Prince William County School Board Meeting - June 2, 2021

001i would like to call the meeting this meeting the prince william county school board to order this meeting the prince william county school board's been conducted electronically under virginia code 2.23708.2 and the authority granted by the general assembly on april 22 2020 through amendment 28 to house bill 29 which permits the school board to meet electronically during the tendency of the current state emergency for the purpose of transacting such business as a statutory required or necessary to continue to operate in the prince william county public schools in the discharge of his lawful purposes duties and responsibilities motions and order mr report mr chairman i move that the prince william county school board approved the closed session agenda as recommended you have a second mr chairman ms williams on second any discussion please vote miss ralston

002how do you vote yes mr also votes yes is eight yes unanimous motion passed next uh motion is in order moving the motion and moving mr mr chairman mrs argable i move that pursuant to virginia code section 2.2-3711 and 2.2-3712 the prince william county school board enter closed session for the following reasons one to discuss with division council and staff the contracts performance evaluation appointment transfer release assignment and promotion of specific officers employees and appointees under virginia code sections 2.2-3711a 1 and 8. two to receive information and discuss with division council and staff actual or probable litigation and specific legal matters involving specific staff and students under virginia code sections 2.2-3711a 1 2 7 and 8. 3. to receive advice and information from legal counsel and staff regarding the acquisition and disposition of real property

003for school sites where the where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the school board and to discuss the investment of public funds where the co where competition or bargaining is involved where if made publicly public initially the financial interest of the school board would be adversely affected under virginia code sections 2.2-3 711 a 3 6 7 and 8 4 to consult with division council and staff regarding retention of legal counsel for collective bargaining issues and legally required procedures necessary to obtain additional further funding under the american rescue plan act for elementary and secondary school emergency relief under virginia code section 2.2-3711a8 and 5 to discuss the qualifications and selection of the student representatives to the school board for this for the 2021-22 school year under virginia

004code section 2.2-37 job a second mr chairman williams a second any discussion please vote oh miss ralston how do you vote yes miss ross votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed at this time the prince william county school board will now enter closed session return approximately one hour one hour thank you [Music] all right um all right well thank you we the prince william county school board's now returning open session from closed session uh moving on to a closed session certification emotions in order mr chairman this is our i move that person to virginia code sections 2.2-3712 that the closed session of the prince william county school board meeting of july 2 2021 be certified by adopting the following resolution now therefore be it resolved that the prince william county school board

005hereby 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 meeting to which this certification resolution applies and two only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard and discussed or considered by the school board do you have a second mr chairman mrs williams a second any discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes ms ralston votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion pass great moving on to the closed session action items emotions order ms zargapoor mr chairman i move that the prince william county school board approved the appointments and releases of specific employees as presented in closed session do you have a second miss jesse miss jesse

006seconds any discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes rawson votes yes the vote is eight yash unanimous motion passed moving on to the approval of appointments and releases a recommendation er emotions or mrs agrippa did i do that one or yeah 902 902 sorry about that retention of outside counsel um go for that mr chairman i move that the prince william county school board authorized division council to retain the services of cynthia hudson esquire and the law firm of sans anderson to provide the school board and superintendent with legal guidance and advice regarding the collective bargaining legislation that became effective may twenty may first twenty twenty one do i have a second miss williams a second miss williams seconds any discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes miss ralston

007votes yes and the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed okay that's the end of action items right okay moving on now to the public meeting i would like to call the meeting of the prince william county school board order the purpose of this meeting of the prince william county school boards being conducted electronically under the virginia code 2.23708.2 and the authority granted by the general assembly on april 22nd 2020 through amendment 28 to house bill 29 which permits the school board to meet electronically during the pendency of the current state of emergency for the purpose of transacting such business as is statutory required or necessary to continue operations of the prince william county public schools and the discharge of its lawful purposes duties and responsibilities at this time we'll do stand for the pledge

008if uh ashley you want to lead us in the pledge here i pledge allegiance to the flag and the united states and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay so we have a little bit of housekeeping here um this is our students last meeting for the year our student members they will be walking down the aisle for commencement this weekend and early next week and so from this school board we we wish them the very best and congratulations we want to take a few moments to recognize our student representatives and thank them for their time and dedication so first i'd like to if you please stand mr ben kim of unity read high school ben and keep standing there ben keep standing ben

009has served on this board two years um and has been with us through some of the most difficult challenging times this school board and school system have ever faced and ben has provided the school board with enormous communications with students by survey over the course of two years statistical analysis of where the students are and really did a great job in representing all the students across the entire division and you know in in whether it was during last year's social unrest or this year's pandemic ben has always been there sort of addressing the needs of our students and and this board cannot thank him enough and we wish him all the best as he attends university of virginia in the fall is that correct ben i get that right right um and we know wherever

010you go you're going to make prince william county proud thank you very much mr kim let's do a little picture next we have caroline silvera from hilton high school please stand miss olvera miss silveras from hilton high school and served as a member of this board this year has been with us really representing the um representing her students very well she she communicates well with our students senate works very closely with them has on more than one occasion come up here to speak about the mental health of our students advocating for students and and in their testing worked with the student senate to advocate for students on ap exams has been there um as a model for how our student members communicate to to be able to then tell us what the students really feel

011care in in in our yeah and in our english learner students and in caroline speak spanish and and provides us um you know outstanding service throughout the year and this board could not have done what it was able to do this year without hearing from her through the pandemic on some of the most important issues affecting students today she will also be attending university of virginia in the fall she's a member she's part of our sizzle program at hilton is that correct and so we're also very proud and caroline we know you're going to go and represent prince william county very well and you know really represent our region very well and and and we wish you all the best in success in the future and we have this for you as well thank you

012caroline this one's yours i'm sorry ben did i give you yours they're all the same for me sorry about that all right and then next we have ashley manavar ashley please stand ash ashley was also one of our student representatives she was the alternate to the student to the board but participated up here on the dice a number of times has advocated strongly for her students for her constituents also on mental health issues also on um in in in really on behalf of our teachers too you know i think it's really important to remember that these student members throughout the pandemic spoke very emotionally very strongly on behalf of protecting the students protecting our teachers protecting our staff they never failed one time to let the board know where they stood on that they did

013not fear and ashley really led on that as well and so this board truly appreciates it we could not have done what we did this year without you all and especially you ashley and so ashley will be attending new york university in the fall and we are very excited and we know she's going to make a huge name for prince william county out there in the in the big apple isn't that right ashley very good congratulations i i i think if we just have a minute and the public will bear with us we'll come down here and take a picture with our students if you don't mind take keep coming in guys thank you thank you guys well i think speaking on behalf of the entire board one of the the most enjoyable experiences of

014one of the great perks of being on this board is working with our students and so again thank you all very much and and what you've done for our school division and this year that you will always remember and um and hopefully write about and tell the world about what you were able to do to help us get through this so thank you very much next we're going to move on to the approval of the agenda mrs argopoor emotions in order mr chairman i mean that the prince william county school board approved the public meeting agenda as recommended do you have a second mr chairman miss williams a second any discussion please vote mr uh miss ralston how do you vote yes ms ralston votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed next

015we'll move on to the adoption the consent agenda motions in order chairman i move that the prince william county school board approved the public meeting consent agenda as recommended do you have a second yes miss uh williams miss william seconds it was diane oh oh mr ralston yeah miss ralston that's okay any discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes excellent miss ralston votes yes great and the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed next we will move on to citizen comment time due to the covet 19 state of emergency and the legal restrictions on school board's authority to conduct its meetings through electronic means unlike other public bodies meeting electronically under more expansive legal authority all discussion at this meeting by board members staff and citizens must be limited to agenda items

016citizens may speak on the agenda item for two minutes when the board is able to resume regular meetings without virtual participation without the virtual participation permitted during the state emergency expanded citizen comment will be resumed as provided by policy 134 in the interim citizen common time has been reinstated on a limited basis in order to allow public comment both in person and through electronic means during the state of emergency citizens are encouraged to submit their comments by email to the clerk who will share them with the school board these cities those citizens have signed up in advance with the school board clerk no later than 4 pm today wednesday june 2nd may address the school board in person or virtually about matters relating to the june 2nd 2021 agenda items there are three speakers signed

017up to speak in person tonight and two speakers to sign up virtually citizens are reminded that if they are not speaking on a specific agenda item for this weekend this evening's meetings they will be asked to step down please use property corporate manners while at the podium we're speaking virtually if you do not do so you'll be asked to step aside please state your name and address for the record our first we'll go with the in persons first we have miss tiziana botino susianna botino she's live right she's one of my live ones okay moving on sandra kern i am back and i am live good evening i'm sandra curran i'm a proud parent of the potomac district i come before the board to say the 23 pages noted in the changes of the 39-page

018code of behavior needs to be addressed and questioned by this elected board my concerns fall in the many changes that talk more of the logistics and less of the basics when a child's needs are not being met behaviors come to light and the students marked a behavior issue we need the inclusion lens clarified a child that falls behind is everyone's concern you are accountable to all 90 000 of them my concern for the sped students that go through an mdr for discipline in this code change focusing on the legal not general term responsibility is a true equity lens changes happen we have to be updated and be conscious of the effects the changes obviously from pen to paper to all digital or virtual we have all experience with positives and negatives but we must be

019prepared technology is a great skill but social skills are so important i hope this board opens up the questions and dialogues for parents guardian students to understand more and not just hurt us through next year's sign it for the new year i also welcome stakeholders to join in the hundreds of our our school's pta groups and the special education pta that's creating the families as partners as sprinkled through the behavior code of behavior thank you miss huebner for all your hard work there second topic of sustainability i make noise as a mom when i have concerns i am all about education and environment two passions i'm glad to see the innovation of environmental literacy being placed in directives for students in schools i hope that what i advocate and preach for is fruition for the

