Prince William County School Board Meeting - February 02, 2022

001good evening i'd like to call the meeting of the prince william county school board to order um at this point i'll do the notice the electronic participation pursuant to school board policy 139 school board member participation in meetings by electronic communication school board member diane ralston of the nebsco district will participate in this meeting through electronic means from her home due to a medical condition that prevents her physical attendance at this time approval the closed session agenda motions in order miss jackson thank you dr latif i move that the prince william county school board approved the closed session agenda as recommended do i have a second assistant chairman miss williams second any discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes mr alston votes yes the vote is eight yes motion passed moving on

002to the motion to enter closed session emotions in order miss jackson thank you dr latif i um i moved at pursua virginia code 2.2 2.2-3711 and 2.2-3712 the prince william county school board enter 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 officers and to receive advice from division council on related legal issues as provided by virginia code a 2.2-3711a1 and 8. 2. to consult with division council and receive advice on legal matters requiring the advice of counsel and or pertaining to actual or profitable litigation as provided by virginia code 2.2-3711 a one two seven and eight do you have a second mr chairman mrs zargaporn a second any discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes

003ms ralston votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed at this time the prince william county school board will now enter closed session and return in approximately one hour [Music] so the prince william county is now returning his school board is now returning to open session from closed session closed session certification action emotions in order miss jackson thank you dr latif i moved that pursuant virginia code 2.2-3712 the closed session of prince william county school board meeting of february 2nd 2022 be certified by adopting the following resolution now therefore be it resolved that the prince william county school board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge one only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements were discussed in the closed session meeting to which the certification resolution applies

004and two only such public business matters where as were identified in the motion convening the closed session meeting were heard and discussed or considered by the school board do i have a second mr chairman mrs arge reporter i second any discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote [Music] did you hear me yes miss ralston how do you vote yes miss ralston votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed moving on to the closed session action item emotions and order miss jackson thank you dr steve i moved that the prince william county school board approved the appointments and releases of specific employees as presented in closed session do i have a second mr chairman mrs jargapoor second any discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes ms ralston votes yes

005the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed i'd like to now call this meeting to the prince william county school board to order we will start with the pledge of allegiance miss flynn can you lead us in the it pledge one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all next we're moving on to the approval of the agenda emotions in order ms jackson thank you um i moved the prince room county school board approved the public meeting agenda as recommended 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 moving on to the adoption of the consent agenda emotions and order ms jackson thank you dr latif i move that the prince

006william county school board approved the public meeting consent agenda is recommended do i have a second mr chairman miss williams and second any discussion mr chairman yes i'd just like to publicly recognize um our clerk and our deputy clerk miss b simpson and miss brandy reeves in honor of excuse me a school board clerk appreciation week without them we have no resources to help us get a job done and that is not even technically their job so i just want to publicly thank you for all of the hard work that you do the interaction and time that you put in that is outside of your actual scripted job duties that help us stay functioning as school board members it is greatly appreciated and then i'd also like to just acknowledge um it's crossing guard week

007um just like bus drivers classroom guards are usually the first and last contact that our students have on their way to and from school and often are left out of the conversation and i just would like to take a moment to thank them for all the hard work that they do to help our children have a good start to the day a good end to the day and to arrive and leave our school building safely thank you miss jesse i just wanted to also uh say to to be and to brandy thank you for receiving all our phone calls trying to keep us straight and we we're really great listeners aren't we guys but we really do appreciate you thank you very very much thank you please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes

008mr alton votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed next we're moving on to citizen comment time uh those citizens who sign up in advance with a clerk may address the school board this evening when they're called to the podium the citizen comment periods for regular school board meetings is limited to one hour with the first half hour reserved for comments on agenda items and the second half hour for comments on non-agenda items or topics germane to the operations and policies of pwcs citizens signed up to speak on agenda items must speak on the agenda item they have identified or they will be asked to step down we have 10 speakers on agenda items 10 on non-agenda items speakers will have three minutes to speak please use proper decorum manners while at the

009podium if you do not do so you'll be asked to step aside when you are called to the podium please state your name and address for the record i will call the first four um so that if they're outside they have to make um make it to the front here mr jeff fuller first martha cutsinger is second lena osme is third and fourth is maggie hansford jeff fuller hello board dr mcdane neighbors how many are here for mass okay okay um well i'm going to focus on the uh dr mcdade's plan um i'm jeff fuller from the gainesville district i want to address a couple facts on transparency dr mcdade has not kept her promise now i'm i have the qr code that links to the various uh videos that i have been referred to

010but in the case of dr mcdade i'm going to quote with the release of that plan you should expect that there will be opportunities to have engagement around the strategic plan unpacking that taking a look at some of our goals and giving you an opportunity to take a deep dive into the practices that we will be employing in the school division hasn't happened not a single question that i know of has been answered in public forum now one of the questions we have is critical racist marxist or critical theory i'm going to quote professor bettina love from a podcast destroying capitalism is part of our freedom dream is part of the long-term goal sounds kind of marxist more on marxism maria burgo some of you know her former equity officer here understand a marxist framework

011and you'll understand how it is used in education think about that the person that wrote the equity statement dr mcdade's plan mentions equity 32 times why is it required why that big deal because it's assumed that we in prince william county are systemically racist systemically racist dr mcgann's plan calls for graduates to thrive as global citizens not american citizens voting at the u.n she also asserts that restorative practices improve a school climate and reduces student suspensions and discipline disparities and creates things like mr darr's daughter being sexually assaulted and the charge being downgraded to inappropriate touching with one day suspension so i think restorative justice requires a little bit of a look and i would be grateful if the school board would please examine all cases where you downgraded from sexual assault to some lesser

012charge thank you for your attention martha cutsinger [Applause] good evening thank you for giving me a moment here i too am here to speak about the strategic plan and like mr fuller i was expecting an opportunity to have some sort of town hall or dialogue about this to my knowledge that didn't happen i did there was a an online forum you could submit but there was no back and forth dialogue so i'm going to read to you because i think a lot of people on this board have not investigated castle you've investigated the 55-page strategic plan which mentions castle one time on page 27 but you have i doubt you've investigated castle if you have i hope you're voting against this plan so i'm just going to read to you from castle about castle and

013the framework that you're about to adopt and i know it's coming from vdoe but that doesn't excuse it so this is 17 pages i'm going to read snippets of but every page is essentially the same social and emotional learning has the potential to help mitigate the interrelated legacies of racial and class oppression in the u.s we recognize in this i'm just reading bits from every page we recognize that the circumstances surrounding marginalization exploitation and oppression are varied and complex in this brief we focus primarily on issues of educational equity and sel with regard to race ethnicity and socio and economic status as a first step towards addressing this complexity how did we get here racial ethnic and class issues continue to vex american society cultural analysis suggests that issues of racism derive largely from an

014overemphasis on the accumulation of wealth within within culture within american culture historically this cultural value prompted some to exploit others for personal advancement white elites promulgated racialized and cultural stereotypes to recruit poor and working whites into hierarchical economic system that exploited them but also empowered them to oppress and further exploit people of color it goes on it just repeats this is what you're implementing this is what you're going to bring from kindergarten to high school it's reprehensible but i'll go i'll keep going i've got a little bit more time castle again this is castle on castle castle is refining a specific form of sel implementation that concentrates sel practice on transforming inequitable settings and systems and promoting justice oriented civic engagement this form of sel is aimed at redistributing power to promote social justice through

015increased engagement in school and civic life i don't think anywhere in this 17-page document do they talk about reading writing and arithmetic nowhere the concept of transformative sel is a means to better articulate the potential of sel to mitigate the educational social and economic inequities that derive from the interrelated legacies of racialized cultural oppression in the united states finally you are not concerned about their social and emotional well-being or you would let them remove their masks thank you [Music] [Applause] maggie hansford all right thank you chair latif and superintendent mcdade my name is maggie hansford and my address is on file i'm speaking today with regards to the annual budget i've been speaking at board meetings for years regarding our community's priorities i want to thank our educators for your amazing work this year and

016every year i have three boys in our schools and i finally hit the parenting level that i have a child at every level elementary middle and high i remember coming back to board meetings year after year and in 2018 advocating for a step and cola for our educators many of those educators that were with me that day are no longer with me due to they left the profession with inadequate pay limited benefits and not having a clear path for retirement we didn't get a step in cola that year but we did the next steps are important because they create a pathway to retirement and cost of living increases are important because they provide a livable wage for our educators our schools are amazing because of our staff that we employ during a national teacher shortage

017it is especially important that our budget reflects our priorities for retaining and recruiting the best educators our students remain our top priority and that means we must provide those students with the best staff to educate transport and feed we must ensure a competitive salary to retain our staff and that means providing a livable wage and a pathway to retirement i appreciate dr mcdade for your tremendous efforts this year i also thank the board for your continued focus on ensuring our students receive a world-class education and i'm confident tonight that the budget will reflect our community's priorities and i thank you all for that thank you the next next four will be bonnie clackowitz stephen lawrence ken gnar john paul rafflow uh miss bonnie clackowitz okay um steve lorenz how do you know she's not outside

018or outside waiting so i'll let them in if they if they come in sure bonnie clack with steve lorenz uh ken narr jp raffle any of them okay uh jeremy pinson you might want to wait outside again mr crow do you know if any of the speakers are out in the hallway so what will will will jeremy jeremy pinson and padres pratter any of them in the room okay while we look for those folks we'll move on to the non-agenda items and we'll go to taisha king hi my name is tasha king and i'm a gainesville resident simple simple part of this is you've turned the schools in prince william county into many health departments and because of this the students have suffered in prince william county the school code of ethics number six states

019in part i will always remember that my first and greatest concern must be the educational welfare and academic performance of all students attending the public schools and will make decisions in terms of the educational welfare of all children in the school division you have failed to do this my 18 year old senior in high school has been removed from school to quarantine for a total of 21 days with no real-time resources to keep up with the teaching in her classes the superintendent has been proud of in-person learning but if it's so important then why do you not give the children you send home to quarantine access to the classes i've been told that canvas has been created to support the kids canvas is a good support for a missed day or two but not for

020seven to fourteen simply put canvas is instruction without teaching my daughter's first quarantine was in september after she was contact traced to a coveted positive friend she was then asked if she was vaccinated or not and she told them no she was sent home for 14 days but everyone else that was around this person if vaccinated was allowed to stay in school and continue to learn the ironic part of this was her friend came down with covid and caused her to be sent home was vaccinated during the 14 days my daughter was sent home she never tested positive what a waste of time two days before christmas another one of my daughter's friends who was vaccinated came down with covet and unfortunately gave it to my daughter my daughter spent christmas in quarantine opening presents

021alone in her room while the rest of us including grandparents aunts uncles and cousins opened presents in our living room we tried to get her tested at patient first but were turned away and walgreens and cvs had no appointment so we did the next best thing we found at home test the fourth day back from winter break my husband received a phone call that my daughter had to quarantine again because of covid another vaccinated friend testing positive for covid after telling the nurse and the principal she just had covered two and a half weeks ago and we have a picture of the coveted positive test to prove it we were told it does not matter because it was not through a doctor she was to go home and test the fifth day even with a

022coveted negative test she was to remain home for another two days totaling now seven days again it was another waste of time for my daughter she did not come down with covid in all actuality it put her behind in her studies and it was during midterms due to her unnecessary quarantine she had missed two tests and a quiz she reached out to that teacher for help to update her materials she missed but the teacher could not be bothered to help her i'm not here to debate whether or not vaccines work but i'm here to give you the facts that we have personally experienced the vaccinated still get it and spread it so cherry-picking one or two kids is not going to help the facts are only 1.8 percent of students that you send home come

