of my guiding principles as a parent a special education teacher and a board member is inclusion I ran on it I actively did listen it doesn't mean I can do exactly what you want or maybe there was a compromise you didn't see but I actively listen I also want to remind everyone that we are in the business of education and every vote

144we make we shoulder the responsibility of considering the impact on students education I am inherently concerned that the impact in this campaign on students and that I believe all leaders should remember that climate impacts classroom I know firsthand the impact the climate of this school board has on schools because I taught here also given the symbiotic relationship of staff and students encouraging the voice of all staff determining their bargaining agent is essential not meaningful for some but meaningful for all a driving voice is to bring an inclusive voice excuse me driving force is to bring an inclusive voice and support this core value through my votes my vote tonight and support for encouragement of voting is further evidence and commitment to making schools a better place for Learning and a better place for teachers and

145to do that I must ensure all perspectives are considered all shoes are seen tried on and walked in and my support for this is my support for understanding the will of the people and the will of the employees but inclusion the noun and the verb is much like having a seat or creating a seat at the table it is not multiple choice the more chairs the better that includes when deciding who represents them as a bargaining agent thank you thank you Miss Jackson I will wrap it up as seeing there's no other Mike is on Miss Jesse did you have anything to add I'm sorry okay um so so number one I want to thank division Council superintendent McDade um the pwa teachers um and the board for grappling with this process over the last

146six months Miss um Jackson gave us a nice timeline there of what we've done we have done something that uh what so let me offer we heard the dissenting opinion let me offer the prevailing anticipated majority opinion um and from my colleague here miss uh wall on her descent um the the um so I as I offer this I I tell you that I support the resolution um and and I want to thank the board for all the hard work they put through this this process has been thoughtful methodical efficient um we will be the first large School Division in the Commonwealth to do this third or fourth I think in the Commonwealth overall um we're doing it without taxing Authority we're doing it as one of the lowest funded School divisions in the region

147as I mentioned last time um you know and I've spent most of my five years four years in change on this board looking for money under every Rock in this County in this Commonwealth whether it's from the board of County Supervisors whether it's from you know this tax or that tax or whether we can get money from the county or the state and you know lobbying our delegates and the governors over the course of my time we have a responsibility here on this board to maintain fiscal responsibility we do zero base we do we do we have to do our budget and we have to take care of many many things and we have the we're the largest employer in the county um we have tremendous responsibilities we have to maintain a triple a bond

148rating so that we can save money um by borrowing for less and doing more for our children and our families we're one of five or six counties and divisions in the Commonwealth with the AAA Bond rating um you know one of few in the country and that's a big deal so everything we vote on everything we do is reflected in the rating agencies look at this to say hey look are we going to keep them with the AAA Bond rating what are they doing everything this board has done since I've been on this board has been committed to making this a better place for people to work we've been recognized by Forbes Magazine as the number one school division to work for in the Commonwealth we have made significant strides compared to where we were

149I would challenge anyone to look at any other board in the past that has done more for teachers for employees for all employees at every level in in the work that we have done and it is very you know very hard to find that so I thank this board for this hard work they're doing every single one of them who's committed to this hard work every single day and you know and you know as as you hear from folks you can you can hear what you want to hear but but I can speak to this board and their hard work and and their commitment to doing the good stuff as I said this will be hidden historic vote the first large District to do so um is it perfect no and I can tell you

150I've been 100 consistent that everything I have voted for since I've been on sport has not been perfect it's not been perfect there's not one single vote I have taken on this dice and anything that I've supported that has been perfect no budget no raise I've always wanted more raises I've always wanted more money for our students I've always wanted more money in the classroom I've always wanted more and I recognize when there are those who want more as well and we're all working together to collaborate to see where we can meet and how we can get together on where we can be I do believe and I will say this as the prevailing majority opinion that collective bargaining will be another tool in our toolbox to make this place a better place for our

151employees I do believe that that's why I'm supporting it is this resolution perfect is it what everybody wants no but it's what I can get past what this board can pass and what we believe the administration division Council what we can afford can can actually happen and it's a start as you heard from a number of members it's a living breathing document and you know we'll re-look at this over time as this plays out so without further I think I've hit all my points here I told you I'm not I haven't voted on anything it's perfect right okay I covered that um and um you know and you heard from some of our members about you know political ideologies and and so forth you know it is it has been um you know it's it's

152I've been called Everything Under the Sun in the county you know I'm not sure sometimes when I go to bed what where I am I've heard it all and so um you know I I I just don't know sometimes but with that I will ask the board if there's no other discussion Mr will you have to read a conflict of interest oh okay Mr Wilk will read us his conflict of interest but um we will then take the vote uh Mr Wilk please read your conflict of interest thank you Mr chair and pursuant to Virginia conflict of interest act I'm informing the public once again that my wife is employed as a teacher in the Prince William County Public Schools but I'm able to participate fairly in this transaction which applies to all Prince William

153County School Employees please vote Miss Ralston how do you vote Miss Ralston votes yes from the neapsco district the vote is seven yes one no wall motion passed we're moving on to Mr Chance Williams our student representative here this evening we're going to hear from from the Forest Park High School after that we will take a recess for about 10 to 15 minutes and then we'll hear from the superintendent Mr Williams thank you Dr Latif good evening Monday I had the chance to meet with the student Senate to gain further insight into issues throughout the county as well as what we want to work towards the county has over 90 000 students and with the help of the student Senate the other student representatives and the student voice committees I want to make sure if

154the audience who are leaving can please keep quiet as they're leaving we're listening to our students the Williams of course it is crucial that the board see the student perspective of things as sometimes things can go unseen by others I want to help give the board student voice and assist in any way possible which is what I plan to do with my remarks with the change of the county logo and the early action deadline rapidly approaching I feel it's the perfect time to address college readiness throughout the county many students feel unprepared for college entering senior year many Juniors don't know things they need to know to prepare for senior year some Juniors at Forest Park and Colgan didn't even know you had to pay for the SAT and the ACT throughout the county there

155are small patches of lack of preparedness that we need to close Forest Park has a deadline for early application for early action transcript requests that guarantees that in 10 days transcripts will be sent to the recipients Potomac High School holds FAFSA and Common App workshops to make sure students understand how to prepare for college this shouldn't vary by high school or you run the risk of students missing out on necessary information every day a student Waits due to lack of Readiness they missed a chance to get scholarship money from colleges the sooner we can fully prepare our students the better we must do better preparing our Juniors for the next steps and making sure our seniors know all their options students across the county believe that information has to come sooner and has to be

156more visible as there is no point in information being out there if nobody knows where they found it where to find it I also want to talk about how the students feel regarding the board most students genuinely don't acknowledge the board as most issues don't directly pertain to the student population the board does a lot for students and teachers and it doesn't go unseen but I believe the board could possibly do more to gain further insight into their schools I'm not suggesting working later creating new resolutions I'm saying go to a class and shake hands with a student we enjoy seeing you at football games and at events at schools we would also like to see you in the classroom the same way our principals visit and Dr McDade visits we understand you are busy

157and we appreciate everything you do but following the schedule of a student or seeing how a teacher teaches you can learn something new talking to teachers in the classroom sitting among the students following a lesson plan these things are far more impactful than stopping to take some pictures next I want to talk about something extremely important to me which is our robotics program as I speak with my next few words I not only speak as the voice of the students but as the voice of the robotics program last year the all-county team robot the all-county robotics team 4472 Supernova made it to the world championship for robotics under the lead of Miss Karen cinnamon who also coaches the Forest Park robotics team this team worked non-stop to build a robot from scratch and earn the

158way to worlds in eight weeks when robotic season first began last year the county through spark provided the team with three thousand seven hundred fifty dollars the cost to Simply register the team is six thousand dollars when the team made it to Worlds the county gave them an additional three thousand dollars the cost of world registration was five thousand dollars plus team travel cost over fifteen thousand dollars for 36 team members and coaches the average cost for this team to compete just without getting to Worlds is twenty five thousand dollars between registration fees and the cost of materials and parts this form of Robotics is the most advanced level robotics program offered during the season this meets this team meets 12 to 24 hours a week from January to April this team takes in-class learning

159and turns into hands-on experience sometimes teaching things you can't learn in a classroom while winning Awards and engineering and design the county has shifted and began to focus on Career and Technical education propelling students into the future this team accomplishes that the robotics program accomplishes that the money the county gives to these programs is a fraction of the cost the money given to robotics teams is simply not enough to sustain them they are constantly looking for Grants sponsors and fundraisers just to compete the robotic season throughout the county lasts from September to April if you make it to Worlds the county wants these students to do well to represent Princeton County school as well these schemes these teams can do that if we give them the aid they so desperately need as a student who

160has participated in robotics since elementary school I've watched coaches and students struggle due to budget constraints and I've seen teams outside the county flourish due to them receiving everything they need at Worlds I saw teams whose County provided them with over ten thousand dollars on top of scholarships I encourage the boards of view the success of our robotic seams and also think about the achievements these teams could reach if they had access to the necessary materials if they have the county truly backing them we are proud to represent Princeton County schools and I will always brag about how great our district is we look forward to a much successful year with your support thank you and that concludes my remarks outstanding Mr Williams thank you very much very good remarks and and we do truly

161appreciate it and and we are just excited to have you on this board at this moment we'll take a let's do a how about a 12-minute what time is it now 9 um so let's come back at 9 50. 14 minutes is thank you [Music] um foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] okay folks if we can start finding our seats and I think is right foreign okay everyone I think we'll get to our seats here and um go um as soon as we're all ready we will move to superintendent's time Dr McDade thank you Dr Latif

162um pwcs npwcs we are doubling down on our efforts to support and ensure post-secondary success in my last letter to the pwcs community I wrote about my experience filling out the free application for federal student aid my denied request and the school counselors who help me fill it out correctly I was lucky to have attended an exceptional public high school with the principal and counselors who cared about what was happening to me and had the skills and resources needed to help me obtain the financial support to go to college but our students Futures cannot be left up to luck we know what students need as they prepare for Life After High School there are steps that we can take as a school system to ensure that our young people find their way and to recognize

163that some students need more support than others in alignment with our strategic plan launching thriving Futures we are committed to ensuring that every student has a plan for their future has access and resources to launch it and has support and supervision to graduate prepared for post-secondary Success many pwcs high schools are currently hosting FAFSA workshops for families to get the financial resources needed for college please check in with your high school's college and career counselor to learn more about FAFSA workshops and other opportunities to support your child's post-secondary education additionally all pwcs high schools have a college and career counselor to support students in their post-secondary aspirations their role is to prepare students in College and Career Readiness toward whichever path they may choose parents and Guardians should encourage your senior to set up a

164meeting with their college and career counselor and visit our pwcs scholarship resources and databases webpage which can be found through www.pwcs.edu transitioning now to our observances pwcs joins the Virginia board for people with disabilities in recognizing October as Virginia disability history and awareness month the goal of disability history education and awareness is to promote positive attitudes in schools creating a culture of mutual respect understanding and equal opportunities for all I encourage our students staff and community members to visit I'm determined.org to raise your awareness learn about the history of disability access resources and find ways to engage this week pwcs recognizes several groups who ensure the safety of our students in a plethora of ways America's safe schools week custodial Services employees appreciation week and National bus safety week and today we recognize school bus

