Prince William County School Board Meeting - March 17, 2021

001okay i'd like to call this meeting the prince william county school board to order um this meeting the prince william county school board is being conducted electronically under the virginia code 2.23708.2 and the authority granted by the general assembly on april 22 2020 through amendment 28 to hospital 29 which permits the school board to meet electronically during the dependency of the current state of emergency for the purpose of transacting such business as is statutorily required or necessary to continue operations of prince william county public schools and the discharge of its lawful purposes duties and responsibilities uh motion is in order for the approval of the closed session agenda ms zargoport mr chairman i move that the prince william county school board approved the closed session agenda as recommended you have a second mr chairman mr

002williams second okay any discussion okay no discussion please vote hey wow we got his applause is like our that's our um live audience for the show sorry miss ralston how do you vote my apologies yes yes okay got it okay excellent um yes unanimous next we need a motion to enter closed session emotions in order mr chairman mr zargapoor i move that pursuant to virginia code sections 2.2-3711 and 2.2-37 at the prince william county school board enter closed session for the following reasons one to discuss with division council and staff the performance appointment transfer release assignment and promotion of specific officers employment employees and appointees under virginia's code sections 2.2-3711a 1 and 8 and to dispose with the attendance of the superintendent and staff as necessary as provided by virginia code section 2.22.1-69 2. to

003discuss with legal counsel and take action on the placement and disciplinary appeals of specific students under virginia code sections 2.2-3711a two and eight three 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 section 2.2-3711a 7 and 8 and 4 to receive legal advice from division council and information from staff regarding impending legislative changes affecting school operations under virginia code sections 2.2-3711a 8. do you have a second mr chairman ms williams second any discussion has seen no discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes ms ralston votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed the prince william county school board will now enter closed session return open session approximately one hour [Music] the prince william

004county school board is now returning to open session from closed session moving on to the closed session certification emotions in order ms zargaporn mr chairman i move that pursuant to virginia code sections 2.2-3712 that the closed session of the prince william county school board meeting of march 17 2021 be certified by adopting the following resolution now therefore be it resolved that the prince william county school board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge one only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements were discussed in the closed 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 miss williams a second any

005discussion as seeing no discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote do i have miss wrong yeah i miss um yeah there she is can we get the hello yeah hey how you doing looking good miss ralston how do you vote yes all right fantastic and we are moving um what do we got i have eight yes unanimous motion passed eight yes unanimous motion passes moving on the closed session action items emotion is in order miss zargarpur chairman i move that the prince william county school board approved the appointments and releases of specific employees as presented in the closed session do you have a second missed wall seconds any discussion is seeing no discussion please vote ms ralston how do you vote yes yes thank you and the vote is eight yes unanimous motion

006passed great moving on to the next item ms sargaport mr chairman i move that the prince william county school board approve osmap's recommendation for the reassignment of student sr 21-04 do you have a second mr chairman ms williams any discussion okay seeing no discussion please vote ms ralston how do you vote yes great miss ralston votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed vote is eight yes unanimous motion passes so at this point i would like to call the meeting of the prince william county school board the open meeting to order this meeting in the prince william county school board is being conducted electronically under the 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

007to meet electronically during the dependency 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 point we will be doing the pledge of allegiance we have a student here uh would you right if any of the students would like to come to the podium and lead us in the pledge mr eye come right up to the podium here i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all excellent thank you next we'll move on to the approval of the public meeting agenda ms agrippa

008motions in order thank you mr chairman i move that the prince william county school board approved the public meeting agenda as recommended second mr chairman williams any discussion seeing no discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes yes thank you miss ralston and very good um what do you got the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed motion passes uh next it's time to adopt the consent agenda motions in order mr chairman mrs argenport i recommend that the prince william county school board approve the public meeting consent agenda as recommended do i have a second mr chairman miss williams second any discussion seeing no discussion please vote miss ralston how do you vote yes mr also votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed motion passes unanimously next citizen comment time