020future of our children and as always reading is a life skill and i thank you all thank you next mr stevens we'll do the virtual citizen comments you can take it from here thank you mr chairman our first speaker is arya buhari i think this is you i just have a phone number listed here should be able to unmute yourself arya buhari sometimes we have issues with the phone and our next speaker is mira shepard you can unmute yourself you got the floor okay um hello everyone uh my name is myra shepherd um i just want to thank the school board for your work on environmental sustainability i appreciate what you do and um i just want to ask that um you also include specific language for uh the net zero buildings and the sustainable

021policy that you'll be um voting on and to also add you know strong um the specific language you know where possible in ambitious language um you know for uh sorry i was holding my son um you know for the future we see in like laws and legislation and things like you know the strong language and saying like we shall and we will you know it seems to be what holds up so i just wanted to add that but again thank you so much for what you're doing for our children and for our future thank you okay thank you i will try that phone in one more time aria buhari okay um she aria said she uh muted herself and if if you could come she i guess she's trying to speak all right let me

022okay try it one more time please it's showing up still muted there we go hello okay hi you have the floor hi thank you so much i'm sorry about that um i just wanted to echo um what naira just said my name is arya volunteer with the greater prince william county climate action network i just want to thank the school board for prioritizing these sustainability initiatives and i'm really hopeful and excited about the future of princeton county schools and our youth i also would like to ask that you all include net zero specific language in the sustainability proposal item that pertains to infrastructure um this language would forge a commitment to minimizing carbon emissions in our county which as you all know is important to mitigating climate change's effects and again i just want to

023say thank you guys have a good evening okay mr chairman that's all we had excellent thank you mr stevens um next we're moving on to 1501 revisions to the 2021 22 code of behavior um ms hebner this is on for information this evening good evening chairman latif vice chair zargapur members of the school board and superintendent walt i'm pleased to be here this evening with some members of my team the amazing dara duggar who's our director of osmant and dana scanlon who is our title ix coordinator and student equity officer i'd also like to recognize becker slater who could not be with us tonight but was a important part of the team so before i hand the presentation over to miss ganlin and miss dugger i want to just talk a little bit about our

024vision for the code of behavior in prince william county schools so the goal of discipline is to create a safe and effective learning environment for students free of disruption so that kids can focus and feel safe as they're in school we recognize that students are going to make mistakes that we have to teach behavior and sometimes we have to reteach behavior in order for the code of behavior to be effective we need to be clear clearly communicate expectations and t and taught and practiced across all settings so this is a situation where we want equity in our in our buildings we want it to be consistently implemented and we need to make sure that our administrators are communicating that and and excuse me and reinforcing that behavior so ultimately we want to shape behavior to

025avoid negative social and academic outcomes and work to provide supports for our students and interventions so that our students can reach their fullest potential so it's not about punishment it's about support and intervention and at this time i'll turn the presentation over to miss scanlon or miss duggar miss duggar's gonna go first good evening school board chairman dr latif vice chairman ms sagaphore members of the school board and dr waltz i am honored to present the recommended revisions to the 2021-22 code of behavior for your consideration next slide please the code of behavior revisions committee is composed of administrators and teachers at all levels central office staff counselors parents students and prince william county public schools division council revisions for the 2021-22 school year were led by the office of student management and alternative programs

026in collaboration with the office of student services and the title ix and student equity office the task of the revisions committee is to review the code of behavior for suggested edits this year revisions included the use of an equity lens conversations on reducing bias and harassment and enforcing the student code of conduct and incorporating new policies and regulations governing title ix recommendations and revisions for the committee were discussed and approved by the superintendent staff and division council next slide please in reviewing the code of behavior through a lens of equity the committee identified the following revisions for the 2021-22 school year revisions that reflect families as partners recognizing the need in partnering with families in making schools safe effective learning environments and in promoting social emotional development of children revisions reflecting language that is inclusive

027of all students revisions which incorporate forthcoming updates from the virginia department of education guidelines and model guidance on dress code and grooming which are based on the health and safety of inclusive community additionally the revisions to an equity lens required edits to the appeal procedures and timelines to ensure clarity to schools staff students and parents and guardians mrs dana scanlan the new title ix coordinator will present the revisions related to title ix and student equity good evening chairman latif vice chairwoman zargabor members of the school board and superintendent waltz i'm very happy to be here with you tonight to discuss proposed revisions to the code of conduct that are specifically related to complaints of discrimination or harassment these proposed revisions have been made in order to ensure that the prince william county public schools code

028of behavior is in alignment with u.s department of education title ix regulations that went into effect in august 2020 and also with new court decisions and legislative action taken by the general assembly in particular we have defined or redefined certain terminology for example the term sexual harassment itself in order to comply with the requirements of new title ix regulations we have also revised our definitions of discrimination and harassment to reflect that prohibited bases for discrimination now include gender identity sexual orientation and lactation in addition the sections of the code of behavior that are specific to allegations of discrimination or harassment have been revised in order to ensure that there is no conflict between what is printed in our code of behavior and the federal title ix grievance process by which all complaints of sexual harassment

029must now be investigated and resolved finally the document provides information regarding how parents and students can report discrimination and harassment and also provide some information regarding how to prevent such misconduct with an emphasis on open communication between students and trusted adults thank you i'll turn this back over to ms duggar next slide please revisions related to the 2021 general assembly session and student services are as follows house bill 1940 permits one school day-long excused absence per school year for any middle school or high school student in the local school division who is absent from school to engage in civic or political event and may permit additional excuse absences for just students who are absent for such purposes virginia code now includes a definition for dress and grooming dress and grooming code means any practice policy

030or portion of a code of student conduct adopted by a school board that governs or restricts the attire appearance or grooming including hairstyle of any enrolled student the general assembly also directed the board of education to establish guidelines and develop model policies for codes of student conduct to aid school boards and implementation of policies and guidelines governance standards address and grooming codes and standards for reducing bias and harassment in the enforcement of any code of student conduct next slide please thank you to all that served on the 2021-22 code of behavior revisions committee and to staff students and parents for your continuous support for a positive and safe school environment that concludes the code of behavior presentation wonderful any questions miss williams because these changes are extensive in a lot of places and it's going

031to take quite a bit of time to go through these who's the best person for us as a board to reach out for questions or if parents have any questions so i can channel that communication i can't say that i can answer every question but i'd be happy to get in touch with the person that could okay so it's easiest to funnel through you then hear me please okay because i definitely have questions and and with all first readings or information items are we're voting on something in two weeks or not we are right right so as just with sort of common practices any questions concerns you have the two weeks to sort of address them with ms hebner and um her team any other questions okay moving on next we'll go to get my

0321601 which is sustainability initiative status update al churoki while he's making his way up here i think it's important to sort of remind the public and maybe celebrate a bit that the united states department of education did recognize prince william county schools as a green designated school one of five school divisions in the nation this year um this is this is due to uh al jaroqi and his team our superintendent his team the entire division working across the uh the county and you know and i was looking through the presentation we don't have the names of all the members on the sustainability committee and and i think if we can put that up somewhere on the website just to recognize how great this effort is and i think for you folks who are attending tonight

033and those at home this is going to be a really great presentation so with that mr turoki all you good evening chairman latif members of the board uh dr walter mr iman uh tonight i am pleased to uh provide you with a presentation on the progress of the implementation of the superintendent's sustainability committee and as you're aware back in june of 2020 you passed a resolution and we've met with you back in september and here we're we are very excited to have mr brian gorham who is our supervisor of energy management and sustainability as well as the sustainability chair mr don richardson co-present the presentation and provide you with an update of all of the hard work and exciting progress that the committee has completed in such a very short time so at this time

034i'm going to turn it over to mr gorham to begin the presentation good evening chairman latif members of the school board thank you for having us this evening now this evening we intend to present you an update on the energy and sustainability efforts in prince william county schools and we have mr richardson who will be joining us and giving us an update on the superintendent's advisory council on sustainability next slide please in june of 2020 the school board wisely passed the sustainability initiative uh the staff and i came to you in september and updated you on the action items from that resolution we include tonight to be able to give you a progress made since september uh provide you a status update for subsequent operations i just want to make mention you will be seeing

035policy 495 sustainability as a result of our efforts this year and again i'll introduce the superintendent's advisory council on sustainability next slide please some good news as dr latif mentioned we did achieve a rank hardly achieved by other school divisions it is the department of education's green ribbon schools award our staff work diligently in putting together the paperwork and gathering all of the accolades that are necessary in order to apply for this award our school division has done so many great things throughout the years and it's really an honor to be able to kind of aggregate those together and put them into a presentation that the department of education you know uh respects and requ and gives recognition to for our school division so that award is a school division a wide award and it

036certainly would go toward the efforts of the school board the staff the students the community at large i think we've all worked really hard over the last decade in order to try to implement some great things we also received a another accolade called the green schools challenge award winner for the vsba now we participate in this regularly however we have never been able to kind of get over that hump that next step and the sustainability initiative and all of the action items emanating from that gave us the opportunity to become the category winner of the 10 student and up category which is the largest of the categories i must say so i think we've got a great student body we've got a fantastic school board who have all worked kind of together with staff again

037and count community participation in order to receive a well-deserved honor we are working on some grants i wanted to call it attention to the noaa marine debris program grant it aligns well with our environmental literacy efforts and it helps create great project-based learning opportunities and then we are also working with the usda on our computer community compost and waste reduction efforts now that's in kind of combination with the county efforts we will create uh create bins for that organic waste that orange peel those things that are kind of collected at the school site and then we'll have those transported using county resources over to the balls ford compost site and then that compost will come back to us so our teachers can use it for some of their project-based learning so we think that's a