023down with covid but if you still decide to discriminate against the un-vaccine then it's your responsibility and your job to provide real-time access to the class teaching thank you uh let me actually i'll go i'm gonna i'm gonna go back and call some of the names of the folks that didn't come in do i have a bonnie clackwits steve lorenz ken narr john paul rafflow mr pinson or mr pryder no and your name is sir stephen lorenz oh yes mr lawrence please pay attention greetings i'm stephen lorenzo a resident of gains of the gainesville district a phd physicist and a leader of a small tech company that actually does do rocket science prince william prince william county is the second largest county in the commonwealth by population but has an embarrassingly small commercial tax base

024the burden on the residents to fund county operations account amounts to about 85 percent while the commercial side is funding 15 a much healthier ratio would be something like 65 residential 35 commercial however the county is essentially out of available land for commercial development which has severely handled hampered future growth forcing many companies to locate in surrounding counties or move it move across the river into maryland the school budget is representative of a broader social economic struggle one that was set up by the actions of the board of supervisors in this county 21 years ago by the creation of what some call the rural crescent this is basically the western half of the county populated by less than 10 percent of the people i do happen to live on that side but 50 of the

025acreage of the entire county the majority of the current board of supervisors is in favor of expansion of expanding the commercial development particularly that are data centers in an effort to bring in the need the needed revenue to fund fundamental changes to the county school system as well as many other needed improvements in services across the count across the whole county unlike other forms of industry modern data centers can be eco-friendly they create low noise they use few few natural resources except for the land they sit on while contributing enormous sums to the economy and to the tax base prince william county is not only last among northern virginia counties in funding per student but also even behind fakir the residential tax burden is already excessive anybody that rents in this county or owns property

026in this county understands that the county should not demand even more from from the residents the only solution that i see is to change the restrictions that were imposed by a board 21 years ago i'm asking that every principal every teacher every parent actively support the current board of supervis super i'm sorry of supervisors as efforts are made this year to expand growth in this county that can result within just a few years and enormous benefits to the school system and the students of this great county thank you very much for the time thank you mr lawrence mr ken nar [Applause] my name is ken nara i'm from the gainesville district as a former farm community inner city and suburban high school social studies teacher having been the primary author of one of the marine

027corps university's strategic plans for re-accreditation and having been the lead instructor designer for the marine corps instructor professional development program i can tell you with some assurances that dr latonya mcdade and her staff have are to be commended for an extraordinary job in drafting a new prince william county schools strategic plan unfortunately i wish i could tell you the hard part was over the costs associated with implementation over the next three years will more than likely be an assortment of spark donations corporate sponsorships federal research grants and national teacher education endowments if the submission coordination and management of all the funding isn't enough the school board and dr mcdade also have to work the political landscape to lock on sustainable renewal streams revenue streams that can support these efforts past implementation and well into the

028future it don't do our it doesn't do our children any good if they get a short-term intervention for a couple years and then the teaching and instruction degrades back to where it was when dr mcdade and the administrators and the teachers identified that we had to do better the population of prince william county is projected to increase by approximately a hundred thousand by twenty forty more families translate to more students which requires more teachers and resources than currently projected prince william county already has a major housing shortfall however we cannot build our way out of this fiscal dilemma the residential tax base simply cannot support the school's projected fiscal requirements let alone address the rest of the county's unfunded infrastructure requirements and vital important new programs property taxes and assessments have gone up almost every

029year for the last decade prince william already has one of the highest property taxes within the commonwealth the residential and commercial tax revenue streams have been out of balance for more than two decades data centers are the most commercial revenue positive source available to any locality the proposed prince william digital gateway alone will increase our commercial tax base to the planning target of 35 percent the prince will digital gateway will be a technology corridor dedicated to over 26 million square feet of data center development in the coming years when completed the prince william digital gateway will conservatively generate over 500 million dollars of commercial tax revenue annually for the county in accordance with the already established 57.2 tax revenue sharing agreement between the county and the schools this equates to 286 million dollars a year

030for the school system as we have already seen dr mcnaid's amazing vision of the world-class education for every child in the most diverse county in the commonwealth has a big price tag thank you mr gnar appreciate it mr j.p raflo john paul rafflow thank you um so i'm a father of three two have already finished uh all their schooling here in princeton county i have a son that's in eighth grade um have seen the positives and some of the negatives that that are going on in our school system we have to understand that to get to a point where we compete with loudoun county we have got to have more funding we have a solution that can help all of you everyone behind me everybody in the county it's on it's unfortunate that at this

031point in time we do not have a scenario laid out where this can be taken advantage of quicker and that's why we're here tonight you just heard the statistics we're looking at anywhere between 250 to 400 million dollars of new annual revenue to the school system if the prince william digital gateway is approved that is a whole lot of school that's a whole lot of technology that's raises for our teachers that's no more trailers behind battlefield high school that's better facilities for the athletic departments if we want to continue to bring in the kind of educators that we know you want i know i want we have to be able to pay them i met with a principal today he told me a story about how he had trained several teachers within his system three

032years go by he has to see them leave because they go for better pay elsewhere thousand six hundred and forty one dollars per student is what we spend per pupil in this county that is second to last in the entire greater washington dc area this is not good enough you know it's not good enough i know it's not good enough the people behind me as well we need to have your help on the prince william digital gateway if you give us this help if your teachers your educators can help us we can in turn help you thank you for your time thank you um is bonnie clack oh i'm sorry let's go to jeremy pinson sorry yeah that's me hey good evening i'm jeremy pinson i'm new to the area i live at in on

033finn castle drive right down the street here i'm here to talk about the budget i want to talk about other things too but apparently you got to decide what time you have so for the budget just real quick i'm not going to support any funding increases for anybody as a voter and i'll organize against them unless a couple things are met one the budget needs to clearly tell us where all the appropriate funding for covet went because if i can go to my local store if i can go to my local store without a mask and my daughter can come with me then she should be able to go to her school without a mask so i want to know in the budget where all the appropriate funding was what i got spent on like

034literally every single penny before i'll appropriate or work to appropriate any funding for any increases for the school and second i want to know that they're not teaching queries during the school i know that everyone says it is or isn't taught but if the tenants of the legal profession are taught to teach either my kid that they're a victim or an oppressor i don't want to talk and i don't want money spent on it so if money is getting spent on that in the budget if money is being spent on the budget again i'm going to vote against and organize against anyone that votes for it or you know tries to increase the budget at all so that's what i really came here to say one last thing before i go so i got here

035late because i came directly from work and had to sit outside it's really hard to understand you guys when you're wearing your masks but on that point it's really hard for my kid to understand the teacher every day the same way it is for everyone in the cheap sheets to understand you guys so thank you for your time um did i see bonnie clackwoods [Applause] good evening chairman latif dr mcdade and members of the board my name is bonnie klackowitz my information is with the clerk tonight i'm here to talk about the strategic plan i was a teacher in prince william county for 28 years i appreciate the effort that has been put into this plan and the many references to equity learning and achievement for all inclusion of more student voices focused efforts to

036support students with learning disabilities establishing centralized supports and coordinated efforts in order to expand family support and engagement overall i do believe it is a solid plan my concern is for how it will be accomplished will site-based management plans be monitored so no school will be tasked with more than any other school with these initiatives i see that teachers will receive more training on the implementation of the new strategies such as high dosage tutoring and a plan for unfinished learning will more staff be hired to help with those issues because i would like to caution you to please do not workshop your teachers to death and put more on their plate than they already have in fact i would like to recommend that more of your focus in this plan should be to offer support

037for teachers and support staff your employees have stepped up under the most extreme of circumstances during the coveted pandemic in order to teach they do that job every day they know what works and what doesn't work what they need is more mental health support for themselves and their students more counselors are needed to improve the counselor to student ratio how will this be accomplished and why is that not a priority where is it stated in commitment for that it is the teachers who will have the most communication with families and that they are the best source and the best resource to remove barriers to communication and facilitate collaboration across offices schools and families trust your teachers they are the most vital link in accomplishing these strategic goals remind students every day that is their responsibility

038for their own learning engage parents by reminding them that supporting teachers and education support professionals will set an example for their child so that they may become contributing members to our society is that not the goal of public education thank you everyone in this room up here for your dedication to our students in our schools thank you teachers and all classified employees for your hard work and thank the parents who are supporting all of the efforts to keep everyone safe in school and thank the parents who encourage their children every day with love and high expectation so that they can reach their dream thank you thank you mr pratter [Applause] good evening chair cheryl latif dr mcdade school board members i'm pedro's pratter and i am a resident of the near school district and my

039address is on foul i identify as an african-american male a husband but the most important title of all is dad i have a daughter and a son my daughter is age four and she'll be entering the school system and we're quite proud about that here in august and so we've been watching as parents here in the community acted for over 10 years what you guys are doing in order to represent us and our future our most precious commodity our kids and when i had an opportunity to look at the strategic plan there was one area that stuck out to me the most and that's probably because of my mother who's no longer with us she was an educator in special education for 30 years in a town called decatur georgia dekalb county school system and

040she'd be so proud to see how you guys have a robust understanding a direction with the special education department which is another vulnerable a vulnerable subject that's a vulnerable pupil of students and and how you guys are doing your best to kind of uplift and and really recognize the value that it brings to provide additional support there there was one particular line that stood out to me and it reminded me of my mother's assistant they called her a paraprofessional and she traveled with my mother from school to school over 30 years there's a particular line of strategic plan that talks about allowing the assistance to become certified teachers that is so important because what better way to teach the next generation of special ed students than bringing it from right right there and supporting that

041as a as a board as a school system again my most important title is father african-american male assad community members aside i know quite a few of the people who are here and while my voice might be stifled by some of the rhetoric that's that's been displayed here this evening just know that we all have one thing in common we're parents and our voice our voice is valuable my support is 100 behind you guys and what you guys are doing i'm so excited i'm so excited that we have an opportunity to have our kids in public school here in princeton county and i want to continue to commend you guys on a job that i think you guys are doing a job well done i've been following you quite a few quite a few of

042y'all for a couple years just stay focused remember to keep the vision first keep the students first keep a listening ear to the parents and i think everything else is going to is going to work out again new school district my name is pedras pratter thank you for your time next we'll have and i'll go ahead and announce the the next three uh it'll be cynthia kilmer richard jesse jessica newton i'll do four and um kaylin lahu so first we'll go with cynthia kilmer [Applause] good evening my name is cindy kilmer my address is on file with the clerk i'm here tonight to speak on behalf of myself and approximately fifteen hundred staff members to ask you to reconsider and resend the resolution adopted in september of 2021 requiring your unvaccinated staff and staff that

043refuses to disclose their vaccination status to be weakly tested those of us here tonight hope to be the voices of all those who object to this discriminatory policy and more importantly the children that we serve that will be devastated by the consequences of this resolution we ask you if students are the top priority why would you threaten to remove their teachers amidst a critical year of recovery if your va if you value your staff and their roles why would you attempt to enforce a policy that discriminates against and violates the privacy of those who have given so much to make in-person school possible if anyone regardless of vaccination can contract and transfer the virus why is only one demographic of employees threatened with termination since federal and staff guidance has made clear that mandates such

044as this are unlawful and unconstitutional what authority does prince william county have to continue down this path these questions and many others have been asked for months and still go unanswered since passing this resolution we have taken time to research and consider the impact on this on of this on our lives our schools our communities and our students have you let's take a moment to understand the resolution in almost five months since it was passed so much has changed in fact the resolution itself was founded on the information that and policies that no longer exist the resolution states tens of thousands of elementary and middle school students are not yet eligible for the vaccination the vaccines were made available for these children ages 5 to 11 at the end of october the resolution states the