009due to the covet 19 state of emergency legal restrictions on the school board's authority to conduct its meetings through electronic means unlike on other public bodies meeting electronically under more expansive legal authority all discussion at this meeting by board member staff citizens must be limited to agenda items citizens may speak on an agenda item for two minutes when the board is able to resume regular meetings without the virtual participation permitted during the state emergency expanded citizen comment time will be resumed as provided by policy in the interim citizen comment 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

010those citizens who've signed up in advance with the school board no later than today 4 p.m wednesday march 17th may address the school board in person or virtually electronically about matters relating to march 17 2021 items only there are i guess i have one speaker who signed up to speak in person four who've signed up to speak virtually citizens are reminded if they are not speaking on the specific agenda item for this evening's meeting they will be asked to step down muted or escorted out please use property quora manners while at the podium and or speaking virtually if you do not do so you'll be asked to step aside please state your name and address for the record um my list i have a list here oh dr kate olsen flynn first in person happy

011st patrick's day i'm dr katelson flynn and you have my address on file good evening chairman latif school board and dr waltz i want to thank you all the end administration for your dedication and hard work during this unprecedented time i'm hopeful for the future i'm here to address the plans to put kids back in the building five days a week we have learned so much about the importance of schools teachers and learning this past year that i wanted to highlight only four important issues of many that i hope will be addressed in the plan going forward research shows that teachers in schools need time to plan effective lessons and that engage all learners and help kids build community in schools we know that scheduled teacher office hours have been a huge success in meeting

012individual student needs and building relationships with teachers how will you be able to provide teachers and students time for office hours within the five day week we also learned firsthand that two students school connections and relationships are vital to happy and healthy students however the social emotional learning takes time after a pandemic how will you provide structures for students to foster community for better mental health in the five-day plan we know the concurrent teaching method is ineffective inefficient and overburdens teachers ability to meet all students needs simultaneously this model should no longer be used in the reopening plans we know how important parent school communication is for student success where there were issues with canvas it was a huge benefit for parents to have assignments and grades immediately available how will canvas be improved for

013streamlining to ensure better communication without adding on to teachers workload last we know funding is necessary to provide resources where they are most needed and we know that there will be students who will be behind academically so the question is what extra resources will you as a board provide those schools and teachers to help those students i thank you for considering these questions when planning for next year let us build upon the practices that we know help students so that next year will be better for everyone thank you excellent thank you um mr stevens you want to handle the virtual speakers please mr chairman i have uh the four speakers are online our first speaker is jim martin you can go ahead and this evening i'd like to uh recognize all the students who have

014adapted to the mitigation measures on the return to learn i'd like to recognize the staff or teaching virtual that would prefer to be teaching in person for their adaptability and recognize the school board and the members who voted for the return to in-person learning and also encouraged the remainder of the school board to vote based on the science and not fear i'd like to encourage prince william county schools to share its return to learn data with the commonwealth and the cdc the current dashboard shows a decrease in the number of cases and currently zero outbreaks in the school system which suggests little to no in-person school transmission i'd like to encourage the school board to use all available resources to return to five day a week in person instruction as soon as possible please don't

015write off the rest of this year but at the very least return our students to five days a week in-person instruction for next year if virtual is still an option i'd like to request that we discontinue concurrent instructions and have dedicated virtual and in-person teachers this decreases the workload on the teachers and decreases interruptions for technological difficulties thank you and i appreciate your efforts thank you our next speaker is maggie hansford you can mute yourself you have the floor hi my name is maggie hansford and my address is on file i want to thank you all as i was unable to speak at the last budget budget markup meeting this staff phrase is historical and i want to acknowledge the chair the vice chair school board members and the superintendent for prioritizing our students and

016staff in this budget this budget provides the much needed mental health funding tech funding and providing our staff with a historic five percent raise i want to thank the school board member lori williams for continuing to speak at border county supervisor meetings to ensure the needed funding is there to support this budget again i want to thank the chair and vice chair for continuing to speak with me throughout the budget process and i look forward to working with all board members in the future months preparing for next year thank you our next speaker is talima driss you can unmute yourself and you have the floor hello my name is selima dries i'm a recent graduate of prince william county public schools i'm here today in reference to the proposed budget and in particular any budget