038great full circle exercise and we've got a great staff who've been working on that next slide please some additional progress that we are making we are diligently working on getting solar more uh throughout the county we have been working on a pilot program out at our brentsville transportation site and we are in the throes of pulling together an rfp proposal working with finance and they've been a great help to us just to try to pull together all the necessary information and make sure that we do make wise choices when we enter into the ppa arena if you will we have not done this before but we anticipate great results for you and we'll bring those back to you as those bear fruit our electric bus grant most of you i think everybody here had a

039chance to ride the electric buses tonight so you know yeah they're great buses they're quiet and mr walton did a fantastic job driving those buses around i'll say the air conditioning is great in that thing as soon as it came on it was a big relief but i hope you enjoyed that that is yet another indication of the partnerships occurring throughout the school division you know the division that i lead having the opportunity to be in facility services but working with transportation it's been such a dynamic year but this is just again one of those indications that there's a lot of networking going on amongst your staff and a lot of benefits are being reaped from that participation in net zero school design we are still on track and we have begun the initial feasibility

040planning for our akaquan elementary school replacement for fiscal year 25-26 we've actually just most recently had one of our kickoff meetings in order to establish some of the parameters about the site and looking towards some programming and that kind of thing so that's a great first step as well into a new foray for the school division you have asked us in the sustainability and next slide please remember to do that sustainability consultants was one of the things that was um asked of us in order to take you know the benefit of those best practices that are known throughout the industry we've looked and utilized some of those consultants but we've also leaned on some fellow jurisdictions fairfax loudoun county we've been able to kind of gather information throughout this entire process and so while this

041wouldn't necessarily call some of our partner jurisdictions consultants i think to the betterment of the sustainability advisory council having them come in and teach and give us a perspective on what they were able to accomplish it saves us those dollars that we're not going down you know that road of trying to do something that's otherwise not going to yield benefit but it also creates a network again that partnership and that knowledge base that we're able to learn from we're working on additional recycling and waste reduction efforts we've got recycling and waste reduction projects going on to further those collection efforts inside the schools but also we have student groups who are actually making headway in putting recycling bins outside on sites throughout high school sites as a pilot we've got some going on over at

042colgan high school this group has worked very closely with our division and establishing a program that is completely student-led it is a great example again of a project-based learning opportunity that these students can chart they can create a project plan they go through the steps and then it yields the result and they can feel proud about that but then they share it and then it's multiplied throughout our organization and i think our students have the opportunity to be able to create these project-based learning exercises on their own with great adult support and a lot of questions but we don't always do it for them and then it yields a great learning experience i want to make sure that we do point out tonight our policy 495 on sustainability i think you will find that we

043have endeavored to try to set a baseline for the school division with policy 495 and that through doing so we are making a commitment as a school division representing your sustainability initiative next slide please i would now like to take the opportunity to welcome don richardson to the podium don richardson is our chairman of the superintendent's advisory council which was formed in october 2020 as a result of the sustainability initiative mr richardson well good evening mr chairman madam vice chair members of the board dr waltz and mr iman it's good to be back and i'm excited to present to you uh what we have done this year with the advisory council on sustainability let me interrupt and just remind the public that mr don richardson is a former member of this body and the representative

044of the gainesville district and has been extraordinarily uh helpful in leading this effort and we can't thank you enough so thank you and welcome back no thank you mr chairman appreciate that um we uh we have got a great bunch on this council and we're going to be focusing in line with what you have directed us to do on three areas collaborating with prince william county environmental literacy and high performance building and design next slide please we've got a great group we have members appointed by the school board we have staff we have students and we have a number of members of the community who have relevant expertise and experience in related fields they're a very enthusiastic group with a lot of energy and a number of them are here tonight i would like them

045to stand up and be recognized i also would like at this point to give a huge thank you to the energy energy and sustainability staff uh who have facilitated and supported us their work has been just absolutely essential to what we've accomplished uh they have really made it work for us and uh we're looking forward to continuing to work with them going forward next slide please as i said uh we've spent the year kind of getting into harness we are divided up into three subcommittees uh dr porta ms landry and miss johnson are driving those subcommittees they we've had a very exciting and smooth process so far our mission as you know is to provide the superintendent school board with high level recommendations so that we can reduce our overall carbon footprint protect the environment

046and save money with emerging cost technologies and also to evaluate and prioritize the long-term strategic plan for sustainability in design for facilities and construction and expanding environmental literacy in the k-12 curriculum and exploring clean energy technologies i'd highlight key points high level and long-term staff is going to have to be responsible for a lot of the detailed work of implementation we are going to try to provide a general roadmap and of course as time goes on that roadmap may change depending on what we learn but our goal is to give you a general roadmap going forward that goes in the general direction of where we want to go next slide please we've done a lot in a short time everybody's been participating and we've all been learning a lot we have had five meetings with

047the full council actually we will have we moved the may meeting until tomorrow night so we could have a wrap up before the summer break uh and our subcommittees have been meeting monthly um we uh we've had uh staff updates on what we're currently working on and we have a lot going on already in this county it was really surprising to me how much is already being done we have a lot of existing educational efforts and we also have done a lot with prince william county government already we have received presentations from community advocates we have received presentations from external experts one of the experts for example was a solar expert who brought us up to speed on the state of solar in virginia and how power purchase agreements work and some building options that

048the school board will eventually be able to consider going forward when we design our buildings we also took a look at local and national sustainability standards it's been this year has been educational for all of us we're trying to get our get ourselves wrapped around uh all the information that's out there and there's a lot of terminology to make sure we're all on the same page next slide please we've had some guest speakers from arlington county and fairfax county government and also from our own county government on a variety of topics we also at our full council meetings have provided an opportunity for citizen comment time and there is definitely citizen interest in this topic we've had several people at several of our meetings come in and offer some some very thoughtful suggestions on things

049we should look at one of the things that we have learned is that there's a whole lot to sustainability and it's going to be interesting trying to sort out what we really need to focus on because there's so many different ways you could go with this this year our recommendations are going to be fairly high level but as we go forward we think we will probably be giving you more specific recommendations in future years our recommendations are obviously going to be broken down by our three subject areas our three committee areas and we'll start with the collaboration with the county i believe next slide the council is recommending that we establish a joint sustainability committee between prince william county government and the school division uh relevant staff from both sides and possibly including members of

050each board make sure we have community members with relevant experience in the various areas uh business and higher education and advocacy groups and students and representation from communities that have traditionally been underrepresented we want to make this a very broad scope along with that we're recommending additional funding for additional staffing including coordinator roles uh at both the county level and at the school division level to promote collaboration on environmental sustainability the idea is that while we have been doing a lot of work in the school division uh on energy management for some time now the county has now stepped up and established their own sustainability office and we think it's a good time to combine with them and see what kind of synergy we can generate working together with the county next slide please on

051the environmental literacy front we already have a lot in terms of environmental literacy we have a lot of internal partnerships with ken bassett and julia renberg and the others from the office of student learning environmental literacy is already part of the prince william county curriculum at different levels at various times of the year our science office has done a lot of work at the eagle center to give an elementary level what we call meaningful watershed educational experience and for the middle schoolers we have prince william forest park and nature bridge and then at the high school level you have projects to study on environmental issues at the high school ib schools but we are recommending for this area this year that there be funding found for excuse me supplemental compensation for a team of teachers

052to research what the curriculum standards should be uh survey the resources we currently have in this area and review the state of professional development in this area and then put together a task force to put together a report documenting all the existing environmental literacy efforts that we have and propose a plan for how to use supplemental resources and provide a support structure to move these efforts forward the energy i should mention that the energy and sustainability office uh aligns their work to the office of student learning core instructional mission functions so they are definitely working together to make this happen next slide please finally for our high performance buildings committee and uh i should note that high performance buildings uh and doesn't just encompass buildings uh it encompasses a lot of things that happen at

053our sites as well but for now we actually have a few recommendations short term if you dig in the cushions and find any spare change it would be a good idea to push forward with some of the projects we already have underway the led lighting projects and the smart irrigation projects that are going uh those are easy wins and so any additional funding you can identify for that we recommend you push forward there are going to be other efforts but this is two that we we spotted that we definitely could move forward right away the other thing we want to do short term is make a cultural commitment to sustainability and adopt leed silver as the minimum baseline standard for all new construction and major renovation projects i should note that lead comes in four

054colors there is basic leed certification which we are already doing with our new elementary schools the last eight i believe new elementary schools were designed to be lead certified and i think the ninth one rosemont lewis is coming up will be the same we are recommending that we seek to up the game a little bit and going forward look for a lead silver certification now we might go for gold or we might even go for platinum but we think it's better to start at silver that seems to be the trend um in in other school divisions and other government organizations right now and uh that is that we think is achievable um from a long-term standpoint we think we need to design a construction manual which includes planning and operations to establish performance criteria that

055will position us to address the net zero goals that a lot of people have been talking about and of course we're asking for funding for additional central office staff to coordinate the high building high performance buildings portfolio to set the commitments and evaluate and manage the operations and you will you will note that that in all three of our subcommittees we have we have asked for additional staff um we're doing a lot but the more we get into this the more we realize that to really truly address the goals that you all have set it's going to take more people our staff is doing a fabulous job but a lot of these goals are going to require additional people next slide please we've been meeting virtually it's been very efficient everybody can participate more conveniently

056and of course we make our own little contribution to sustainability by taking our cars off the road for all of these meetings we're going to continue to do that going forward we will have a regular meeting schedule more or less bi-monthly beginning in august of the full council and again more or less monthly for the subcommittees we anticipate coming back to you next spring roughly this time with an annual meeting or with an annual report rather excuse me but if we come up with any brilliant ideas in the meantime particularly ones that could be fit into the cip uh we will we will bring forward additional recommendations in the interim um as appropriate um some of the things we're going to be doing we're going to be having virtual and in-person visits to sustainable sustainable