165transportation employees Appreciation Day we encourage everyone to join us in thanking these invaluable employees today this week and every week we are grateful and thankful for our amazing staff and their continued commitment to the physical emotional and mental well-being of all students next week pwcs will acknowledge Red Ribbon Week in honor of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique camarina who gave his life in the battle against illegal drugs in 1985. we pledge and renew our vow to be part of the creation of a drug-free America this year's theme Celebrate life live drug free reminds us that living a life that is drug free is living a life worth celebrating every day schools throughout our division will carry this message to all students through various activities and remind our children that they have the power and fortitude

166to maintain control of their lives and their future before introducing our state of the school's presentation I would like to congratulate our finance department Prince William County and Prince William County Public Schools received a reaffirmation of its triple triple AAA Bond rating from all three major credit rating agencies Fitch s p and Moody's which uh which we pride ourselves with that and Dr Latif mentioned that earlier finally pwcs will be closed on Monday October 24th in observance of Diwali May the Festival of Lights bring all who practice it joy happiness and prosperity at this time we will move into our annual state of the school's address this is a pretty in-depth presentation so it will take some time but it is incredibly important that we share this information with the public as a School Division

167we are committed to creating transparency and ensuring that our families and Community are authentic part authentic Partners in education and equipped with the information needed to support their students learning this year every school shared their school's individual data with the school communities and tonight we'll share the data for the division as a whole as we continue to work toward recovery acceleration and re-engagement it is critically important to illuminate both the forward progress the school division is making along with the many challenges that continue to remain post pandemic the purpose of the presentation is to provide the current state of the school division post pandemic along with key takeaways that can be gleaned from the data and next steps for continuous Improvement there are a few things to keep in mind number one a wealth of

168research now available to school divisions Across the Nation shows that academic recovery from the pandemic will be a multi-year process number two it's important to note that a direct comparison between school year 2021 achievement data and school year 2022 cannot be made as Sol participation increase over 60 percent from the prior year in the total number of tests taken this is important to consider when we are looking at Trend data across multiple years a recent educational research brief conducted by nwea posits that Elementary School students may need at least three years to catch up from the pandemic to where they would have been if the pandemic did not happen and middle school students would take a minimum of five years the study did not include high school but examine assessment results for more than 8

169million students across the country to estimate the number of years it would take to fully close achievement gaps in reading and math based on what we have learned from the existing body of literature we are utilizing the data provided in the state of the school's address to inform current and future instructional practices while accelerating growth in the hopes of reducing the time for Recovery with the understanding that there is no one Panacea for full recovery which will take multiple years pwcs remains on par or ahead of the state in overall academic performance however it is important to note that all school districts in the Commonwealth are struggling with the same challenges shared across the country as quoted in the nwea research that I highlighted today as well as the wealth of research conducted from educational

170institutions across the country mpwcs growth highlights include significant growth in mathematics for grades three through eight although we are still not at pre-pandemic levels but math did suffer the greatest impact over the past two years um so seeing that growth shows that we are moving in the right direction in math steady increases in literacy including early literacy indicators and growth across all student populations with the largest growth in reading for Hispanic students which is our largest population of students areas of struggle and needed Improvement include decreasing Dropout rates specifically for our English Learners and Hispanic students which impacts the overall on-time graduation rate as well as the need to increase the overall Proficiency in science you'll see science did not increase at the same level as reading and math our Educators and leaders are working

171diligently to bolster core instruction and Implement research-based best practices which are yielding results I am extremely grateful to all of our Educators and school leaders for their unwavering commitment to pwcs students and families we are in year two of implementation of our unfinished learning plan and one and a half years into our four-year strategic plan we will stay the course and Implement our current strategic plan with Fidelity as strategic initiatives in the four-year plan are designed with long-term Improvement and impact in mind and in direct response to some of the data that you will see this evening I want to thank every single School Board member for your continued engagement and commitment to academic progress especially over the last few weeks as you each protected a significant amount of time for us to share and

172unpack a wealth of data with you individually your probing questions your feedback ideas have been insightful embraced appreciated and will inform our efforts toward continued Improvement to ensure academic achievement for all students at this time I would like to introduce our new director of research accountability and strategic planning Dr Tim Neal to kick off our presentation on the 2021-2022 pwcs state of the schools address Dr Neal will be joined by Ms Rita Goss our associate superintendent for the office of teaching and learning and Miss Denise Huebner associate superintendent for the office of student services and post-secondary success to provide this comprehensive update following the in the formal presentation we will facilitate q a for any questions Beyond those that the board may have already shared with us Dr Neil thank you Dr Latif score members

173Dr McDade good evening it's my pleasure to share with you tonight the first report of our state of schools on our new strategic plan so the overarching goal tonight is to share with you the data from the 2122 school year but also then take that data and determine what are the key takeaways and what are our next steps the basic shape of this presentation to construct this narrative I want to provide a little bit of our regional context for you about us and our surrounding School divisions do a really quick overview of our strategic plan and then its commitments the bulk of our time will be spent doing data Dives on those four commitments which you can see on the screen learning achievement for all positive climate and culture family and Community engagement and organizational

174coherence and then we'll end with the key takeaways and then what we're going to do with this data how are we going to take this into this next school year and change our practice so this slide shows a little bit of the contextual data about Prince William County and our neighbors so here you can see that in some some places for example we have a relatively High proportion of students with economic disadvantages we have a fairly High proportion of L students and we're one of the highest the second highest in terms of total number of students also on this slide you can see the FY 22 cost per pupil and you'll notice that out of all the divisions listed we had one of the lowest costs per pupil I should note that for this next

175year we are increasing student spending to close to uh fifteen thousand dollars per student again Sol participation as Dr McDade stated earlier the pandemic in and uh we had a dramatic decrease in the number of students that took the tests so pre-pandemic we had Fairly High participation rate pandemic hit participation dropped La previous year last year was a return so in some cases we had a 90 percent increase in the number of students that were taking a test so it usually ranged between 60 and 70 percent so our strategic plan is broken into four different commitments learning and achievement for all that's where we're going to spend the bulk of our time but we'll also look at positive climate and culture family community engagement and organizational coherence for each one of those commitments we've shared

176some or all of our objectives so here you can see for Learning and achievement for all three of our objectives are to provide Equitable opportunities for students prepare them for post-secondary education in the workforce and to prepare staff members to support and challenge all students so by 2025 100 of our schools will be accredited just as a quick overview of the accreditation process vdoe looks at school quality indicators and uses those indicators to determine whether or not schools meet accreditation criteria they then assign one of three ratings accredited accredited with conditions or accreditation denied for this current year 93 percent of our schools are accredited and seven percent of our schools are accredited with conditions I should note that this is this is atypical for Prince William County schools but it does reflect a pattern

177that you can see across the state this next slide is looking at Sol performance specifically in Reading in grades three through eight this slide is a little bit different than Sol data that we've shared in Prior years and prior years we've shared Sol data from grades 3 to 12. we've narrowed that range here just to the elementary and middle school years the gold bar will always be the current school or the just past school year so it'll be 21-22 with the dark blue 2021 and then the light blue 1819 as a reminder we didn't administer Sol tests in 2021. so this is that same data Broken Out by a student subgroup so again you can see our reading Pass rates for all students and then students with disabilities compared to students without disabilities students with

178economic disadvantages compared to those without economic disadvantages and our English Learners compared to our non-english learners this is that same set of data but for mathematics I'm going to start to sound a little bit like a broker in record because the patterns that are coming out of this data are fairly consistent so what you'll see is a fairly high level performance in 1819 a drop and then a gradual increase for most groups this is that same data Sol performance for grades three through eight for mathematics Broken Out by student group and then also Broken Out by race and ethnicity so another another goal we have is to increase our pass Advance rate for uh Sol testing grades three through eleven so here you can see the past Advance rates in Reading Broken Out by ethnicity

179that same those same data broken out by student group and then again moving on to mathematics past Advance rates and grades three through eleven also Broken Out by ethnicity or student group and then lastly for science our past Advance rates by ethnicity and by our student group I should note that one of the challenges with our science tests unlike our reading and our mathematics tests which are done yearly science tests are cumulative for for a series of grade levels so the grade five science test measures third and fourth grade science so a new metric in our strategic plan is that by the end of second grade all students will be 80 of our students will be reading on grade level so what we're looking at here is a table that shows reading performance as measured

180by our hmh literacy assessments and you can see it by the end of second grade last year 66 percent of our students were reading on grade level on or above grade level this table also breaks it down by race and ethnicity and then those same data are shown by student subgroups again the similar patterns persist where you see lower performance with our English Learners our students with disabilities and our Hispanic students so we have a target of getting to 95 percent on time graduation rate that's shown in the horizontal bar at the top of the chart you can see that we had a decrease in our on-time graduation rate last year down to 91.7 for this year just as a reminder our on-time graduation rate is the graduation rate for the group of students that

181start in one cohort and finish within four years with exceptions made for our English Learners and our students with disabilities who are granted additional time this is our on-time graduation rate broken down by ethnicity and that same information shown by student subgroups so another goal for us is to have 60 percent of our graduates meet the s.a.t college and Mathematics benchmarks so this slide shows the number of sat tests taken the number of graduates and the percent of students that took that SAT test in that cohort so you can see out of last year approximately 43 percent of our of that cohort took the s.a.t that is up slightly from the prior year and in terms of meeting The Benchmark you can see in this chart the horizontal bar across the top at 60 percent

182is where we want them to be and you can see for a mathematics benchmark both for the current year in gold and then prior years and shades of blue Dr mcday can I ask a quick question just clarification um do you is there an act slide there is not an act so so do we know do we track how many students are taking the ACT instead of the SAT does it mean 43 I can tell you my children don't take the SAT they took the ACT we do have that data and we can we can provide that yeah I mean I think that's important if we're going to look at you know we should look at both it may be one of the reasons yes we can we can and um should look at both

183one of the reasons that we've gone with sat is it is a more rigorous um standard that shows college readiness and so more selectives highly selective schools do look at the SAT first so that's one of the reasons that we've been um you know pushing sat because we do want to increase the rigor and expectation in terms of college readiness but we absolutely can provide act but I did want to give that perspective in comparison for the I appreciate that Dr McDade and you know just on that note just as as I I worry about you know as as colleges are changing their sort of dynamics of what they're looking at if they're moving away moving more towards test optional are we going to start shedding the numbers of students that are taking both the

184SAT and ACT so are there other ways for us to monitor college readiness is something maybe people are thinking about so that so this shot this slide shows the College s.a.t college readiness for both reading and Mathematics so they have to meet The Benchmark in in reading and Mathematics together this shows The Benchmark for reading [Music] actually let me correct that let me go back if I may this is a this is for mathematics Broken Out by subgroup this is the SAT Benchmark for reading Broken Out by race and ethnicity and then also by subgroup and then this slide shows the college benchmarks where students have met both math and reading and that same information Broken Out by student subgroup so another goal that we have set that is new in this strategic plan is

