Prince William County School Board Meeting - March 16, 2022

001i would like to call this meeting the prince william county school board order pursuant to school board policy 139 school board member participation and meetings by electronic communication school board member diane ralston will participate um in this meeting through electronic means from her home due to medical condition that prevents her physical attendance the clerk will so note in the minutes of the meeting emotions in order for the approval of the closed session agenda ms jackson thank you i moved that the prince william county school board approved the closed session agenda as recommended do i have a second mr chairman uh miss williams second any discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes miss ross votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed moving on to motion enter closed session emotions and

002order miss jackson thank you dr chief i move that pursuant virginia code section 2.2-3711 and 2.2 3712 the princeton county school board enter a closed session for the following reasons one to discuss with the superintendent and staff the resignation performance discipline appointment and release of specific employees and to receive advice on related legal issues as provided by virginia code section 2.2-3711a 1 and 8. 2. to review and take action on the disciplinary appeals for individual students as provided by virginia code section 2.2-37-11 a 2 and 8. to consult with division council pertaining to actual or probable litigation involving employment or and educational matters as provided by virginia code section 2.2-37-11 a one two and seven four to consult with the staff and division council regarding legal requirements specific to the pandemic which require legal advice

003and guidance as provided by virginia code section 2.2-3711 a eight five to consult with division council regarding specific legal matters regarding to the freedom of information act in the ex expenditure of school funds as provided by virginia code section 2.2-3711a 8 and 6. receive information and discuss with staff plans for security of the kelly leadership center and other school board facilities and property and the safety of persons using those facilities and property under virginia code section 2.2. a 19. do i have a second mr chairman mrs argephore any discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes mr also votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed okay at this time the prince william county school board will now enter closed session return to open session in one hour [Music] um uh

004come back into open session so we're gonna first um we're now returning open session from closed session we're gonna move to our first action night which is the closed session certification i will a motion is in order miss jackson i move that pursuant virginia code section 2.2-3712 the coast session at the prince william county school board meeting of march 16 2022 be certified by adopting the following resolution now therefore be it resolved that the prince william county school board hereby certifies to the best of each member's knowledge one only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements were discussed in the closed meeting to which the certification resolution applies and two only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard and discussed or considered by the

005school board do i have a second for that motion a second miss jesse seconds a motion any discussion as seen there's no discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes miss ralston votes yes miss jesse you got to vote i miss wall the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed okay moving on to closed session action items we have 9.01 which is the approval of appointments and releases for specific employees emotions in order miss jackson thank you i moved that the prince william county school board approved the appointments and releases of specific employees as presented in a closed session do you have a second mr chairman miss williams any discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes miss ralston votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed great okay

006moving on to um the next action item which is approval of the smapd recommendation for the long-term suspension of student hs22077 uh motions in order miss jackson thank you i moved that the prince william county school board approved staff's recommendation for the long-term suspension of student hs 22-077 through february 11 2022 and that the prince william county school board also approved the recommendations for the student's return to school any non-traditional education eligibility determination contained in the smapd letter the student's program placement at the time of the student's return to school as determined by the iep team and the final determination for the site location for implementation of the program identified by the iep team as determined by s-m-a-p-d do i have a second mr chairman mrs zargapur second missile report seconds in motion any discussion

007okay please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes miss ralston votes yes the vote is seven yes one abstain williams motion passed okay moving on to um is that the last action item we had right okay all right so tonight we have something special we'll now move to our thriving futures focus tonight we'll recognize some of our student athletes who have won state championships for swim and wrestling uh we look forward to okay we look forward to recognizing additional state championship winners at future meetings let's start with mrs adell jackson of the brentsville district as she introduces some of the winners from her district miss jackson thank you dr ortif we'd like to congratulate the following student athletes who won state championships in swimming and wrestling as you hear your name please feel free

008to step forward from patriot high school in swimming the state champion in the boys 200 individual medley and the boys 100 fly is landon gentry state champions and the boys 200 medley relay are joss hochard vincent nguen alex martins and landon gentry the state champions and the boys 400 freestyle relay are josh harchard alex martens peter gilbert inches and landon gentry in wrestling the state boys wrestling championship at 182 pounds is vince um i'm so sorry for vincent joe quivetta at this time dr michael bishop principal of the patriot high school would like to make a few brief remarks good evening dr latif members of the board and dr mcdate with me tonight are the families and coaches of student athletes from patriot high school who competed and won at the virginia high school league

009state championship meets for wrestling and swim i would like to present the following student athletes and their accomplishments vincenzo corvetto state wrestling champion 182 pounds undefeated season finished with a record of 36-0 head coach rich edwards four swim earning their second team state championship in our school's history head coach lisa bussian assistant coach jen burch boyce 200 medley relay receiving all-america status boyce 400 freestyle relay receiving all-america status and 6a state record students on the state championship relays are peter gilbert josh hoshard alex martens vincent nguyen and landon gentry landon landon gentry was also the winner of two additional state championships in the boys 200 individual medley attaining all-american status and the boys 100 fly also attaining all american status and the 6a state record as their principal and on behalf of their coaches family

010and friends i want to publicly congratulate them on this honor [Music] thank you dr bishop and thank you all for being here um i'm fortunate to also recognize um to congratulate the following student athletes who won state champions in wrestling from the brunsville district high school as well the state girls wrestling champion at 136 pounds is may kyler and i believe at this time mr brett stein assistant wrestling coach at brunsville district would like to make a free a few brief remarks thank you good evening everyone with me i have may kyler our girls 136 pound state champion um and i'll go ahead and give you guys a little bit of a background of may so the brunswick district wrestling program is known throughout the state of virginia is one of the top programs over

011our many years program has amassed nine team state champions and 38 individual state champions however 38 is a special number to us this year right number 38 is our first female state champion in school history and number 38. [Applause] [Music] number 38 mae kyler is who we celebrate tonight uh may started wrestling in middle school over at marshteller but her competitive background comes from her training in judo where she's ranked third in the united states at her respective age group and her respective weight class she's had a dominant season this year in all girl competitions as she did not yield a single point to a female opponent and she pinned every girl she wrestled in the first period which is massively impressive may also compete as a varsity starter this year taking six in the

012region wrestling boys and girls for the vhsl state championships and vhsl region championships so she had a very successful year but her success comes as no surprise to our coaching staff as may is the athlete that every coach wants in their program she's humble she's focused and she gives her all in every aspect of the sport and in school in addition to her hard work in the wrestling room she also gets done in the classroom earning a 4.0 gpa and she's an active member of the national honor society as well so may you are paving the way for women's wrestling in the state of virginia and we would like more girls to experience the success that you have had this year so please give another round of applause to our state champion mikhail [Applause] okay

013miss jackson thank you very much i think we'll move on to miss lisa zargaport of the kohl's district thank you dr latif when i call your name please come forward we'd like to congratulate the following student athlete who won the state championship in wrestling from colgan high school state boys wrestling champion at 220 pounds is elijah gonzalez and at this time if mr bruce bennard is he's the wrestling coach at colgan high school if he would like to come forward and make a few brief remarks if he's here okay i think mr crow will go look for him if he's if he's available and if not we'll move on to the next but can no all right well congratulations again thank you very much next we have uh mr justin wilk of the potomac district

014thank you dr latif thank you athletes for being here tonight um we'd like to congratulate the following student athlete who won the state championship in wrestling from the potomac high school home of the panthers state girls wrestling champion at 113 pounds is samantha wadu [Music] at this time my colleague and friend uh march madness is coming so principal brandon bowles of unfortunately the university of michigan would like to make a few brief remarks good evening dr mcdade superintendent staff school board members and our potomac district representative mr wilke my name is brandon bowles i'm privileged to serve as the principal at potomac senior high school and thrilled to recognize sambodu this evening sam is the reigning cardinal district champion region 6b champion and also the number one ranked female wrestler at 112 pounds in the

015state of virginia as impressive as her accomplishments are on the mat may be more impressive for her accomplishments in the classroom sam has earned over a 4.0 gpa she's a four year [Applause] [Music] she's a four-year njrotc student and has taken several of our cambridge classes at potomac most recently sam has been recognized as one of only 20 students in the nation to receive the prestigious cnaf aviation flight academy award and so she's received that scholarship one of 20 in the nation so when you talk about focusing on thriving futures look no further than potomac's own sambodu [Applause] thank you mr bowles miss jesse of the akaquan district we would like to congratulate the following student athlete who won the state championship in wrestling from woodbridge high school the state boys wrestling champion at 120

016pounds is tyler tennant at this time [Applause] at this time mr michael wright the director of student activities at woodbridge high school would like to make a few brief remarks thank you and thank you for returning yes ma'am thank you miss jesse dr latif members of the board dr mcdade it is truly an honor and a privilege for me to be before you this evening to recognize tanner excuse me tyler tyler is not just a state champion this year but i'm just going to go over a few of his accomplishments while he was a member of the woodbridge wrestling team two-time district champ two-time regional champ three-time state placer he finished fourth as a sophomore he won the state championship as a junior and a repeat won a state championship as a senior this year

017i think that deserves a great round of applause tyler has a has accumulated over a hundred wins during his career at woodbridge senior high school his plans and he's being currently being recruited by multiple schools in the state of virginia his plans is to continue his wrestling rio at the collegiate level in the fall i'd like to take this opportunity to recognize and thank tyler for his contributions to woodbridge high school's wrestling team um okay at this time dr mcdade i'd like to invite you to make some comments thank you so much dr latif thank you to our school board members for recognizing our outstanding student athletes and congratulations to all of our students for your amazing accomplishments we are pwcs proud in addition to congratulating our student athletes i also would like to acknowledge

018the tremendous efforts of our coaches starting with the brentfield district high school wrestling coaches including head coach rick adams and assistant coaches brett brett stein tom dillinger prince hill and dick adams thank you so much for all of your hard work um and to our principal thank you so much for your leadership dr mice in supporting all of the amazing programs at princeville high school for patriot high school i would like to acknowledge swim coaches lisa bussian and jen burch and wrestling coaches rich edwards and micah zarin a special congratulations to the colgan high school wrestling coach bruce bernard potomac high school wrestling coach nick pirelli and woodbridge high school wrestling coaches ty knapp alex alex stanley cody zieman sergio morales and nate gaines i would also like to acknowledge the leadership of all of

019our school's presence including to uh to dr mice we have dr bishop as well as tim healey dr tim healy from colgan miss heather abney from woodbridge and mr brandon bowles from potomac high school thank you all so much for your tremendous leadership and support of our student athletes and coaches and to close out this special part of our meeting today i want to note that we are aware of many state-level award-winning students across our division and we plan to recognize our students and their coaches during the next several board meetings congratulations again to each of you and thank you for representing pwc as well thank you dr mcdade so before we before we excuse you we're going to have you come up and take a group picture with the board but before we do

020that i want to give the most important thanks and that's to the parents of all of our student athletes including you all who are here tonight because without you all these students wouldn't be where they are and it's very important to our school system to have you all engaged with our schools as you do and so we are very grateful for everything you do to contribute to our schools our teams our boosters and everything and then for all of you who are great teammates and i know you have great teammates who are not here tonight congratulations to them as well so we invite you up please parents included to the front here and the board will take a picture and then then certainly you're welcome to stay to enjoy the rest of the board meeting

021or certainly be excused everybody [Applause] okay me everybody in i'm going to take a few i'm going to take a few on the on the phone and then a few on the camera and then i'm sure everyone wants to get some shots as well okay on three one big grin one two three one more one two and three same thing one two three one two three looks good anybody else [Applause] is there a way i can get those pictures on the camera um [Music] um [Music] okay well thank you all very much and um that was fantastic and appreciate that dr mcdade to diana gulotta b simpson communications and all the folks that did the work to make this happen we appreciate it and if there are students we missed we certainly promise to try

022to try to you know get them here the next few times um but that was wonderful and i think that's why uh miss josh dr hart reminded me as i walked back up here this is why we do this work so thank you all very much at this time i would now like to call the meeting of the prince william county school board order we'll start with the pledge of allegiance if everyone can stand and donna sharifi our student member will lead us in the pledges to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay moving on to the approval of the public meeting agenda motions in order miss jackson sorry i moved to the prince