057facilities in the region we are going to align the development of standards for literacy environmental literacy and align them to our strategic plan we're going to have subject matter experts come in with regular presentations and we're going to develop a method for tracking our recommendations and the related data so that later we can go back and see how well we did and adjust as necessary and that is all i have for you this evening thank you very much well that was wonderful um i think we'll i think if we have any questions would you are you willing to take some questions guys yes we can you're okay great and if there's any questions or comments the board may have and um um so first of all i'll start but just by saying thank you that

058was an outstanding presentation and again you know not to make light of this but having a former school board member on this um uh committee and leading the charge with with with with the sustainability committee certainly helps and just the language in you talking about you know coming to us in the interim with updates to the cip really brings forward the the fact that the experts we have here can actually make things happen so that's what i really appreciate and i've heard over and over again from this committee for members of the committee that they've been able to make things happen i congratulate you all on working with a county so far and i'll have some questions about that later on but i'll turn it over miss jesse good evening first of all i wanted

059to congratulate uh you on the years that i've been here this your environmental work has been tremendous i'm i'm sort of surprised did we not receive some award from vsva for uh our initiatives at some point in time mr gorham yeah it's up on slide um we did this year we received the green schools challenge and we received it for the ranking of ten thousand and one students or higher in the school division yeah i know that i know that they rank them i have a couple of questions first of all i want to thank you for the ride on the bus it was the noise came when the air conditioning came on i really didn't even realize that the bus was turned on did you notice that that the only noise you heard was

060the air conditioning is a great ride and i appreciate the opportunity uh i wanted to ask a couple of questions uh on slides i think is 10 10 and 11 we talk about you don't have to pull up the slides but we talked about this collaboration with the borders county supervisors i i was wondering could you give me a little bit more insight on that and the purpose and what do you think it looks like in any timeline yeah our sustainability uh team and committee met with a group of folks on the general government side to to learn more about the initiative that the resolution that the board of supervisors recently came up with but to also gain an understanding of where they're headed and i think what came out of that is they are

061looking at the county and all of its citizens so they're not looking just at the general government department they're looking at the entire county so whereas we're looking at our school division in the educating of our children which is very broad topic as well so we saw where their focus is a little different but we did talk about synergies where we may be able to work together and do things simultaneously so we had we made no formal commitments uh but we we did realize that once they get their department established themselves because we're already a few steps ahead of them in that respect that we will be coming back and dialoguing and and then looking for ways to find that synergy but they were very open and receptive to to partnering as well i think

062that's a great idea i also wanted to uh ask you know you received the awards there's some the energy awards mr gorham do the school awards there's a performance award i think in one of these slides i saw there's some school performance awards or is there some recognition of schools for use of energy continuing i know for the years it has been yes ma'am so we've been um having our energy challenge annually so we recognize individual schools with a rebate for participating in that and that's quantified by the amount of savings that they generate from their projects and those type of things we also have historically applied for energy star awards and then had a ceremony and kind of welcomed everybody together who have been able to achieve those in the past year obviously that's

063been something we've kind of put on hold a little bit but we will be kind of reigniting that we anticipate this coming school year is going to be a fantastic opportunity for us to be back in the schools be back present with the student body and the staff and and making all of these programs available on a very broad basis i just have a couple more questions project-based learning you say you're doing a great deal with project-based learning could you give an example of some of the project-based learning types of activities our kids are engaged in sure i think one of the projects that we're working on and i think it caught the end of it was it community engagement yes so one of the ones that we're working on is we know a lot

064of the community utilizes some of our open areas around some of our high schools for instance we had some students that came to us a group that is named they've named themselves heel but they are healthy environments active learning i believe and they had a great opportunity and an idea about outdoor recycling we have a lot of field use we have a lot of community events at our sites we have some track usage at some locations where people come they were noticing that a lot of recyclable materials were being kind of just put in the main waste stream and so they came to us with an idea we helped them develop a project plan see what the end goal would be identify how you kind of go through that process of resourcing a project i

065take every one of these opportunities very seriously and we approach it as if it is a true project step by step through it it's a learning endeavor they generate a schedule then they generate the outcome from their hypothesis it does does it work are we going to get a lot of people to use these bins that has yet to be seen but that's one of the examples of the project-based learning and we've worked with the school staff over at colgan and i think in order to get really attractive bins something that the students can feel proud to be able to display and represent as part of their work so then if that takes flight and they can go share that idea amongst other schools that's just a built-in project that each one right now of

066these high schools could then just adopt and take on every year and we can help support that okay uh one it's very personal it's net zero i'd like for you to explain a little bit more about it but you also mentioned at occoquan the new occoquan school you're looking at that being one of your first project can you tell me a little bit more about that i'm sure mr porter would like to know more about that also since than aquaculture mr porter said a lot about that this year i know and and we think it's a fantastic opportunity based on the the horizon and the cip of new schools occuquan represents the first and best effort that we have to create a net zero school it is a very big challenge for us it's a

067very small site we've got a lot of conditions we'll have to meet with being able to orient the school building to utilize the best angle for solar which is going to be the primary source of energy we're going to use to offset that grid-based power and and take us to net zero i think the main opportunity that we have here is to provide um you know in the aquacon district an example of an environmentally friendly school that then becomes kind of the baseline at least if you will for the rest of the school division and we use that as an opportunity for students to be able to learn from every day the visuals the dashboards that we can use the daylighting the amount of green space that will still be available on the site and

068so all of that planning has begun and we are committed to seeing that school through we still have some hurdles to get through as i alluded to earlier but i think we see the end result of the new aquafon elementary school being able to be designed for net zero thank you i know you always tell us how much money you've saved i don't know if you have that information but i just want to say that uh every presentation you guys have made to this board has been uh very professionally done and very extensive i appreciate it thank you thank you yes ma'am mr will get his hand up next mr wilk oh miss williams oh sorry somebody down there mr jackson all right thank you for the presentation i think um the presentation of the

069initiative and the time that the sustainability council put in reaffirms our commitment to our students future um so i'm very grateful for your time i do have one follow-up question and it has to do with recycling and you kind of touched on it but i just want to like maybe elaborate or just to confirm how do we ensure that schools are recycling or if they need any like assistance with roadblocks that might impact recycling from like the school system or the county yes it's a great question and it's one that i i learned firsthand from an employee of mine who came up with some fantastic ways to approach this situation she has developed some waste audit strategies which will allow us the opportunity to go into schools you know and work with the nutritional staff

070work with the teaching staff work with students to the degree that there's interaction there and try to understand exactly how much recyclable material is going into the main waste stream and then learn for ways to divert it is it signage do we need to enhance our containers do we need to somehow do something more proactively in order to engage and i think that's our first step is the engagement piece we've historically i think we've done a great job of putting recycling bins out and expecting human behavior to take over everybody's got their best interests so they'll put things in the recycling bin there has to be some engagement there has to be some leadership and i think we are on the cusp of doing that and that's our main priority in the coming school year

071again thank you for your time and the sustainability council's time and for the students who came and spoke at us uh way back when before the pandemic that i'm thankful for them coming to advocate an overhaul thank you miss williams thank you um thank you mr sharoki and um thank you to mr gorman you've been around for quite so many years thanks for staying after our original program started um it's wonderful to see all the developments since that time we i think we already had the foundation for a great sustainability program my question is how um and of course you don't have to answer this now but i'd like to know how our sustainability program and energy energy and sustainability what we have outlined if we are taking advantage of our own specialty program at

072freedom high school which is the center for environmental and national studies because i know that that program could benefit and maybe be a leader in the way for some of our sustainability efforts considering that's what they do and talk about and you don't have to answer that now i'd love to have some follow-up about that and how we can get them more involved those students um and then any other partnerships that we entertain because i know there have been a few during the past year but i'm assuming we're put on hold rightfully so because the pandemic was of paramount concern so just maybe later in the year over the summer or in the fall if we could get some more updates on how we're dealing directly with our our own internal students and providing them

073opportunities um and any of the new partnerships that we are developing or considering developing because i know like mason and a few other groups universities had reached out during the pandemic so i did not expect anyone to work on that during the pandemic but i'd like to know some really big and have been advocating for a long time about um usually utilizing our own students and our own internal resources which i know you're a big proponent of and expanding those opportunities um to provide them some more real world practical application and sort of full circle because i know this has done we've done art contests and all kinds of things so anything i think we can do to add value to our students besides just strictly literacy would be of benefit too so and thank

074you again electronic buses were wonderful rear view mirror is the most amazing thing with the camera in there so um and it is a quiet ride so i know some of our neighborhoods will appreciate that as well and i look forward to seeing what we um will continue to improve upon in the future thank you and and if i may real quickly just to and i will answer you more in detail and we'll send that through freedom is a great example though of some infrastructure that's been in place that some students identified needed a little bit of assistance in order to try to get back on track some solar panels that we've got the greenhouse that's out there and we have some student-led efforts going on right now and they're working with our facility staff

075to make sure that those systems are in place and working in order to facilitate what you're describing is some project-based opportunities and they've been leading the way which i'm just so thrilled with that's wonderful to hear thank you and also if you could throw belmont on that list because i know they're right there with the sign yeah of course thank you you're welcome thank you miss williams miss wahl thank you mr chairman um thank you to mr shiroki and mr gorham did i get that right and mr richardson for your efforts in leading this council this was this looks extremely organized and efficient i like how you've set it up with the subcommittees and the clear focus i think you're going to get a lot done so i really think that's great and you have