185that our students 100 of our graduates will have post-secondary plans in place so this slide shows the percentage of students over the last several years who have created post-secondary plans now the post-secondary plan is the culmination of multiple activities over their course of their educational career in their senior year by by the spring they've met with their guidance counselors and they've worked on creating and formalizing a plan for what they want to do after they graduate I'm sorry to interrupt Dr McDade this is a great slide can you just comment on this I mean it's a particularly high jump just in the last 12 months one of the things that we're doing is trying to make sure that every student has a concrete post-secondary plan meaning that a counselor is you know working with them

186to ensure that post-graduation they are identifying either College enrollment meaning that they've applied to colleges and gotten accepted or they're going into the military they're going into the workforce Etc what what I found is that students who have a concrete plan at graduation are highly likely to be more successful than those who are leaving on graduation day without a plan in their back pocket we are working to even refine this more um to make sure that we have evidence points so even when students have a plan if they say for example you know I I'm going to West Point that they we actually have evidence of their acceptance so that we're documenting that um and that we also can work with students over the summer so that we don't you know we don't see summer

187slide or summer melt so that they actually step foot on those college campuses um in the in the upcoming year so we're doing more to refine this but um uh Denise's team has been putting forth an all-out push and effort to make sure that all of our students we want 100 of our students to have a concrete plan so this has been a focus for the the new post-secondary office that miss heebner is leading and so I'm glad to see this but we're looking to even do a little bit more here and make it even more evidence-based this is wonderful thank you very much yeah Miss Williams I'm sorry to interrupt you but this is to me a game changer and something that levels the playing field for all of our students and all of

188our families I know that um having a post-secondary plan has been a Cornerstone of Independence non-traditionals um one one of the things they do for all of their students coming through but I think prior to this new strategic plan and uh you're being here as superintendent with sort of school by school and for a lot of those students who are first in their family generation to go to college or economically disadvantaged or come from other countries where their culture doesn't encourage or are familiar with the amount of planning that has to go into life after graduation this is one of I think one of the key tools that will absolutely provide every single student with the same opportunity for Success no matter what path they choose when they graduate and I just really sincerely appreciate

189that because it will no longer matter your family history or your income everyone will have the same chance coming out and and I that just brings me a lot of joy and I really appreciate that this is a key priority of this school division moving forward for everybody thank you so the pattern of post-secondary plan completion persists across student groups as well so this this slide shows a percent of students completing Advanced coursework or in dual enrollment again you can see um a general upward Trend although from 2021 to 2122 there was a dip and this pattern also can persists across all race and ethnicities and all student subgroups this is a new slightly new um objective for us our goal for us rather and that is our all of our graduates or our graduates

190will have completed um dual enrollment courses Advanced courses or seal of by literacy or industry credentials and again you can see a significant upward Trend across all race and ethnicities here and an upward Trend in subgroups another new metric for us is are the number of monies brought in by scholarships so we've set a goal we've set a goal of 260 million and here you can see in the last year approximately 91 million dollars in scholarships were offered to our students representing about 35 percent of that goal that's also Broken Out by school on the table I just want to add one thing to note one of the reasons that we're really pushing FAFSA completion because students in terms of looking for and qualifying for scholarships it is important that they still complete FAFSA completion

191so that's one of the reasons we've been pushing for schools across the um the county to offer FAFSA workshops and I talked about it in my report today because it's a missed opportunity for scholarships when they don't complete the FAFSA and a lot of times families may feel like oh I may not qualify I don't need to complete it but everyone needs to complete it because of scholarships work study student loans so there's a wealth of resources that are tied to FAFSA completion I think Dr McDade that's a great Point um you know everyone has to fill it out if you're going to get a scholarship even if it's a merit-based scholarship they still need to see the FAFSA so it's not just for financial you know Aid it's it's for all sorts of everything

192everyone needs to fill it out and I would remind parents too that you may not qualify for your first child but when your second and third child go to college and you add those into the FAFSA and you're saying you're paying tuition here and you're paying tuition there you then become um you then qualify actually for financial aid after they've seen you've been paying for one or two children already and so I know it it's a terrifying form and it's just you know scary to think about you know moving forward with this there is a FAFSA simplification law that actually passed I don't know if that's in effect this year or I know the form is going to get easier to fill out Miss Williams thank you I just wanted to I'm not sure if

193you touched on it but this was self-reported Data because we know that there are potential uh that students or families have been rewarded other scholarships they just haven't reported so I just want to make that plug so that hopefully our students will report all of their scholarship monies um when received so that we can continue to have a better picture of what that looks like for our pwcs families and our counseling teams are going to be pushing um you know they've seen this number they know us self-reported and so they're concerned about that too so they're going to be pushing um you know students to share and asking for that information as well hi I when I first came to the county um and and to the board I met with Rebecca and I asked

194her about the scholarship opportunities and she said at that time a lot of the scholarships were being sent back because no one applied for them and my husband and I'm in all these we're in various Community groups and I think that sometimes these smaller scholarships the 10 000 the 3000 the 2 000 scholarships uh they're getting lost so I'm glad that we've got more career uh counselors and I hope that they will you guys will check out some of those small scholarship offers because you can pile those things up and make a great deal of money or provide a lot of support for students going to college so I'm glad that this is a new slide thank you which we did I'm you know and you're going to hate it when I say this but

195you know if you look at that last line on pwcs at 91 million I believe there is a lot of room to grow here I believe that number could be doubled easily with the kind of effort and the work we're going to focus on in in you know this board committed to hiring those career counselors at each high school you know you're seeing just in the year one and these slides that this just even attention to this is is going to make a difference and I really believe and I'm not saying you have to double it but I do believe we can Ryan I'll hold you accountable for that but but we have we have to do it and I and I challenge this board and everyone listening our counselors are doing an amazing incredible

196job I I'm just so impressed with you know the newsletters I'm receiving and everything and that's even your middle school counselors and your Elementary counselors who are saying look look at these programs the level of communication I've seen just over the course of this last 12 months has been over the top and I believe that will have a direct result into changing those numbers and we really should aim to double or triple them I mean we we are expecting that we're going to surpass our four-year goal for sure so I'm taking you up on that and I don't hate that you said it I agree with you I want our students to get all of the financial support and resources that they can to be able to realize their dreams in post-secondary success so I'm

197here for it and we will continue to keep pushing and hopefully we will double Miss Jesse said triple is getting a little heated in here but but she did a silent triple but I did see the triple so but we are pushing to surpass the goal I I think it would be very nice to have uh students who have gone to college or whatever their their chosen path I'm thinking College just because of the the scholarship issue and FAFSA and things like that but anybody who's gone to a technical school or even the military if they if there was an event or an opportunity for them to come back to the schools and talk to the kids because um last year I did get to see a um a young lady who had gotten into

198Harvard and she came and spoke to a bunch of um kids who were you know 9th 10th 11th 12th grade didn't really matter um and she just gave her advice um talked you know from a kid perspective from a from a app you know student perspective it was really helpful and the and watching the dialogue going back and forth was really interesting because what the um the kids sitting there were interested in asking her about some of this is is also you know you might have hold a dream in your heart about going to Harvard or wherever it may be but you don't maybe see yourself as that person so maybe having some kids who've gone through the process have them come back and talk I think that'd be it are you just wanted to

199add that about I think about two weeks ago my husband my daughter does SAT tutoring college prep and we were invited to the Ron Brown scholarship award and there are at least two students from Prince William one was my one of my daughter's students but have received that award that scholarship that's a major major scholarship and there are hundreds and hundreds of primarily African-American students who are doctors lawyers and that's a scholarship I think we really need to look at also I just want to piggyback on what Mrs agapore said um as a parent my son who graduated in 2019 was able to come back and speak to culinary students because he's a chef and the impact that it had was great I don't want to burden our Administration with making that a requirement but

200I do know it is valuable and while we are focused on what happens to our students when they leave providing a pathway or a way for them to be able to come back and do that because some of the things that I heard from students who graduated is like how would we do that like do we have to reach out or something so just little things as we continue to build I think that that's a wonderful insight and and I know what it is Meaningful and impactful and Mr is right as an as a parent I had a whole set of you should go under talk about this and the teacher was like you should talk about this and that was not the most impact those were not the most impactful things that this the

201students were looking for um for my son to speak on and so I I do think that that is a very great Point raised and not to say that we need to do it immediately but as as as we continue to grow and build on our focus on what happens when we leave here that that would be a terrific add-on so that is learning and achievement for all if we were to look back on on all of those slides as a quick summary you can see moments of of growth where where performance is increasing students are are taking those Advanced some of those Advanced courses the post-secondary plans are being created but you can also see our gaps gaps in our performance groups in our our English Learners gaps with our Hispanic students gaps with

202our students with disabilities moving on to our positive climate and culture you can see we've got three different areas to address here provide a positive learning environment which Fosters inclusivity connectedness and incurity social and emotional well-being having students and Staff feel supported and being a welcoming and sustainable so this this slide shows our chronic absenteeism rate for last year that is the gold bar just as a reminder chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10 percent or more of the membership days and the membership days or the number of days that you are enrolled for that school in that school year so last year if you were enrolled for the entire year the day's membership was 173 days which means if you missed 18 days you would be considered chronically absent these this is that same

203data Broken Out by race and ethnicity and the next set of slides is going to go through student subgroups so this is our chronic absenteeism for students with disabilities English learners and students with economic disadvantages as you can see last year posed a substantial challenge for chronic absenteeism we also have a goal of reducing our dropout rate by 10 10 percent this is primarily focused on on our Hispanic students and our English learners and so here you can see the dropout rate in general is right around six percent but you can see for our Hispanic students they're quite a bit larger I think um Miss wall wanted some clarity on this one miss wall was the question was around like how are we going to get 10 if we overall are lower than for all

204students then 10 which is a really good call out so I think it's important for us to explain that for um you know the public that's watching this one of the things that Tim is calling out is that when we talked about decreasing the dropout rate for all students by 10 it was a clear focus on those student populations that were in the double digits so when you look at Hispanic if they if we decreased that by 10 percent then you would see less of a disparity across all of the subgroups so I just wanted to call that out because that was something that you probed us on and so I wanted to make sure that the public was clear on that yeah thank you I appreciate that that was something I was yeah I

205was not really sure like how we were interpreting that but that makes a lot of sense and in here as I look at this we do have groups that are in the double digits which is very concerning and so we know now I mean this data is actually very informative because it helps us know where we can Target our efforts to get that to keep those kids in school make a difference in their lives thank you I I just want to um commend some of the the leadership that I've been able to witness especially when it comes to principles and back to school night and addressing this issue head on the the shift in culture and messaging from having gone from a few several years ago prior to the pandemic back to school nights and