017items that grant funding to the cro program cross are the last thing our schools should be prioritizing right now our youth need mental health resources better food programs and widespread access to the internet not cops in their hallways cross do not create a safer learning environment in fact the mere presence of the cro constantly surveilling students makes many people uncomfortable especially students of color lgbtq and disabled youth who are much more likely to be criminalized children should not be criminalized anywhere especially in a learning environment we know that virginia leads the nation in perpetuating the school to brisbane pipeline that is not an achievement every disciplinary infraction that a child receives in school has a deeply damaging effect on their mental health and family life and brings them one step closer to being incarcerated is

018that the reputation you want for prince william county schools to be a school system where kids are traumatized and criminalized this is an issue that cannot wait you have the power through this budget and future budgets to keep our youth truly safe in a loving community instead of a harsh school environment with people with orange people in the hallways constantly threatening our kids these funds should be reinvested into programs that serve our youth such as restorative justice spaces mental health services and food and housing supports the issues that many youth deal with do not disappear at the school door and those issues are certainly not being solved by cros please take action now to protect our youth thank you so much thank you our next and last speaker is melissa rich you can unmute yourself

019good evening my name is melissa ridge i know a lot of people right now are anxious for return to normal and much of tonight's meeting focuses on just that but we all should have learned over this last year that some parts of normal aren't worth returning to the prince william county school's budget allows for several cro community resource officers at elementary schools armed resource officers at elementary schools for safety yet no study to date has shown that armed officers and schools promote safety what does promote safety in schools is equity equity includes providing necessary resources it includes ensuring students are fed it includes additional counselors it means providing asl interpreters at board meetings equity means hiring a diverse staff and addressing teachers biases and it means using a curriculum in which students see themselves all

020of this requires money that we're very often told doesn't exist i'm requesting that you strike cross from the budget and reappropriate that money to address real school safety inequity thank you thank you that was our last speaker mr chairman thank you mr stevens at this point we'll move on to 1401 update on academic progress during the pandemic dr waltz thank you chairman latif and members of the board good evening tonight's update comes at the request of school board members to hear directly from principals regarding academic progress and support for our students as we have been doing since october please note that now that all grade levels have returned in person with a virtual option at the request of the school board chairman further academic updates will continue and be provided as written briefings for the

021school board i will now turn it over to associate superintendents for western and eastern elementary schools ms jarcelyn hart and mr nathaniel provencio who will facilitate a panel of principles who will provide a brief update on academic progress and support for our students thank you dr waltz good evening chairman latif madam chairs argofour and our school board my name is nathaniel provencio and i'm the proud associate superintendent of our division's eastern elementary schools our school leaders have continued to do a remarkable job in guiding and leading their staff students and families through the pandemic in an effort to continue to give our school communities a voice on these heroic efforts tonight we welcome three outstanding principals to share their insights perspectives successes and challenges on their efforts with transitioning from virtual instruction to in-person learning

022speaking with us tonight we have antoinette mcdonald principal of bel air elementary mary jane boynton principal of parkside middle school and brandon boyles principal of potomac high schools chairman latif vice chairwoman zargapor school board and dr waltz thank you for inviting me to be a voice of my school community during this global pandemic greatest evening all i am mrs antoinette mcdonald the servant leader of bel air elementary school we are an intergenerational diversely populated high performing state awarded title 1 school in central land as the third smallest elementary school i humbly lead a group of the most engaging and invested professional educators and classified personnel i wish to thank my fantabulous staff who continue to put students first and make families a priority during this pandemic at bel air it is every student every day

023whatever it takes as the only school with a global and dual language spanish immersion program our students work through global competencies with a focus on service through the united nations sustainable development goals our kindergarten and first grade students enrolled in our dual language program are thriving and growing as bi-literate and bilingual students with some of them being trilingual at belair we are home to five self-contained special education programs two autism and three for students with an emotional disability these most vulnerable students and heroic staff have been in person since september 2020. we have welcomed back 48 or 181 of our 379 students over these past nine first days of school it is so good to have our students return to the building seventy percent of my staff has also returned to in person our in-person