023william county school board to prove the public meeting agenda as recommended do you have a second a second miss jesse seconds motion any discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote [Music] yes ms ralston votes yes so the vote is seven yes one not president vote williams motion passed adoption the consent agenda emotions in order miss jackson thank you i moved that the princeton county school board approved the public meeting consent agenda as recommended you have a second mr chairman mrs argopoor i second any discussion okay please vote ms ralston how do you vote yes miss rawson votes yes yes and so the vote is seven yes one not president vote williams motion passed great moving on to citizen comment time um those citizens who signed up in advance with the clerk may address

024the school board this evening when they're called to the podium the assistant comment periods for regular school board meetings is limited to one hour with the first half hour reserved for comments on agenda items only in the second half hour for comments on agenda items or other topics to remain to the operations of the policies of prince william county schools citizens signed up to speak on agenda items must speak to the agenda item they've identified or they'll be asked to step down we have 10 speakers on agenda items and 10 on non-agenda items speakers will have three minutes to speak please use proper decor manners while at the podium if you do not do so you'll be asked to step aside when you were called to the podium please state your name and address for

025the record and i'll start by calling the first five speakers and like to remind the audience that we request no cheering or jeering so that folks at home who are watching can hear and so we can hear the complete statements um as our citizens give their speeches our first four or five to call up will be jennifer rokowski jennifer roberts janice sullivan sandra kern and ashley berger miss rokoski all right good evening chairman lachief vice chairwoman jackson dr mcdade and school board members my name is jennifer rakoski and i reside in the akkaquan district tonight you are adopting the budget but there are some things i'd like to point out or share there was a consent agenda item for hiring a tutoring company for high dosage tutoring have you asked any of the teachers about

026whether they how they feel about the program would it be successful and why we aren't able to staff it there are questions about the salary increases and how that works how are salaries improving across the board i know you say that steps do not equate years of service however many people i tried explaining the situation to are not happy feels kind of like a slap in the face to be placed lower and also there's an issue with missteps for employees who have been around for years and have lost time educators are still quitting the profession you have openings now and they're still not filled put salary benefits as a priority to show your staff that you value them and want pwcs to be the place where the best staff from other counties to come to

027also i strongly encourage you to think about having a ta for every elementary school classroom i taught high school and for a day i subbed in elementary classroom grades four and five holy moly elementary educators are way under appreciated i could not believe how many interruptions to a single day there are specialists coming and going throughout the day to pull kids out or they're doing push in four preps and half of the planning time of a secondary teacher and that's if their planning time isn't taken by clts or having to cover another class during our sub shortage while hiring more teachers may seem like a good idea to lower class sizes please remember that many of our schools especially our older buildings and traditional or k-8 buildings simply do not have the physical room to

028place more teachers listening to administrators about the physical needs for renovating buildings would also be a huge morale booster to the staff i learned that the division may not be renewing near pod license for next year some educators reached out and were upset about that because they really invested themselves into it it's up to possibly the school to purchase a nearby license if a teacher does it it's 397 dollars but it may not be enough gigabytes for what they do so please consider renewing the near pod license for the division or doing assessment of how much they need thank you for the work you've put in and continue to put into the budget please talk to your principals teachers and your classified staff about what they need to improve facilities promote student growth and provide

029compensation resources to make your staff feel valued and heard thank you jennifer roberts good evening dr mcdade dr latif members of the school board my name is jennifer roberts from the gainesville district thank you for the opportunity to speak in support of school library month as an avid reader and the mother of two i understand the extraordinary ability that books have to help children understand themselves process difficult and sensitive information and make sense of the world around them seeing positive images of themselves and other people in their community in the pictures and reflected in the stories told on the pages can give students a sense of pride validation and community this diversity and reading material can also foster empathy school library month is a wonderful opportunity for us to be intentional about making sure that

030our public school library books and resources reflect the ethnic racial and linguistic diversity of our students and make sure our students are exposed to these important resources by school librarians and classroom teachers several years ago i had the opportunity to serve as a school library volunteer my job was to reshelve books i enjoyed helping in this capacity but was always disappointed at the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in books and many of the books with people of color were outdated biographies i was also disappointed at the lack of books in different languages i've also served as a book fair volunteer and observed a repeated disparity in books by authors of color and books featuring contemporary stories with people of color prince william county strategic plan touts a commitment to family and community engagement which

031i support as part of this commitment i encourage our school librarians to invite the community into next month's school library month celebrations our county and surrounding counties are rich with local authors and artists who excuse me with local authors and artists who can partner with schools to speak with students about career opportunities in writing and illustration hold workshops for students interested in writing and inspire an entire generation to be lifelong readers and writers we also have access to dedicated parent and community volunteers who would be excited to read with children from a variety of racially and ethnically diverse books throughout the month it is my hope and expectation that we utilize next month's school library month observation as an opportunity to intentionally acknowledge and normalize the presence and experiences of our diverse student body thank

032you janice solomon [Applause] good evening dr latif school board members and dr mcdade and my fellow community my name is janice sullivan and my address is on file i'm from the kohl's district thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak in front of you i'm a wife a mother of two young boys on the autism spectrum one non-verbal i'm a family physician practicing in alert local urgent care and i'm also current president of the prince william county special education pta also known as pwc septa my main goals for speaking in front of you tonight are three four threefold and interrelated so i'll get right into them first to emphasize the importance of accepting and embracing people with developmental disabilities in our communities developmental disabilities occur among all racial ethnic and socio-economic groups thank you

033for also including autism awareness and ot awareness as well i will stress that they are all vitally important in building a community that is generally inclusive and equitable a world-class education is not just about academics just like we have to model self-awareness emotional intelligence and appropriate behavior to our children and students we have to choose and generally model inclusion it is essential for our community for the benefit of our future for us parents within our households to increase our and our family's awareness of these disabilities and work towards accepting that no one mind or body is alike and like what temple grandin said all minds matter i ask that we be humble and try to take another's perspective and appreciate that we can all benefit from accepting and embracing those people with developmental disabilities in

034our schools and communities while neurotypical kids parents are putting together play dates or taking their kids to sports practices parents with kids with special needs are getting their kids to occupational therapy speech therapy aba doctors appointments stressing about iep meetings oftentimes they also have little time to address their own overall wellness they've talked about commitment to innovators and problem solvers and we need to embrace our differences especially those seeing world through a different lens recognizing that some of our own renowned innovators have also been on the autism spectrum such as albert einstein temple grandin and elon mask elon musk dr madeidu stated that it can be daunting tests to navigate through resources and all the more true for those parents who are taking care of kids other than iep and 504 plan my second goal

035is expressing for the gratitude for the comprehensive budget thank you for the increased special education teachers assisted technology specialists an increase in salaries please other suggestions please train parent liaisons to collaborate with pwc septa consider a career exploration track for high school students interested in going into special education um make available playground and inclusive playground equipment and my third strong ass is to ask for compassionate leaders of our community to step up and keep pwc separate going strong into new year and years to come we've done award ceremonies teacher member grants virtual support groups um and we want this to keep going but i cannot continue to be president i will leave with um that we should stay valued and committed to core values of kindness compassion treating others according to the golden rule so

036let's thrive together and stay community thank you very much thank you thank you um sandra kern good evening my name is sandra kern my address is on file and i'm a proud parent in the potomac district i'm also a sped mom thank you dr latif dr mcdade and honorable members of the board to allow me to speak tonight i come before the board to bring forward my appreciation for recognition of march being developmental dis national delava developmental disabilities month 1405 on the agenda developmental disabilities are a group of conditions due to an impairment in the physical learning language or behavior area i have to reflect on that because it was 35 years ago my senior year in a prince william county school that developmental disabilities month was first recognized back then i had no idea

037i would come before this board so many years later and just praise that it's such a vital and personal recognition for our children falling back on my sped mom status i want to say life happens some of us do not see through the eyes of a person with developmental disabilities just to make it clear children and their families that have developmental disabilities want the equal playing field for the education and vape something that this board must deliver even in your budget a child with disabilities sometimes want to be recognized not for the disability but for their humanity i encourage making friends with these students and finding compassion for some of the kindest precious people in the community truth plus transparency is equaling trust three small steps that we can mean the world to our children

038and others as always i must include because it's outside of the dd they are one in five children with dyslexia and reading is a life skill now officially two months being now now officially this month being two years from the beginning of the world pandemic and the trauma we have all suffered three words i need help there are some of the most difficult to say and for non-verbal impossible children are suffering in plain sight we have to have we have some with resilience others have succumbed to major learning losses social skills are also a focus as being life learners we must find their strong supports in this system in our budget building at the brighter future for our children is getting involved in the septa the pta advisory boards with our amazing teachers which i

039see tonight and making changes in the plans and policies that affect our children's futures parents as partners i stand here transportation nutrition services i also thank you for your keeping our kids moving and our bodies and minds children of children thriving one quote there's no greater disability in society than the inability to see a person as more robert hensel good evening ashley berger and ashley berger good evening my name is ashley burger my dress is on file i'm currently a senior here at osmond park high school i'm here tonight to highlight a fundamental issue within the proposed budget for the year simply put there is not enough money being allocated towards mental health services we do not have enough counselors psychologists therapists or other resources to deal with the ever growing number of students with

040mental health issues there should be one counselor per 250 students and one psychologist per 500 students pwcs does not meet these needs there's also no full-time therapist at my school and i know there is a lack of full-time therapists among other schools as well though there is 4.2 million being put towards lowering the ratio of assistant principals from 600 to 1 to 500 to 1 we need to lower the ratios of these critical positions for mental health services before we add assistant principals to schools in the budget under core values the board takes responsibility for students mental health when i examine commitment 1 which has 30.6 million in funds there is only 1.3 million allocated to mental health which is 4 of the funds pwcs does not have a separate category for mental health either

041however louden county has a category dedicated to student mental health support and 24 7 online therapy available and counseling specialists according to their budget most of our funding goes to psychology stipends and very few programs however to my understanding the school psychologists are responsible for testing and critical care not everyday support under commitment number two positive climate and culture there is 16.8 million in funds of this 8.9 million which is 53 percent of the commitments budget is being put towards security and risk management however according to the nasp research security systems have been found to be ineffective in protecting students and associated with more school crime and disruption instead of placing funding towards this we allocate this funding to the fundamental problem at hand students mental health students act out in all sorts of ways

042when coping with poor mental health according to the acmh one in five children have a diagnosable emotional behavioral or mental health disorder and fifty to eighty percent do not get the help that they need i will note that there is eighteen thousand eight hundred and twenty five thousand twenty five hundred dollars um designated to social services signs of suicide annual subscription which accounts for less than zero point zero one percent of the funding to put this into perspective this is only five percent of the superintendent's salary i would hate to suggest that the school board does not see this as a prominent issue after all according to the american association of suicidology in 2019 suicide was the second leading cause of death among the age group 15-24 the solution is to allocate a significantly greater

043amount of money towards mental health services we need a lower ratio of students to counselors and psychologists we need multiple permanent full-time therapists in each school there will be detrimental consequences that this problem is not addressed these consequences have already happened into my disappointment there was nothing done there was no change to follow to prevent another suicide so i stand here before you today asking you begging you please be the change i'm not only advocating for myself for my loved ones for my school but for all 90 000 students um so please stop focusing on your political career and start focusing on the kids thank you [Music] and remind the audience if we can hold the applause and the cheering lorenz kenneth narr carter wiley jp rafflo i'm not really sure how to follow that

044[Music] good evening board members ms mcdade uh coming next month is uh child abuse prevention month i'm here to commend you all on a superb job of keeping your child abuse and neglect statistics so low unfortunately as a parent of a student who has been abused and neglected at the hands of the prince william county school system i've learned through almost 100 hours of research at 74.13 an hour how you keep those statistics so low i'm a trained federal investigator who has been conducting both criminal and civil investigations for over 17 years i've carried many titles investigator inspector commander special agent you can call me any of those all i ask is that you actually call me the title that i prefer most is dad that's hands down my favorite on january 30th this year