206hearing truancy officers make this presentation and seeing some of my families in my district react like you're just going to put me in jail so I'm not going to tell you anything to the new culture and climate of having administrators and teachers go look you know please come talk to us about this what is exactly going on we can work with you we have this kind of supports we have this kind of programming and I think if we continue to spread that message that we are willing to work with families that we have especially for some of our high school students alternative paths to graduating that's not a traditional means especially if you come from a family where you have to work multiple jobs just to stay in your home knowing that those options are

207out there and available I think is really important to combating some of our absentee rates and understanding our families and and how they operate especially in um the current economic climate for for this County for a lot of our families that what they experience especially in my district I just want to note that it's very much appreciated the shift and I heard that directly from a lot of our families this year at back to school night so thank you I want to just I want to comment on back to school night you know I've been to a lot of them and it was very different this year and they said she gave us a template I said a template so everybody can just you can't just do whatever you want to do and they thought

208well not really but I think that schools where they really did use that template and they presented I I always say you present The Good the Bad and the Ugly and they really did present The Good the Bad and the Ugly but more importantly they developed they show they show plans for continuous progress what they were going to do differently for the next year and parent participation and what they expect from parents uh I think it's it's a new day because I you you you have to deal with your current reality and you know I've worked with Title One and Title One schools for years and until you deal with your current reality you really don't get better and I have to one little joke that I have with Dr mcday I think she's running

209for office because if you yes yes you are because I see if you look at the video there's one place where she's stolen Somebody's Baby and she's got this baby on her hip and I called her every time and I said what is this with the baby on the hip but the thing is that she looks very comfortable in these situations and I think everybody made note of that so I just want to say that I really enjoy going to back school night and I did some comparisons but it's really different thank you it's Neil thank you this slide shows the dropout rate by student group again you can see some disparities there again drop out rate by ethnicity moving on to a metric that we've had for a while and that's exclusionary discipline so

210we've here this shows the exclusionary discipline rates by for all students and then broken down by student race and ethnicity and also by our student subgroups Mitch Williams thank you Mr chairman um I'm just going to pause here and uh I I imagine I'm not sure if it's going to come up later now's a good time but I've been consistent in my call out for um disciplinary practices for black and brown students for economically disadvantaged students I know that it is a systemic issue and it's always been a work in progress I'm not sure if now or later is a good opportunity to address some of the changes and things that we're doing because I think it's important right our numbers um are not where they should be especially considering the pandemic we still saw

211an increase for for those that those particular groups and I think it's important that the public know that we're actively working and continuously working and evolving our practices to make this Equitable for all of our students because it's not acceptable to have a smaller portion of our population and receive more disciplinary um action than other groups so I'm not sure if now is a good time to we can address some of those things or later in the presentation but if we could speak to that I think that's important for our public to know that it is a priority and it is something that we're actively working on and we can talk a little bit about that in the next steps but we are um actively working with schools to reduce exclusionary discipline especially through restorative

212practices I know that um all of the level Associates are working with their individual schools even establishing goals within their continuous improvement work plans for those schools or who may have a significant number in terms of exclusionary discipline so it is one of the areas of focus based on the Strategic plan goals as well as you know what we're seeing in individual School communities thank you I appreciate that and I look forward to a little bit more detail so this next slide shows our our teacher retention rate for certified staff for 2122 and prior years you can see there was a drop in our teacher retention rate uh from 2021 to 2122. so our Target is 90 and for this last year we're sitting just about 90 percent a slightly new metric for us this

213year is to have our Title One Schools teacher attention rate be parallel to that of the entire division so this slide in the blue bar you see our teacher retention rate overall and the gold bar shows our title one teacher retention rate so it's about three percent off Miss wall um can I ask a question about this just really quick you said this is a new metric that correct you're doing so we don't do we know data then for like last year the year before or five years ago we were not tracking this we were not calculating correct okay okay so we'll be calculating it going forward correct thank you um also a new metric in our strategic plan is administrator retention rate we've we've set a target of 95 percent the gold bar shows

214the current administrator retention rate at the school level so that would include our principals our assistant principals and our our directors of School counseling and our directors of Student Activities and that sits at right around 90 as well this slide shows student feelings of safety as measured by our 2022 climate and climate and culture survey this is broken out by level so on the far left you can see elementary students the middle set of bars you can see our middle school students on the far right you can see our high school students the blue bar represents safety overall the gold bar represents feeling safe from bullying although those two are related we have separated them because there is a has been historically of an intensive look at bullying as something that's distinct from safety in

215this slide I found it interesting that elementary students if I'm reading it correctly feel less safe than High School has anyone is there some reason for that as has anyone looked at that what's your thoughts on that so in in terms of overall feelings safety which is the blue bar they actually feel more safe than Middle School yellow the yellow bar is safe from bullying but the yellow bar is safe from bullying yeah that's what I was looking at and so although I I don't want to hypothesize too much and go too deep one of the things that seems to surface especially when we field tested the surveys were various interpretations of of what does it mean to be bullied at the elementary level so although we provided a age-appropriate definition um sometimes that doesn't

216always resonate with our elementary students I understand thank you good answer just a quick question that that's the age group also where we start our anti-bullying education as well correct I I would have to defer to my colleagues I see him assume they're nominating in the back that's good enough for me because I think that that probably plays into it is learning what bullying is and learning how not to bully and as you it looks I mean I've been a big fan because I've seen having one who's graduated anyone who's now in elementary the difference in understanding as they matriculate through the system and also how much more prepared they are to deal with bullying and call it out as they get older so I think that that I'm I'm just guessing but I would

217think that that has an impact into what we're viewing as well so moving on to family and Community engagement so in in this commitment we're looking at engaging families as authentic Partners working collaboratively collaboratively with Community agencies and business partners to support our initiatives and ensuring honest transparent two-way communication so the main metric for for this commitment comes from our 2000 or 2022 climate and culture survey 89 percent of our families should showed high levels of family engagement and Trust on that domain so this is a survey that we are continuing to refine and make more robust it was newly developed for this year but we are confident that the information that's provided is both will be both be valuable and useful for continuing to make progress and lastly organizational coherence we're working to create

218systemic structures for strong cycles of continuous Improvement and remove barriers in communication to facilitate collaboration this is a terribly exciting slide for me um we have a goal of having a hundred percent of our schools and departments have plans that are aligned with our strategic plan and that has been accomplished all schools and departments have submitted continuous Improvement plans all those plans are aligned with the Strategic plan all of our leaders have been trained in the continuous improvement process and and these plans are currently under review and being refined um for continued Improvement in this world um this is also very exciting for me because in my time being on a school board member I think either number one or time or two uh commentary has been on organizational coherent adherent coherence excuse me and

219um I appreciate this board and this administration's absolute dedication to I'm going to borrow one of Mrs Jesse's terms the non-negotiables across the division and doing it with Fidelity and Equity so I really appreciate the side slide being in here and I really appreciate all of the work that's been done because I think that's one of the things that um our staff and our parents appreciate and it and it does dismantle that this side of the county versus that side of the county or this school versus that school mentality that we've made such a commitment to getting rid of and I really appreciate all the the hard work that's done and the fact that we we've had such a great amount of buy-in from our staff and administrators and getting this work done it's just

220it absolutely deserves commentary so thank you uh I want I want to Echo that um I think this is great and a great slide as well I agree with you this is a great slide um I um I'm curious um if it is possible for a parent to request to be able to look at what the school's plan is I'm assuming that principal advisory council is somewhere where a parent could go to find out that plan or take a look at it or maybe be aware of it I'm not sure I just want to know like is that right is it would it be a parent advisory Council or would it be like reaching out to the principal to say can I take a look at it or if they want to be a part

221of it because I think you know we gotta parents can be part of the goals too if the parents know what the goal is um that the school is working on then they can reinforce that yes so the answer is yes parent advisory Council also every school was required as a part of continuous Improvement to have a continuous Improvement team that had to consist of a diverse body of stakeholders inclusive of parents so parent voice should have been captured in the continuous Improvement the development of the plan additionally at back to school nights schools should have been sharing some of the priorities in their continuous improvement work plans as well so the answer to that question is yes but also keep it in mind that parents and community members were invited to be a part

222of the actual CI team to help develop and set goals that's great that's great I'm glad you mentioned that because I I think um that's that goes to you know our other goal which is to allow parents to have a voice and how things are going in their schools this way thank you I just want to reframe that a little bit and maybe Dr McDade you can help me I think when most parents or most citizens watch this they're thinking a continuous Improvement plan I'm just looking at a simplified document just a document right because that's what we hear or our stereotypical definition of a plan is and I think it's important to highlight that in this or circumstance the data that is shared at back to school tonight is part of that plan or

223there are other things that fit under how we Define plan but maybe someone at home watching wouldn't necessarily Define plan if you could speak to that a little bit because I think that's where we miss a lot of the parents who say but I don't know about that but you have sort of been shown that information or provided an opportunity to comment it's just from a different lens but it's included in this plan yeah so the schools do have a physical continuous Improvement plan that lays out the goals for the year that's that shows just like we went through the current state here tonight their plans show the current state of the the individual school so in back to school night every parent that attended where the school presented the data that's a part of

224the actual continuous Improvement plan that lays out the current state of the school and then goals that were shared are part of the continuous Improvement plan and even the priorities that schools identify like what they're focused on what they're going to be working on all of those components that are shared and communicated are make up the actual continuous Improvement plan to show where the priorities for the school is and the actions that they're going to be taking so Eve taking even if you know the school administration shares different programs structures for acceleration or intervention those are all a part of the actual continuous improvement work plan and not something separate and apart thank you I appreciate that and and that Dr me did it's something you monitor accountability and you look to see how they

225make progress towards their goals each year yeah so this year we're implementing um our level Associates are you know doing instructional learning rounds I matter of fact had an opportunity to attend my first one for this year at Garfield High School and as a part of the instructional rounds process the school team shares a problem of practice that's identified in their continuous Improvement plan so multiple ways for us to engage with schools and to see what's happening the level associates also will be facilitating on progress monitoring sessions with their school teams where they come and sit with the school team and review you know where they're on target or off Target with their plans where course Corrections need to be made and that'll happen at least three times for the school year a beginning of

226the year middle of the year and end of the year process foreign so there was a lot of data in those slides but we can summarize it into a few takeaways that show both areas that we've performed well and areas that we can grow in so in terms of our our performance we do see improvements in grades three through eight in reading and math performance overall especially with our Hispanic students our participation rates rebounded they they increased dramatically however the effects of the pandemic on staff and students continue to linger as Dr McDade stated they research has indicated these are going to persist for a while and these are manifesting in lower on-time graduation rates increase chronic absenteeism and it's taking its toll on academic performance also we still have access and performance gaps for

227English Learners students with disabilities and Hispanic students so we have some groups that aren't taking Advanced courses at the same rates as their peers they're not taking the SAT tests at the same rate of their peers or their growth on those tests are not the same as their peers and so those are areas that we want to continue to grow in and to talk about how we're going to take this information and and use it as part of our continuous growth cycle I'm going to turn it over to my colleagues could I um Miss Dr Neil when I was when I was doing my present during your presentation with me one of the things that I wanted to bring your attention to it was that the three the the English language students the students with