076done a lot already which is fantastic um and i'm glad to hear that we're working with neighboring jurisdictions who maybe are a little bit further down the road from us because why reinvent the wheel you know good good good education starts with good information i think that's great um i also am happy to hear about some of the student-led activities that the composting that you mentioned um i could i didn't miss what school which school but was it colgan um so we've got six schools that are participating oh six island right now yeah and so they'll uh we've got a great opportunity in front of us and we'll report back to you on that i think it's going to be some uh some great examples again of student-based learning and that kind of interaction so

077that's awesome to hear um my question i have just two my first question is regarding the high performance building goal target and i'm thinking about the sr3 funds that that large reward part of money that we may be able to access if we can come up with the you know justifiable um items is there any is it too early to speak to that or you know as we are looking forward towards sustainability are there efforts because sustainability ties directly into healthy environments you know for mental health physical health and other things like that air quality etc so are there um efforts or i get identifiable i guess objectives that we could possibly look towards with esser funds to help us with our sustainability goals yeah i can speak very briefly to that in working with

078our finance department and mr mallingford and his team as we're reviewing the the conditions that the state is putting upon one of the conditions in dealing with facilities is that our goals of the use of the money is to find things that provide mitigation covert mitigation when it comes to our facilities primarily hvac type work now obviously when you look at sustainability indoor air quality is a huge piece so any way that we can replace our equipment when it's the appropriate time and provide new energy efficient equipment that is rated as such compared to the older equipment but also provide filtered fresh air at the appropriate rates and and continue to do that that is a good thing so right now sustainability is not one of the conditions that we've seen as a primary focus

079but it is mainly looking at hvac which still deals with good air quality and environmental conditions within a school when it comes to temperature humidity and things of that nature thank you that's that's good i look forward to being able to at least try to do something in those areas improve especially we have older schools with you know issues and things like that my second question is you mentioned working with the county and how we may be a little bit ahead of the county or we have slightly different goals because we have education in our buildings whereas they have other focuses but are there i wondered if you could speak just a little bit more to that where you see areas where our goals and their goals might align and we could realize economies of

080scale or economies of like financial economies yeah obviously and again i don't want to put the carp for the horse but you know if we were to look at uh we're looking at our building design standards you know the policy tonight sets the baseline but your resolution is very specific on doing our best to focus on say net zero carbon neutrality that's what we're looking at as an ultimate goal the county is we did really didn't talk about focusing on their specific buildings and things of that nature but it could be things such as safe routes to schools instead that people are walking healthy you know versus riding the bus or get riding a car to school where it's appropriate litter campaign litter-free campaigns water quality things where we can partner where they have a

081county-wide initiative but we are a member of the county and we can help promote those not only within our schools but within our students and their families things that are out in the residential areas but as far as specific types of ideas and projects they were not there or we they did not share with us that level because they're again they're establishing that foundation but again as you said very well we're focused on our school division and they are looking at the county as a whole so their lens is a lot broader than ours in many respects but there will be some similarities and as we grow and mature with them i think those will those will resonate and then we'll be coming back and the committee will vet those but then we'll ultimately come

082back with some recommendations they were very receptive thank you so much for answering my questions and thank you for all your hard work um mr wilk and then ms sargopour sorry i'll be i'll be brief first thank you um for the presentation thank you mr richardson tonight and everyone for their work um you know one of the first things in my foray in the local government was uh supervisor princip he put me on the solid waste management committee way long ago and people were like well that's exciting you're dealing with landfill and all this other fun stuff but the cool part about it was that was at the uh that was at the onset of colgan being built uh in that partnership and it's great to kind of see that through the fruition of that

083partnership and come full circle from the skepticism that members in that room had about how we're going to actually partner with the school system to where we're at now so i think that's commendable and i love that we're moving forward with that direction the other thing is you know i'd like to see again kind of expanding this more to the younger grade levels um potomac middle i'm proud of the aquaponics program that we have there in the greenhouse back there kind of a hidden gem back there that we are doing before covet kind of disrupted that process but moving forward with that so i'd like to see potentially more partnerships and opportunities with the whether it be middle schools or elementary schools a lot of them are in great placements near like wooded areas or

084other environmentally kind of friendly areas that i think we could build partnerships whether it be like patty at forest park or montclair or something and all of our schools have different opportunities there but just something to explore and exposing our youngest kids this very early as they progress through our schools so thank you all ms argopour thank you dr latif um thank you so much for this presentation it was very very interesting it has a lot of different layers to it so i wanted to um first of all thank you for answering miss wahl's question because i was going to ask about hvacs and and maybe where we could be going with that so thank you thank you miss wall um but i am actually curious about um it says expansion of environmental literacy in

085k-12 curriculum so my brain is going it's kind of obvious in elementary school you can sort of fit things in a little bit differently what does that look like in middle and high school um i i mean are we talking about um this is going to be in our biology classes is it's the lining with our sols i'd just like to hear a little bit more about how that might look sure and i think most of what we are discussing we're at the onset of developing those plans we are working with mrs goss and and mr bassett and trying to find the best ways for our resources to benefit their planning if you will and have that you know collaboration we see opportunities to get out into the local parks to mr wilkes credit you

086know the point that he just made about those partnerships with the county we have an extensive trail network we have lots of park systems we have lots of waterways in our own local jurisdictions so working towards some of that watershed protection those projects can start at the elementary level and gain kind of an awareness as you rise through the grade levels and as you get older into that middle school and then high school level maybe you're now developing some of those project objectives for the younger students and it's it is you know perhaps going to align with sols we don't necessarily include environmental literacy per se as an sol requirement but we do have the tentacles of environmental literacy sprinkled throughout our studies and so i think we do have a student awareness of that

087but we've got to provide resources to student learning to make sure that they understand from a facility's perspective we can help with you know the watershed management some of the waste and the recycling efforts we've talked about and we've got that capacity to help provide educational materials we've already developed as part of our energy management and conservation programs and turn those into those project opportunities then the the next piece of this would be um you know i think that since the future is this sort of going this direction what college and career or tech ed or something that we can connect for our older students into something where they're learning at nova or at a neighboring college or you know jobs and things like that of the future so i mean you don't have to

088have an answer for that we may not even know what some of those things are but i just i i have a lot of um hope for the future that this is going to be you know another um you know it's it's the next industry so to speak so those are that that's just one of the things i think the next year will bear that fruit right as we begin to again continue our networking and more so in person now we we can really dive deeply we've just touched on it you know thank you so much for all your work i i will i am done good thank you very much so i i'd be remiss if to um if i didn't take this opportunity i'd like to introduce mayor ernie porta is here with

089us mayor porter could you stand please thank you mr porta is the the mayor of the town of akka quan and actually mr porter i'd like you to come to the mic i have a question for you specifically as you chair the the committee on collaboration with the county um dr porta um he serves um he's a busy man he serves his time for this committee which as don richardson pointed out is going to be meeting very regularly so first of all they're going to meet monthly we all know how hard it is to get to monthly anything and so i can't thank the committee in general for all of the service they're providing to this county and they do this free of charge dr port is also serving on the 911 commission set up

090by mr wilkin and the the curriculum committee so we're very we're very appreciative dr porter please tell me i i know you work closely with the county just as a mayor of the town of aquacon as we move forward on this issue and i know some members had asked you know what synergies we have um with their new office and mr richardson pointed this out the challenges what challenges do you see that we as a board can help you with the committee or you can help us with work with the county to get the most impact in the shortest amount of time so uh thank you mr chairman the um in the discussions i will say with some of the supervisors supervisors from both parties i can say in discussing a little bit about what

091we're doing at the school level i've coordinated of course with with chair richardson and with the county staff in doing this it seems to me that you're going to have in the county we're going to have relatively enthusiastic partners in other words folks that are actually interested in collaborating i think the the real challenge will probably be to find areas of common ground where information can be exchanged to the mutual benefit of the parties to just be candid about it there are things that i've learned where the school system is really doing great things and has a lot of expertise and i suspect the county may be doing a little bit more than i realize they are doing i suspect it's not at the same level we've had some discussions about this with the county

092not at the same level that the school system is so i think quite frankly that the school system is going to be able to transfer some knowledge to the county and the county hopefully will be able to transit transmit some knowledge to the school system staff that will be mutually beneficial then what i think will be another challenge is that inevitably in this kind of environment when you're talking about sustainability land use issues are going to come up and i think that that is one of the areas where i would really love and i think others would as well to see more collaboration between the county and the school system because the schools are going to need school systems going to need land for additional schools it's going to be competing as you already know

093more than anybody else you're competing for the demand for parks for other open space well i think there are ways of looking at this in a sustainable through a sustainability lens that makes collaboration on that easier and so i think those are going to be those are going to be some of the challenges finding some common ground where you're going to be able to exchange information that's mutually beneficial which i think will will take a little time as the as the groups become uh familiar with each other working more regularly now i do want to say we didn't get into details in our recommendations but um with the way we've been looking at it from the subcommittee that i chair and endorsed by the full committee is we expect this to be a regular perpetual

094collaboration between the county and the school system not something that is uh put something together and then come back and give a report in a year with recommendations of your collaboration we view this as something that should be a regular ongoing regular part of business and i think you're gonna find that uh that buy-in exists at the at the border county supervisors level as well does that answer yeah that's great and then one last question because i know and i check in with members of the committee and and i can't thank you all again they have worked so well together and there's just there are our folks with melinda landry and christine johnson this other subcommittee chairs amazing work but um you're you made a recommendation to the county to have a county-wide sustainability task