045i emailed miss porter lucas about my child being abused and neglected in the prince william county school on january 31st she responded confirming that my child was segregated isolated refused in person learning but she determined that no abuse or neglect occurred i emailed her back asking for a copy of her investigation under the foia act of virginia she responded that there is no copy or i'm sorry she didn't respond tanisha holland responded that there is no copy of an investigation because an investigation wasn't conducted ms holland was nice enough to send a link to virginia code 63.2 1511 section 3 that says that the division it if or for investigations of child abuse and neglect when the child is alleged to have been abused neglected by a school employee the division superintendent designate director of

046prince william county schools risk management security services if there's no conflict of interest shall participate in planning any investigation when the report names a school division employee is the alleged abuser neglector ms mcdade again i've been an investigator for a long time there's two basic principles that exist an allegation cannot be determined to be false without an investigation which is why the law requires the investigation and an investigation of this magnitude cannot be completed in one day regardless of what your television says ms porter lucas my employee she falls under your direct supervision this means that you either aren't doing your job as a supervisor or you are and you can't claim willful blindness to this matter having documented the derelictions of your duties and multiple violations of virginia state statute and code and your

047own school board policies i stand here before you tonight this as your employer ready and willing to accept your verbal or written resignation because my child's safety means that much to me to the board you now all know what is going on you all now know an investigation was neglected by state law thank you mr hahn do your job stephen lorenz stephen lawrence from gainesville district i'd like to address what's the direct budget impact issue the lack of development developable land that remains in principle in william county in particular how the 10 000 acres in the data center overlay district is actually fictitious one argument that we've heard over and over again is that no new land is needed for data centers and that no new land is needed for anything not for new housing

048not for new commercial development that there is plenty already allocated however development in this county is grinding to a halt i've been in the county for five years i run a small tech company i've stayed very plugged into what available land and what commercial space is available and it has really dried up totally over the last five years there's no and unfortunately in particular there's no no land left in the in the data center overlay that can support can support a data center campus but 10 000 acres currently consist of data centers land in the process of becoming data centers small a few small dispersed lots rece a lot of resource protection area streams and creeks and so forth and existing businesses is a county going to replace jiffy loop live or ups the amazon

049prime distribution center or hundreds and hundreds of small and medium businesses and command them to change their use most of the few hundred acres that are left in the overlay are scattered and suitable for small business fill in only this is a fundamental problem for the county county has great plans high hopes and is a wonderful place to live but there is no funding stream to pay for it all no funding for collective bargaining for teachers for police or for firefighters no path forward for improving the tax base and therefore school funding as you all know over half of the school budget comes directly from the county taxes which are largely currently residential taxes on personal pri and on personal people's personal property please support the board of county supervisors in their efforts to bring

050new development into prince william county and therefore directly change what's possible within the school districts thank you kenneth norr good evening kenneth narrow from the gainesville district i'd like to start off by complimenting this board and dr mcdade on putting together a proposed fy 23 budget that aligns with the recently approved strategic plan and puts our students teachers and staff first it takes on the challenges of providing a world-class education for the most diverse student population in the commonwealth of virginia head-on you have consciously assumed risk when and where it makes the most sense while somewhat aggressively addressing the initiatives identified needing the most immediate attention if anything i would suggest you could and should have leaned for even further into the two most pressing challenges there is an educator shortage throughout the country according

051to the new strategic plan we are approximately 250 positions short of where we need to be to provide this world-class education to all of our students our pay scales across the board are average at best our teachers make roughly 7 000 less than teachers in loudoun and fairfax with approximately six thousand teachers in our schools the proposed fy 23 budget needs an additional 42 million dollars above the seven percent raise to be on par with our two neighboring counties like it or not these are the two school systems we are competing with against to retain our current teachers and to recruit new teachers another another way to look at this fiscal situation is that we have the second lowest per student expenditures in all of northern virginia we invest roughly 6 000 per student less

052per year than loudoun and fairfax with current student populations around 90 000 students our budget should be over two billion dollars as the tenth most diverse county in the entire nation we have additional challenges to require educators to be better prepared than other school districts this fact adds to the demand of professional development requirements of our entire school staff this area is identified in a strategic plan but i would suggest it is significantly underfunded obviously these are extraordinary numbers my suggestion is we can as a community and use the school board formally develop a five to seven year supplemental plan starting in fy 23 to increase our county's commercial tax base to 35 percent this would produce the needed funds and is exactly how loud and fair facts are supporting their higher pay scales and

053student investments thank you carter wiley [Applause] good evening carter wiley gainesville in late february this year the prince william county planning department announced its draft pathway to 2040 plan which will is the blueprint for future growth and development part of this report addresses housing and expectation of the number of new units that prince william county plans to see over the next 20 years the report indicates the county is a shortfall of housing by around 19 000 units conservatively this need represents 3 200 additional acres of land necessary to satisfy this anticipated growth where is the county going to find this acreage and at what cost to its citizenry currently prince william county is struggling to maintain its anemic 15 commercial tax base with the anticipation of more houses the commercial tax base is certain to

054fall how can prince william county alter the eroding commercial tax base when the market for land is void of opportunity data centers serve as industry sector that can change prince william county's flailing commercial tax base data centers generate close to five times higher tax revenue than any other use in the county and without the impacts of new schools roads or government services at this time data center overlay offers no opportunity for additional data centers where is the county going to find more land to facilitate this thirsty data center demand where is the available power fiber and latency the proposed submittal for the pw digital gateway provides prince william county with any opportunity to facilitate data center demand bolster its tax base without desecrating other areas of the county with new transmission lines and needed infrastructure

055of the 2133 acres under review 1600 acres are under under contract the data centers what more needs to be said for the county to take this course of action i encourage all administrators teachers and parents to speak to the county supervisors about the need for a stronger commercial tax base and the promise the pw pw digital gateway holds to bolster the commercial tax base necessary to pay for competitive teacher pay and school funding thank you [Applause] jp raffle okay the next five will be uh katie murphy richard jesse arlene devereaux kimberly stewart and vita carroll katie murphy good evening my name is katie murphy and i'm a resident of the gainesville district i'm here to talk about accountability first i'll address miss mckay a little i'd like to hold her accountable for her conduct and

056words at the last school board meeting she described my 13 year old daughter's speech as facetious and disrespectful and asked what kind of citizens we're trying to create my daughter was not facetious or flippant and she was not disrespectful she spoke about removing the mask mandate a single issue her speech was factual and impactful to answer your question about what kind of citizens we want to create i'll loosely use your words i'd like to create citizens who can critically examine structures and policies of our government i'd like to create citizens who do research to support their claims as my daughter did using the virginia department of health's covet 19 dashboard for prince william county still reporting zero deaths ages zero to 17. i'd like to create citizens who are emboldened brave and impassioned to respectfully

057address a room full of adults in positions of authority and question their motives and decisions i'd like to create citizens who offer to pray for those who they feel are wronging them and i'd like to create citizens who know right from wrong and use sound judgment unlike micaiah little did when she chose to attack a child as for the school board i'm lucky that i have the opportunity to speak tonight the school board has opened minimal spots for citizens to speak and have limited us to three minutes per person whether or not we like this policy we adhere to it each of you as school board members are also held to three minutes for your comment time unfortunately some of you believe rules apply for thee but not to me at the last meeting miss

058williams spoke for four minutes in 40 seconds and miss jessie for five minutes and 16 seconds with no regard to the rules miss jackson failed to do her job of stopping the speakers at their three-minute mark i sent an email on march 7th to every member of the board and superintendent mcdade asking how they plan to ensure school board members adhere to rules nine days later i'm still waiting on that response and no it's not in my junk folder when looking through the agenda for items to speak on i was at a loss in the closed session you all discussed security of the kelly leadership center and other school board facilities and property that's been a point of contention brought up by many parents who've showed up here at each meeting yet you choose to

059discuss this in a closed session rather than be transparent with us let me be clear i support occupational therapy physical fitness school libraries math and statistics military children autism awareness developmental disabilities awareness earth week recognition and child abuse prevention that said for nine out of the 11 agenda items to be focused on naming months as special interest months is weak there are google calendar plugins for that we want substance we want real issues that are affecting our children to be on the agenda we want to know what's being done in schools to protect our kids from the increasing number of physical fights we want accountability richard jesse my name is richard jesse my address is on file i want to be clear that i really support the way that the board of supervisor has citizen

060time and i think the way that the school board does it is the disservice to the citizens i like to recommend i think last week you or last meeting you recommended that it's three board members want something on the agenda that they can have it on agenda i would like to to hope that the board members would support looking at the changes to the way that you're currently doing citizen time and have a discussion for the public on any changes if you would so see fit i had some recommendations and i gave a copy to the clerks so you can see some of these recommendations one recommendation for example is having citizen time in at 12 noon only for the reason that many times the agenda items are not fully filled up by speakers so

061if you do something at in at 12 noon some of the other speakers who are on a waiting list can come and fill in the empty spots from the agenda items another thing is that i wish you would allow virtual speakers one of the things i encourage people to come to the board meeting but a lot of the citizens in the past did not want to come to the board meeting because there were too many people without mass and they didn't feel safe but if there was a virtual option they could come and also if you have a virtual option i would wish that you allowed the citizens if they want to use a camera to do so if there's a speaker that needs an interpreter they should be given more time not only double

062the amount of time but they should be given an extra minute or so so for example instead of three minutes i would recommend giving seven so that the interpreter can interact with the person and give them full credit for what they want to say if you are going to stick to this total time i would recommend at least going to two hours if needed instead of one hour and that you have an incremental thing for example if you have one hour keep to that if you do 30 seconds for example right now you have 20 speakers at uh at three minutes if you did two two minutes 30 seconds you could have 30 speakers thank you miss arlene uh i'm sorry miss is it arlene hey elaine elaine devereaux hello i'm allen devereaux a parent

063from the gainesville district i'd like to speak to you today about the weaponization and purposeful misinformation of certain concepts such as critical race theory alleged divisive concepts and equity now let's be honest people even you we have the right to be racist sexist homophobic xenophobic we can teach that garbage to our children it's not desirable it's not ideal but we do have that right however we do not have that right to bring those garbage ideas into our schools our public school systems we do not have the right to impede on any child's ability to have a safe compassionate inclusive accurate and world-class education period now i believe being a parent has been one of the greatest honors of my life as i'm a child's first teacher and hopefully lifelong teacher but i'm very clear being

064a mother doesn't necessarily make me or anyone else a historian a mathematician a scientist or an expert in educational policy and school curriculum after all a dog can have puppies a dog is even a mother but you becoming his historian a scientist by careful study and training yet there is this new movement to encourage a subset of parents particularly mothers to fight and stand against our children because they don't fit the so-called preferred demographic they falsely believe that these children their stories and histories are less valuable because they claim it makes them feel uncomfortable well it's okay to be uncomfortable do your homework and welcome to adulting and parenting all of our stories are part of the american history and perhaps more importantly they're part of our future particularly in prince william county where we

065have the most diverse school district in the state and the 10th most diverse county in the nation so this attack on equity and culturally responsive teaching is nonsense and should be a non-starter in this community now i realize a lot of this is rooted in power fear willful ignorance and uncertainty there are some people who are racist and it is what it is but others they're just simply fearful because they don't know what to expect they don't know maybe they have not been exposed or perhaps they haven't accepted the entire truth but you don't have to be in that space because there's many of us and we're working on avenues to get us together listen strengthen our communities and we can be an example of collaboration for our children to follow so please stay tuned

066but i would say to those that continue to spread lies and misinformation i'll ask this question i understand from a political and power perspective but how do you reconcile this with your faith perspective how do you reconcile your actions and rhetoric with our spiritual teachings for example in christianity jesus was a homeless nomadic man he ministered to the poor the sick the infirm the forgotten even a demon possessed he offered the kingdom to the jews and gentile how about that talk about equity he didn't turn his back on others because they didn't fit a certain mold so he commanded us in john 13 34 35 love one another as i have love you so you must love one another by this everyone will know you i'm disciples if we love one another so i will