228disability Hispanic students there is also a persistent Gap with African-American students and I don't want them to get lost in the shuffle because there are some really drastic losses and but there's like a 20-point gap and I think it's there's some slides and I don't want to bring up the slide but in The Benchmark testing and the other thing that I noticed was that the the advanced students and that the advanced uh not advanced placement but Advanced performers that there's been a decline in that I think there's been maybe a tendency to teach to the middle and um you know I'm not sure about the remediation on it but the research says you accelerated not remediate but I'd like to see us develop a plan to to really improve those in those areas so thank

229you and Miss Goss is going to talk a little bit about some of the things that are already in place I do want to re-emphasize what I stated earlier in the superintendent's comment time about the fact that the current four-year strategic plan is designed to be responsive to the data that we're seeing today and so a lot of the initiatives that we started last year continuing this year and some that we're launching new this year are in direct response to the current state of the School Division and anticipated losses that we knew were coming based on a plethora of research that was already widely available about what school divisions needed to do to address the Fallout from the pandemic so we're seeing the results of that now the actual impact that has been predicted through

230the research we're seeing that come to Bear but we knew it was coming and we have been gleaning learning from the research over the last two years it informed our unfinished learning plan as well as our current four-year strategic plan so I want to make sure that we're clear to everyone that this is not an opportunity for us to now create new plans or add-on or pylon more for schools but instead to make sure that we're implementing our strategic plan with Fidelity that's been widely socialized schools have developed their continuous improvement work plans which is the local school Improvement plan based on those the strategies and initiatives in the four-year plan for this particular moment in time so just reiterating our commitment to implementing our strategic plan with Fidelity and then reminding everyone that we

231do have the two-year unfinished learning plan we're in year two of that last year was the first year we're in year two of that and so we do still have the federal stimulus dollars that supports that two-year unfinished learning plan until your appointments Jesse around acceleration The Unfinished learning plan was all about acceleration in because that's the other thing that a lot of the educational research points to that we should not spend time in remediation that's not going to get us the double-digit growth that we need to see to reduce the amount of time for recovery so I want to make that clear for our families for our Educators for our school leaders that are paying attention to so that they don't take from this that now there's going to be like new action plans

232separate and apart from what we're already doing we're going to stay the course with what we're doing because it was designed to address this moment we're in so good evening as Dr McDade said I am going to begin by talking about the next steps first with learning and achievement for all these next steps are high level prioritized levers that we believe will have significant impact on the learning of our students and closing those gaps that you saw tonight in the data and they are all aligned to the theories of action and goals and strategic priorities that we have in our strategic plan Vision 2025 launching thriving futures the first Next Step that you see here is a school leader professional learning on instructional leadership best practices for the instructional core and continuous Improvement this really

233has uh involved the re-envisioning of principal level meetings to be focused on deeper learning of instructional leadership best practices focusing on the instructional core and continuous Improvement as stated some might be wondering you know from home what is the instructional core Dr Elmore from Harvard University describes the core as the relationship between students and teachers within the presence of the content more specifically each of these elements is part of an equilateral triangle with all sides being equal and each of those elements being on each of the three points so students teachers and the content and in the center the task that students are actually doing and were assigned and so we are focused on really engaging in that looking at relative to students what is the engagement an agency that students have over their own

234learning the teacher knowledge and skill level and then content rigor and relevance you've heard Dr McDade and all of us speak about the right level of cognitive demand and the alignment to the standards and the relevance being is it relevant to the student in their life outside of school the next uh that you see around continuous Improvement planning and implementation targeting those student groups with the greatest gaps you see two of them here but like Miss Jesse said we have others we have Hispanic students black students that have gaps in their learning all schools and departments have learned and implemented a continuous Improvement planning process that included that deep dive into their school data and the division data using that data to determine the current state at each of the schools determining a desired future

235State that's aligned to the Strategic plan they conducted root cause analysis to really determine what has caused those gaps and then have developed their opportunities really to improve through goals and theories of action and those action plans that we've already spoken about tonight especially for those groups that you saw in the presentation the next one is focusing on high quality accessible core instruction for all students through Universal Design for Learning multi-tiered Systems of support and language-rich interactive environments it's it's important to note that all of these are really interwoven and connected they are not separate and apart from each other the core instruction is really that Universal instruction that all students are receiving in their courses and subjects Universal Design for Learning is a framework for really looking at and intentionally planning for instruction that

236meets the needs of the full range of Learners it helps to ensure that the learning is accessible and challenging for all students it provides a a framework for multiple means of Engagement representation of learning and action and expression in the classroom it's really the why the what and the how that it prompts teachers to think about as we intentionally plan not just for the middle as I heard someone remarked earlier but also for the students on the edges the gifted learner the advanced learner the learner who needs additional supports multi-tiered systems of support this again is a framework that really helps us identify and look at problem solving relative to student learning it helps us identify students that are in need the first part there are three tiers tier one which sometimes people may also

237refer to as good first instruction that's what all students are getting universally as I spoke about before it's the first step of any effective multi-tiered system of support is to really look and ensure that we are examining the health of that tier one the expectation is the majority of our students should be successful with that Universal learning that's happening in our classrooms hence the reason why we must make sure that we are universally designing that instruction for all Learners to meet the needs of all learners tier two is additional targeted supports we provide those to identified students again using multiple points of data who were not successful in that tier one instruction and would now need some additional help in order to to make those kinds of gains and learning that we need them to

238make usually that's provided in small group and lastly is tier three which is more intensive interventions for students who didn't successfully navigate or learn in that good first instruction that tier one that Universal instruction or the additional targeted supports and now they need additional intensive supports usually provided to individual students but sometimes in small groups and lastly is that language-rich interactive classrooms you saw tonight multiple points of data speaking about our L students right who are lagging behind the rest of our students in their academic areas but also in graduation rates and and their access to opportunities for advanced learning so one of the things that we've really been focusing on and I actually had the opportunity to be in some of that training today with our folks in teaching and learning was is around

239the seven steps to language-rich interactive classrooms these seven steps really help create the conditions for success for all of our Learners especially our multilingual learners we all know the research around students talking and writing and the importance of our students really doing the learning all students a need talking and writing as a part of their processing and their ability to build language which includes vocabulary so the seven steps really focus and help teachers build in the the processes of the steps in the room to ensure that students are getting those routines that really help every student actively engage in their learning these are really supported by the research Hattie's meta-analysis talks about the effect size the high effect size of clear goals teacher Clarity reflection and evaluation especially on the parts of students and so

240these steps Encompass that those the steps include things such as having structured conversations for all students to participate in structured reading and writing activities using random ways to call on students and invite them to participate having students speak in complete sentences and use the academic vocabulary one of the pieces that was being stressed today was that we don't want we want to always use the highest level of academic vocabulary we don't want to simplify it to the point that it has lost that level of rigor that level of cognitive demand and so we are working to ensure that we are challenging all students um to rise to that level of learning that we need them to have to succeed in that grade level learning the last part is that Norm facilitation of instructional rounds that

241you heard Dr McDade speak about tonight and that norming of practice which is a way for us to systemically monitor the Integrity of teaching and learning that health of the teaching and learning happening in our classrooms instructional rounds is a non-evaluative way for us as Educators to study and learn more about the teaching and learning and the health of that it is modeled after after medical rounds so medical learning rounds involve a network of doctors going from Patient to Patient talking about what they're seeing in the data for the patient and thinking through the best way to approach uh getting the patient healthy so as a as as such our network of Educators come together from school and Personnel teachers leaders essential office folks um to visit and observing classrooms to focus on that problem

242of practice that was identified through those continuous Improvement plans remember earlier I said about everything being woven together so there's this tight alignment to that continuous improvement process and everything that we've placed in the Strategic plan in order to promote us reaching those goals that we've set for all of our students so as they go in and look at the instruction they just they come out of their describing what they saw in non-evaluative terms so we're not saying something is good or bad or or the like thereof we're really what do we see in here what do we hear the teacher do and say what did we see T the students doing and saying what do we see relative to the content and importantly what did we see with the task because the task ultimately

243predicts performance and so they Analyze That collected data they determine Trends across classrooms in the school and then the team that network of Educators recommends next level of work for our teachers and leaders in the school but also at the division these are really powerful opportunities for the division to see Trends across classrooms and across schools across levels even so that we can better and more effectively provide the supports and services that our schools need to get better at getting better and again all of this is based on Research we have based it on I'll just to name a few the meta-analysis of John Hattie Marzano Harvard University's Graduate School of Education work with Dr Elmore Doug Fisher Nancy Fry's work Stetson and Associates for inclusive practices and of course we're also utilizing Dr Carol

244Salva who is identified by the state as one of the Premier experts in multilingual education um Miss wall has a question thank you for going through each one of these steps because I feel like I have a better understanding and I know that's probably going to be beneficial to parents and others even maybe even teachers who are listening um so so can I ask a clarifying question sure so with instructional rounds um it sounds to me like I was under the impression that it would be feedback for that particular teacher that was being observed but it sounds to me like it's more of a tool for Gathering like this is what we're seeing in this classroom etc etc and then that what is seen across schools and grade levels or whatever you're doing is brought

245back and then you're looking for Trends and and ways things that you can do to improve overall is that correct I mean does that teacher get that feedback at all or or the teacher who's doing the observing does the teacher who is a actually I see there's a great benefit in actually watching people teach um but because you you learn like what a great idea I could try that in my classroom but I'm assuming that's probably one of the collateral benefits right but am I correct in assuming that it's not necessarily for that particular teacher but it's a little bit more of a way to gather and monitor the quality of teaching in the division you are absolutely correct so we're not giving individual teacher feedback what we are giving right is feedback about the

246instruction right around the problem of practice for example let's say we're focusing because the problem practice has something to do with our students not doing as well in math instruction right in their math learning and we went to math classes across all of the sixth grade math and seventh grade math then we would come back right and see what did we see right in the way of teaching and when we analyze that data we look at those those research-based best practices you know what was happening what wasn't happening what would we expect the learning of students to be based on what we saw in the classroom and as such right we're making recommendations for the school relative to the instruction that we saw law not just focus on on one teacher there's other processes where

247we give individual feedback to teachers and coach and and do that through the supervision and evaluation process but also through the support process at central office where we have instructional coaches and others go in and work one-on-one with with teachers and then I'll just add a little bit there on um tying this back to the continuous Improvement plan what it also does is it gives school teams data to show whether or not some of the strategies that they've enacted are actually taking root if they're working so for example the school that I visited they had done some extensive work to address their problem of practice and they saw they were seeing from the learning realm process and the trends that came from that where they were making progress and should stay the course and even