045urgency to expand vaccinations is increasing as the highly contagious delta variant spreads but delta is no longer the dominant variant and omicron affects both vaccinated and unvaccinated individual individuals alike with much milder symptoms the resolution states executive director of number 18 encourages other employers to require their employees to be fully vaccinated but this directive was rescinded by governor younkin's executive directive number two and multiple legal proceedings over the last five months have deemed such mandates by employers to be illegal and unconstitutional the resolution cites a public health emergency from august 21st of 2021 and guidance from the virgin department of health put but the public health emergency was terminated by governor younkin's executive order in january of 2022 and the vdh's current interim guidance says that testing should be offered not required for unvaccinated teachers

046and staff when passing this resolution it appears little thought was given as to how it would be implemented for example if i test on wednesday results are not available until friday and i'm available and able to return to work the following tuesday this means the testing program is only able to identify an asymptomatic infection and isolate staff measures for one day of the six days they would have been considered contagious by cdc guidelines not only is the is the process flushed with oversights and contradictions it is outdated unnecessary and the purported benefits do not outweigh the enormous cost inconvenience and negative impact on students staff and prince william county as a whole thank you richard jesse my name is richard jesse and my dress is on file i want to clarify some misrepresentation made at

047the last school board meeting by some citizens there were allegations that jenkins won the commonwealth overwhelmingly he only won the commonwealth by 1.94 percent additionally i have stated before that you are living in prince william county and young lost the county by 14.81 for your group to imply that you are in political position to impose your will on an entire county is not correct and laughable your group is against the school division requiring math i believe most parents and prince william connie support wearing a mask and have no desire [Applause] and have no desire for their kids to be forced to sit in the same classroom with your kids without a mask and likely not vaccinated they have their rights and i believe they are the majority of parents i give you credit for being

048much better organized and better at speaking up publicly i would say to the parents who want all their kids in school to wear a mask and be fascinated that you must stop being passive stop being intimidated and hopefully stop getting get and hopefully get off your gluteus maximuses and come to stand up for what you want let's change the subject i recommend changes to citizen time if a citizen needs an interpreter they should be given seven minutes instead of three number two the allocation for ten agenda speaking speakers is to change to five the allocation for ten other topic speakers to be increased to fifteen citizens are not are allowed to participate virtually that they be allowed to participate virtually as it's done at the board of supervisors and citizens may use their cameras as

049they do at the board of supervisors to be seen if miss walls may comment and support speakers who speak at citizen time the other members should be allowed to do so also and i encourage you to do so if this is the case we are not wearing mass the the royal mass rules in this building is evidently not enforced because we have more than 100 people here that don't wear mass and i don't understand thank you jessica and newton after jessica will be uh kailyn lahu kaylee um rootin and katie speaks so um jessica newton hi i'm jessica newton and my address is on file the mandatory testing resolution has a tremendous negative impact on teachers and staff when you agreed to this resolution coven 19 told a different story including but not limited to

050the efficacy of the vaccine although things have changed drastically you have not reconsidered your policy just as teachers are expected to continually gather data and adjust their instruction to match the needs of their students circumstances have changed and your decisions need to be revisited to best serve your staff and community i'll draw your attention to some of the most striking examples of outdated or contradictory policy one both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals are contracting and transmitting covid but only those unvaccinated regardless of exemptions or undisclosed are subject to invasive testing two unvaccinated students are not subject to testing and they likely outnumber staff ten to one three teachers are forced to use sick leave if they do get coveted while vaccinated staff are given leave that does not deduct from their banked time four testing does

051not happen at their assigned work site or during their contract hours five some staff are paid for the time to test while others are not these are just some examples perhaps the most egregious aspect of this resolution is in the execution the consent form you're requiring teachers to sign is insulting there is no such thing as mandatory consent that is called coercion are you aware that staff must agree that quote to the fullest extent permitted by law release discharge and hold harmless prince william county schools school authorities in cyan diagnostics and without limitation all of prince william county and science diagnostic representative officers directors employees representatives and agents from any and all claims liability and damages of whatever kind of nature arising of or in connection with an act or a mission relating to covet

05219 testing or the disclosure of coven 19 test results why would anyone release all liability for damages they may suffer due to forced participation in experimental testing it is suspicious and concerning that you would mandate this consent while all while touting the safety and security of your testing process and hold their job security and livelihood hostage it is a breach of their privacy to require disclosure of vaccination status however the violation of privacy has extended much beyond this despite claims of keeping their medical information confidential principals secretaries and department chairs have by default all been made aware the subject is not without debate and staff members who are holding differing views on the policies and politics now have access to their private decisions and react accordingly this creates unnecessary tension and a hostile environment that

053is not conducive for giving their best effort and attention to students another negative impact of this resolution is the toll it's taken on our teachers mental health in a time when they are constantly reminded to consider their students social and emotional well-being the irony does not escape those of them receiving threatening emails text messages and calls to sign a mandatory consent form comply with testing and ask no questions [Applause] um and let me go back lena osme if she had come in the room mr crow i don't know if she was out there lena osme was from the first list so we'll go to kaelyn lehu next kaylee brewton and i apologize if i said the name wrong that's all right um it's cali city thank you my address is on file continuing what jesse

054began we are a county that prides ourselves on excellence messages from prince william county regarding this testing have been sporadic and at times completely contradictory and frequently evasive and rude hr has stated in several emails you don't have a choice then we get an email thanking us for volunteering to participate the hr director questioned certain teachers as to why we waited to file an exemption but there is no limit of time to when we file such exemptions and frankly we didn't know they existed the frequently asked questions were not posted until january 14th four months after the resolution was passed we were notified of testing requiring on the 19th and told to start on the 24th this timeline is absurd and it leaves no room for questions or concerns which we've already mentioned many the

055frequently asked questions also state that will be tested by professionals however job postings on facebook and other sites say quote job opportunity in prince william county we need to hire staff to conduct covet testing pay 16 an hour not only are we taking experimental tests but now we're hiring anyone off the street to do that the concerns over professionalism and safety continue on and on scien diagnosis has reported multiple issues such as losing 50 tests and having to have them redone hiring people from cyan and then not using them to actually administer the test is also of grave concern another teacher who went to the testing site observed that names and barcodes were visible to anyone who visited the site this is egregious if you go to the site you'll have ample awareness there are

056signs posted everywhere stating prince william county public schools covet testing site available for any parent visiting a sport event a school event it's for all staff to see it appears this process is the furthest thing from safe confidential or excellent and this will have a tremendous impact on our staff our colleagues and our students should it be implemented to its fullest extent we already have a major sub shortage and when subs aren't available we cover each other's classes this is a burden for all teachers all administrators and on the students themselves when a student finds out their teacher's been put on leave this will be a tremendous impact on their on their spirits after an entire two years and when we're on leave we won't make sub plans because we're not being paid which means

057another teacher will have to implement sub plans and put more stress on their already stressful plate in some schools students will be broken up separated from friends pods and in general their world will get rocked these are elementary schoolers everyone suffers we are suffering because we are unpaid you're financially ruining us those that are left in the building take on additional stress and responsibility admin will scramble to cover our classes and students will suffer most of all more instability more time lost thank you for your time 80 speech and after misspeaks will be miss kimberly stewart marianne jensen and christy buzzy all right i'd like to um add on to what kali said with some data we surveyed 34 teachers which is less than 146 or about 2 percent of the total number of staff

058that would be impacted by this resolution in our group of 34 there were 22 teachers six specialists one bus driver and five who play other roles in pwcs we also have many teachers with gifted esau sped or special certifications and their absence would would impact over 200 sped students 30 gifted students 215 esau students multiple students that are deaf and require sign language interpretation and students that require reading services or pal supports it's not just teachers we also represent five coaches who coach 277 athletes five club sponsors who help sponsor over 690 club students participants and many other responsibilities if this policy remains in place it is our students who will be impacted the most take a second to put yourself in their shoes you get to school and find out your teacher isn't there

059teachers occasionally get sick or have to miss school but what if this continues for days or weeks your teacher is gone and no one can tell you where they are or if or when they will be back some days there's a sub in your room but not one that can help you with any assignments other days different teachers rotate through the classroom in 30 minute increments or maybe you're put in an auditorium with other classes and one adult to supervise you if you're in elementary school your class may be split into groups and placed in another teacher's classroom with different rules and routines you've been separated from your friends you've completed all the work that was assigned before your teacher disappeared and now you're frustrated that none of your work isn't is being graded maybe

060it's not your teacher that is gone but your coach practice isn't the same you lose a game and the season feels broken maybe it's the counselor or the librarian who always had a piece of candy and a smile when you were having a bad day maybe it's your bus driver and now you have to wait for 30 minutes or more after school for one bus to complete its run and return to get you kova 19 has caused tremendous disruption to everyone's lives particularly our students high school seniors are the only ones who've been able to experience a full normal school year with dances pep rallies plays concerts and sporting events with their friends and family in the audience or bleachers anyone younger than third grade has never experienced a full normal school year while much

061of this has been beyond our control you now have the opportunity and responsibility to prevent further disruption unnecessarily we can't give our students back everything that they have missed but we can do our best to keep them from losing any more this mandate will have long lasting negative impacts that far outweigh the benefits these same teachers you wish to place on leave are the teachers who were eager to get back in the classroom and end virtual school we are amazing teachers who have passion for our students please allow us to be free to teach and do what we love kimberly stewart [Applause] my name is kimberly stewart my address is on file it might be my campaign slogan i want to start by thanking miss jennifer wall for her committed time over the past two

062weeks and listening to her constituents on a variety of concerning issues we have felt seen and heard by you and we appreciate your time in a world increasingly divisive i'm here to advocate that we finally come together to find common ground common purpose and common decency to do what is in the best interests of kids the past two years we have lost sight of the most important part of our educational system the most vulnerable piece of our community and the part that will be our lasting legacy we have forgotten about our kids i am here to push for the parental rights to opt children out of mandatory masking to add to advocate for our amazing teachers to end the vaccination and or testing requirements and to finally end the statistically impractical quarantine and close contact

063tracing that is that is consuming the time and attention of our staff away from the most important job teaching kids we need to get back to rigor in our instruction community and relationships in our classrooms and give our children their childhood back and the mandates and the protocols and let our kids get back to a valuable and meaningful learning environment that is conducive to providing them the education they deserve that focuses on their academic success to support them engage them challenge them and help them grow into the bright beautiful and intelligent children that they all have the capability of becoming for too long we have stifled their exploration their interactions their connections and their growth it is time to focus on supporting policy and process that does no harm policy and process that focuses on

064what is best for kids i am a member of the so-called loud minority because doing what's best for kids is what i am passionate about i am an educator and i am a mother and i have seen the light dim in so many children because we have a as adults have created policy and procedure forced upon them that have shuttered their abilities their talents and their gifts their light is dimming and it's because we are unwilling to be open-minded and open-hearted compassionate humans to work together to toward a more collective good that meets the needs of our children based on sound practical and common sense approaches [Music] i became a teacher because i wanted to do what is best for kids i am a mother and i want what is best for my kids i'm

065here today to urge you and urge all of us to work together to do what's best for all kids marianne jensen my name is marianne jensen and my address is on file i know there are many educators who want to protect children this goal is not different from my own our implementation preferences may differ but we want the same thing to get through covid without harm unfortunately politics leads us to believe there is only one solution masks yet thousands of schools around the country have been open during the entire pandemic without masks and no corresponding rise in serious illness there were not child coffins lined up as some educators in this county suggested would be the case in fact things have been going pretty much as normal kids are getting sick despite wearing masks we