067in closing i would just say that there's many of us on each side and we want to find our better selves and we will do what's right we have such a rich and vibrant community and as long as we live in love and not fear we will succeed because we the peacemakers we will be the light the fire that ignition that will launch us to a thriving future thank you thank you and i appreciate you kimberly stewart my name is kimberly stewart the address is on file tonight i want to celebrate and share with you and the community some of the amazing work and amazing teachers and staff we have in prince william county so i'll use my time to do that i'd like to shout out to reagan middle school ptso teachers in abbon

068that supported a dance last friday and let kids be kids again special thanks to miss marcel and miss perez who are the world's best kindergarten teachers shout out to my mountain view co-workers we absolutely love the bres staff mrs cook is amazing and from talks with my daughter you can tell she adores her battlefield has the best latin teacher both kids chose to do four years with her somehow she makes it incredibly fun and engaging mrs arnold and mrs ty papa at chris young are two of our absolute favorite teachers miss miranda and mrs walsh at glenn kirk elementary have been so supportive of my kindergartner all the teachers and staff at alvey elementary are amazing we love the staff at mount clare elementary they love my kids so well and have for years mrs

069marshall and mrs van der dijk at tns thank you to dr mcclerg and mrs mcdonald at chris young thank you to the sixth grade staff at tns for encouraging and supporting my son my fifth grader wouldn't have survived virtual without mrs warren and mrs boyle at cedar point last year they went above and beyond mrs perry second grader at buckland mills elementary has been phenomenal in supporting my son hayley cameron is an awesome third grade teacher at graverly elementary mrs abner miss collins mrs katiel mrs baker and mrs chase at haymarket for being so incredibly wonderful and showing up even when it wasn't easy mr baldwin at hems hmes is fantastic and cares about teachers and kiddos mrs tony ann harris from b-e-m-e-s and mrs christie pregnant from hmes battlefield high school mrs hill and

070mr mcmillan the graverly staff and especially mrs sablin and the teacher's aides miss lashonda black elizabeth hoffman at knoxville thank you to melissa goldman geometry teacher at bhs and jamie marsh the reading specialist at bhs mrs ellis saucer the aice classical studies teacher is the best she keeps the class interesting miss henke the orchestra teacher who clearly enjoys the kids and is passionate mrs casarino at graverly elementary is wonderful thank you to mrs price mrs housinger at battlefield miss weiss and mr c at uh our special ed teachers at tns and the most dedicated teachers also mr webster the pe teacher at tns mr suthers a special ed teacher and ms cook for work for world history at bhs huge thank you to mrs mays mr haley cameron and mrs michelle fravil are amazing and

071i give them the shirt off my back we have incredible staff and teachers in pwcs and if we want the best for our kids we should always strive to celebrate and recognize the hard work of some of our best [Music] peter carroll william deutsch maggie hansford are the next three miss carol vita carol gainesville district i do live in this county unlike some of the earlier speakers this evening i'm a sped parent of a four-year-old who is a student in the system i will be speaking on the prince william digital gateway this project is a proposed over two thousand acre data center compound in gainesville that will tear down home erase farmland bulldoze historic land and replace it with millions of square feet of data center what does this have to do with the school

072board you may ask absolutely nothing it's completely ridiculous i'm speaking to you on the subject tonight i'm embarrassed and apologetic to other parents for taking valuable time however last week when dr latif publicly endorsed this project in his role as school board chair i felt the need to come and speak on this directly i know you've heard a few others speak on data centers tonight and they each failed to disclose that every single one of them is financially invested and stands to make millions of dollars if this project passes i am not financially invested i am not an elected official and don't have to balance interest of donors i don't live near the property but i am opposed to it let's talk about tax revenue of course it will bring in money but the numbers

073spouted by supporters are inaccurate the county's finance department determined advertised revenues are over inflated by 75 percent there are several caveats making it highly optimistic and the the number now is based on full build out that's in 40 years it's not coming next year this money's not coming next year y'all look at loudoun county often used as an example of a data center haven and an excellent school system however in the past year loudon has pumped the brakes on expanding data centers into their suburban royal transition areas staff was quoted as saying data centers have been proven to be an unstable revenue source and they should know because just last fiscal year their budget was about 10 short of projections with a deficit of 60 million dollars from data centers one of their county supervisors

074stated quote we worked really hard to accurately predict our data center revenue and use it only to find ourselves in a position where we ended up overestimating shortfalls are likely due to technology depreciating quickly which raises another concern are these buildings even going to be relevant in 10 or 15 years or will they be obsolete reminders of poor decision making by our county leaders i care deeply about what this school system looks like i will have a school-aged child for the next 17 years at least but let's learn from loudon let's smartly diversify our industrial revenue so we don't so we do have increased funding for our schools let's increase our data center industry tax to compete with loudon which will double our current data center revenue immediately not with a 20-year build out but

075next fiscal year let's teach our children how to respect our earth by preserving rural and historic areas and most of all let's keep our local school board out of politics dr latif do not abuse the role you were elected into by going beyond the scope of your job description do not inappropriately politicize this board by endorsing widely unpopular and highly controversial dead-end projects i will not be back to speak on this subject i will not take away from parent time this is not a subject for the school board and i ask that mr latif dr latif you talk to the gentleman who have convinced you to hit your wagon to this and encourage them to stop taking up valuable parent time as well thank you [Music] mr william deutsch [Applause] [Music] thank you mr chairman

076member of the board i'm here to speak about the night and day change that we've seen with citizen comment time over the last number of years back in the last board's term this board had a policy that it didn't matter what your opinion was we supported your right to speak what happened this september though was the diametric opposite now instead of discussing citizen comment time under the discussion of citizen comment time we discuss it under security procedures for the kelly leadership center when i arrived here in september for a board meeting it was clear that this board had changed its perspective of how they viewed parents from collaborators to the enemy i counted 14 security guards and multiple checkpoints because this board does not want to hear from the public anymore and quite frankly it

077was shocking but every name that i've heard used to justify these atrocious acts on parents is something that happened before right we heard parents called rabble rousers we've had parents accused oh you're taking up time talking repeatedly about issues maybe you're talking about issues that shouldn't be brought up before this board right look under the last board i had somebody sitting in the front row heckling me that was fine nobody on the board did anything about it right under the last board uh there is somebody came from maryland to speak on a school naming couldn't remember the name of the school of the person he wanted to name it to right we had people who spoke repeatedly to issues that maybe there are personnel items maybe they're issues that generally the board didn't address but

078you know they spoke up and they gave their mind and that's good that should be encouraged but what we've seen is the opposite citizen comment time has been limited and now we have security guards ready to jump down anybody who disagrees with this board right we've seen altercations at the front door because of arbitrary policies here in this room for how many people can be here and every time we ask about constantly changing policies they always say the board created these policies well guess what we can't find these policies anywhere let's also talk about the fact that this board arbitrarily enforces all of their rules right if i go over my three minutes i'll get gaveled out of line if other board members go over their three minutes they don't get gaveled out of line

079right the chairman went ahead and the first number of people today who were applauded for nobody was gaveled when somebody was applauded to criticize the board they were gaveled right i came to an arpa meeting in the summer and uh the sitting then vice chairman of the time was speaking to the issue about mitigation measures masks etc somebody came up and spoke against masks he was gathered out of line because masks apparently weren't something you could speak about look the rules have been arbitrary and they've been focused on silencing dissent from this board and it's wrong thank you mr joyce maggie hansford and then after that will be brandy uh provenzano stephanie evers tammy fick good evening dr mcdade chair latif board members my name is maggie hansford and my address is on file i'm

080a proud parent of three students in our school division a speech pathologist by trade and the president of the prince william education association for the first time in history public school educators in the commonwealth of virginia have the opportunity to pursue a collective bargaining agreement with the school division as of may 1st 2021 virginia localities may pass a resolution which allows for the recognition of employee associations as the exclusive bargaining representatives for certain segments of their workforces and collective bargaining with such exclusive representatives as of today march 16th prince william county public schools has not passed a resolution authorizing exclusive bargaining agents and or collective bargaining pwea has obtained the signatures of a majority of employees who support collective bargaining based on skills training compensation functions work locations benefits and job duties given that prince

081william county public schools has not adopted a collective bargaining resolution the self-determined bargaining unit would like to provide certification that the majority of the unit desires to be represented by an employee association per virginia code this certification of the bargaining unit triggers the requirement that the locality take a vote to adopt or not adopt a collective bargaining resolution within 120 days employees look forward to working with you to establish an environment that best promotes student growth staff success and community engagement collective bargaining will not only help us recruit new teachers and staff it will also help us retain our veterans veteran staff i would like to acknowledge and thank you all for your generosity in this year's budget we all know that in order to recruit and retrain the very best employees for our students

082we need to compensate them fairly our educators are bus drivers custodians librarians special education assistants itinerants social workers school psychologists nurses secretaries and every prince william county school staff members support our students to thrive and reach their full potential we are so proud to stand before you tonight and before you dr mcdave and this historical partnership that we will benefit it will benefit all parties we also want to thank our parents and families who have shown us their unwavering support as we continue to work together thank you so much randy provenzano please hold your applause folks good evening school board members dr latif and dr mcdade my name is brandi provenzano and my address is on file tonight i want to thank this board in advance for recognizing the hard work that educators and staff

083members have accomplished to collect signatures in support of collective bargaining as you can imagine this was no easy task however we work together because we all believe in the benefits of working with the division to ensure that student and staff needs are met we understand that collective bargaining is not just about compensation it's about identifying the needs of students and staff members and ensuring that they have a voice to communicate those needs we also recognize that as other surrounding divisions begin to craft their collective bargaining resolutions we can lead by example your support of collective bargaining tonight will be heard across the state once again prince william county schools will have the opportunity to show support of our staff and our students and we want to retain and recruit the best because our students and

084their families deserve nothing less we are so proud to stand before this board tonight and before you dr mcdade in a partnership that will benefit all parties we also want to thank all the parents here and all the parents who have shown unwavering support as we continue to work together thank you stephanie evers good evening school board members dr latif dr mcdade my name is stephanie evers and my address is on file tonight i want to thank this board in advance for recognizing the hard work that educators and staff members have accomplished to collect signatures for collective bargaining as a veteran teacher in this county i worked on this campaign because i recognize the value of having experienced educators in the classroom we're always excited to recruit young college graduates so eager to implement everything

085they learned in college they bring new energy to the table a fresh perspective and a heart full of hope however as we all know college prepares us for many things but it does not prepare us for the real authentic work that it takes to become an expert in our field the only thing that does that is experience reflection and growth veteran educators play a critical role in helping our new teachers transition from the world of academia to the world of building relationships with students and families we are there to offer resources best practices and most of all we're there to support them on their journey however veteran educators are often forgotten and their experience and expertise are overlooked we need to protect this valuable resource and that is why i encourage you to vote in

086support of collective bargaining show your veteran educators bus drivers cafeteria workers custodians secretaries and all other prince william county school employees that you don't just say that you support them you vote for and implement policies that show your commitment to them we are so proud to stand before this board tonight and before you dr mcdade in a partnership that will benefit all parties we also want to thank our parents and families who have shown us their unwavering support as we continue to work together thank you tammy thicke good evening school board members dr latif and dr mcdade my name is tammy fick i'm with the brinsfield district and my address is on file tonight i want to join my colleagues to thank this board in advance for recognizing the hard work that we as educators

087and staff members have accomplished to collect all of these signatures for collective bargaining tonight i want to stand before you in support of the teacher assistants without whom i would not be able to survive my day in my special ed class at work every teacher that has a ta in their classroom will tell you how invaluable they are for student success and teacher success our tas provide extra support additional instruction small group instruction behavior support and so much more they're the ones we work with daily and trust to share the responsibility of educating the children in our schools our tas truly are outstanding i know that you believe this too so please show them that you support a livable wage at a clear pathway to retirement for them show them that you see them and