248expand that into other areas other content areas in the school okay thank you that that's really informative um so not only just you know it sounds like it's real Gathering of data and that we can pivot on that very quickly and correlate that data with that actual that school's actual plan so I expect we're going to see great results from this it I mean it has right it has the potential to be really powerful powerful yeah and it also helps us really understand what the numbers actually mean right in reference to the teaching and learning that's happening in classrooms Miss Williams and then miss Jesse or Miss Jesse and the Miss Williams uh they're uh the John had a meta-analysis research I understand that Kerry I didn't know that there was a actual uh project

249or how he's translated that into actual practices until I went to kerrydale are there can you tell me a little bit about kerrydale with with not a lot but just a general idea and are there other schools I I don't think we're prepared to talk about individual schools today just because we might not know what every school is doing individually every school's continuous Improvement plan looks a little bit different depending on the data for this I was just interested in the John Ed are there other schools doing this also I'm not sure I'm not sure if we've collected that kind of if we've done that kind of assessment it was up for an award I think is there another school so we we have a number of schools that are using um John Hattie's visible

250learning uh research and so um I believe that school plus a number of them have gone to that training and participated in that training so you'll see evidence of visible learning in The meta-analysis Invisible learning across the division at different schools and we'll try to we can follow up too to let you know the exact number of schools okay all right we just don't have the exact number we're doing it and you're talking about research-based practices I'm glad to see that thank you so the next slide I'm going to invite my colleague Mrs hebner up to talk about that thank you so I'm honored to be here and represent our entire team and the work that's being done across the division in our departments and share some of the next steps related to inform our

251actions in the positive climate and culture area I believe we all agree that there's a strong connection to student attendance and correlation with engagement for students at schools and a sense of belonging and feeling safe so in addition to the Prince William Kelly heels initiative that you heard about at one of our previous meetings there are many strategies in our thriving future strategic plan for ensuring that our staff and students have a positive experience in Prince William County schools our staff and student safety and well-being is a priority our team and risk management continues to enhance their security measures by conducting trainings of security personnel and School staff and by working to refine our crisis protocols additionally we've increased our staffing to include the addition of security staff at the elementary level and there's a

252noticeable difference in increased visibility of security during the school day and at after school events this is achieved through the implementation of uniforms for security staff as well as the establishment for protocols and increase Staffing at events in addition to our students physical safety the emotional and mental health is a concern that we recognize needs to be addressed and our mental health professionals are ensuring that we're following up with parents on the needs assessment that our students completed at the start of the year as a result our school mental health professionals are partnering with parents to determine the supports such as individual AIDS counseling or group counseling we're actively monitoring and collaborating across multiple departments to create and utilize a dashboard the system will help us analyze student attendance as the data to anticipate rates

253and to project and prioritize interventions for potential dropouts our goal is to know our students by name and by need and to have a personalized plan to meet each of their needs attendance matters is a public relations campaign I hope you've seen and will be continued to be deployed throughout the 22-23 school year and we're monitoring our unexcused absences by our School attendance officers and our students are at the greatest risk of exiting education prior to receiving a diploma are being assigned support Corps members and team counselors in order to ensure their needs are being met collaborating across the central office departments to clearly Define opportunities for credit recovery remediation Alternative Learning options and better utilizing existing resources to track risk factors is in action so that we can proactively prevent dropouts and attendance chronic

254chronic attendance problems so looking at the implementation of some HR initiatives under the leadership of Donna Eagle in Human Resources our initiatives include our Prince William leads which ensures that we have a Criterion instruments that are used in our selection process professional development and offerings and other systems of leadership that are in alignment with the leads competency model we continue the implementation of our launching our leadership capacity which is a robust curriculum which is designed to ensure ensure we have Future Leaders and Inspire leaders continuing our implementation of the launching thriving careers launching thriving careers which includes enhancement of the new administrator institutes and multi-leadership year multi-year leadership assessments and academies formal and informal mentoring and coaching we continue our implementation of initiatives to increase certified applicant pool we want our children to see themselves

255reflected in our staff in the school buildings so we continue our work on redesigning our selection process to include protocols and tools and professional learning opportunities that are designed to promote the selection of the most qualified candidates reduced bias and increase efficiency beginning in the um we're beginning to plan the you belong here a comprehensive diversity initiative and inclusion Equity organizational development initiative through this initiative Prince William County will ensure that our leaders are creating inclusive cultures within their school buildings that will positively impact the climate and culture and employee morale we're disaggregating and analyzing employee statistics regarding satisfaction and retention by department and school level and the data will be shared and informed with administrators about employees and satisfaction and retention rates teach Prince William County schools as a robust strategic initiative that's building

256a deeper certified applicant pool to reflect the rich diversity was already within our schools and in our County through an umbrella umbrella of programs designed to increase the number of Highly qualified teachers we want our students to see themselves represented in the diversity of our staff we continue the expansion to grow our own program which is an additional program in our high schools to reach the goal by and to have one in all high schools by 2025 and we continue to expand our existing Partnerships with over 50 colleges and universities we're continuing with our teachers to teach our assistance program to provide support and financial assistance to our teaching assistants who are interested in joining the workforce as certified staff in regards to our school-based administrators we continue to provide I'm sorry in in to

257implement disciplinary supports this will be your favorite Miss Williams and interventions we have continued our trainings on our coded Behavior we're looking at our documentation the accuracy and the coding so that we can use that for prevention and intervention purposes identifying supports for kids prior to incidents but then actually putting in processes to help them learn from their their incidents we integrate The Healing Center engagement specialist into our student management alternative Department program process so when kids have a disciplinary infraction we're wrapping around the families we're helping the kids learn from their situation and hopefully not repeat this the goal is to keep the kids in school and help them Reach the finish line additionally go ahead thanks I just I may have short-circuited you but I just also want to ask if we are

258also addressing this too from a staff perspective and shifting um how we welcome students back after they've had a situation into our school field and and what we're doing to address sort of a um an older stereotype I'll say it that way where when a student gets in trouble that then they are sort of flagged for the rest of their academic career as being a student who's known for getting in trouble and I think that's a key component too when we welcome our students back from having situations our staff perception I've seen a change in that so I want to I want to highlight that because it's very important right because if a student doesn't feel welcome when they come back from having a disciplinary issue they're less likely to stay so I want to

259note that we have made progress but I think that's an important component to that process as well I appreciate you recognizing that and it's partially the work of our Healing Center engagement Specialists our support core counselors who engage with the families but also a lot of hard work by our team it's mapped and also the teams in the schools we're recruit increasing our communication looking at what kids need when they re-enter the building we're tracking we're a little bit tighter on our communication between the the buildings and we're seeing increased um success of our kids when they return so the whole goal when we talk about restorative practices it's important to note that there are disciplinary consequences there are things that occur in school so restorative practices has two aspects of it it can be

260preventative so that we help build understanding tolerance and skills so that kids can resolve conflict positively but it's also after the hospital situation where sanctions occur that we put healing practices in place because those children are still in our school building and they need to learn from that situation and resolve that conflict so we are working to implement our restorative practices at the division level as well and finally we have our ongoing refinement and progress monitoring of all departments and our school's continuous Improvement plans oh was that a hint I think I think the next slide actually is on to you Rita yeah okay okay and so that that is the conclusion of all of the positive climate and culture there we go thank you so family and Community engagement as all of you know

261is an important extremely par important part of us reaching the goals of our strategic plan and uh so you see here again four levers that we believe uh will have high impact on really uh improving those relationships with our family and community and engaging them in ways that are the authentic Partnerships that you've heard Dr McDade speak about many times about giving the Knowledge and Skills and tools to parents to support their learners but also giving them what they need to hold us accountable for what we've put in our strategic plan uh we you saw earlier this year we conducted annual uh community events for our families where we make connections with our families connected our families to supports and services here in the school division but also within the community and um it's how

262we will continue to collaborate with our business partners and Community agencies to really wrap around our families and work together as a school community uh structured back to school nights I've heard some of you already speak about the change in back to school nights in which our schools shared the current reality as Mrs Jesse says the good the bad the ugly and also how they're responding um to the data and what they're going to do to make a difference in those gaps right those achievement gaps and opportunity gaps that you saw tonight in the presentation but also our parent and teacher conferences how we're structuring those to focus again on on student progress in arm our parents with the information they need right to ask the right questions about what's happening with their student and

263holding us accountable for helping their student reach the goals that they have and the student has for themselves and you may have also noticed that we added middle schools to the same date that elementaries used to have conferences so we have conferences at every level so we have middle school and Elementary conferences coming up just making a plug for those on October 31st and we've already had touch base conferences for the high school earlier this month and then finally launching School status a two-way communication tool for between the teacher and the parent communication that's automatically translated into home languages whatever home language has been selected by the family that they would like to receive Communications in this school status will translate the message so parents again have access to the information they need to Advocate

264and support their student at school and lastly Miss Huebner is going to share about organizational coherence so the ongoing refinement and progress monitoring of all department and school continuous Improvement plans is a key piece we have all these great really specific plans using the data and the strategies that we put in place but the monitoring will be the key to determine the effectiveness and the Fidelity of the implementation of these plans so we have highlighted the previously that each school does have a targeted continuous plan and a reflection on the individual School data that occurred in order for those strategies to be developed and this is where we'll focus on the special needs of those specific populations that you saw in some of the slides um you know as a reminder the specific targeted strategies

265will be in place um and will be monitored continuously at the school level and at the division level and you will receive updates on those oh thank you the key to success um will definitely be the partnership between our school teams and our central office additionally we're implementing a vision-wide customer service customer relationship management platform and deploying to customer service model in the division our executive staff our senior leadership team key members of our offices and departments have participated in this professional development and contributed actually specifically to the development of this plan and this service model so our goal is that all stakeholders receive a high level of customer service specifically our students we all come to work each day for our students they're with matter and so you'll see that through our service to

266our students and our stakeholders as well so be on on behalf of our entire executive cabinet I want to share a commitment to creating a thriving future for all of our students and thank you for your time okay thank you Mr uh Miss Jackson um I don't have a question specifically for you miss him no but I just want to say I really appreciate um the time that everybody put into this and um the transparency that was tonight and also at the back to school meetings I got this back to school and I got to see a lot of the data um I also appreciated the dialogue and preparation for this meeting and I have heard from parents about being included in this Sip and the strategies and the interventions that we talked about I

267just I appreciate that you connected it to the research as a reminder that there's you know there's research-based decisions being made um I just want to just touch on a few things and I'll try to be quick um given that meals were free I've been concerned about the impact of applications for Aid this year whether or not they've gone up or down so I'm not not now but at a later time can we have an update on the number of students um considering that we are tracking students who are economically disadvantaged and it also impacts funding and access to food and I just want to reiterate my support for a data point back on the graduation rates for students again not now but later for students who are given extra time you know like the

268one for IEPs and El students to see you know are they graduating um and I'm going back to when there was a discussion about uh what we saw growth about the plans after graduation and I'm trying to figure out what slide that was everybody was talking about it and then I should have commented at that time I apologize but they were talking about plans for um for students that uh that included a community transition services I think and at some point it would be nice to learn more about what that is entailed because I have talked to parents of special needs students or parents students who see special education and um who have already graduated and they often say the phrase that they graduated to the couch so um and I know some of that