066are forcing healthy children home for exposure despite them wearing masks and we are segregating children by vaccination status and religious exemption status despite the wearing of masks so i ask you if masks work why don't they i know i'd now like to cover the facts not policy is determined by the white house not cdc recommendations which i remind you is still policy policy maya that i might add that changes by the day without any basis in science at all so here are the facts that are available to any one of you over the course of the pandemic 49 000 children have died of all causes 331 of those were coveted related yet we have turned kids lives upside down at school for what is essentially a non-risk let's put that risk into context last year

067fewer kids died of coven 19 than of heart disease cancerous tumors suicide homicide and drownings have the protocols have the schools stop serving hamburgers and french fries have we put up tin foil on the ceilings to block power lines do we even address the growing incidences of suicide during the pandemic no we play politics with kids faces by placing restrictive fabric over their noses and mouths that the cdc itself has said don't do anything and it's for their safety this is asinine this is blatant political theater and it needs to end finally regarding that and i need to point something out that has been bothering me on november 15th of last year i had the privilege of speaking with dr mcdade for 10 minutes following the crt town hall meeting during that discussion which was

068friendly and cordial i asked what she as superintendent could do to get the kids out of masks dr mcday told me that she would if she could but that her hands were tied by then governor northam's executive order mandating face coverings and if it weren't for that things would be different well tonight things are different and i'd like to ask you dr mcday tonight what has changed and what do you plan on doing now that your hands are in tight i'm in fact i'm asking all of you to step up the way other leaders who have who have and are ending coveted restrictions by the day what when will you what will it take you are on the losing side of history and it's time to make that right before these children now crispy crispy

069buzzy good evening and thank you for this time tonight my name is christy buzzy and i'm a librarian at reagan middle school i'm here to highlight awareness on two important issues that have already been brought up tonight first the mandatory quote testing that is happening with a select group of employees and second how this testing protocol will impact our students this testing is the result of the resolution that was passed in september as you've already heard tonight its rollout has been anything but smooth our closest colleagues don't even know what is happening so we know that the community and maybe even some members of the board are not fully aware of how this resolution is playing out so there are three things i'd like to make sure have been brought to light tonight first the

070testing is discriminatory and it's futile only employees that are unvaccinated or those who have chosen to stay private are required to test it's february 2022 we all know that vaccinated or not anyone can contract and spread covid what does testing one group of employees actually do is anyone really safer or healthier as a result or is there another motive is it simply punitive is it tied to more federal money whatever it is these questions need to be asked because it doesn't make sense the second point you should all know to be tested we have to sign a mandatory consent form think about that for a minute the definition of consent is giving voluntary permission for something to happen a mandatory consent is a contradiction it isn't a real thing yet here we are mandated to

071consent to testing that is required to make your head spin even more this consent includes a zero liability waiver it completely releases prince william county and cyan diagnostic of all liability even we won't even the disclosure of our test results we literally have to sign this sign away medical rights in order to be tested this leads to the final point and this is the most important because this is what impacts our kids the most if we are not tested weekly we are facing termination from prince william county schools as ludicrous and extreme as that sounds i assure you we are not exaggerating the email we all got on the evening of january 19th made it perfectly clear and i quote employees who fail to complete the testing progress process will be placed into a default

072leave of a default leave without pay status until they comply a list of employees who are considered ineligible to work will be given to administration every friday and failure to comply will be considered insubordination and may lead to further disciplinary action up to and including recommendation for dismissal so i quickly asked the board are you okay with all of this was this was this your intention in september when you passed this and can it's okay to admit it was wrong and to change it and that's what we're asking you to do tonight okay so i had one last speaker was as osmi did she um arrive mr crow did you see anybody out there miss osmi okay all right folks we're moving on next to caitlin oh yeah caitlyn lehu did she come i miss

073her all right uh at this point we're moving on next to um launching thriving futures strategic plan um uh motion is in order miss jackson thank you i recommend that the prince county board approve the launching thriving futures strategic plan a second do i have a second miss jesse seconds in motion at this point the discussion i'll turn it over to superintendent dr mcdade for any updates regarding the strategic plan thank you dr latif we do have some revisions and i would like to enter bring to the podium dr jennifer quesada our director of research accountability and strategic planning to share some updates made to the strategic plan based on stakeholder feedback all right good evening dr latif vice chair jackson school board members and dr mcdade the draft strategic plan was posted publicly and

074announced to the community on december 17 2021 the strategic plan web page included a link to an online feedback form that has been available until today to inform the board's adoption the feedback form provided the public with the opportunity to comment on various aspects of the plan and provide suggestions in total just over 90 people responded to at least one question on the form themes in the feedback received included compliments on the strategic plan on the process used in developing it critiques of the strategic plan's equity focus interest in additional clarification of key terms data and concepts questions about funding for strategic plan initiatives and specific suggestions for individual components of the plan in response to this feedback and board member suggestions the following edits have been made to the strategic plan the glossary has

075been expanded to include additional terms such as digital equity environmental literacy evidence-based restorative practices rigor and sustainability among a few others mathematical reasoning has been added to the critical thinker aspect of the graduate profile i'm going to go through the edits and the various commitments in the learning and achievement for all commitment edits include an expansion of the mathematics and science sections of the plan additions to the world languages sections to include reference to additional languages such as urdu farsi and american sign language expansion of the health and physical education section to include driver education the addition of sections on libraries media and research as well as student activities and athletics revision to the career and technical education section on work based learning and internships the positive climate and culture commitment includes the addition of

076a section about cyber security the family and community engagement commitment includes the addition of a section on support for military students and families and the organizational coherence commitment includes clarifications in the strategies related to competitive salaries and benefits as well as plans for ensuring adequate staffing levels additional edits for clarification and language have been made throughout for consistency purposes and ease of understanding the updated strategic plan with these edits has been posted to the web we appreciate all the input from the public and board members the feedback received has led to edits which serve to enhance the strategic plan as a whole thank you um okay at this point uh there's a i need to take a recess i gotta there's a tech issue on the strategic plan i don't see it attached ms simpson

077i need that attached to the board docks so while we will take a recess for a few minutes uh well actually before we do recess why don't go ahead and ask any if any board members have any questions and i'll wait for the um the attachment to be on board docs so i'll start down here any questions on this side strategically i know we went through it a lot last week uh any questions i know the board oh we can go to comments as well so comments or questions while we're waiting for that to be uploaded uh miss williams oh miss wall um i just wanted to thank you dr quesada and and the team everybody um for taking my questions i know i gave a lot of feedback and i see that quite a

078lot of the feedback that i gave was considered and some of it was entered into the edit so i appreciate that opportunity to do a back and forth on things that i thought maybe could be improved or maybe things that i felt were unclear so i appreciate that opportunity to do that mr williams thank you madam vice chair uh i too appreciate the back and forth and the ability to have questions answered and explained i also want to say that as of being a school board member and i'm sitting have sat in the seat for a number of years on several boards this is my second time around doing a strategic plan and not as a board member but not my first time interacting with the strategic plan this is the most comprehensive well-thought-out inclusive

079strategic plan that really lays out the priorities of the division what we think we should be doing not only for our students and staff but the community interaction as well i appreciate that the document is easily digestible and even if there are terms in there that you do not understand that we have taken the step forward to explain them in the back in our glossary i appreciate the fact that our division was so open for comments i think it's often forgotten that we set up pages and links so that people can specifically comment in an easy manner but there's also opportunity to do so with your board member or the board as a whole many of us received numerous emails directly regarding the strategic plan and i just want to make note of that as

080well it wasn't just what comments received on the website i appreciate the willingness for the division to meet with all of the board members as well as members of the community i think that's really important when you're talking about a four or five year plan to lead the division again i'm just really appreciative of how inclusive it is for all of our students and families considering how much prince william county has changed in its dynamics since the last strategic plan was developed so thank you i'm very excited about implementing the implementation of this plane excuse me hi miss jess thank you uh i i guess i'm a senior member of the board and i've been here for so long and i've gone through i've met with several superintendents and i i'm amazed at this plan

081first of all she presented the plan and it was evident that it was her plan but she also gave credit to her staff and that i took note of she is a hands-on leader and i appreciated that i i love the fact that this plan is going to be reviewed on a quarterly basis that there was there's transparency the four commitments of learning achievement for all uh positive climate family and community engagement and coherence as outlined in the budget i've never seen a plan where she actually took this plan outlined this plan on the budget and aligned it the division-wide culture is is her her her comment was division-wide culture of exceptional instructional excellence and those are exactly her quotes it's a part of the plan that i really love is the vision for graduation

082skills and that students should graduate with skills i've heard so many years we tout this 90 percent graduation rate but her post-secondary plan is something that we need because when we look at kids who go to college we know that even with graduation from high school that many of these kids are not very successful in college many are there for five years and uh my favorite part of the plan is that profile of a graduate the critical thinking with a world view i just want to say to you dr mcdade that uh i've been here a long time and i have seen many plans i've done national work where i've reviewed plans and you and your staff did a wonderful job thank you it's an honor to work with you thank you it would have

083been nice to hear you we couldn't hear anything anyone else miss jackson um i just want to take a few moments the school system has been asking for public feedback since december 2019 and i just want to say thank you for that i also met with dr quesada and again leader with dr mcdade and the commitments from addressing student achievement plans to address organizational coherence through increasing community engagement to climates for staff i see the input of our community i appreciate the time the school division took to gather and include more input thank you for answering our questions ahead of time in preparation for this meeting and thank you for explaining like pwcs training is a supplement to the required voda online dyslexia training i look forward to hearing more about it also thank you

084for specifically including asl and the strategic plan thank you for expanding support um to directly include support military families this plan is comprehensive data and stakeholder driven and i know dr mcdavid's team our dedicated talented instructional staff and all support personnel can meet these smart goals because they're measurable and achievable okay wonderful so our tech situation sorted out um the um [Music] i want to thank dr mcdade her staff dr quesada all the stakeholders who've been involved with this since the very beginning of our our program all the advisory councils principal advisory councils superintendents advisory councils all the different councils we set up to engage parents and and folks on how best we move forward with this strategic plan in this vision i think the document uh nicely encapsulates the broader community's desires and needs

085and i think that we need to fully support this program consider fully funding this program as we move forward and making sure we do the best we can for our students this is a student-centered strategic plan clearly the document um takes into consideration all aspects of all the different types of students we're working with in all quarters of this county and i want to you know echo the sentiments of the board members and thank the work being done by the entire staff our community who's engaged with this on their effort moving this forward so at this point if there's no further comment i'll ask the board to please vote on the strategic plan and i'm very excited this is um is one of our biggest responsibilities for the school board is to pass a strategic

086plan implement one and oversee it miss ralston how do you vote yes ms ralston votes yes the vote is seven yes one no wall motion passed wonderful very good move on next to student representative tonight we have miss charlotte flynn with us this evening let me make sure where am i here yes charlotte flynn woodbridge high school junior joins us this evening ms charlotte please thank you good evening school board members and prince william county tonight i wanted to focus on upcoming goals that the student representatives are working on recently the student representatives have been working on collecting data regarding start times to improve student mental health according to the cdc sleep deprivation is associated with health risks such as being at an unhealthy weight and an increased chance of using drugs smoking tobacco drinking