088you recognize their role in our thriving education program if a teacher's assistant can leave us and make more as a walmart greeter with less responsibilities than that of an educator how valued can they really feel they stay for the kids but they leave because they must pay their bills i stand with my colleagues to say that we are so proud to stand before you tonight and before you dr mcdade and this partnership that will benefit all parties including our tas with collective bargaining we also want to thank our parents and families who have shown us the their unwavering support as we continue to work together thank you that conclude that concludes citizen common time we're moving on next now to student representative matters and we have donya sharifi our student representative from the gainesville high

089school junior there to join us this evening donya good evening to the prince william county community school board members doctor and dr mcdade thank you for allowing me to speak tonight happy women's month to all those hard-working women here on the school board dr mcdade our super our representative supervisor miss viola the student senate and other student representatives i'm so grateful for the opportunity to work alongside such empowering women i also want to say a quick congrats to may and samantha who are introduced during the recognition for the swim and wrestling championships thank you for representing those female athletes breaking boundaries and proving that certain sports like wrestling are not just for boys and representing prince william county congratulations i would also like to speak on an agenda item today regarding earth week in the

090earthquake resolution it is said that prince william county school board and superintendent proclaim april 18th to 22nd as earth week to encourage all students and staff to participate in activities that promote environmental stewardship throughout this week as well as reflect ways to contribute to a healthier planet throughout the years a canvas module has been developed to promote this resolution as a type of research page with multiple activity suggestions for earth week so thank you to the sustainability office for getting that together as a great resource for both teachers and students the canvas module will be released in the week of march 28th and the module has over 25 lessons k-12 activities and questions for student reflection this is based on our annual earth week calendar of events which is based on the pwcs website the

091reps and i intend on connecting with teachers sca and environmental clubs at each school to promote sustainable practices and awareness during that week that will hopefully translate throughout the entire year sustainability practices are habits that must be learned and the best age to learn habits is when you are younger so we'll be focusing heavily on elementary school and middle school students for these activities for the upcoming library month as declared by prince william county to be in the month of april i want to give a shout out to all those librarians in prince william county and i especially want to shout out mrs crookton gainesville high school my school's librarian because she's honestly one of the most genuine genuine and kind-hearted individuals at school she promotes and promotes an environment in the library that students

092love to go to the library not only to study or socialize but to participate in several activities um we've had blind book datings um during valentine's where the books were wrapped so we wouldn't know what book we would get and then we've even had a red card with several books with red covers when taylor swift dropped her red album the little things that every librarian does does not go unnoticed and i commend all librarians across prince william county schools i would also like to add that i agree that both in school libraries and school book fairs books with more representation need to be available and i hope we can allocate funding toward the purchase of those books representation and books written in other languages thank you and next on to student representative updates on school

093start times we've developed a draft of a survey and had had several meetings with dr neil on the approach we are going to take and we intend on releasing the survey and gathering analyzing data and presenting it to the board end of april early may and then i would like to share just a couple of statistics that shows why this later start time is essential so when a child goes through puberty they're up here pretty their sleep cycles lincoln also decreases sensitivity to light in the morning the sleep cycle is called the circadian rhythm and helps our minds and bodies maintain an internal cycle that tells us what time to eat sleep rest and work however when teens go through puberty their cycle changes and their circadian rhythm is turned thrown off these changes causes

094teens to sleep later at night and wake later each morning the early school start time forces students to get up earlier than they should disrupting their sleep cycle it's rare for teens to get eight to ten hours of recommended sleep and when it's told to students that they're supposed to get eight to ten hours of sleep half of them are in shock and the other half is aware but have accepted that there's no possibility of them getting them asleep so they ignore it it's important to understand that if a high school student wants to go on the bus at 6 30 but typically seats at 11 or 12 a night due to school activities sports or homework they hardly will get six to seven hours of sleep that's barely scratching the minimum of eight hours

095lack of sleep has several issues that i won't list off because it's an infinite list the cdc's survey teens across the us and show that only 25 percent of high school age adolescents reported sleeping the minimum eight hours of sleep each night and without this amount of sleep growing bodies aren't able to reach maximum function abilities each day to solve this the american academy of pediatrics recommend that high school begins no later than 8 30 and even the governor at california passed senate bill 328 which does not allow high school start times to start before 8 30. we're hoped that prince william county will implement a later start time similar to that of california and a lot of our neighboring counties in order to promote more sleep among students the survey we are sending out

096will help us understand both students teachers and parents perspective on this change which hence we are having to have a separate survey for students parents and teachers that's all for tonight and thank you so much make sure to stay posted and engaged in our pwcs community by following us on twitter at pwcsraps also if you're a student involved in sca or other student leadership clubs we're planning our leadership conference for this year so be sure to look forward to that soon we also like any uh photos from school sporting events to musicals to send us to weekend repost we want to see all the stuff going on in prince william county's channel through our page so be sure to share any photos or upcoming events with us through twitter or email lastly i would like

097to let students know that the student rep application for next year is running until the end of the month so be sure to look out for that thank you everyone and have a good rest of your night thank you donya all right i actually went out of order you were not supposed to be next but we'll go back to 1601 which is um the fiscal year 2023 budget and capital improvement plan approval it's on for action a motion is in order miss jackson thank you chair i move that the prince william county school board approve one approved the fiscal year 2023 cip in the fiscal year 2023 school budget and the total amount 1 billion eight hundred and sixty five million twenty five thousand three hundred and eighty three and further two approve the revenue

098sharing agreement between the prince william board of county supervisors and the prince william county school board that provides 57.23 percent of general county revenues be transferred to the school division for the operations of fiscal year 2023. and further three direct the superintendent to forward the request of the school budget by fund totals to the prince william county board of county supervisors and further four request the prince william county border county supervisors to approve and appropriate approve and appropriate their fiscal year 2023 school budget by lump sum appropriation in the amount of one billion eight hundred and sixty five million twenty five thousand three hundred eighty three dollars by fund totals as in previous years do i have a second mr chair miss argipur seconds of motion okay discussion um who'd like to go first anybody

099like to go okay well how about i'll miss wall and then i'll go next okay thanks mr mr chairman um a couple of guiding principles on the budget i've taken a lot of time to review it in detail and a couple of guiding principles that i have in my own personal decision making process one is the need to invest in student achievement and in the classroom in particular two is the need to improve our market competitiveness for attracting and retaining the best employees that we can and three is ensuring fiscal responsibility and careful management of our resources so that we may get the best return on investment and put hard earned tax dollars to their best use for the sake of our children so in my opinion this budget does all three of those item

100one i'm particularly happy to see the expansion of gifted education and the career and technical education programs shoring up of special education resources for students and supporting english language learners on on my item two the proposed raise for teachers and staff better positions us to be competitive in the marketplace for top talent and that is really important for the health of our school division my expectation is that these propos this proposed budget will increase our competitive edge and this in turn should directly benefit our students because if we can keep our best teachers we have continuity in the classroom and in our programs so i expect we will be gathering data on our success to track our investments and make adjustments as necessary on item three i want to spend just a little bit of

101time on this my third item i should say and we must remember that we're talking about a very large amount of money 1.5 billion dollars every dollar represents taxpayer sacrifice it's a trust it's an investment in education and we must always keep in mind whose money that is it's the public's money and we use it as wise stewards and so we should guard against waste at every turn we should maintain vigilant adherence to sound principles of solid fiscal management um we and we need to set aside ample reserves for hard times we're we're in hard times right now and we don't know the future we don't know what's going to happen in the marketplace we don't know what's going to happen in the world the political world is very very precarious right now and um

102you know as a just a reminder and as we look at this budget um i think we do have some things in place that we have that we've set money aside we've been very strategic in in not investing any s or funds or any coronavi you know federal relief funds for things that aren't um that couldn't be a one-time expenditure so there are a number of things that i think we've done that position us to to be well situated to weather a storm um and i but i think it's really important that we do this traditionally in prince william county we um we've done very well with fewer dollars i think we it's indisputable that we generate a solid return on investment at a lower cost than our neighbors and so i think that's to

103be highlighted and commended um but and we also almost also must remember that throwing money at problems and hoping that something sticks is not good um fiscal management rather success will lie in making sure that money is being spent wisely in pursuit pursuit of purposeful priorities which is why i commend um the division for its strategic plan and its purposeful planning with this budget the close tying of those two things together i think is awesome i think that takes commitment we have been a commitment to accountability and transparency moving forward so i look forward to that um when um here in prince william county our students achieve comparably with our bigger more wealthy neighbors despite traditionally being out funded and not having the same amount of resources i think we should be proud of that

104i think we should build on that strength and recognize the things that we're doing well that don't have necessarily a big fiscal price tag and then moving forward however i do see that we do have investments that we need to make in key areas not only to promote additional student success but to reduce organizational risk and assure compliance with federal and state laws and regulations and that is very important for us to recognize i think that budget this budget prioritizes that i think that's important that we need to recognize that recognize those risks and take measures to mitigate against them so above all we must deliver on our mandate to educate the children of prince william county position them to graduate ready to move into successful productive lives as fully contributing members of our community

105i think this budget makes great strides toward that goal and i'll end my comments by re iterating the last point which is consciously we need to consciously remember where these funds come from and to whom we are responsible and that we continue our efforts to be transparent and accountable to the public for the use of these funds for the benefit of all students thank you mr chairman thank you miss wall ms argopour thank you mr chairman um ms wahl you actually covered a couple of things that i wanted to talk about but i'm just going to expand expand on one of the the thoughts um when we are investing in our employees um it it's it's we don't want a revolving door of employees it costs money to train people it takes a few years

106for teachers new teachers to they need mentors they need compassionate people in their lives who are helping them do the best job they can when they're starting off it's been really hard through this pandemic as well so um all school divisions right now are facing uh issues with people maybe deciding to move out of the teaching profession and so to remain competitive we do have to do something about raising our salary um but it also it is just it's good fiscal responsibility to make sure that we aren't having a revolving door because we aren't paying our people enough so i'd like to point that out i agree with all those things that you were talking about i'm particularly excited about the investment in our children in special education gifted education and i know we've got

107parent liaisons it doesn't sound like a lot but it's going to make a big difference to our communities because parent we know parent involvement is the number one thing that helps our school communities and i want to remind parents too that you please take advantage of all of the opportunities you have we already know that our our sports parents are doing the boosters and our music parents and our theater parents you have that side of life we have the ptsos we have all of these opportunities to sit on committees and and things like that so please stay involved and engaged because that's just going to make everything so much better i'm also excited about um i'm going to have a grandson in about a month and when he turns five years old he will be

108in kindergarten in one of our prince william county schools and he will have a ta in his in his kindergarten classroom one of the best kindergarten teachers that my kids ever ran across at marshall elementary um always talks about her tas or her team and um just she's she's an amazing teacher a miss stamp the stamp helmet stamp but she always talks about her team we want every teacher to have a team so uh this this is investing directly into our staff and into our students making our school division even better um and and this whole idea that we've been able to run uh on a tight budget it it's great but i don't want people to be exhausted over it either there's people in the kelly center who are taking on a lot of

109work investing a little bit more staffing in the kelly center is going to be better for all of our employees so as we move forward through this budget uh session i'm i'm just thrilled with everything how it aligns with the the um the strategic plan yes and i i specifically one of the reasons i ran for school board was because i know that the strategic plan is is the thing that guides us and if we aren't if some education teachers are evaluated on something called a smart goal um i wanted to smart goal the division and that's basically what we're doing it's it's accountability in and it's it's checking as we go to make sure that we are doing the job we said we're going to do so i am excited about all this thank

110you mr wilk thank you mr chairman i have stated that a crucial difference between the budgetary process this year and previous years is the detailed alignment uh in these budgetary positions with our strategic plan for example many of you who followed budget sessions in the previous years will remember that i was one of the only board members who proposed cutting a number of central office staffing positions provided at the recommendation of dr waltz well this year every new position added to our operating budget is not only aligned to this strategic plan but dr mctade's team gave me a detailed explanation as to how each of these positions will benefit the overall goal of teaching and learning for our students the details provided by our superintendent go way beyond waving a wavy report and telling me