269is you know the services in the community outside of us or I just I would love to learn more about that outside of this conversation that's slide 32. thank you yeah slide 32 and um it's just I just appreciate the transparency and the areas that we talked about for Boom for growth so thank you Miss Williams thank you um I just want to comment and and really um praise all of the hard work and um Dedication that this Administration has demonstrated um I've said consistently I know since 2017 that we are have have been understaffed and we added more positions as so every time we fill them we continue to add more which benefit our School Division but I I don't think that the the public watching really understand the amount of work that comes

270in that goes into making this presentation and all the work that goes behind it um to get us here tonight and I know it's only 62 sides and it seems like it's a an attorney because it's really late but you do deserve your kudos for all of your hard work and especially for the amount of pivoting and transition that's been done after a pandemic with only one year at this Administration under its current leadership if you don't get credit and create praise anywhere else you definitely deserve it tonight that's a lot of work especially for division so large and we've consistently heard it takes an eternity for a division of the size to make these kinds of leaps and you've done it in such a short time frame and continue to do it and I

271just wanted to make sure I took time out to say thank you to everyone because it makes a difference no matter where you are in this this level whether you're the superintendent or the custodial or the bus driver or the teacher in the classroom the teacher aide or the instructional coach every single person um makes a difference in making this plan work so I just wanted to say thank you and then I have one ask not for tonight for later um at another time if we could just get a little bit more information on how we plan on um retaining our teachers at our Title One schools that's a significant interest to me because I think I have the most Title One schools and our Title One school um list continues to grow like for

272example Garfield is the second high school that's a title one school so I think that's of interest to our community how we plan to do that so not now but later thank you Miss Jesse uh I'm here all of my questions no I'm only kidding ah I did I want to thank you for the comprehensive report this is probably the most comprehensive report I've ever seen and it has data and it has plans for responding to data uh Rita you know always ask for the smart goals and the smart goals were there and I want to thank you for that and I also want to thank you for providing the extra time the one-on-one hour it really made a difference because that way you could just the things that were specifically your questions that you

273could ask I really appreciated that I did ask for some I have two Title One schools now so I did ask for can we get a report on just Title One schools because I'd like to know those are the schools that I'm really more it's not that I'm not concerned about the other schools but I would like to have a title one reported sometime but uh I I'm just very impressed and the back to school nights were very very different and I really and I think the parent education part is very important because I notice I think the research shows it too that parents even in schools where you're not performing at a level that you've got really short grabs you got those I told little teeny weeny graphs that the parents are still they're

274just happy to have their kids in school and I think we need to teach your parents how to be Advocates and ask questions so I just want to thank you guys you ready Miss wall all right thank you everybody actually I really enjoy this topic so it's been really fun um and I loved I also made a huge list of questions um I'm not going to ask them all tonight I know some of them were answered in the presentation which I appreciate and I know there are probably some answers that I can still get but for the sake of time I'm just going to ask a couple questions Mike I appreciate everybody's efforts and I really like how we are bringing to Bear the data in an individual School level and that we're working together

275as a team to like improve all these divisional scores but I I really appreciate this whole setup um or how this this how we're going to tackle our problems my first question is I recognize um that our school our struggling schools have need attention I mean this data tonight didn't focus in particular on schools um but I see you know even this in my my district I have some schools that are high performing schools and some schools that don't perform quite as well for various reasons um I and I also see that some of our high achieving schools could do so much better so I sometimes get on the rankings and I look at neighboring jurisdictions and I see how well highly ranked some of those high schools are that are not very far from

276us you know I think what's how can we get there how can we get our great schools to be even better and get you know get that recognition or earn that recognition I should say um and so I I would be interested in what our thoughts are for how we can do that and I'm assuming it's the continuous Improvement plans but I'm assuming also that continuous Improvement plans Focus kind of on the gaps you know kind of filling the gaps which is appropriate and we definitely should do that but like what do they also push schools to say like look we have all these kids that are like you know scoring really high on the SAT or something like that why are they not National Merit Scholars or why are they not you know getting

277into the I don't know I don't know what I'm saying why are they not in all these AP glasses or you know why are they not taking advantage of all these other things um do you see kind of where I'm going with this like I really feel like there's an upper limit that we are not really we haven't in the past I should say really reached for um we close gaps and we focus on gaps which is 100 appropriate and don't anybody misunderstand me but I feel like there's so there is further that we can go and I'm assuming that's captured in our continuous Improvement plans as well not just closing gaps but also like pushing kids to really reach um that's my question so the criteria in terms of um when you look at

278the continuous Improvement plan the goal here is for each individual school to identify where there are problems of practice meaning that for example if you look at our end of year goals for the school division where we may say we want 85 percent of students being at or above proficiency well we've got schools that are already there so now they can't put that as a goal because they know they've already met that goal so many of those schools now in their continuous Improvement plans you'll see they're focusing on past Advance right they're recognizing that their goals have to look different depending upon your starting point and that's the beauty of school Improvement School Improvement planning requires that you conduct an analysis of your current state with all available data to then determine where you are

279in an area of needed Improvement right so if meeting proficiency is that the area of needed Improvement and past Advance may be as well as identifying gaps which is why you'll see schools some of those higher performance schools that you're talking about are a part of our new initiative equal opportunity schools with a goal to specifically increase the percentage of students who may be accessing advanced placement or IB coursework or dual enrollment so you'll see the it's not a it's not a boilerplate or template for the actual plan itself the components are Universal across and normed across the School Division but every school's priorities is based on their current data that they have that shows them where they're missing the mark and so those higher performing schools that you're speaking of they they know that

280they've got to not only move the needle in terms of gaps in subgroups they also recognize that they have to move the needle in advancing students who are already meeting proficiency and that's true for all schools like all schools are focused on not just meeting but ensuring we're increasing the number of students that are at past Advanced as well well thank you that's great to hear and I I think that hopefully we'll see good results from that um can I ask an additional question yeah um my I'm I'm curious I think it was five slides 35 36 although the numbering might have been uh adjusted just a little bit so it might be off but it's about the decrease in percentage of students completing Advanced or dual enrollment courses and my question was just a

281little bit more of like informational did we offer fewer courses overall did we change the prerequisites or the qualifications for enrolling in a dual enrolled course or did we in like did we Implement tighter controls or who could enroll in it I mean is that the cause of for why those numbers went down um or and I guess the corollary question is if a student enrolls in a de or an AP course um and then they kind of hit that first mid-term I guess you know it gets hard um do we do we generally encourage them to kind of stick it out for at least a quarter or a semester and kind of help them work through it or do I mean or does that depend on the school do we let them drop out

282easily um or do we do we over have what kind of oversight do we have those are a lot of questions but that's okay let me let me try to just unpack what what you were asked about so first and foremost we we did not offer fewer classes um now it is true that uh it appears that we had fewer students right interested in taking those those classes do we have a specific reason uh no we don't have one specific reason but I think we can surmise that coming out of the pandemic we had a number of students who are maybe not feeling as confident in their learning as they felt be prior to the pandemic and so we can assume right that that's maybe perhaps is a contributing factor to that um we we

283could have had fewer sections right if you have fewer students you you may have fewer sections of those of those courses but we didn't change any of the qualifications uh we didn't add any additional restrictions to try to keep students out uh we didn't do anything like that you mentioned about that whole thing around you know if a student is not doing well do we try to encourage them well you've heard Dr McDade speak about it you've heard I'll speak about it before and that's about persistence right and we know that if a student persists past that first quarter that they have a much higher higher likelihood of of being successful in in that advanced course so one of the things that we continue to strive I know my colleagues behind me do and those

284of us in teaching and learning is to encourage that our schools right are not only getting kids access to those Advanced courses but we're providing the supports necessary for them to stay there and be successful and that's certainly something that you know Dr McDade has spoken about to our principals before about ensuring that as we expand opportunities for kids that we also expand the ways in which we're supporting students so that they can persist in those Advanced courses and be successful that's fantastic because I I mean I know those are hard courses and it can be daunting to take them and then you know they might want to jump out but you know if they do if kids do persist and we support them it can be like powerful a very powerful affirming process and

285help them get ready for college and advanced studies and they can learn something about that they that they never knew something about themselves that they never they never knew so I'm glad to hear I'm glad to hear that um and I also do think that the pandemic might be have might have affected children's confidence and and they might not maybe understand the waiting that we give at more advanced courses that we wait a more advanced course more heavily so that a be in that class is equivalent to an a in a gen ed class but I'm a firm believer that a student should take the most challenging class that they can handle with effort and you you heard absolutely and you heard Dr McDade speak about equal opportunity schools and so that's that's an initiative

286a strategic initiative um at our high schools um but the other piece of it right is that we're also talking to our teachers and leaders that um getting uh increased access to Advanced uh courses really starts right we are Pre-K 12 school system and so we build uh the skills early in our students to be able to to reach those those levels of of coursework and so it's not just a high school issue right it's something that we're working on across the division from preschool all the way to grade 12. thank you hey um I just got a couple quick ones just on the uh chronic absenteeism have we seen Improvement in the first quarter do we know I mean last year was pretty bad so someone monitoring it on a daily basis to see

287if we're having any Improvement so the the challenge with chronic absenteeism is it's based on the number of days that you've been enrolled and so at this point in the year uh 36 days 37 Days somewhere in there if you've been absent four days you're considered chronically absent so right now The Chronic absentee numbers look really high however individual absences are being looked at so we're still seeing the same kind of pattern as last year is that what you're saying uh no I think it's too early to determine if we have that same pattern based on The Chronic absenteeism numbers because that that number um shifts at this point if you missed three days because you've been sick with the flu you could be considered chronically absent even though you're not part of that regular

288power sure but if it's at the ratio of like 20 or whatever you can't really we can't really it's not like an Apples to Apples comparison from what we're giving you is the the foods yeah View to now with a limited number of days into the school year to be able to say that it's the same or different we we would really just be you know hypothesized but but I assume there's somebody in each School monitoring this and looking at those kids and saying hey calling home and figuring out so Dr Latif I I assure you okay there is a hyper focused good attendance this year and I plan to deliver we have a very um okay full-on effort in place and you will be very pleased because I will not let down you're going

289to their houses yourself to drive if I have to go and knock on the door myself kids will come to school so we're on it you can come to our house and drag my kids out anytime yes and we have a lot of systems in place to help schools monitor so I think you're going to be very pleased outstanding and um so so I know Jen Wall asked the question that you know Dr McDade and I want to talk about but it's you know as it's it it really is and if you if you look at our strategic plan it really is layered in in there so the commitment to all students and moving the needle at all levels you know and I worry and I think Miss wall and I both share children the

290same ages and we're you know they're in the we're in the middle of this college application process which is sort of you know very challenging and and you know as you as you talk to admissions officers around the country right and with this test optional stuff which jacks up a level of anxiety to a whole another level because do I submit the score do I not submit the score you know um you know admissions officers are saying different things but if we are moving towards that the one thing they are looking as your transcript they're looking at your rigor of coursework they're looking at what you chose to do you know the elite schools are saying did you take advantage of all the opportunities that were given to you if you didn't you know how