087alcohol and poor academic performance the 2014 school health policies and practices study found that 93 percent of high schools and 83 percent of middle schools begin before 8 30 which is the recommended start time for most schools and although there are many external reasons that starting later at 8 30 may conflict with this pushing the start times would benefit the mental health of students and staff when schools start later studies have shown a significant improvement in academic performance and more regularity and sleep patterns according to researchers at the university of washington with these goals in mind for prince william students the representatives are creating a poll to survey the county stakeholders on this issue another issue that the representative team is working on is improving the dress code and its enforcement the dress code has

088changed recently to be more accommodating for different body types cultures identities and clothing however the way that these new standards are enforced needs to be improved the senate and representatives are working to collect data on how teachers enforce the dress code to see if there are different standards and levels of tolerance our goal is to ensure all students and staff understand the dress code so our focus is to create resources that will support this such as updating the code of behavior and dress code videos and reviewing the enforcement of this policy this will ensure a universal way to address this concern and make it fair for all students regardless of gender identity or body type thank you for letting me speak tonight i appreciate your time and for giving me the chance to share the

089student representatives plans for prince william students thank you wonderful thank you charlotte we really appreciate the update next we're moving on next to dr mcdade's superintendent's time thank you dr latif good evening i want to begin this evening by acknowledging the sacrifices of bridgewater college campus police officer john painter and campus safety officer j.j jefferson both officers lost their lives yesterday protecting the students and staff at bridgewater college during an active shooter situation our thoughts are with the family and friends of these brave men as well as the bridgewater college community i am also thankful to our school resource officers and security personnel who work each day to ensure our schools and our students are safe moving on to more positive news you may have noticed the colorful banners beautiful posters personal artwork and handwritten

090thank you letters created by our talented students february is school board appreciation month the virginia school boards association proclaims february as school board appreciation month to salute the service of the almost 850 school board members in virginia it is an opportunity for school divisions and communities to build a stronger understanding of the crucial role school boards assume in a representative democracy i share my appreciation for the important responsibilities of serving on a school board especially during our challenging times and i thank each one of our dedicated school board members for their commitment and engagement in service of our school division february is also black history month i encourage you to watch our website social media and the scoop for features from the division and our schools throughout february as pwcs recognizes this annual celebration of

091achievements and heritage of african americans i would also like to mention that crossing guard appreciation day is february 9th as we work collaboratively with our community to ensure our students arrive to and from schools safely i want to recognize and appreciate the critical role of our crossing guards before introducing the fiscal year 2023 proposed budget i would like to take a moment to acknowledge february 7th through february 11th as national school counseling week as we all try to survive this difficult pandemic it is increasingly evident how important it is to support the mental health of our students and staff i appreciate each and every one of our school counselors and their efforts in supporting our schools thank you for your commitment to the well-being of our students mr chairman this concludes our regular superintendent's report

092and we are prepared to move to the presentation of the superintendent's fiscal year 2023 proposed budget and capital improvement program thank you dr mcdade so as a reminder for folks we do this the same every year we have a series of meetings coming up to go over the budget public hearing markup sessions tonight is the first night where the board members will receive the superintendent's proposed budget so board members is a quick reminder while tonight is not the time to ask questions or make comments on the proposed 2223 budget you will have opportunities to do so instead you can provide your questions directly to john wallingford chief financial officer who will coordinate responses our public meeting on the proposed fiscal year 2023 budget will be this coming monday february 7th at 6 pm held here

093in the school board meeting room individuals wishing to address the school board should notify the board clerk by phone at 703-791-8709 or by completing the citizen comment time request form prior to noon on the day of the board meeting will be placed on the list of speakers and again speakers will be similar to the way we do it here with three minutes at this point dr mcdade i'll turn it over to you to present the fiscal 23 proposed budget thank you mr chairman i am pleased tonight to present the fiscal year 2023 superintendent's budget proposal i want to thank our chief financial officer john wallingford and our budget director kathleen addison their staff along with the partnership of our entire leadership team for their hard work and leading the reinvention of our budget development process

094this year mr wallingford will provide further details on our budget proposal in just a moment but first i would like to share some exciting key takeaways we began our budget development process by aligning to the priorities and outcomes outlined in our vision 2025 launching thriving futures strategic plan additionally i met with every department where we collaboratively reviewed the existing budgets and identified opportunities for work we could stop in order to better align investments to our priorities and identify new opportunities to advance our strategic commitments this was time consuming for our staff but was crucial in our ability to assure no stone goals unturned as we maximize every dollar in our budget to support students teachers and staff first and foremost this is a budget that is teacher and student centric with the bulk of our

095new investments going to support the classroom and our schools where they are needed most as you know i have visited every school this fall and met with hundreds of parents staff and students where i heard firsthand the needs of our school division as a school division we do not control our revenues up or down we are fortunate this year to have strong state and county budgets that are crucial to our ability to fund our schools both adequately and equitably the fy 2023 budget is a 1.5 billion dollar budget which represents an approximate 14 percent increase over fiscal year 2022 the centerpiece of this budget and the single largest investment is 60 million dollars to provide a seven percent average increase in pay for our staff this critical investment recognizes the need to offer competitive pay

096and benefits as outlined in our strategic plan i will provide further details on this in a moment but first i will walk through each of our four strategic commitments and highlight the major investments that this budget makes in each area first is the core of our business which is learning and achievement for all our work on this commitment is to provide equitable opportunities for all students to achieve at high levels preparing all students for post-secondary education and the workforce and ensuring all staff members support and challenge every student as we've heard from our instructional staff beyond their own pay and benefits they urgently need more support in the classroom this budget specifically includes a focus on our early learners and support for our special education teachers and students to this end this proposal includes hiring

09788 full-time kindergarten teaching assistants to ensure every kindergarten classroom has a full-time assistant further i am proposing 100 full-time teaching assistants for special education classrooms that will be allocated to schools based on programming and staffing needs to support our most vulnerable students to further support our special education and as identified as a key resource in our strategic plan we are also proposing the hiring of 13 assistive technology specialists these experts are critical to our ability to ensure every student has the support needed to have their voice in their own education an additional resource to support our schools and students is the addition of social workers and behavior specialists which are desperately needed to address social and emotional learning and mental health and wellness for both students and staff a key goal in our strategic plan

098is for 100 of students to have a post-secondary plan because we know that our job at pwcs does not end when we hand over the diploma on graduation day to this end we are proposing the addition of 15 career counselors one for every traditional and non-traditional high school who will play a key role in guiding students and families in the development of concrete post-secondary plans to secure their future after graduation the theory of action behind our first strategic objective is that if all schools have high expectations and engage students through universal design for learning and rigorous problem project-based learning then every student will have the knowledge skills critical thinking and digital tools needed to fully access advanced opportunities leading to higher levels of academic achievement to deliver on this theory of action we are proposing

099investments for academic support including 13 instructional support positions to provide teachers with professional development and school-based coaching in the areas of math science social science and literacy as well as support for english learners and world language these positions will help us develop advance and deliver curriculum that are both inclusive and rigorous for every student earlier this school year we shared with the school board a presentation on the state of gifted education in pre-pwcs based on that data and recommendations from the superintendent's advisory council on gifted education we are funding 21 gifted program positions to advance our goal of every school having a full-time gifted program teacher by 2025 these positions will increase student access to gifted education programming this budget will also make critical investments in our classroom technology infrastructure as we are now a

100one-to-one school division we must ensure we maintain this investment as well as upgrade our classrooms where the technology has fallen behind many of our teachers are using interactive whiteboards or projectors that are more than seven years old and this leads to equipment failures that disrupt instruction this budget centralizes management of these assets so we can ensure technology adequacy and equity in every school moving forward also in support of adequacy we have included funding for our small schools to ensure that they meet the basic needs of their schools when per-pupil funding may not be sufficient our next strategic commitment is positive climate and culture this is our promise to provide a welcoming supportive and safe environment for teaching and learning to support our schools and again tied to our strategic plan goals around positive climate and

101culture we are proposing the hiring of 30 security specialists along with infrastructure upgrades of cameras and emergency systems we also have included the hiring of an additional 14 nurses as we know the pandemic has placed a heavy burden on our school staff and none more than our nurses who have delivered exceptional service to our students and families throughout this challenging pandemic this hiring will further bolster this critical role in an effort to reduce high student to nurse ratios as we seek to ensure our schools are inclusive and safe for all students we will continue supporting the no place for hate program as well as adding support positions in handling student discipline cases lastly creating sustainable facilities and reducing energy consumption continue to be a division focus and this budget adds resources to support these initiatives

102our schools exist to serve students and families in partnership family and community engagement represents the commitment to build collaborative meaningful partnerships and trusting relationships to foster the success of all students we also believe involvement of the family in their child's education is crucial this should be true for every family however as a large school division navigating the multitude of resources can be daunting especially for those families that may speak a language other than english as such we are proposing ramping up our family liaison program with the addition of 35 parent liaisons with the long-term goal of having at least one parent liaison for every school in the next four years we are also adding five additional social worker positions and additional language translations support our final commitment is organizational coherence this represents the conscious commitment

103to align the entire school division as one team united in a singular commitment to support all schools students and families in supporting our teachers administrators and support employees and align to our strategic priority to reach to provide regionally competitive wages the core of our budget proposal is an investment of 61 million dollars to provide employees a 4.2 percent cost of living adjustment and a step increase this will equate to a seven percent average increase for most employees overall the cost of this investment is offset by a vacancy savings of 20 million dollars we will also be investing an additional 20 million dollars to make market-based improvements to our certified and instructional pay scales and our classified pay scales as a result of these adjustments our salaries will be more competitive these increases will be targeted

104primarily at early and mid-career steps on our scale where we are seeing the least parity with other school divisions with whom we compete for talent this means some instructional and certified staff will see increases above seven percent this proposal will also keep health care premiums low despite increasing claims and health care costs the proposal includes a modest two percent increase to employee premiums in our divisions self-insurance plan administered by anthem this equates to about an additional ten dollars per month for the family anthem hmo plan however kaiser has established a rate that will result in a 14 increase or about 73 dollars additional per month for the kaiser hmo plan it is important to note that kaiser's overall premium cost will still be lower than anthem our principles are also being asked to do more

105than ever they must be instructional leaders mediators and they must navigate the ongoing burden of the pandemic recognizing the enormous challenge of this role we are adding 26 assistant principal positions to further support the work of our building leaders and lower the student-to-assistant principal ratio the strategic plan addresses the need for organizational coherence this means that we as an organization are all headed in the same direction and that every resource we have is dedicated to supporting the classroom this includes support positions which are crucial to the work of our schools and let me explain why as you've heard me say with the new positions proposed today in addition to our annual hiring needs we have a substantial amount of hiring needed at the local school level for every hire at the school there comes the

106need to recruit onboard equip and pay these new employees we strive to keep that support as efficient as possible however when that support becomes too thin then efficiency decreases this means if we do not have the human resources finance transportation or technology staff to support our schools then we have negative impacts this can result in delayed hiring negative customer service for our families leaders or staff and infrastructure breakdowns for example i have continuously heard throughout this year from our school leaders regarding the impact of our understaffed support offices this includes the inability to be competitive in filling key positions and even losing top talent as a result of delays caused by substantial workloads to meet the high demand of customer service we've outlined envision 2025 and ensure fiscal responsibility it is necessary for us to

107adequately resource departments that are woefully understaffed today this is especially true for our finance and human resource departments in just a moment i will ask mr wallingford along with other key members of the leadership team to share further details of our proposal but before i do i want to bring us back to our strategic objective 4.3 that pwcs will ensure that our strategic priorities are driving our investments and our theory of action that if we align our budgeted resources with our strategic priorities then we will ensure that every student is provided equitable access to facilities technology and curriculum enabling improved student outcomes and experiences this budget is exceptionally strong we have an opportunity to advance the necessary work of supporting our students by investing in our classrooms our schools and our staff this is a