095force um in in your recommendations from your group are to make sure there's area experts on that group so it's tell me a little bit about that because i think correct so i will work uh yeah i i think it's appropriate for me to leak a little bit of the details of the discussions with the county so the uh one of my functions actually was to was to communicate with members of the board of county supervisors because the board of county supervisors is taking action as you know and i worked particularly with supervisor bode chair wheeler and supervisor canlin all of whom were very generous with their time very open uh to the discussions and um what is expected is uh hopefully that there will be a joint body of some sort in the future

096established there will be liaisons from each of the individual boards um somebody from the school board somebody from the board of county supervisors but then the folks from sustainability commission somebody from this body that i'm on as well but then the the superintendent and the county executive will appoint people taking into account both the staffing within each of their respective entities as well as the subject matter expertise that is necessary we also have advocated in the specifics for student representation two students one appointed by the school board and one appointed by the board of county supervisors that also has been met enthusiastically the idea being that um it would be great for both boards to show a commitment to have future generations be involved in the planning that we're talking about now now i just

097want to caution you that this is all this is all that we recommended um essentially there will ultimately have to be votes about this and both bodies will have to agree to that sort of structure but that's the kind of thing that we've been discussing in detail with the county uh i think the board of county supervisors uh supports it in a bipartisan fashion uh those three supervisors anyway that i've been dealing with regularly have been very very supportive and generous with their time in discussing it so thank you very much dr porter i really appreciate it i think it's it's great that you sort of explain to the public as well that this has bipartisan support county-wide support and we have sort of folks from all different angles looking at this looking to to

098make sure we work together and we can't thank you enough for that okay thank you i'm going to take a little bit of a victory lap on this myself just a bit and i have a real quick set of thank yous we need to make on the electric buses if you didn't get a chance to ride them fantastic beautiful great work i have to thank dominion energy for their commitment to the state they put out 50 buses to school divisions we got two of them it's a pilot program they paid the difference of what a regular bus to this bus would cost close to about 200 250 000 on each bus and so that was great i want to thank mary mcgowan division council because she wrote the pilot language and all the legal documentation

099that the entire state modeled on this project with dominion and moving forward will be the basis we hope for more of these um projects with dominion energy and so i think it's really important for everyone dominion energy has stepped up in a big way and and we're very grateful for that uh the beginning of this resolution that started last summer came from the work that you know i consulted with jay facette from arlington county i see you're working with arlen county folks who was a former chair of their board of county supervisors put their first net zero school together the discovery school tiziana boutino with the climate action network the students that pushed hard for this effort to be made we have to thank them we wouldn't have got to this u.s green designee award

100green ribbon if you look at the details on how it was selected if you go through the packet of how they decided it was decided on a number of things our historical work we've done with lead work when mr richardson was on this board when they built the 25 schools that have been there since the superintendent has been here 25 buildings have been built all you know with an eye towards green lead and all of that the the redoing of the lights this is nothing new and and that's what the us federal department of education recognized but then all the new stuff they recognize our sustainability initiative our commitment to to working towards net zero this is really important for the the public to understand um and in one might say why are you spending

101all this time dr latif on this tonight we're the largest employer in prince william county we employ 15 000 people we have 91 000 students we run buses all day long we feed a lot of folks there is a lot of areas where we are the biggest player in almost everything in this county the biggest budget the biggest everything so we also have the biggest responsibilities to move forward in a direction that i think that is beneficial to the entire community so i can't thank you all for doing that i want to thank mr gorham working with the students on some of that project based learning you jessica weimer have shown enthusiasm working with these students and i hear from these students i hear from these different student groups i hear from the different folks

102um we just in our division and it's important for everyone in our division no in all offices whether it be finance or whether it be in in in in food services have opportunities for student learning i mean we have internal internship you know things that we could think about and as you guys have have start leading the way on this there are things maybe we can do and utilize more for the whole school division because we have area experts right here i mean you don't have to go work at amazon you have guys in it who know what the cloud is and how it works and you're managing the 35th largest school division in the cloud it's a lot of great stuff again please forgive me this is this is a really great initiative and

103i want to make sure i don't forget to say anything this the curriculum basis some of these students are also working to implement sol initiatives with the state on making sure that there's environmental literacy at the sol level that would then drive school divisions to do this but then you guys are also doing this with your committee work so again i can't thank you all enough i uh and i've taken much of your time and this board has taken much of your time but the community really thanks you and mr richardson you're putting them on a on a pretty hard work work work program for monthly meetings and and but you're doing it uh with sustainability in mind and using zoom moving forward so mr truaki any final comments yeah just two items one i

104would be remiss if i did not thank each of the members that were either appointed by yourself by dr walt by our staff each of our committee members have an individual talent a skill and a knowledge that has really allowed this this committee to go is they say they haven't done a lot but they really have done a lot and the progress that they've made it's really set the course uh for us to be able to carry that forward at the same time i know that our committee would love to get very quickly get a photo with the board if we could before they leave we should do that very quickly and then we're done if the committee can come to the front here of the the podium and then um we can take a

105picture that would be fantastic and the board members can can come down the front and i hope somebody has somebody has a camera we've got that somebody has a camera is it would have been helpful we'll go to the [Music] um we're gonna have to find a better place to do this you want help nope i think it goes backwards the trouble with answering all these questions is that you literally could be here all night giving them um we don't have a lot of good news i was you know [Music] all right wonderful folks we're going to move on now to 1701 student representative matters um so i have something i have to say mr ben kim unity read high school please sir thank you um i mean man i'm just i'm still so pumped

106after hearing that presentation um and as someone who's on there who's on the committee um for sustainability i mean it's just been amazing um i appreciate everything tonight i mean a lot a lot has occurred during my two years here but i must admit like i was very excited for tonight in particular because of this of our county's increasing commitments is sustainable efforts it's very applaudable and i can't talk about associates without again thanking the energy management team and all the staff working on these efforts because it rocks it you guys are like rock stars and like the last number i saw was like 47 million dollar sage or something from energy management which is like that's insane and taxpayers that's like great news just to follow up i can't really follow up that presentation

107but i wanted to comment on this pressing topic we heard so much about student perspective so i thought i might offer some as many as you know a large number of students are very interested in sustainability like everything we've heard like heel and the colgan group and everyone advocating for the literacy you can really tell from the our students enrollment and environmental courses the cnes at freedom posting on social media the ubiquity now of ecology and greeting clubs at each school like ms jackson you saw yesterday i mean kids were willing to toil under the sun for our gardening project at uni read as now as pjcs ushers in a greener and brighter future i ask everyone to let us students be involved in the battle i mean i heard you guys talk about it

108which is awesome like internships and stuff i mean we can really you know this is a good capital resource we can use allocate and all these students are super like interested in this so let our enthusiasm be turned into palpable action where we were planted here in pwcs because it's a resource that can really be taken advantage of just offers some suggestions on what we heard tonight uh this could take the form of green clubs learning directly from energy management um providing feedback and ideas for the county sustainability efforts or even partnering with the workers on a project at their school you know i'm talking like cte students learning first hand about the technology this board pays for and learning about it from those experts you know we have the experts here let's learn from

109them students could help maintain solar panels es classes could lead projects at their school like those colgan students or even lead composting all there's so much food waste at lunch they can use their knowledge to improve the sustainability of their school brewing that's something to be so proud of and to improve your own school building sustainability i mean there's just so many opportunities um and like those those like that pilot program at the six schools that's like a perfect example of what i'm talking about and what more should be done students can serve their communities in these capacities but they can also learn so much in the world of sustainability i just i love hearing that phrase project-based learning it just makes me so excited kind of on a side note according to the bureau

110of labor statistics two of the three fastest growing jobs are wind turbine service technicians and solar photovoltaic installers basically renewable energy technician people so cte and sustainability can totally go hand in hand be super cool to see that and what kids are taught in those engineering classes by being involved and exposed to sustainability students will grow more interested in the topic and we've heard we need the next generation of leaders to be educated about this issue because we're the generation who will solve it if i'm a kid and i see like an actual solar panel at my school i'm going to be so curious as to what that is and like like you know kids they're very curious about that and just having that like in elementary school could bring huge educational benefits that installation

111of like a solar panel not only has a very generous roi in terms of finances and the environment total impact but the immeasurable value of inspiring our students and teaching them firsthand about this green technology there's just so many opportunities and they just need to be pushed for i'm sure some yeah you guys have seen discovery elementary the net zero school i mean it just looks like a utopia and if i put myself in the shoes of a student there i just would be so excited to go to school every day and to be just surrounded by that net zero it's just is inspiring and there's no those students are going to get a great education in that environment and just those sustainable schools like that are beautiful for the environment beautiful for communities and

112beautiful for students to be to learn and learn from the actual building it's fantastic that pgcs will soon join the net zero building party with like aqua elementary and stuff but it's not enough until all the school buildings even old ones like my own unity read have been renovated to this level so what can us us here tonight and those at home do to push towards sustainability board members you continue to pass bull policy that ushers in this brighter future much like the equity statement equity lens sustainability can and ought to be woven into all decisions regarding construction renovation admin klc leaders it's up to you all to ensure the application of policies like 495 so that the impact is actually made and teachers you can help get your students interested in this topic after

113all it's an issue that they will have to deal with their entire lives it's very relevant so even if you're not a science teacher sustainability is a topic that can be woven into every subject and that's part of its beauty it can bring together people together from all walks of life it's very interdisciplinary uh there could be environmental literature woven into english classes discussions in those world languages like spanish and french are being made on the subject sustainable economics and in history classes like you can use like the kyoto protocol and really exemplary efforts by international groups to like stop the ozone layer depletion great example of international cooperation and you know sustainability can even be woven into like elementary school math problems like sally has a tree you know two trees go away i