111that we do not have enough central office positions as compared to other jurisdictions i understand the budget because the positions are aligned again with the framework of our strategic plan thanks to the alignment of our plan i'm not only able to see how this is a holistic view of our division but how some of these positions specifically will help the potomac district as outlined in our strategic plan everything we include in our budget would help the mission and the goal of developing our profile of a prince william county graduates today and in previous years my goal has been to support the fiscal responsibility and serve as a voice for the potomac district as a representative of potomac my view as a board member is that i must be engaged i must be responsive and i

112must be present in my 14 schools when i come to budget work sessions and improve our operating budget i use this mindset when advocating for resources and projects in my schools now let's talk about some of the core values of our strategic plan let us talk about equity within the potomac district and do a deeper dive in how it benefits my constituents equity is not about providing every kid with a pair of shoes it's about providing kids with shoes that fits over the past four years i have tried for example to move the fenestration and renovation projects at grand park forward an additional year although these attempts have been unsuccessful i'm now happy to see that starting this summer graham parks fenestration project and hvac will be coming to their building yes i know we

113have quite a contrast in the potomac district a number of my students go to the state of the art and the only middle school that looks like potomac shores middle school in the county but we must keep in mind the conditions of our older building like older buildings like grand park middle school when it comes to community resources and being responsive to the needs of my constituents using forest park for example last spring i was made aware by a potomac local article about the dilapidated conditions about the tennis courts at forest park high school immediately i jumped to action i talked to staff and started thinking of a way of handling this project as the tennis coach told me at forest park no previous board member had ever come out and walked tennis courts with

114her and was so responsive to the needs of her students the same goes for my other high school and securing a new track for potomac high school but equity goes beyond the exteriors of our schools and specific facility projects school programs within buildings also must stress the equitable needs of their learning populations in this budget take dumfries elementary for example a small building with a small student population where many of these students come from poverty and households where either both parents work multiple jobs or a single parent is supporting the entire family these low student numbers do not lead to a full-time itc and the principal has to use federal grant dollars to pay for a community liaison dumfries does not have a population where the ptco can raise thousands of dollars from events however

115with this budget dumpers will have the ability to hire a full-time itc they will be able to make a community liaison position sustainable even when the grant money runs out they will be able to leverage additional small school funding to hire curriculum support specialists because the students of dumfries deserve the opportunity to compete with students from more affluent populations if you look at inclusivity and supporting the health and wellness it is not coincidental that forest park high school is one of the only two high schools open to the public this goes back to a couple years ago when an advocacy group called run free prince williams talked to me and another school board member about the need to open these tracks to the public i'm proud that the potomac district offers this opportunity for residents

116and constituents as some speakers have said resiliency and the well-being of students are paramount and they are apparent in this budget with the 13 additional college and career readiness counselors last year i did try cutting a million dollars worth of textbooks to add 12 additional counselors to the school reduce caseloads but i'm happy to see that this budget includes our goal and continue our success in cutting counselor caseloads over the past couple years this board has expanded support for the whole child by adding social workers psychologists counselors and other programs to support the resiliency and well-being of our students yet we need to continue adding more counselors to meet the asca recommendation of 250 to 1 ratio april's millichild military child awareness month and anyone who follows the budget process each year knows that i've

117continually advocated for a full-time military family transition coordinator in the past fortunately federal grants helped sustain half of this position's funding however next year that federal funding is gone but i'm happy to see that this budget does support that full-time position this position is critical to the potomac district that may have the most military family populations in our county for the past six years i've had the pleasure of serving on our division safe school committee one of my last projects at the committee was working with our principals admin and parents to bring back groups like our watchdogs and create unique solutions like other national programs like dads on duty the safety and well-being of our students has been an utmost priority in mind and again this budget keeps that in mind by adding additional security

118school specialists to our secondary schools and additional funds to hire more aps to support building discipline and safety finally and most importantly as a fellow special needs parent i am honored when families come and ask me advice or even ask me to participate in an iep meeting unfortunately because of conflicts of interest i cannot attend these but i appreciate that families know that i am one of the voices on our board that represents the special needs families i get what special needs families face during coven 19. my nine-year-old son dominic struggled during this time because he could not learn virtually and he needed to be back in school we saw major regression which we're still working on today as a family our budget is historic because it nearly doubles the number of positions in our

119special education department yes a number of these positions are going to be based at this leadership center most of these positions will be individuals who serve in the field and support our special ed teachers i will add that as a board we need to keep moving forward and add additional tas in our autism and id classrooms in closing i want to say that i spend many week nights and weekends working throughout the potomac district and listening to families and getting their feedback and concerns most recently for example parents at the ashland ptco contacted me about the lack of communication between bus drivers who accept new routes when they take routes for their apps and colleagues often the bus app does not reflect this accurate timing however this budget includes additional positions so we can do

120our best to address communication and combat the national bus driver shortage hearing stories like this with bussing or feedback regarding school safety is a reason why i will continue to be engaged responsive and present in my schools thank you miss jesse i agree with everything he said uh that was a very comprehensive review but the first thing he indicated in his remarks was this alignment and one of the commitments from the superintendent was organizational coherence and i want to speak to that because i think that when you see us in the boardroom you if you haven't noticed that there's a difference in this boardroom i have because i've been here for a long time and the budget process was always a very difficult process we would spend hours at markup i think maybe four hours

121five i don't know but i think we spent an hour in markup because the superintendent and her staff really have provided us with information in advance and i want to commend her for that because it made the process easier for example she provided us with a form and we filled out the form instead of writing everything we could think of she gave us a form we wrote we put our information on that form our request and then she asked a very important question at the end or was it mr wallerford i'm not sure which one of you did this but you it was a very good question the question was if you don't get this if you want this and we don't have it in the budget what are you willing to give up and

122it forced us to think what is it that we're willing to give up i've always looked at student achievement as number one and that's in this budget and i'm not going to outline all the different positions because i think i honestly think that justin did a very good job of outlining everything that's in this budget but she also gave us a response and we got these little forms with green and white forms i had seven or so items in my budget that i wanted and not only did she respond to say no you can't have it in a very nice way i must say or maybe you can have it and here's what we're going to do for example one of the items that's really important to me and it's interesting because i am a

123k-3 reading person and i believe that that beginning reading literacy piece is very important someone talked about literacy earlier but as i look at our graduation rates and i look at the disparity between the reading performance and the graduation rate 95 percent of kids are graduating all these 95 90 graduation rates and i'm wondering what's going to have to happen after college and i think literacy is really important so literacy in the content area was an area that is very important to me so she did the mr wallaford and the superintendent of staff did say that they're going to look at it next year the other item is equity and i like that analogy the shoes and boy you're on it tonight yes thank you thank you he was so good but it is very

124true so when i looked at then the data are there's a disparity in our performance we're concerned about math we've talked about math a great deal but i looked at the science scores and i was concerned that our science scores are even lower and that we needed to really look at those scores so for me i've been in this county long enough to know that we had to bring people in this board room for woodbridge high school to get a feel after 45 years we don't really need to do that anymore but i am looking at what it is that we need to have to get equity equity informs when i i asked for a report when i first came on this board i walked i visited so many schools and i realized there were

12514 trails in some and bathrooms outside and there was an equity issue but i also asked this time for a report on the science labs and it looks like there are 20 science labs that are missing in schools and they're all title 1 schools so when we talk about whether or not kids have equitable i'm not sure i think that falls on the equality it's a lack of equality but she she has looked at that and i know that there are some considerations about uh physical space having the space to really build a lab but she has also said she is going to be working with another agency to provide some support for those schools that do not have labs in our title one districts and she is going to look at the physical space

126down the road so i just wanted to commend the superintendent and her staff for providing us with opportunity for input and i say this again that each i think it's friday i have another two by one meeting briefing meeting i think we meet with her so frequently i can't keep up with the meetings my husband said don't you have a briefing meeting today i said no i don't have a briefing we had to look at my calendar because we are briefed all the time i just want to commend the superintendent and our staff for allowing us to have input and not to i use the word fight out loud that we don't have to fight out loud so i want to thank you and i think this budget is the best budget i've seen since

127i've been here i'm very very impressed thank you miss williams thank you mr chairman um i want to start by saying i i appreciate and um support this budget that the superintendent and her staff have put together i think that um if we don't recognize anything else it's that for an administration that's been in place since july 1 has clearly taken the time to not only listen to the board our employees but members of the public and then translate that into this budget in our strategic plan and i can't tell you how much i value the alignment between the strategic plan and the budget because the strategic plan is our roadmap for how we're going to lead the division the budget is how we're going to fund those priorities that you can't you shouldn't have

128one without the other and i think this has been the best example of that since i've sat on this board i do want to if mr wellingford will indulge me because you say it so much better than i ever could i ask this every budget season and every time we talk about the budget because i think we don't talk about it enough and i remember prior to being a board member thinking that's a really large number for a school division and that's a lot of money and hearing members of the public go well we need to spend money in in the classroom and we need to do this and we need to do that and i think on top of all of those regular questions the pandemic has brought on a new set of questions

129so mr wellingford if you wouldn't mind um just doing the usual for me on behalf of me and all of the the watching public and simply explain the difference between our operational budget and our pandemic funds and why members of the public may not see them and why we cannot use them in our operational budget for ongoing items so dr latif members of the board and dr mcdade mrs williams thank you for the question the budget that's before you tonight for adoption is the operating fund and other funds budgets of about 1.8 billion dollars the general fund budget is about 1.528 billion and that does not include like you say that does not include about 200 to 220 million dollars that we've received over the past year and a half to two years in funding

130from the federal government for the pandemic through sr1 esser2 and sr-3 there is about a hundred to 120 i was going to say billion 100 to 120 million of those dollars left to spend and again they're not part of this budget those were added during the year in each of the last two years and are part of our carry forward process that takes place at the end of the fiscal year each year and with those funds mr wellington when i'm talking about pandemic relief funds can we just spend them any all kind of way can we throw them in our operational budget and like just buy whatever we feel is needed just because we have those funds no absolutely not the pandemic funds are are really uh to provide two or three things one is

131mitigation for the pandemic through ppe and other mitigation strategies the other more important frankly issue is unfinished learning and trying to recover from a year and a half to two years of of learning uh remotely and for some period missed in the classroom altogether so we try to focus those dollars on those issues it appears that we're coming out of the pandemic finally but there's still there's still a great deal of work to do with regard to unfinished learning thank you mr wildford i think that's important to note at this time because you know budgets have always been complicated for me i'm sure a lot of other people share that sentiments and i think it anything that we can do to further educate the public and ourselves about the different categories of money and how

132we spend them and why it's important i appreciate greatly i don't want to keep you up at the stand i think that's the my main point um it i i bring that up because it's important um we know this year that there's still uncertainty from our state general assembly as to how much money we're going to get from them from funding because they haven't figured it out yet often the school division has well every year we go before the board of county supervisors with our revenue sharing agreement and explain to them why we need funding and i think this year even more so it's important that the public understand that those funds don't operate our school division every year on a continuous basis and our school division is growing one of the things i meant

133to ask mr william for but i think i got this myself as we continue to grow as a school division not only in number and size but in the types of students that we have and the different categories of students also mean that we have to spend more money often times our esau students or our at-risk students we have to allot more dollar value to them to provide them an equitable education as well and i think that that's also important especially in a time when we know some of our student enrollment numbers have gone down but the needs of our students have gone up and it's not just our students it's also our staff members as well i appreciate in this budget as someone who's advocated since 2017 for a pathway for our staff to

134grow and mature to be supported in their job duties and their job qualifications that is represented in this budget not only is it represented by additional positions but also also in our hr department we're undertaking the task of making sure that we stay equitable to our staff members by ensuring that we're not enforcing three uh jobs on one staff member and by comparison to our other jurisdictions i appreciate the start of bringing competitive salaries for our staffing i think it's going to take a while and we're not going to be able to fully do everything in this initial budget but making that commitment to back up what it is we say we believe i appreciate also um the focus on all students not just students who come from low-income families or have the ability to