108budget that both the school board and the community can be proud of thank you for your support and consideration of our proposal and i would like to now ask our chief financial officer mr john wallingford to provide additional details on the fiscal year 23 proposed budget dr mcdade thank you for that introduction dr latif members of the board dr mcdade the first thing i'd like to say before we get into the numbers is that it's been both a pleasure and a challenge working with dr mcdade over the past several months and putting this budget together it is a change in process for us and i i have to say that i am excited to present this budget to you tonight it is a very good outcome for the school division so you're familiar with some

109of these slides you'll see over over the next a couple of slides these two donuts used to be pies but what you see is a depiction of both where the money comes from and where the money goes to and on the left where it comes from and you may be familiar with this we see roughly 50 percent of our funding coming from the state and 50 percent coming from the county like dr mcdade mentioned earlier we have very little control over these numbers but this year they have been uh just fantastic where does the money go to roughly 80 percent of our money goes towards instruction into the schools unlike many localities in virginia we do have a a very healthy capital improvement plan we spend a fair amount on our schools because we are

110growing not as rapidly as we have in the past but we do spend more than most school divisions on our cip to the next slide what you'll see here is two items the first on the left is our expected enrollment growth over the next several years you can see the the real deflection uh between 19 20 and 21 to the left of this chart and we were expecting growth in the range of four to 700 students per year going out from 2003 out into the future the slide to the right is a bar chart you've seen and what it really does is it depicts the enrollment growth in different populations in the division over the past five years this slide is different than it's been in the past and of note is uh the bottom

111bar where you see total enrollment growth over the past five years has been uh just a hair over zero percent so little in fact that the chart shows zero those other populations are growing of at rates between eight and almost twenty percent and the important thing to note here is that those populations are more expensive populations for us to educate and therefore even though our total growth over the past years is is flat our costs continue to increase the next slide and this is what excites me a great deal i have to share with you uh starting in in 2009 and you've seen this slide before starting in 2009 if you take a look at the bottom line that is our per pupil expenditure adjusted for inflation and you can see that even in the

112current fiscal year our per pupil expenditure again adjusted for inflation is less than it was in 2009 this year this coming year fiscal 23 you'll notice that our per pupil expenditure again adjusted for inflation actually finally exceeds the number we had in fiscal 2009. very good news the top line are the same numbers unadjusted for just specifically on that just so everyone understands that 11389 is higher than the 10-776 that's basically what you're saying yes sir yeah for the first time we're back up over 2009 levels that's correct again very good news the top line are the same numbers this time unadjusted for inflation and the important thing to note here john can uh sorry mr wallingford uh board members have questions on that again just go over what you mean again by the adjusted

113inflation rate so if you look at the orange line in 2009 we used to receive 10 776 dollars per pupil correct that is correct that was in 2009 when the recession hit you know we that continued to go down and state revenues continued to go down and we for the first time this year are going to be at 11 389 which is the first time we're higher than we were on adjusted inflation rates per pupil since 2009. that is right correct okay so the top line shows our unadjusted or nominal purple expenditures and what you can see the the thing of note here really is those last two years what you see is an increase in per pupil expenditures of roughly eighteen hundred dollars per student that's a that's a substantial increase year every year

114and when we get to the last slide in this presentation we'll walk through the revenue numbers and you'll see what that 1800 per pupil increase means so here's the recap of revenue and i'm just going to take you to the bottom right hand corner if you take a look at the bottom right hand corner of this slide what you see is 173 million dollar increase year over year in revenue to prince william county schools or roughly a 14 percent increase this is a substantial number it's it's greater than we've ever experienced and so i'll walk through the individual categories the most too important again are the county and state revenues and you can see that county revenues we expect those to be up about 50 million year over year 50 million dollars year over year

115is a typical total increase this is just from county revenues 50 million the next number you see is about 120 million dollars and that's an increase in our state revenue streams again from fiscal 22 to fiscal 23. as you're aware the general assembly is meeting right now and they're discussing all kinds of things that may change these numbers they may reduce them may increase them in fact and this is something that happens every year the general assembly typically is doing their work while we're proposing and working on our budgets so in both of those categories we expect to see changes between now and the time when you adopt our budget and send it to to the county board of supervisors for adoption this final slide just walks through the calendar that we have laid out

116before us for the next couple of months i'm not going to walk through every single one of these i'll point out the important dates the last date is the date that the board of county supervisors approves our budget that's on the 26th tax rates while i haven't talked about tax rates tonight tax rates theoretically will be set on april 12th and that's when we'll have a good feel of what our county revenues are and at that point if we have to make any adjustments if they're large if they're large enough we'll bring those back to this board thank you okay so at this point as i as i pointed out before dr mcdade do you have any further comments okay no that concludes our our presentation i'll ask board members to make comments restrict questions

117for email and and later but certainly you can make comments about the budget miss williams you have your hand up oh miss jesse uh first of all i think the budget is just a phenomenal budget and the items that are exciting to me one number one for me is that for the first time uh per pupil expenditure i think that is phenomenal the seven percent increase in staff pay the special education assistance kindergarten assistance because if you work with kindergartners you know you need a second person in the room at all times because kindergarteners do what they do the career counselors very excited about that because i think that aligns with the whole looking at what happens to kids as they prepare for college and after college the small school supplement i think is also

118something that is exciting to me i would like for us to look at uh transient schools i'm sure we'll get a chance to give more specific input but i worked in a very transient school so my secret my front office staff was your needs were different because we were entering data every single day the nurses are really very excited about the nurses and maybe down the road we can consider some assistance for health assistance i think it depends on the pandemic but i i just wanted to highlight some of the things in the budget that as i read it i was excited about i'm not sure i fully understand all the aids but the ell population when i looked at the data that's something that we need to consider and also the science our science

119scores when we looked at when i looked at quality profile it's the only scores where we're lower than the state in our science performance and i think in this meeting and other meetings i asked for a countdown on which schools had science labs because we asked people to do hands-on and project-based learning kind of activities i think they need labs there are schools in this county that have five labs and there are schools in this county that have no no labs at all and most of those schools are title one school so that's something that perhaps in the cip we can address but overall this i think is an exciting budget and i know that the teachers and principals will be very excited uh the other item are the front office staff where the assistant

120we're getting the system principles i'd like for you guys to look at whether or not we can provide registrars or look at the principal secretaries because the principal secretaries have multiple responsibilities so that's that's just my limited input of course i sent them an epistle today but those are just mine off the review of some of the data that i sent in to them thank you very much williams um thank you i i i have um two questions but they can be answered and i think it's just worth repeating um so if mr wellington doesn't mind if you could just address the general public because i think this will come up repeatedly through the budget season and it was also brought up this evening the difference between our operational budget and our pandemic funding because

121i think most of the public believes that our operational funding and budget is the same as federal funding or wherever we get our pandemic relief from and i think since we're starting this discussion this evening we should start it off with some clarity if you don't mind sir so mrs williams that's a very good question our operational budget does not include federal pandemic aid that we've received over the past approximately two years that money has been added to the budget in mid-year in each of the last two years this budget that that you've received this evening does not include that pandemic aid those dollars are in the current year budget and will be rolled forward into the new year so those are are not in in these numbers thank you and and i also if

122you don't mind because you're our money man and i think this is helpful for our public to understand our operational budget is ours we make the decisions on how we spend the money um as a school division a board what have you but when it comes to pandemic relief and funding that we received for the pandemic that money is often if not always encumbered with restrictions or requirements or a certain methodology on how it's spent so for example you know we if we get five million dollars in relation to pandemic it often comes with you must buy xyz or you must spend on xyz and it's not generally non-renewable funding which is different than our operational budget if you could address that please sir absolutely again a very good question our operating budget is our

123budget this board approves it sends it to the county board of county supervisors and they approve it in lump sum they don't direct how it's spent that's direction that comes from dr mcdade and this board the dollars that we received from the federal government both standard federal formula aid title 1 title 6b and pandemic money all of those dollars have all kinds of constraints placed on them particularly the most recent pandemic money we've received in the form of sr-3 funding the the effort to manage that money is substantially greater than than the other dollars because all the restrictions that the federal government and the state government has placed on those uh including the kinds of things that we can spend the timelines during which we can spend them a great deal of constraints additional audit

124requirements layered on top of the standard audit requirement so your search assertion is precisely correct those dollars we have some control over but there's a great deal of control placed on us by both the federal and state government thank you sir i appreciate that my last um comment is along the same you mentioned something in the presentation that i think bears repeating because it is significant into our operation and that is if you could just repeat why we mention specific student populations with specifically free and reduced lunch special education and ell students because i think the public tends to see that maybe our enrollment numbers are not going up so why do we spend more money and why is it important that we especially highlight those populations in our budget again thank you for the

125question a very good one so you're absolutely right our total population growth has moderated a great deal over the past several years but our growth in those categories that you mentioned has not um this year obviously because of the pandemic is an odd year but even during that those three populations that that you mentioned have continued to grow at pretty substantial rates each one of those populations requires additional funding in order to provide them the world class education that prince william county provides for students so even in an environment where the total population is relatively flat or just slightly increasing our cost to instruct students to provide instruction to students continues to continue to grow thank you i appreciate that mr wallingford i'm going to move into my comment portion um i don't have anything

126else to ask you um but i do want to say i i appreciate you coming up here to to state that again um it goes directly to my comments because um the thing about this budget that is most in fact impactful for me or one thing that is most impactful is the acknowledgement that we need additional staffing and a lot of times we hear this rhetoric of well the school division doesn't spend money in the classroom but the staffing is part of the classroom if you don't have special education teachers if you don't have gifted teachers if you don't have aids you're not spending money in the classroom because there's no one there to do that job if you don't have administrators to help those support those individuals who are directly in the face of

127our students our teachers and our support staff don't aren't getting what they need in order to do their job so i just um really want to thank dr mcdade and her staff because this budget to me encompasses many of the things i've advocated and fought for my entire time on the school board it's almost as if you were here before you were here which shows me your dedication to listening not only to board members but to members of the public in the community your own staff and students it's reflected in this budget it aligns with our strategic vision which directly and it speaks to oak organizational coherence you shouldn't have a budget that's separate and it's in its implementation from what we said we're gonna do it it's no longer a matter of having to

128repeat the budget is our priority it clearly states it is our priority and it aligns with our strategic plan which is just the way it should be frankly um i am exceptionally excited to see our um investment in our gifted teachers in gifted programming so many students are missed by that and we don't have enough gifted teachers who want in the school division to support our students who come in all shapes and sizes we shouldn't have teachers shared between schools or running on carts and then with the advancement of our push in where we have gifted teachers who come into the classrooms whether they're recognized gifted students or not to provide programming i think this will alleviate the burden on some of those staff this budget is just absolutely amazing and i appreciate that while

129we have the additional funding not only from our county but on the state level that we're taking advantage of that and we're doing so in a way that is smart and strategic um i i hope that the public understands that this is just the first of many conversations and conversations take many forms when it comes to public dialogue with school divisions i also appreciate especially from my district the investment in parent liaisons i represent a district that has a high immigrant population and we speak many languages and it's important that those parents feel that they are part of their child's academic process and they're able to communicate with the school in a way that's meaningful i can't thank you enough for that i also noticed that there was an addition for our transportation liaisons i