114don't know something like that uh but all in all it's clear students want a greener and brighter pwcs they want to be educated about this pressing topic the demand is there and like we've heard about tonight like they would be ecstatic to be involved firsthand with our experts and our amazing teams here in helping their county move towards a sustainable future so let us help we're a resource for you guys give as many students as possible who are interested the skills and opportunities to help support sustainability efforts students can be the change and we would love to help thank you so much thank you mr kim we're moving on to 1702 appointment and announcement of student representative ms zargaport mr chairman i move that the prince william county school board appoint dania sharifi and charlotte

115flynn as student representatives to the prince william county school board and appoint maclet surafill as the alternate student representative to the prince william county school board for the 2021-22 school year do i have a second mr chairman miss williams i'd like to second excellent very good any discussion ms williams um i just want to say again it's an honor to to have student representatives serve with us on the board and watch the continual development of this role as each new student comes in and changes it modifies it and it grows only for our betterment and i am continuously thankful for all of those students who not only apply but then choose to serve with us wonderful miss williams okay please vote miss ralston miss ralston said i heard yes or i saw yes mrs yes

116miss ralston said yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed wonderful congratulations and i'll say their names again dania sharifi she is of going to be at the new gainesville high school charlotte flint of woodbridge senior high school maclet cerephil will be our alternate from hilton high school my understanding is over 100 applicants this was a very competitive year congratulations all those who tried and we wish you the best and and we hope you continue to serve your schools and work with your student councils and and all the groups so thank you all next we'll move on to superintendent's time um we have tonight this evening deputy superintendent keith emon filling in for um superintendent dr walt's mr imon good evening chairman latif vice chairwoman zagaporn members of the board i am standing in

117for dr waltz during his absence tonight so that he can attend his daughter's final dance concert and performance and he sends his regards even during a pandemic our school division continues to earn accolades the virginia school counselor association has elected melissa excuse me if i mispronounced that school counselor at bristow elementary school to serve on its board of directors miss leishner is one of nine members on the board and will serve a three-year term as a member of the board she hopes to serve as an advocate on behalf of all virginia school counselors and students she said she looks forward to helping school counselors provide comprehensive school counseling programs to meet the needs of every student during the pandemic the virginia science education leadership association elected julia renberg supervisor of science and family life education

118as its next president ms renberg was voted in as president at the organization's 2021 spring conference and her appointment took effect immediately she will serve a two-year term dr walt shared that he has had the opportunity to recently to visit several schools and participate in some classroom activities during the pandemic jennifer mays a second grade teacher at kyle wilson elementary school held a virtual field trip with her class to see a beehive up close and personal miss hayes husband is a beekeeper who took students inside the hive to meet the queen bee drones and the worker bees later that same day dr waltz visited spring woods elementary school where he played a hand bell exercise with the physical education students in the virtual jungle ninja run and talk to students and staff about their experiences

119this school year during the pandemic he also recently attended and congratulated our graduates at pace west stopped by both tyler elementary school and swans creek elementary school and attended the celebration of the publication of works of for students at unity reed high school who participated in the origin project and cheered on the tennis athletes at the last home competition for the woodbridge high school teams during a previous meeting we congratulated our teacher of the year and principal of the year our communications team has been completing videos to help you get to know our outstanding winners a little better tonight we will share those two videos beginning with the teacher of the year please roll the video i'm jamie um this is my eighth year teaching in prince william county and in general i am the

120seventh grade math teacher miss juba is just an amazing beautiful human being that puts people first it's about lifting others up i see some confident people picking picking one and sharing to everyone in the chat she embodies everything that we look for in a teacher that we bring here people that are going to put children first that want to build relationships and build experiences that are authentic relevant and [Music] when you make those relationships you figure out what those students are interested in and how to connect what they're interested in to what you have to teach them in whatever subject you're teaching miss juba is the thought that if you maybe failed today she's helped us rethink and reframe failure that it's an opportunity to grow forward and lean forward and go one more round

121and grow as kids i feel like i was i was meant to be a teacher you're a parent in some aspects you are a teacher to teach curriculum you have to be so many different things for these students i love helping um i love making connections with students this year has been so hard and i would not be where i am today this year without my team that i have um not just the team but fred lynn as a school miss duba is so successful here at fred lynn because the kids see through fake the kids know that she's there from there's nothing they can't go to miss do before it could be something that's happening at home on the street in the classroom miss drooba's always going to be there for her kids and

122they know [Music] [Applause] [Music] principal shaw is somebody who gives 150 every single day and the way she handled the pandemic just exemplified the greatness that she does every day most of the steps she's hired so she relates to the staff every day i am still very honored and surprised to have been selected as principal of the year i'm incredibly blessed to work with so many dedicated educators who will do anything for the success of students the best thing about principal shot is her sense of family and her trust for her educators mrs schat is a great administrator she is great at interpersonal relationships and she is just awesome she knows every student's name so she's out there in the morning greeting every child she's so happy that they're here um even our virtual students

123she's joining zoom classes and making sure that she's still connecting every day to our families good job myra one of my favorite parts of the job is being in the classroom i love to support students and see what they're learning and have a chance to interact with the teachers we help our students believe that they are capable of achieving anything as long as they have a growth mindset and they're willing to work hard if they develop that growth mindset early on they are headed for lifelong success she always does her best to make sure that everybody feels like they're taken care of and that they're special and she always wants to help and help she's helped me become a better teacher mrs schat is the best person in this school congratulations [Music] thank you mrs

124bernard's eagles i really appreciate that [Music] [Applause] as you know our amazing food and nutrition services staff have been feeding our family since the pandemic began at last count they had served nearly 22 million meals with the school year coming to an end shortly this important service to our community will experience some changes during some changes june 7th will be the last day of the bulk meal service with pd pwcs serving a week's worth of groceries on that day when summer school begins pwcs will provide free mails at 62 sites for students in attendance with select locations offering times available to the public we will be sharing more specific information through our website social media emails to families through the scoop and local media so please watch for more information soon because of the pandemic

125virginia code and authority granted by the general assembly has required our school board agenda topics to be limited because of this limitation we have temporarily suspended board recognition and approval of many proclamations honoring very various observances however i do think it is important to mention these additional observances june is lgbtq plus pride month pwcs recognizes that together we can celebrate one another and foster a welcoming environment for all students and staff june 19th is juneteenth which is the oldest known commemoration of the end of slavery in the united states it marks the day in 1865 that enslaved people in galveston texas the last of the former confederate states to abolish slavery finally heard that the civil war had ended and learned that the emancipation proclamation had made them free nearly nearly two years earlier although

126this year juneteenth is on saturday pwcs will close on friday june 18 to recognize this important occasion with a holiday for employees as dr walt stated at the last school board meeting he has a proposed plan for one-time employee pandemic pay adjustment as you recall the superintendent's proposed 2021 budget the one for this current school year included a 2 percent employee cost of living adjustment in addition to the step increase and this was then unanimously approved by the school board in the adopted budget unfortunately the pandemic came shortly thereafter and with an abundance of caution regarding economic uncertainty that two percent increase was removed tonight i'm pleased to share that our financial picture has improved as such the superintendent will propose as part of the final year-end adjustments brought per standard protocol to the school

127board at the next meeting a one-time two percent pay adjustment for all active employees with a minimum of one thousand dollars therefore no active employee would receive less than one thousand dollars well not a cost of living adjustment because it is only a one-time pay adjustment the superintendent's proposal provides the school board with an opportunity to meet the intent of the superintendent in the school board's original unanimous decision regarding the two percent raise the superintendent's proposal also fulfills the request of several school board members who have expressed interest in rewarding and thanking all our dedicated employees for the extra work that was done for our students their families and our community as we close out the pandemic affected school year based on individual conversations with school board members regarding this plan we also understand that

128the school board may also consider a plan of its own for a one-time pay adjustment in closing i sincerely sincerely thank our outgoing student representatives to the school board and welcome and congratulate the incoming students thank you and stay safe and healthy 1901 new policy 495 sustainability first reading mr choroki good evening chairman of the chief members of the board dr waltz and mr ibon uh this is the first read uh for you to receive information on the new policy 495 title sustainability uh this is in accordance with the resolution and obviously the presentation that you just heard earlier this evening this policy sets the benchmark or a baseline that will give the overarching guidance that will be incorporated from here out that's it anybody have any questions great um it looks great so we

129have two weeks and we'll be voting on this at the next meeting correct outstanding sir thank you at this point we're at board matters i'm going to excuse myself because i have to be on the road i'm leaving town and so i will leave it to miss um mrs argipur thank you everyone congratulations to our i'll just say one quick thing congratulations to our graduating seniors um it's impossible for for us to attend all the commencements it's there's a lot of them and some are at the same time but congratulations best wishes on a wonderful year and um and make and we know you're going to make prince william county proud wherever you all may go thank you and have a great evening thanks thank you dr latif drive safely we'd like to start with

130miss jesse this evening uh first of all i want to thank all the teachers and uh thank the superintendent for providing his plan and i understand that it will probably be looked at by the board uh i wanted to i went to antinom elementary and they have this mapping activity where they invite people in to talk about their origin and i was able to discuss my origin and i shared with them that up until um maybe three years ago i thought i was a descendant of uh native american in descent and every i bought items in my house thinking that i was only when ancestry.com came out and said that i was not so we had a great laugh about that and i was able to put on the map my heritage is from africa

131and also i am looking forward to all the graduation ceremonies and i will not be able to attend all of them but i want to congratulate all the graduations the students who are graduating and i'm looking forward to the fifth grade promotional ceremonies and this year is going to be a drive-by so i think i'll be driving for three or four in one day but i'm looking forward to the end of the year and to all the teachers uh you know that um mrs zuckerberg and i have both been talking about some type of compensation and i want to say thank you to all of you the word i've heard from most people has been the word exhaustion and as we finalize this hazard page situation i want to say thank you to all of