135get tutoring but every single student across the board whether they're going to go into college or career pathways or in the trades i think that that's outlined very clearly not only in our strategic planning excuse me plan but in the way that we're fund in the way that we're placing funds in our budget um it's not just that i appreciate all of the things that get are in the budget that would be specific to my district but it's the fact that they're it's specific to every single district because we no longer live in a community where a student that just lives in my district just goes to school in my district they could end up in mr wilkes district or miss walls district or miss jesse's district and it's important that we are funding our

136schools and our staff in every district in a way that's meaningful for our students growth and learning and achievement i am just proud to be on this board i am proud to be uh here to be able to support this budget and i hope that when we present this budget before the board of county supervisors that it opens up a chance for dialogue and further public education and just as we have modified this budget process and made it more equitable for each member on this board and much more of an educational experience i hope that we are able to replicate that instead of having a one-way conversation with our board of county supervisors so that we can continue our due diligence and explain to the public how it is that we're spending the funds and

137why it's important so um in closing with that i just want to say thank you very much for this opportunity and i highly support our budget miss ralston did you have anything to add no i think it's been worked over okay very good um miss jackson thank you dr rotif um the first thing i'm going to say is thank you for answering all of our questions and for meeting with us secondly i echo the sentiments of all of my fellow board members from the alignment to the strategic plan to this budget to smart goals to something that i thought mr wilkes said was that was pointing about being a special needs parent as someone who sat at all sides of the table parent student teacher and when looking at this budget i feel many voices

138were heard to me the alignment to the strategic plan makes us more competitive financial financially responsible and gives us strategic steps to achieve achieve the goals as i stated in the last meeting this plan being aligned with the budget and the cip directly aligns with the concerns brunsville constituents and brentsville staff have discussed with me over the last few years i know the positions added will improve customer service and remove some burden on staff and all of this is directly linked to student success and parental involvement i am also excited about the renovations coming to the brunsville district that is listed and outlined in the cip because my fellow board members went into such great detail i'm just going to just reiterate how grateful i am for the superintendent and her team for listening and

139collaborating with the board i support the new positions ranging from the special education administrative coordinator supervisor more ape teachers special education department chairs parent liaisons teacher assistants also teacher assistants in kindergarten classrooms transportation liaisons and audiologists behavior specialists gifted teachers special education transition specialists social workers i'm just excited about all these positions and the impact that they will make through investing and prioritizing and student achievement we take concrete steps to outline the goals in the strategic plan and i'm excited to support this budget thank you very good thank you ms jackson um okay so i think this is an outstanding budget i'll apply a few words of caution this is the proposed budget once adopted by the school board will be our school board budget we will take this in front of the county board

140of county supervisors to ask for approval of the budget as well which typically isn't that difficult because we have a revenue sharing agreement but much of the budget is dependent much of the increase of the budget much of the new investments we're making are based on what the general assembly is going to do general assembly has adjourned last week they are in budget negotiations so the final budget is still unknown to school divisions across the state and so until we know what we're going to get this budget is based on our best expectation and best guess my understanding is the budget could come in 50 million short 10 million higher based on what the general assembly is going to do and so there will be some maybe coming back here to the table and adjusting

141some of these investments this is the fifth budget i've overseen since i was elected chair um appointed elected and then re-elected chair i ran on a very transparent desire to improve student success the safety and security of our students the space and infrastructure we have here in the division and the salaries those have been my four guiding principles um in the five years i've served on this board in prior years we've made significant significant achievements and improvements in all four categories when we came our counseling ratio was awful we made significant improvements in the last three budgets on adding counselors psychologists and social workers we have ways to go we still have ways to go and we're going to keep working on that our salaries were there they're still among the lowest in the northern

142virginia region and our per-pupil spending is still among the lowest in the region and we continue to lose great staff to divisions who are paying more but in the five budgets i've overseen we've seen significant increases in salaries at record pace uh better than any other five-year period in in in the millennium for sure so the commitment i made all of those commitments are based on you know improving those four bucket buckets our strategic plan lines up with those buckets as well learning and achievement for all a positive climate and culture family and community engagement and organizational coherence this budget addresses all of those areas in addressing much of the long-term needs we've had that needed to be funded and taking some new and innovative approaches to problems we've had also for a long time

143the amount of money going in this budget and i think mr wallingford what was i think you had a number in the budget markup or earlier the percent of monies going into the classrooms directly did we we have a so about 80 percent of the new spending correct correct me if i'm wrong 80 percent of new spending is going directly into classrooms we're talking about funding our teachers adding teaching assistants committing to gifted teachers and you've heard it all already career counseling you know instructional technology coaches really just a a fantastic budget if we get this all approved regarding you know health safety and security we're working on security around the division we're adding nurses and we're continuing to work on our efforts with counseling the family and community engagement is an excellent piece here

14435 parent liaisons for transportation liaisons we have a lot of work to do there and so this commitment this this budget really begins a strong commitment to that effort and salaries this year the average salary raise will be about 7 percent for employees it could be as high as 10 percent based on the new salary fixes that have been installed in this budget these salary fixes many of these we wanted to do prior to the pandemic in that budget with the pandemic year of 2020 we had some of these fixes built in but we had to remove them because of reductions in our budget at that time and moving money to reserve cash we reserved cash this year because of the cost of gasoline going up two and a half million if you heard at

145the last budget markup is going towards that so i want to commend our finance staff john wallingford all the budget team all of our principals all of our folks working on the budget which started back in july it doesn't start in february or january on putting together a strong budget that addresses our needs in dr mcdavid for this budget aligning with the strategic plan which is something all of us worked on uh we invited um the community to participate in the you know the the um the putting together the strategic plan and that included inviting you know folks in different aspects of our community prior board members other folks in the community interested in seeing where the school should go my commitment and you know responsibility as as a school board member and as chair

146is to try to get and fund our schools at the highest possible way we can i made no secret about how i want to fund our schools i believe that we need more monies from both the state and the county and i will continue to fight for those monies however i believe we can get them in the best way possible i've committed to you know doing it by hoping to convince the board of county supervisors or general assembly to reduce the burden on property owners and find other ways to diversify the tax base and so all of this is again dependent and highly dependent on the financial situation that the general assembly ultimately approves and the budget they've approved so we will continue to lobby and work hard and and i will continue to do

147all of that work with the intention to support my efforts at student success safety and security space and infrastructure and salaries i believe all of these things will make our school division stronger better and a even better place to work than it already is and so with that i fully support the fiscal year 2023 budget as proposed by the superintendent i will if dr mcdade if you had any final comments before we take the vote we will go ahead and take the vote unless i have anything oh got it okay i'll take care of you i'll do that oh we define it oh got it okay all right so um doctor we'll go with dr mcdade if she has any comments and have to recess for a few minutes on a couple matters that we

148have to take care of uh legally with mr wilke and then we'll come back and vote on the budget um dr mcdade thank you so much mr chairman um i really want to just take a moment to thank the entire school board for your support of the fiscal year 2023 budget and capital improvement programs and the process i know that we made changes to the process this year and you have spent so much time in that process providing feedback and input and evaluating the budget as well as the process to ensure fiscal responsibility we've spent countless hours in dialogue and review of the budget i also appreciate all of your efforts to ensure that our stakeholders and their needs and wants and desires are represented in this budget as you provided your feedback and so

149we're really excited about the amount of work that has gone into the budget as well as the dedicated um work and stakeholder involvement that contributed to the pwcs vision 2025 launching thriving futures which ensures that our priorities are driving our investments so i'm really excited about that and thankful to the school board for your consideration of this budget i also want to show appreciation for on behalf of the entire school division and i'm sure school board as well for this year's revenue sources which primarily include our pwcs residents who are taxpayers and their taxpayer dollars go directly to provide the resources to support funding our division's budget and so we appreciate all of the revenue sources that we've received to support this budget and our strategic plan i do want to acknowledge that you know

150with the strategic plan and the budget we do have a significant portion of funds dedicated to improving overall wages and benefits within the school division which is incredibly important to make sure that we can retain top talent within the school division and ensure competitive wages across the board across the salary scale and so salary scale being a significant portion of the budget we will be providing additional detailed information to our employees in the coming weeks around the salary scale as well so i just really want to thank you all for your support it's been a comprehensive process i'm excited about where we are today with our strategic plan and hopeful that the proposed budget will be adopted to be the board's budget for the next school year thank you dr mcdave uh we'll go ahead

151and recess for um let's make it 10 minutes and then we'll come out and do the final vote thank you okay we'll go ahead and reconvene we had to um collect a couple um final final things we need to do before we vote on the budget so i will um um turn the floor over to justin wilk mr wilk potomac district thank you mr chairman i apologize i should have prepped a team in advance uh but every year i have to read that pursuant to the virginia conflict of interest act i'm informing the public that my wife is employed as a teacher in prince william county schools but i'm able to participate fairly in this transaction which applies to all prince william county school employees ms genwall gainesville district i'm also going to make a

152similar statement pursuant to the virginia conflict of interest act i am informing the public that my husband has been employed as a substitute teacher in prince william county public schools but i am able to participate fairly in this transaction which applies to all prince william school employees thank you okay at this point i will call the meeting for uh i'll call for a vote on the fiscal 2023 budget cip approval miss yeah please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes miss ralston votes yes of the nebsco district and the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed all right very good thank you very much that's a big deal everyone okay moving on to superintendent's time see now it was good that we had this student who really had to get out of here for

153a test um i screwed that up earlier well now we we will go to dr mcdade superintendent's time doctor thank you mr chairman good evening um again thank you so much to the board for all of your engagement during the budget season for your input most importantly for adopting the fy 23 division budget and in support of our strategic plan thank you so much and then again additionally later this week we will be sharing a comprehensive update with all pwcs staff members regarding our proposed compensation investments to support our strategic priority to provide regionally competitive pay scales for all pwcs employees i want to highlight a few celebrations our robotics program and the many outstanding students coaches and mentors who participate and compete recently 18 robotics teams from prince william county public schools qualified for

154the vex world's vex worlds competition to be held this may in dallas texas the vex robotics world championship presented by the northrop gruman foundation brings together the top vex iq challenge vex robotics competition and the exu teams from around the globe to celebrate their accomplishments and compete for the championship congratulations to the lake ridge elementary school qualifying team as well as the two qualifying teams from ashland elementary school both parkside and gainesville middle schools are fielding three teams each with one team from each of the following schools the knoxville school porter traditional school and benton middle school six teams will represent our high schools with two teams representing patriot high school and woodbridge high school one team representing colgan high and one team representing osborne park high school we are immensely proud of these teams

155and we are looking forward to witnessing their talents and skills in the world competition so good luck to all of our robotics competitors our strategic plan's number one commitment is learning and achievement for all and we have begun implementation as part of our commitment to academic excellence for all student groups pwcs will focus division wide on the implementation and fidelity of the instructional core which includes continuous improvement in the level of content student engagement and teacher knowledge and skill by focusing on enhancing and improving the instructional core pwcs students will be exposed to rigorous educational experiences to ensure integrity to the teaching and learning process of the instructional core school-based administrators are being trained in how to conduct instructional learning rounds which is a research-based approach to improving teaching and learning and a priority in

156our strategic plan during instructional rounds educators observe instruction and work together to analyze those observations with the goal of improving classroom instruction over the past few months i've had the privilege of joining instructional rounds at several schools including ellis elementary school bevel gainesville and parkside middle schools and hilton unity read and woodbridge high schools i will be participating in instructional rounds at many more schools this spring and i look forward to working with our associate superintendents school administrators and teachers towards continuous improvement to ensure academic progress for all students this monday i had the honor of serving as the guest mystery reader for miss bonay's first grade class at covington harper elementary school the students and i read the good egg by jury john students were excited about reading engaged in follow-up discussion and asked

157great questions it was the perfect way to close out national reading month i would like to extend an extra special thank you to ms belnae and principal ciero at covington harper elementary school for the invitation mr chairman that concludes the superintendent's report excellent dr mcdade thank you very much we will now move on to board matters um we will start um which side do we start last time how about we okay mr wilk look he's jumping into it now here after screwing up early yeah after my monologue earlier i'll be quick uh on 3-5 i had the pleasure to spend time with principal devers at triangle elementary the visit included participating in the class art project with miss ivan's class following i actually got to visit my colleague and friend at swans creek principal amanda