130think that will significantly reduce the amount of parents who are frustrated with the what's up bus app or trying to call transportation or transportation staff who are limited in their numbers trying to run buses and dispatch and communicate with parents who are frustrated because they can't find the bus or the buses later whatever the case may be i think adding another layer to support our transportation part our transportation division is a smart investment i'm just overall pleased that i don't have to for the first time sit on this board worry about whether or not we're going to pay for basic things for our students such as psats that horrible critical immense needs list has gone away because it's already incorporated in what this budget um is made up of so i just want to say

131that i'm very excited about this budget i hope indeed that it does pass and i appreciate your active listening uh not only to this board but to members of the community it is truly an honor to be serving right now and discussing a budget i have never been excited about a budget that was former school board member guild trenham's role um so this is a new new thing for me but it is it is i understand why he felt like that now so thank you oh i'm sorry one more thing um when it comes to because i forgot we're doing budget ncip and i just want to piggyback off of what miss jesse said um i know that the majority of the schools that do not have science labs are in title 1 schools which

132are in my district they're not all in my district but almost every school except for one in my district is a title 1 school and i would appreciate if we could look at that in our cip and come up with a way to correct that because it's a matter of equity for all of the students who attend those schools and the the push for stem is there and it would be nice if those students can have the same access as other students to that learning curriculum thank you miss wall thank you mr chairman so i will just say um it's obvious that there's been a tremendous amount of work that has gone into this and its presentation is excellent the organization the correlation with the strategic plan i can see that this is a very

133professional document i want to congratulate not congratulate but applaud all of those who worked on it the layout you know it's it's very good presentation tonight um i am looking forward to public comment and feedback on this and so um i i'm interested to hear what people think it's got a lot of things in here that are some of my highest priorities especially opportunities for student academic excellence and seeing a real investment of resources into our classrooms and also increasing our competitive advantage in the marketplace for our professionals attracting and retaining the highest quality workforce that we can afford and i also you know want to make sure we do all of this in a way that is fiscally responsible with an eye towards stewardship and good financial stewardship so i appreciate the hard work

134on this and i'm looking forward to hearing public comment the budget hearings and the work sessions and everything else thank you argopour thank you mr chairman um yeah i i was really happy to see in the budget that there were um they're not little things the addition of kindergarten teacher assistants and extra teacher assistants for special education uh one of the things that we keep hearing over and over and over from many different teachers is how much is on their plates and what can we take off of them take off of the off of their plates for them so i know just those two categories alone are going to go a long way and i look forward to hearing also from our staff as we move forward just what else is going to be helpful

135i know that the school the high school counselors have talked a lot about the many job duties that they have so hopefully the adding the career counselors is going to be a little bit of that relief we've got more mental health put into this budget which is still very very very important so so all of those things um with an eye to to making things better for our students making sure our staff have more support um is is uh i'm just really happy to to see how responsive the division was this year and um and that we've got like ms wall said you know we want to be good stewards of our of our of our budget um so all of this is going in support of our students but we also need to take

136care of our staff as well so thank you for for keeping all those things in line um i'm a little jealous about the the pa the potential pay raise here and not all districts do it so uh um but yeah so thank you for for all the work that the staff has put in mr wilk thank you dr mcdade um since we have so many other sessions and work things coming up i'm gonna just keep this very minimal and i'm also paying a graphic designer to make some really nice flashy things of what's coming to the potomac district and uh so uh but i'm very grateful for some of the projects um it's about being good stewards for our community and representing the needs of the potomac district so when you find out that the

137tennis courts are dilapidated at one of your high schools uh you take action when you find out one of your tracks is falling apart whereas the other school just got a brand new one you have to take action so i appreciate the responsiveness and the support from the division to help assist me where my constituents are looking for things law for many years the colleagues on the board know i've i've championed to make sure we have a full-time military liaison in our schools and we've always been able to supplement that 0.5 with the federal grants and subsidize that this year that grant is gone so we are able to do the full-time now employee on our end so i'm very thankful for that for the military families a lot of us have advocated for kindergarten

138aids to make sure they're in every room as a special needs parents the more special needs assistance in these classrooms is critical um i think it's now a matter of finding them on the market and making sure we can uh compete and recruit the best people to be in our classrooms uh and then you know i think the counselors were mentioned last year i tried adding 10 at the last minute in a markup session and it didn't happen but we do have 15 career counselors and even for high schools i know that already have a career counselor we're actually giving them now the ability and the flexibility now to have another counselor on their staff to help reduce those caseloads so it's just fantastic dumfries you know small school a very tiny school i think

139one of the smallest actually in the county having that supplemental funding for a small school budget to help add and things like liaisons or other additional costs that they're not able to potentially get to other schools in my district or in other districts so overall very pleased um i can you know go on and on but i just wanted to hit and touch on those highlights there and very thankful for the staff everyone mr wallingford mr churrochi everyone that contributed the entire team to make this happen so very thankful thank you miss ralston did you have anything to add okay we'll go to miss jackson thank you dr latif um i don't want to repeat what the my board members have said today because i share some of their excitement um there are a number

140of priorities in here that i'm very excited about including the instructional assistants and the tas for kindergarten classrooms but what i'm looking forward to is the process and the community involvement over the next few weeks and our collaboration with dr mcdade's team and just all the time you've taken so far to answer questions and then i know there's going to be a ton more questions coming so i'm just very thankful for everybody's time thank you okay well that leaves me well first off i want to congratulate the entire finance team dr mcdade this is a record budget this um you know while i share the frustrations of of many folks who who came here to speak on a variety of topics this evening i like many have four children three three in the school system

141now one in college all dealing with you know pandemic concerns frustrations um and it has been a challenging two years um today is groundhog day it's like this was like this last year at this time and so you know i'm hoping next year is going to be the future is much brighter this budget paints a much brighter picture for the the whole of this county i think it is absolutely um stunning that we've been able to deliver a seven percent raise across the division on average the competitive salary adjustments are fantastic this is on top of my first year four point eight percent raise a 4.8 percent raise a second year i've been on this board 2.4 in the pandemic which should have been a 4-8 but we cut for the pandemics 5.0 last year

142and 7 this year and we are still behind other school divisions in the region for salary but we are making some real progress in the future is bright everyone should remember that we'd be very excited about that the student success aspects of this and the learning achievement for all the kindergarten tas we know that when we went to full day kindergarten that had a dramatic impact on the success of our students and graduation rates adding tas to every single kindergarten class is absolutely critical and and it may have similar results moving forward i think beefing up our science departments our science support here at the central office for our division as you heard from many many school board members is very important as we move to more stem focused concerns we we have been very

143um you know really behind and and and i think in an area that has desperately needed work for many years and i think we're going to get some added support there and i'm excited about that space and infrastructure outstanding capital improvement plan continues to address my concerns of safety and security we're looking at more counselors continuing to improve our ratios and um you know overall this is an outstanding budget i think everyone should remember though we have a number of factors that will fund this budget factor one is what happens in richmond the general assembly is looking at the proposed governor northam's budget they're going to make some changes to the budget governor younkin will then go ahead and sign a budget that gets to the assembly based on what we're hearing from our folks

144down there there is considerable interest in making sure schools get funded at adequate levels and and i appreciate the work of all the representatives in richmond as they continue to work on this and it will be critical to determine what our final budget will look like secondly the county board of county supervisors will vote on on on their um commitment to to the school division in a number of different ways and we'll see what their revenues look like as well and that's going to be important and final adjustments will be made accordingly over the next couple months as we go through different work sessions and and meet with the board of county supervisors it is important for all of us to remember that you know as pointed out by a number of speakers you know

145diversity of a tax base is critical to the success of the school division loudoun county for example gets about three to four hundred million dollars just from data centers alone to fund about two two and a quarter billion dollar school budget we have about 1.5 1.6 billion dollar school budget and we're getting currently in the i think 30 to 60 million range from data centers and there are significant areas where we can achieve um more revenues for our schools less on the backs of our property owners and families and and and and citizens but more on diversifying the tax base and looking for revenue streams from whether it's data centers whether it's other um creative ways to increase revenue sources and i know the board of county supervisors are looking at all of them and

146i wish them the best as they make those decisions and recognize that those decisions will have a direct impact on our ability to achieve our strategic plan which many of our board of county supervisor members were a part of in in discussions on the plan and and it is critical so again thank you all this is a historic budget a historic evening for prince william county schools these are numbers we've never seen before these are numbers we're going to continue to work towards and um as a continued commitment over the course of my four years and now fifth budget you know we will continue to spend this money as wisely as possible and for the benefit of every single student we have in this division so um with that dr mcdade do you have anything

147further dad i just want to close really by saying thank you to the entire board for your considerate for allowing us to present this uh proposed budget this evening as well as for your consideration i just want to echo something that you said mr chairman this really is a bright spot as we continue to deal with so many of the challenges with the pandemic and things that might be debatable i think the one thing that's not debatable is that this budget contains all of the necessary resources and investments that are needed to move this division forward whether it be the competitive wages so that we can retain our talented staff to the desperately needed resources that are being provided directly to the classroom but most importantly we now have a a comprehensive strategic plan that

148will ensure that our priorities drive our investments in this school division so i could not be more proud and look forward to continued dialogue around the budget and your consideration for the proposed fy 23 uh budget thank you so much wonderful dr mcvidade um okay any other board members have any other comments i think with that we can move on next to i've lost my place on the screen what's next folks what is that that is uh oh um okay directive for a prevailing wage uh ms arghapur can you or or i'm sorry miss jackson i'm getting used to my old vice chair thank you dr latif i move that at the first school board meeting in march the prince william county school board be provided by the superintendent and the office the division council

149with information regarding the impact of the virginia's prevailing wage law on prince william county schools including any resolutions and or policy changes necessary should the board vote to implement a similar requirement for construction contracts with the prince william county public schools do you have a second mr chairman miss our report second okay any discussion um you know i'll go first then here this is there are some laws that have been changed regarding prevailing wage and looking at what our vendors and contractors pay their employees their workers and from my standpoint from a personal standpoint in some of the work i've done at the university of virginia we've implemented these kinds of changes already and you know they are very positive in in an environment like northern virginia i suspect and i'll be interested to know

150as the staff brings back where are we on the wage scale relative uh relative to other regions for um how we're how are how we're paying our workers we want to make sure that that everyone just like in our division has paid well and we're trying to increase that and remind everyone that forbes magazine rated prince william county schools as the number one school division to work for last year um and so in in a continued commitment to be a good member of the community i am very supportive of the beginning of this effort to look at the prevailing wage effort next anybody have any other comments to add okay um please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes miss ralston votes yes the vote is seven yes one no wall motion passed okay

151next we're going to update up miss laurie williams our chair of the governor's school at innovation park board she will give us an update this evening on the happenings at the governor's school thank you dr latif or chairman latif the governor school board last met in december we received an informational update on students their academic progress what supports were being put in place or already in existing in place to support their mental health and academic progress i am pleased to report that we do have a very strong network of supports in place for those students the pta or ptso excuse me because there's a difference has some planned study sessions to help additionally support our students academic progress the budget for the upcoming school year was approved unanimously and the next meeting will be held

152on february 17th at the governor's school and innovation park thank you excellent at this point i think we moved to board matters um i don't know where i started last time i think i started would i start with miss last time okay we'll go to miss jessie of the akkaquan district uh first of all i want to thank all the principals i have been in contact with all of them and uh they and and staff and all of my schools in fact i called them last week to talk about the budget and i want you to know dr mcdave that they said they really appreciated the fact that you involved them in that input session so that's one thing uh the other thing is that i am on the students with challenging schools environmental representative