132you for the school secretaries who came in early the people who did the one ten thousand iep the hundreds of emails that relate their emotional and real concern about their families and personal safety learning a new instructional delivery system to include teachers uh to include teaching classes at two classes at once scheduling and making class changes on a dime the sheer fear of working and what could be described as a toxic environment that you could not see feel or hear i say to you nothing but gratitude and as you know i've given a cup to my people in the aquapon district so tonight i bring to you my to take one second i have a cup of gratitude to all the teachers and principals and secretaries and custodians and everyone and it is one of

133my one of my cups that is a tiffany cup so to all the teachers and all the staff that have worked this year this cup of gratitude is to you thank you thank you miss jesse miss williams thank you i'm going to try to squeeze it all in here in three minutes first i'd like to also echo happy pride month i'm dismayed that we aren't able to do our normal proclamations but i think it's the appropriate time to mention that you know lgbtq plus youth are um still not able to fully participate safely within our community so protecting them fully while they are in our public school system is a respite is a respite from the trauma that they may be experiencing while not in school we know that the dropout rate for lbgtq plus

134youth is three times higher than their hetero counterparts and that they make up 40 percent of the homeless youth population and they are three times more likely to be harassed and bullied at schools in schools by other students and teachers and staff so i think that this is an appropriate time to be mindful of those students and i look forward to this board and this division updating our regulations and policies um to be more inclusive of all of our students and our student body and staff as well um and to segue into that i would still encourage or like to be updated from the division or talk about at this board meeting um how we are updating and how we are following our commitment at the proclamation we made last summer for black lives matter

135and our what the state talks about more about our anti-racist policies and our equity policies we spend a lot of time talking about the word equity and i would like to see a similar if not the same amount of time that we discussed about sustainability talking about our anti-racism policies our transgender update policies and all of those other controversials depending on who you're talking to because they aren't to me updates because we are a school division that is minority uh has more minority students and staff or more minority students and families than anyone else in this division and we owe all of them the same and equal amount of time um to discuss the things that are important to them as well as every other student and staff member here as we do when we

136talk about sustainability especially to all those who advocate for mental health and safety of our students and staff lastly but not least is i had the pleasure of attending the early identification programs graduation we had 29 students from prince william county participate in eip which is a nationally recognized program that we participate in addition with a few other northern virginia school divisions as well as george mason i myself as an eip alumni um i just want to make a quick mention for two of the students that spoke well former students now one our student speaker from uh garfield high school mina buhan uh spoke at the graduation ceremony and then i also wanted to give a special shout out to rena alvarado who participated in the program i know it's really bad angle but she

137participated as a prince william county student then went and graduated from eip went to mason earned her bachelor's and her master's now and is the associate associate director of eip at george mason university so her life has been eip and now she continues to give back to all of the students who participate in eip and what a wonderful program it is if you don't know about it i think highly encourage you to look it up it's for first in their generation students to be able to uh be prepared and attend a four-year university upon graduation we don't spend enough time talking about these students because they do sacrifice not only three weeks in the summer but weekends and after school all year long from their eighth grade year until their 12th grade year when they

138graduate um so sorry for going over time but i thought it was worthwhile to talk about them and then if we could get some more information on summer school that would be great thank you miss williams uh let's uh miss ralston would you like to add to bournemouth board matters tonight yes i want to speak um i think it's been a an interesting school year and our students and our teachers and everyone who adapted to what was going on you know we did not know it but we we we worked through it so i want to thank everyone and all those who stayed and fought hard this past year god bless thank you thank you miss ralston um miss wall so i'll try to be brief um i am looking forward to graduation um graduations

139i should say plural for the class of 2021 i know i've talked about this a lot lately i have a 2021 graduate and i know many many many families do as well i have enjoyed attending governor's school at innovation park graduation so far and graduation ceremony at pace west hoping to attend patriot battlefield potomac and unity read in the coming days so excited for everybody such such a great accomplishment to see kids achieve this highest honor of being a prince william county graduate at pace west i wanted to congratulate heather klingerman who won the principal's award there for overcoming challenges showing resilience in the face of hardship and just discovering so many wonderful talents that she had um and she's heading off to college and she was well deserving of that reward it was really

140neat to meet her this last week also a student at battlefield by the name of sarah riggy was in a terrible accident i just want to say to her and her family that we the community is is rallying behind her and wish her the speediest recovery for overcoming her accident and hoping that best wishes for her for graduation and her future plans i also wanted to say that stay tuned we will be seeking input on the sr3 funds the use of these funds will be a topic where we will be gathering information from our community our teacher community our parent community our larger community so please stay tuned for information about how you can give us input on how you think these funds should be spent thank you to all of our teachers and hardworking

141staff i know we have just a little bit of a lot time left and it's kind of the end of the year where everything's a little bit in chaos and finals are taking place just we appreciate so very much we know every single person is contributed in ways that are immeasurable to our effort to maintain a high quality school division throughout this school year in the face of a pandemic [Music] lastly i wanted to congratulate the battlefield lacrosse boys and girls varsity teams they are the cedar run district champions representing the district as the number one seeds in the 6b region tournament because of their wins and i wish them the best of luck as they advance and to all of the sports as they're wrapping up i wish everybody the best of luck thank

142you miss wall miss jackson it has been an honor to serve with all the members of the student representatives to the school board i was very impressed by the commitment courage and caring for the betterment of the school system i love seeing all three of the school student representatives at the events via zoom and advocating to senator warner the impact that they have made will be generational mr kim thank you for your help in gathering student input regarding virtual learning during the naming process ms menovar i'm very grateful for your advocacy and the dedication to your school i know that all three of our members will have a bright future ahead of them last meeting i forgot to thank brunsville high school ffa and horticulture for their plant sale the fancy per the plants i

143purchased are thriving and i'd love seeing the new amazing greenhouse yesterday i was lucky to be invited to the utv garden groundbreaking and sunflower planting thank you miss campbell it was great seeing the students teachers parents and administration i'm very excited to go back and see the plants after they've grown i want to thank all prince harry county staff for their amazing work this year i love seeing all the celebrations and i'm looking forward to attending some speaking of celebration the wonderful patriot high school is celebrating their 10th anniversary and i look forward to going to the kickoff next fall in september september 10th to be specific i'm excited to see the brunsville district lines patriot pioneers and unity read lions walk across the stage in a few days congratulations to all graduates finally i

144want to thank the school system for the message of inclusivity via recognition of pride month this is a time to reflect on the history of the lgbtq plus community as well as accomplishments this also reminded the importance of inclusion and the responsibility of the school system to strive to ensure all students feel safe respected and accepted in their place of learning so that all students have access to world-class education so happy pride month thank you miss jackson um spongebob would you i mean i know i'm going to miss next week or nasty next meeting is the grand finale right hopefully of this uh first i i look forward to graduations i will be attending my two high schools forest park and potomac high school graduations uh next saturday this saturday excuse me uh keeping tradition

145uh with the last couple meetings i asked my principals of my two respective buildings to recognize an outstanding senior and give me some feedback at potomac j ron will be graduating uh this saturday at the end of his high school career earning a 3.9 gpa and having completed several cambridge project lead the way courses which support his interest in robotics and stem fields with the help of project lead the way teacher j-ron competed in the vex robotics competition this year and placed in the top 32 of virginia he is especially recognized for his work with the virginia star program star virginia star provides students interested in engineering and technology by training the students to replace broken laptops which are donated to the school to date over 10 potomac families have received laptops devices from potomac's

146va star program j-ron returned to on-site in learning at potomac in april and we'll continue his educational journey at virginia tech next year way to go j-ron and i just want to make sure he gave me yes j-ron farren so i was like who am i talking sorry j-ron j-ron farron then potomac excuse me forest park eleanor siegrist she's recognized as a governor school student and a forest park student she's a member of the robotics team she participated in the nasa programs offered she's a regiron national science competition finalist she was in the top 40 in the nation she's also ranked in the top 10 of her class she's in the running for class valedictorian and they're waiting upon finalized grades for class principal describes her as a go-getter and well-grounded in conclusion also i

147was able on friday last week to do a quick visit of a number of my schools forest park high school mary williams henderson swans creek triangle and dumfries elementary i'm proud to announce actually at dumfries after a long 20-plus year wait the mayor and i and the city council were able over collaboration to finally get dumfries the electronic sign they deserve like all elementary schools in prince william county so i want to thank altaroki the dumfries councils mayor wood and that entire team it's been a mystery mystery where that sign has been located but we are finally going to give them that electronic sign so that's very exciting and uh appreciate everyone's time and have a good night thank you mr wilk um so very quickly um i really enjoyed the ride on the electric

148school bus um here they have a name julie one and julie two and no one's explained thus far whether why julie but um i thought it was kind of cool so thank you for for that opportunity i want to thank the superintendent's advisory council on sustainability for all the work that they've been doing ashley ben and caroline good luck thank you for serving on this board thank you for all of your hard work and all of the students who have participated by raising their voices and uh you know helping each other throughout this entire school year thank you so much uh let's see um oh i did i got to go to see pace west's graduation um which was really special it's a little bit smaller ceremony very personal it was it was um it

149was beautiful we're looking forward to seeing independence hilton patriot colgan and ophs and ophs osborne park and hoping to be able to stop by a couple of the fifth grade promotion ceremonies also had an opportunity to go see cedar point's little mermaid it was amazing that was absolutely fantastic i see hopefully maybe some of those kids will be coming to colgan in the future um and uh other than that i know every week i say wear your mask wash your hands keep your distance and i know our guidance is changing so listen to the guidance use your best judgment if you're not feeling well stay home everyone have a great evening thank you for all the hard work that you guys are doing in the school division to protect our students to educate our students

150and to get them across this graduation uh finish line and this meeting is now adjourned you