158whitney on 3 9 i participated in montclair elementary's virtual kindergarten literacy night and then drove over to potomac high school to attend their spring sports orientation meeting on 3 11 i attended grand park middle school basketball jv and varsity team as they took on the potomac shores seahawks i do want to recognize my long-standing grand park principal maria ramadan who has accepted a new job in another district and she will be leaving and friday is her last day so i want to thank principal ramadan for an outstanding service to prince william county schools on 312 i had the pleasure of visiting with my son the klc on a saturday to use the instructional teacher recruitment fair i want to recognize the entire hr team michelle cesano and everyone involved in all the distr my schools

159who participated in finally on 314 uh the potomac shores seahawks varsity boys defeated mipon ripon middle school to end their season undefeated both jv and varsity although there are no quote-unquote playoffs in our middle school sports the potomac shore seahawks were the undisputed champions by regular season record and they got to cut down the net it was some cool stuff so congratulations and i see the remainder of my time miss arge report thank you dr latif um i'm going to be quick again tonight real quick tonight i had a chance to visit um over at hilton high school to see how the renovations are going i got to see their career center which was amazing uh they had everything you can think of in there they had military career options they had cte type of

160career options they had all these colleges and universities represented and it was a beautiful space that's been newly renovated so congratulations and continuing the work of renovation um osmond park will be getting their windows um this some rest of their windows some of them already been done um i know you're looking forward to your turf field um it's coming in 2023. um hilton's turf field will be starting this uh this week summer i believe i got to spend saturday at the vboda band assessment and i got to hear op hilton colgan saunders middle and lakeridge middle school bands all of them earned superiors for the performances i heard and they were absolutely amazing i got to take in a little bit of the hilton baseball game last night and it was early because everyone's pants

161were still white it was great i think it was very early innings there and then right after that i went over to hear the hilton choir sing they they did their practice for pre-assessment um in front of an audience they had judges um you know taking notes and things like that they will be at battlefield on friday doing their assessment um he's taking i believe three groups there so good luck to all of the choirs this friday um i got to see what was the other thing oh yeah i got to see um the osmo park girls how could i forget you girls got to watch several of their games um they were just great great teams to watch um they got to go to the state tournament came up a little short but i

162am so very proud i know the whole county was rooting for you got to speak with parents this week a lot of uh a lot about colgan traffic i know it's we're still working on it um just bear with us it's it's a process um i i did make a post about um about the the survey you could take with with vdot about that um also got to talk with uh some other parents about the bush's bus issues mr wilke referenced in one of his things earlier today we also got to meet with a garfield student ib student who talked about student mental health and um this is a priority it's it's very very very very important and i believe we were going to be hearing from safe schools committee later about some of the

163things that we will be working on so everyone have a a great couple of weeks we'll see you at the next meetings ms wall thank you chairman latif um so ms sharifi is not here but i just appreciated her comments about the difficulty that students face in getting enough sleep under our current high school start time schedule and it wouldn't surprise me to see improvement in mental health and academics if we were to um take up this suggestion that keeps that has come repeatedly from our students i know during the pandemic that was the number one thing sometimes the only thing that the students liked about virtual school was the chance to get a little bit of extra sleep and in some cases a lot of extra sleep some of our students um you know

164they work really hard for their their grades and their athletics and they they get to bed at midnight they get up at 5 00 5 30 you know they do that over and over again so i really support um that that advocacy from the student reps um i wanted to also say that i was able to attend tyler elementary for a nutritional security event on friday the fourth i met with division and school leaders students from first through fifth grade and heard about the school's great accomplishments and serving 1.2 million meals during the school closures and usda officials were there to highlight successes of our food service program in pwcs so hats off to all the individuals who help with that i got to help make enchiladas and bread and bake they break bread on

165site i got this really great apron from pwcs so i'm ready to pitch in at a moment's notice if we have a need for an extra set of hands congratulations to the battlefield basketball boys basketball team for making it to the state championship game that was a tough final game but we're proud of you for your amazing season last weekend i attended orchestra assessment i am a violin player so it was really fun to hear there i was able to hear a large number of orchestras perform in particular bull run and battlefield orchestras and they did a great job those schools got straight ones i know music educators especially it was a difficult year last year we you felt really hamstrung because you know through no fault of your own because of being in a

166virtual environment for music it's just very very tough but students are making steady progress and it was really rewarding for me to hear that um i'm looking forward to chorus assessments this friday at battlefield high school as the host um dr mcdade already talked about robotics i think it's fantastic 18 teams to the vex world championship that's just amazing and um that's the largest contingent we've ever sent to the vex world championships and the history of the program so thanks to denise carroll and all all those um awesome robotics coaches out there and parents and students as well um let's see i'm looking forward to going to the sea perch competition this friday which is also something that we do in prince william county in the robotics field i want to give special congratulations to

167the sled hockey paralympic team and evan nichols a battlefield student who is one of six rookies on the team that won gold this last week this is extremely exciting and i'm sure we're going to hear more about this in future weeks and hopefully we can bring him in and congratulate him because like this is just really amazing what an opportunity for evan i appreciate everybody and i want to wish everybody a happy st patrick's day tomorrow and have a wonderful evening evening miss williams thank you mr chairman um i just want to start out by speaking a little bit about the governor's school and give you a more update in-depth update next meeting but um for anybody who's interested their research symposium i think it's worth save the date on your calendar is may 13th

168at the mason campus congratulations to all of the students who have received early acceptance from already over 20 colleges and earned i'm sure the scholarship number will be astronomical as it is every year but i want to give special um congratulations to those who competed in the science fair they sent over 20 teams and five which were category winners and out of those five 2-1 grand prizes two students and please forgive me if i butcher your name i apologize naaman agarwal and jesuit he's from patriot and dejuan boykin from forest park will be participating in the 2022 international science and engineering fair i'm very excited about that um i also had the opportunity to attend a couple events one at porter traditional for their steam night which was held in person they had a plethora

169of activities to choose from and it also happened to fall on national pie day i am aware that there's somewhere out there there's a picture of an administrator who was pied in the face due to a few carefully answered pie questions from some students so i'd love to see that eventually i want to say a special thank you to sabrina easter the pt ptso president who provided snacks ptso provided snacks and drinks for anyone who attended i also was able to attend featherstone steam night which was virtual it was really exciting had a lot of fun doing the steam projects with my son at home and as well as featherstone's reads night which is still ongoing i think tonight may have been there last night which was also virtual as well i want to as

170we enter our testing and our um ap testing and sol season and all of that um have students recognize especially those students for the last few years who did not do any of this at all um to just take a deep deep breath know that there's support out there for you take the time to ask the questions get enough rest but please please please ask the questions get the help the resources are out there as you enter this unknown season for a lot of you students who've never taken these tests and i hope that we all all give each other grace especially with these students in our mental health testing is an important time of year and it already causes a lot of anxiety and i can only imagine how a lot of our students

171feel who have never undergone sol testing or end of the year ap testing or final exams and i think that that's worth acknowledgement and then again um i just i also want to congratulate a former pwcs student robert kelly who is a swim coach for special olympics very proud of our swim program here and what their students are able to do when they leave and then that's about it thank you miss jesse today in the news we learned that children died in ukraine and i know that this is not something that maybe should be on our agenda but i can't help but think about these children who are not getting an education who are living in fear and so i want to start because i did go over last the last time and i thought

172that mrs murphy was still here but i did i did respond to her i did apologize for going over so i thought i'd do my and one of the concerns was of course that i took time to give tribute to the people those two to what's happening in ukraine so for the children of ukraine and our rights to all the people here tonight in citizens time you have a right to speak and i think i cherish i think you should cherish that right to speak because they're fighting in ukraine for that very right so i'd like to take 10 seconds to recognize and whatever you want to do in moment of silence for the children and families and you carry ukraine okay i hope that we clocked that i wanted to tonight is uh woodbridge

173night i think for me because i was invited to participate in their mock interviews where they actually brought students in and we interviewed these students and we rated them and they did they actually did a very good job we i think they sort of forgot to dress for the interview but other than that it was really a great experience for me and i also would like to recognize our tamika duck dudley i don't know if you guys have realized that sidwell friends was nationally ranked for their performance as a basketball team and she was a national coach of the year but she was a coach at woodbridge high school she was named uh in into the hall of fame in 2011. she met many state champions but actually the woodbridge vikings basketball girls basketball team

174wore she was a person that actually coached when they received the state championship and came into the boardroom so this is a women's recognition of women's history month and i wanted to pay a special tribute to tamika douglas and i hope that she will be able to come into the boardroom and we can recognize her thank you miss ralston okay thank you miss ralston uh miss jackson thank you march's arts arts and education month i decided to celebrate this month by attending performances at our talented bio-talented pwc students i had a privilege to see the pre-assessments for both gainesville middle and gainesville high school both pre-assessments were performed beautifully i was also fortunate to attend the elementary all county course concert with miss agapor it's my absolute honor to attend these displays of talent to

175take a moment to focus and appreciate the hard work of students and staff with the support of their families next week patriot high school is focusing on social media awareness they have a number of activities for students over the week to help students focus on mindfulness and talk about the impact of social media and that they can have on them and their future choices they'll also be showing a video to the community these events at schools do help bring awareness to issues that directly impact those students and i want to thank dr bishop for looping me in also good luck to the robotics competitors including gainesville middle and knoxville school thank you to all those who came and of course thank you again to all students who come to our meetings thank you to the

176student athletes from patriot and principal high schools brunswick district high school i'm so proud to represent you on the board and i loved being able to honor your achievements and hard work i would like to highlight all of their accomplishments but it speaks specifically to may carlo and as it is women's history month and she is making history at the wonderful brunsville district high school thank you to the athletes that came today the families the staff the coaches the athletic trainers for all of their support thank you all right wonderful all right thank you everyone um all right uh i want to first start off by adding a couple things everyone else has said congratulations to our amazing basketball teams who had great seasons the op ladies basketball team uh finished as a semifinalist in

177the state championship patriot and battlefield played i think four or five times to you know um five times patriot winning almost all four of them and then losing to battlefield in the semi state semifinals two powerhouse teams great seasons patriot was undefeated until that point battlefield went on to the state semifinals or the state finals and congratulations to them as well the brunsville district ladies basketball did a terrific had it also a terrific season i share with miss um wall's desire that we should start talking about start times again for the high schools that has sort of been on our agenda for now two and a half years running and the pandemic delayed it but i think that's something that we do need to start talking about um i want to thank our high schools

178this weekend um you know fairfax and loudon canceled their schools on saturday because of the the the small amount of snow that came and um um and many students were stranded and couldn't take their sats our division thank you dr mcdade stayed open uh offered the s.a.t courses at many of our high schools that were offering it and the sat the exam students studied long and hard for that and it's very disruptive to lose that moment so i can't thank our high schools enough and dr mcdave for committing to making sure we keep our schools open congratulations to all the robotics team i've had children in robotics for continue to have them in robotics for many years now it's a terrific program congratulations to denise carroll the great work her and her team do and

179and i'm proud to you know we are adding a little bit more help to the robotics effort in this year's budget there is a new position to help out with robotics the science fair fantastic effort when the first year i came we sent only one person to the international science fair this year we're sending four uh this comes from the hard work of julia renburk and the uh the science department of one and her team that but that that science department is going to also get expanded in the efforts over there and all the volunteers who help with the science work thank them for doing a great science fair every year and they they had another successful one this past weekend congratulations to all our orchestra and bands for their terrific assessments i continue to

180see them on facebook i i have to say you know i enjoy seeing the the work that our students do it has been fantastic and with all the issues we have all the concerns we have with all the long-term needs and short-term needs we have with the schools i believe in my heart this is one of the best school divisions in america and i'm very proud that our students go here and that our parents choose to send our kids here and families choose to send their kids here i think it's a great place with the best staff and teachers we have and we're working very hard to keep them all and we want to keep them all here and happy so with that i will adjourn tonight's meeting [Music]