153for vsba and we look at all the data especially in challenging schools and it is actually frightening when we look at some of the school districts our school district has really not we made we made some sense we have had some significant losses but there are school systems in the state of virginia that have gone from eighty percent pass rate to zero percent pass rate in some of those lower income schools and even in our school system if you look at the data if you go to quality profile and look at some of our ell data it's a lot of work so i'm on another committee which is the federal review committee and on friday we spent a full day talking to various representatives and i had an opportunity to talk to to governor warner

154and i mean not go underwater senator warner and also to senator kaine and we wanted to i asked my question for us we got this money from various sources my question was what are we going to do with the bill back better and my number one priority was that we get universal pre-k and it looks like that is something that they're looking at because i think if as we look at the kinder we get kindergarten going and then we get universal pre-k through the federal government i think it's going to mean a lot so those are my report items for the week thank you thank you mr c miss williams thank you madam vice chair um i just want to start out to um while tonight's has been mostly about budget and strategic plan and

155just kind of remind everyone that virginia is still fifth in the nation for excellence in schools it doesn't seem to be the dominant rhetoric out there but we aren't a horrible school division we aren't horrible in our state rankings we don't spend enough time talking about how good of a job we do and i think that's extremely important in this day and age when our teachers are bearing the brunt of the rhetoric that is out there i also want to talk about parental reinvolvement and remind everybody in the public that there's parental involvement in academics at every level you have opportunities to comment on state at the state level vdoe volunteers on boards and commissions with at your local level emailing calling reaching out to your representative commenting on whatever the topic is of the

156month especially here in prince william county schools we often have government forms that are available for the public to use which are also translated in a plethora of languages so any and all have the opportunity to provide feedback as well as opportunities in your student school there is no shortage or ever of um demand for volunteers or feedback in your school division i i have yet to be the teacher who has had to turn away volunteers because there's been so many so i would encourage parents to continue um to work with their their school and the school division and provide as much feedback as they would feel or see fit um i also want to remind anyone in the woodbridge district i am looking actively to an appointment a member to the joint environmental task

157force that was just started up so if you're interested please reach out for that i would love to have someone who of course is interested in environment to participate on that task force and in my last 60 seconds i just want to give a nod to black history in prince william county we have sitting on this diocese a history maker in our um in our presence with dr mcdade who is the first african-american and female african-american superintendent in prince william county schools history not too long ago only a mere 26 years ago we had the first elected african american in prince william county and that was mr john harper also in addition to that are four courageous four who integrated prince william county schools fannie fitzgerald mary porter zella brown maxine coleman and i also

158sitting next to me have the longest serving most popular african-american former principal now board member we have history live in the making here in prince william county and black history and i just want to say how much i appreciate that and encourage our public to continue to make history and honor those who have thank you ms wall thank you mr chairman um i'm going to start out my comments because i always run out of time um with talking about an event an event that i attended at bull run middle school this weekend it was the vex robotics middle school western qualifier and um it was held under the direction of denise carroll and hosted by the team there at bull run by mr oppenheimer and other great and other great supporters of robotics there were

159a lot of teams that qualified for the state competition and potomac shores middle school was there to compete in their very first tournament they're not a school from my division but their principal used to be a principal at reagan and it's a brand new middle school and so it was really fun and exciting for them to compete in their very first event one of the silver linings of the pandemic is the increased involvement of parents in education and watching what we're doing and getting involved and i um well i did not ask people to come here tonight um or solicit their support i do appreciate um hearing from parent voice and what we witnessed tonight was authentic engagement on issues that they care deeply about and as i have said all along throughout the pandemic

160every policy has a cost there is always a balance of benefits and harms i've spoken on this numerous times especially early on when we were trying to open schools we have got to do a better job of balancing the benefits and the harms health is more than the absence of covid it is time to appropriately balance the risks to children's health in the broadest term reclaiming normal life for our kids is the best way to support and protect them i think a lot of people don't realize how awful the pandemic has been on kids now kids are patient they are resilient they do mostly what they're told they're very good at that they have suffered the greatest impact there has been a real impact on kids we see it in the educational data we will

161see it in our social and emotional data for years to come you know families are tired um the pandemic has taken a toll but it's not just on families it's also on our teachers our principals our nurses and others it's just been tough having to enforce policies not of their making as i have visited with a number of principals from the gainesville district that's helped me to see the perspective more because i'm i can't you know get into the schools and really see what's going on but just listening to their listening to them has been really invaluable to me and has informed my perspective i think we need to not lose sight of the need to adapt as conditions change as they do and as they will we must be willing to reevaluate our balance

162of risks and benefits of our policies we must be responsive to the families who support our schools we must be responsive to the teachers who teach our kids and um with that i say good night miss jargofour thank you chairman latif to ms wall's point um you know i do agree with her those of you who came tonight to talk about how you feel about the the um the the testing requirements you're right we did make a decision back in september and i have been thinking quite a bit about what has changed since then i i have been thinking about it i have a lot of intellectual curiosity and so you know i have been uh making sure that i'm i'm listening but also making sure that that we we really reflect on what we've

163done it's part of education right we do something we reflect on it we make sure that we are on the right path so um so those of you who came tonight you know i am listening um i want to talk a little bit about the kohl's district here i went to uh what the first jazz concert at colgan high school that they've had since 2020 i think and it was fantastic they did a great job um there there were it just oh man it was just a great concert i can't wait for the next one i think they said that one's coming in may uh congratulations to the the students at osmond park high school their honor society inductees um great job i know it's been hard through this pandemic you guys are sticking with

164your your academics and you're you're getting the work done and you're being honored for doing so parkside middle robotics did a great job this weekend apparently they got what three out of five of their teams are moving on to states and one team c won an excellence award i went to vsba last week with um miss williams miss wall and dr mcdade and um got to hear from different people in richmond we met with our different legislators to talk about our legislative priorities making sure that prince william county was represented we got to talk to actually quite a few of them which was really nice i want to say also to any teacher that had my i have three daughters two are out of school and and one is um she can graduate this year

165she's a she's a junior though so we'll see what happens you know i can't raise my kids without a good solid school behind them the the fact that we've been with prince william county schools the entire time from kindergarten until my kids graduate the teachers have taken care of my kids they have fostered this love of learning in with with my daughters and um and the principles have been supportive making sure the right programs are in the schools anytime i've had concerns the counseling staff has been there and not just from the bottom of my heart thank you so much i think you guys have done a great job you're continuing to do a great job dr latif i guess i'm supposed to say something really witty about masks and vaccines but i think i'm

166going to leave that for right now why don't we just we're going to stay safe we're going to take care of our families and our friends we're going to make sure that we're um we're caring for each other thank you have a good night thank you mr reporter you can always wash your hands mr will thank you chairman latif thank you everyone thank you dr mcdade for the present presentation of the budget and of course adopting the strategic plan with certain things being said you know from day one um i joined dr latif and miss wall with trying continuously to bring our kids back to school um since july 2015 of 2020 at a quicker time than dr waltz had recommended uh it was we see the long-term impacts i think of some of those

167decisions and i think you know now we have to look and a couple lines were set about being adaptable as the climate changes and re-evaluating policies from where we're at today there were a lot of great points shared tonight not just on you know what we heard about the testing but also about the strategic plan in the budget i thought that was great to hear some of that and i'm obviously considering a lot of that information when it comes to school visits so i wanted to say that first i also want to add that you know again another plug for our nurses i think it's great that we're hiring more nurses or proposing to hire more nurses in the budgets but i would still like to see us look at other options for helping and

168supporting our existing nurses right now in this pandemic so visitations on what i did the last two weeks uh so on uh jim's almost said july 21st on january 21st visited several classrooms at forest park attended a lot of those classes and saw a lot of great things happen on the 25th i went to the potomac boys basketball game close game lost to freedom high school but still great to be there on 1 28 i attended and was invited to the faculty breakfast on our the teacher planning and pd day at forest park high school and had the chance to speak with teachers there on 129 my favorite event of the year i should say this my plug is attending the forest park place conducted and done by my wife the forest park drama teacher

169that was a great play after the play i quickly uh served as a helper i guess kind of a de facto chaperone at the forest park senior snowball dance it was great to see all the kids back to dances in person and i think it was great to see the kids excitement there on 131 ashland had stem day in ashland elementary so during my lunch i was able to visit ashland toured four different grade levels and looked at the projects that the kids were doing so it's great to always be there and then last night i went to another potomac high school basketball game uh sad loss but still good to be there and good to get out and just kind of live life normally so anyways so thank you everyone have a great day

170night miss um ralston the past thank you miss ralston all right well that leaves me oh no i'm sorry god i do this every time miss jackson thank you um i just wanted to say i also participated in the sba but it was online and um i was unfortunate fortunate to be invited to unity read yesterday i was invited to attend the assembly during flex time where the speaker talked about mental health i attended a proactive circle with students and a teacher and a breakout session with staff thank you to mrs anderson for showing me around yesterday and for the time teachers took to meet with me it was a wonderfully welcoming day and it was great to spend time with the lions next week is school counselors week and i want to take a

171moment and thank again our school counselors i believe the school's counseling week theme is better together thank you school counselors for everything you do for your students in some cases that the tools you bring are invaluable and your impact felt beyond school rules i truly schools are truly better because your knowledge experience commitment and compassion i look forward to recognizing miss simpson and miss reeves for board appreciation week and they also extend my gratitude to the school crossing guards please know i continue to listen read and read all emails and thank parents for coming every meeting i encourage leaders today to lead with love and acceptance to create unity and conversations let us show true intent and model kindness many members of our staff breathe and live education i see this in all staff members

172from custodians to itinerant to kelly leadership my perspective is that of a teacher so i'm just gonna talk about why i teach today because i know many share our thoughts i teach because i truly love my students every day no matter what i want to do everything i can every day in their best interests it is why i set up my classroom for a place for them to hide and not be seen during an active shooter drill and why i hide by the door as their teacher it is an easy choice to stand by that door it is why i go to sleep thinking about how to feed or teach or clothe that one student it is why i love data smart goals but also qualitative data that we don't talk about it is also

173why i see this in countless employees who go who could go anywhere else but stay here because they love thank you vice chair jackson all right well um it is groundhog day and i feel like i swear to god it's just like it was last year in some ways um and unfortunately two years in this pandemic i can make one promise that i will continue to do that i've been doing is that my push for change will be too slow for some and too fast for others so i can guarantee you that will continue but i will continue to listen to the public do my best to evolve and adapt in my policy positions on on how to go where we need to get to to get back to normal and i believe there is

174an urgency to do so moving on i want to thank the members of the board who went down to richmond to lobby our delegates and senators and state government officials to get us the monies we need for to passing our budget i want to i know our principals teachers staff watch this meeting typically every year for the budget proposal i want you to know that dr mcdade has worked very hard with each of the board members and wanted to make sure that we knew that she listened to everyone from all levels of the division on what their needs were and worked extremely hard to try to deliver what those needs were and align them with our strategic plan and i think as our community of staff teachers parents families who look at this budget will

175see many things in here that they're going to really like and you're going to hear more about them as you learn about it and i think the budget will be posted online is that correct at some point here mr wallingford great okay if it's not already um um right and so we'll we'll we're gonna you know we we want to continue to to push for the full funding of this plan and i want to thank dr mcdade for for this evening historic in nature for many reasons so last year was bleak the future is bright it's bright because we just passed an amazing strategic plan launching thriving futures and we began the ambitious walk or run towards fully funding that plan this evening and so for that i am grateful to this board i'm grateful

176for the public's support in in getting us to this moment and i can tell you over and over again the future is bright for our community and i will continue to push that way for our school division i want to thank everyone for attending this evening and um and remind everyone that you know we value everyone's words and thoughts and opinions at this time we will go ahead and adjourn this evening school board meeting