291do we know you're going to take advantage of opportunities at our college right and so so they look at that and and these are this is what real admissions officers are saying right in that UVA will you marry you know that's you know Georgetown that's your you know the IVs whatever your top 50 publics right they're all looking at those things so so it does raise a level of anxiety and so as you know and I'm very glad to hear you know we honored the gentleman from Battlefield and those courses and and I know we've always tried to have a robust level of courses but but it is important and I I do appreciate Dr McDade the work that you know you're demanding each of the schools to move that needle at all levels because

292that is really the critical work for for everybody everyone has to you know all boats have to rise and it is really important and so I really appreciate that and so I won't go any further on that and then the last issue I have but I it's just I that is something we do need to really pay close attention to um the um yeah so it you know you reminded me Miss Goss when you said that you know we're layering on you know you don't get to take an advanced course in high school unless you were doing well in middle school and elementary school and you know we're trying to build that up and and this is where you know I'll I'll sort of echo Mr wilk's statement from the last meeting about homework you

293know I I do I I just very personal and I'm not an educator nor do I you know claim to be one or you know um but I I do I do I do feel the level of rigor at the elementary school you know can can be looked at and and the the homework or the kinds of work you know and and I know Dr Waltz was fond of saying you know it's the right kind of work you know it wasn't necessarily homework it was you know what are we making them do and and and I and I I just I in my mind I I really would encourage everyone to to look at are we challenging those students enough are we doing enough are are we doing enough to challenge them and and I

294and I think that's important because I do believe students have far more capability resiliency than sometimes we give them credit for I know Miss Jesse talks about this a lot if we don't set the bar High you know we're not going to get high you know high high levels of achievement so now I don't mean to be on a soapbox but this is a concern that I that I live with that it really does concern me and when Mr Wilk went um and talked about this the other night it you know reminded me of this sort of issue that that I've had concerns over for a long time I I don't think there's anything wrong giving homework I just let me go on the record with that you know that that I think we need

295to be very aggressive about it and and and and you know um because the problem is our students show up at Middle School where the homework jacks up and they weren't used to doing it in elementary school and then you get them to high school where they jump into an AP class and Bam they get hit with a bunch of homework and they have it it's like asking someone to do 100 push-ups after you've only asked them do seven every night and I mean this we have to build this and and that's going to have it'll lower your dropout rate in those advanced classes that'll that that'll increase confidence levels you know homework is more than just homework it's really about you know learning the habits of mind right that's in our what's our line

296our mission you know our first line so so I I'll get off my homework box but um I'm coming yes oh yeah yes I haven't talked so I'm gonna jump in here um a couple things I was thinking so a lot of stuff um that chance was saying up on the dice about college career Readiness I think is um is accurate across the board and I know we've made a concerted effort to hire college career Readiness counselors and stuff like this I would like to we have a lot of great tools to leverage for this we have obviously Naviance we have other programs we have different tutoring and other resources that kids can access I would like to see a centralized repository of resources and help videos just walking through little mini lessons as Refreshers

297uh you know I was I was you know talking to chance and I was like a lot of it doesn't really have to be recreated you can Google online and get on YouTube all these different videos of different districts posting videos on how to use Naviance to the full effect or how to use another program or different activities and things like that I I think that would be good and something that again we don't have to necessarily rely on every building to create their own but give the college career Readiness counselors the ability to collaborate in there and share the resources amongst all the students of our division no matter which of the high schools they attend um another thing I'll go back to homework in a sec but I'll go back on my soapbox

298of College and Career Readiness which again I think begins at elementary school um and and I I like our concerted effort to now we're starting to see you know the whole uh transformation of Education was to start taking those shop classes in Middle School what 10 15 years ago and remodel them and turn them into something else but now we're bringing them back and bringing back to CTE and exploring that early on in middle school I think is great and I think more programs starting even in potentially Elementary School for early exposure to some of the trades and other career alignment and stuff like that would be very important I think with this I'd like to see I know I didn't jump in every you know a slide or something like that but I was

299thinking when we were talking about those College indicators and stuff like that I would really like to see how that aligns and how we can make that go with our profile of a graduate what are the qualities are the identifiers that we have I know we already have them posted or what makes a Prince William profile of a grad graduate but what in that data can we extrapolate and put onto that and find out what are how are we succeeding I guess in the sense of College and Career Readiness in developing that profile leveraging this data in our metrics I just think it'd be kind of a nice alignment to see how we're doing with that and then going back to homework I mean I brought that up I think looking and reviewing the homework

300policy is important um but one thing as chance said when you go and visit your schools and actually go during the day and you have had that luxury to be able to walk around and see classes and talk to principals at one of my last visits a principal who watches us as a lot of them do heard me and was like one thing feedback for you is teacher having to give meaningful feedback on these assignments and the bandwidth and the work and stuff like that so I think we have to think about that as well of what designates meaningful feedback if they're going through and like checking off and putting a star maybe on certain things that's applicable but then if they're doing more of you know writing assignments and stuff like that what is

301Meaningful feedback on those because you know I don't want to just say homework for the sake of saying we need to give kids homework which I do believe rigor is very important um with that but I also think it's expanding cross-curricular activities I for the life of me I don't I would love to see more and again I have not been in you know I've not been in and taught a class for nine years almost now so I've been out of it right but I do believe there's the ability especially as we start kind of with the scheduling and stuff or teams in middle school or sometimes I noticed that one elementary teacher does math science one does social studies in English different programs and stuff like that I'd really like to see writing incorporating

302more into all subject areas I just for the life of me like when I used to Proctor SATs and acts for extra money as a teacher I saw really as things were going where it became my first year doing it kids were writing that statement in cursive and I'm not saying you know but my point is by the end of it by year five they couldn't do it anymore they have to take that part off the SAT or act now to have kids write a statement because our kids don't know how to write in cursive and and I I mean I'm not saying that's the end-all be-all of life and stuff like that I do believe it's important to know how to sign your name and stuff like that but again you know just an

303idea of kind of how things are changing I just think it's very important and we're we're missing out on some key areas where we can adopt and put five paragraph essays in any component of the core subject areas in Middle School uh incorporate you know I one big thing I've noticed I I've emailed you guys before and stuff like that but I I as I go different rooms I understand there's different different um different programs in our elementary schools and stuff but I I never see spelling words I never see kids working on specifically spelling and stuff and I know we're on word processors and I mean I'm guilty of it there's a lot of words I just type real quick sound it out and then I you know edit it but I I guess

304I think basic just components of spelling grammar those are things I'd like to see kind of embedded back into some of the programs if already not there but duchess Barbara got me going so I appreciate that just you know the biggest tragedy on the the Sol reform and Innovation which I know I don't I I can't speak for Miss Jesse but I know she was on at the time and they and she opposed the getting rid of the writing SOL at the fifth grade I thought was a mistake I thought that was a big mistake they shouldn't have gotten rid of that writing as well it wasn't because the Educators wanted it done it was political because all the research shows that writing non-fiction writing is critical and kids should start writing at kindergarten and

305I know Rita knows this you know we used to do the writing and early writing and uh we're not doing it and by the way the Jesse girls cannot do cursor very well and I felt very guilty I thought really you didn't teach him how to write and one kid said to uh Anita flemons he said you know you guys didn't teach me how to write and she said well why you're so upset he said because they asked me to sign my name on a check and I couldn't write it and curse it and they just insisted that it'd be done in cursive so there is this thing about kids who can't even sign their names but I think it's getting late and we're getting off topic okay sorry we'll go to miss we'll go

306to Miss Williams and then miss Jesse had just for the for everyone who's staying late and I do appreciate you know all the folks that have stuck in with us but miss Jesse had made a recommendation if the board is not opposed to it I I think we can suspend board matters for the members and then consider doubling that time at the next meeting but that's a thought but I mean I only say that because some of my stuff is date sensitive but that's not what I was going to talk about okay so I just want to remind um uh our current some of our board members and our listening public that we do have things that go across uh grade levels and across subject matters Makerspace ideas are are um one of the things

307that has been utilized before to to take one subject and move it across different grade levels and different subject matters so I don't want that to be forgotten because I know we still have maker spaces I think it's also important to note that like I I know you didn't grow up here Justin but like I've always had shop and stuff so like that's not new and I don't want us to get off on a tangent or encourage people to suddenly think that like we did something new I'm not correcting I'm just saying like we've always had shopping and I understand the expansion through High School but even when I was a student back in the dinosaur days we had like cosmetology and all these courses so I think the evolution of them is important to

308know but I don't want people to think like we just started that and I oh okay yeah well we went to different formatting so because like some some kids didn't always have music or that whatever okay so and I also wanted to um just comment a little bit about some of the survey things Miss while I was referring to and note to the public that they're also dependent on public input and parent input and whoever the survey gets to at the building um and we don't get credit for any of our um CTE programming in those surveys so that also affects like where we are on our Niche um the niche ratings and good schools and all of that because a lot of times parents will say well this school isn't good and I'll say

309well you also have to look at who put in that data because it's not just us as a School Division it's other interpersonal experiences that make the the difference on whether a school is rated high or low and sometimes you go in there they don't have the right addresses and things so I think that's important to note for the public that's not the only source you should be looking at to determine whether our school is performing well or not and when it comes to homework if we do decide to undertake those things I would also like current research to be presented to this board because I think we need to keep in mind the evolution that we are educating students for a world we don't live in and it's important to be mindful of that

310um and also for our parents to understand that too because some of the things that we believe are important is because of our experience and the time that we went to school that may not be relevant for our students moving forward and there are some things that may still always be relevant but I think we should look at it holistically I'm a huge fan of that as an integrative studies person um so I I just think if we go down that path let's try to present a holistic View and be mindful that there will always be experiences that we as adults cherish or or feel that are valued but the Next Generation it may be Irrelevant for them so I don't want us to go to backtrack that's all thank you at this point we

311can go to board matters if Miss Williams you'd like to go just really quickly and Skip all the other stuff and do it later I just want people to know that tomorrow night uh the racial and Social Justice Commission will meet at 6 pm at the McCourt building um and please tune in um be there in person or tune in there's plenty of things that are discussed and again I am the representative so I will be present for that um and the only other thing that's time sensitive that I wanted to talk about was the specialty night program information nights I know high school is going to be 10 27 and middle school is 10 25. um the the rest of it I think can wait in for another opportunity so thank you does anyone

312else want to make comment if if not if everyone's good with it sure why don't you go ahead and do that go for it just uh really quickly I just want to thank custodians and um all bus and transportation employees just for everything that they do to keep our students safe and for supporting instruction and so what I would recommend at the next meeting I don't think that's scheduled to go super long but but um you can have added time at that meeting and and go over stuff as long as the board's not opposed to that okay at this point the meeting is adjourned thank you everyone for staying coming we really truly appreciate it