024environment consists of class sizes one to nine students assigned seating in the classroom and cafeteria with mitigations in place throughout our school building and concurrent learning our staff embodies interdependency and it is most evident during our monday collaborative learning team meetings this is a time where all interventionists and specialists attend grade level meetings to plan review data and become experts in teacher instruction and student learning our students continue to receive tier two and tier three interventions for lost learning recovery our kindergarten through second grade students are performing at 79 mastery of all math standards our third through fifth grade students are performing at an 81 mastery in math standards in reading 64 of my students are reading on or above grade level and this summer we'll be hosting a plethora of programs to help our

025students math recovery reading camp a one-to-one connective tutoring book clubs with student conferencing each student at bel air is an mvp the most valuable panther you know academic achievement is in the quality and not the quantity our students are receiving consistent and rigorous tier one instruction their success there are successes that should be celebrated more than just data points on a state scoreboard success is like having five-year-old students maintain the wearing of facial coverage throughout an entire school day or have an 80 percent of screens displaying the faces of our fourth grade students or even consider children being able to access login stay engaged in a lesson upload and submit assignments in canvas and lastly when you have a parent share their concerns of their reading in october but is now celebrating their students ability

026to use word detective eyes confidently to the code now those are successes that i value along with the supports of lexia dreambox seesaw legends of learning canvas and mastery connect our teachers are working in the 21st century at high levels in all honesty my staff have has been able to shift recalibrate and rebalance we stress the importance of schoolwork balance but to have balance is to ensure that all is in order the time dedicated and planning and delivering instruction to meet the needs of our students is immeasurable with current learning it appears to be a solution but it's not ideal it's literally the same instruction through the use of a school issue device moving from home to school back to home my staff with admirable strength stand on the front lines mentoring parents providing homework

027assistance and tapping into the emotional health of our students their resumes are overflowing with 21st century skill sets my staff has become masters of multitasking with concurrent teaching and this is emotionally and physically exhausting lastly at belair social emotional learning and support are a priority with our students we embrace zones of regulation and with the implementation at home our parents are keeping our students healthy and happy our school counselors have their guidance lessons and on mondays they hold lunch bunches small groups individual counseling and are available for any additional supports our school social workers and school psychologists offers support to students and families by identifying community resources with our staff we have implemented monthly mental health and self-care calendars we've had a visit from a traveling coffee shop there's weekly tokens of appreciation staff check-ins

028and the sharing of the county's employee assistant program comp site resources our community he has also stood in the gap through the support and investment in student learning from grace church of virginia down in dumfries to phi kappa zeta chapter of zeta phi beta sorority incorporated holy family church and countless other organizations and donors blessed is the one who perseveres under trial this pandemic is definitely a trial that we will all come through victoriously with my f as well my students are well so please acknowledge that we are all surviving a global pandemic that is to be celebrated i am ever so humbled to lead the learning and protect the heart of my staff students families and bel air community thank you to mr erickson and my family the central elementary school principals for your

029leadership unmatched wisdom and support allow me to introduce one of my middle school colleague dr mary jane boyden thank you ms mcdonald good evening dr latif members of the school board and dr waltz it is my pleasure and honor tonight to have this opportunity to share parkside middle a cambridge international schools experiences with supporting student learning during the school year of virtual in-person and hybrid instruction throughout the school this unique school year parkside has made a robust plc culture we have continued meeting weekly by content and grade level throughout the school year our teachers work in collaborative learning teams to plan problem solve and support one another this protected time is used to brainstorm ideas and collaborate on how to differentiate activities and lessons most importantly the teachers share ideas and suggestions on how to

030reach struggling students both in the virtual and in-person setting we analyze student academic progress and we work to develop specific targeted opportunities to support our students this school year our teachers have been reaching out to our students via breakout rooms the chat feature phone calls and emails to problem solve with them as well as their families this is a systematic approach being facilitated throughout our school building when necessary our parent liaison school counselors and our multi-tiered support specialist has become part of the outreach to provide additional support to our students supports are offered that we offer include after school tutorial sessions tuesday through friday by individual teachers to provide additional support to our virtual students we have monday office hours and additional opportunities for our virtual students to meet with their teachers we provide targeted

031supports to students by inviting them to come in the building to receive one-on-one support our school counselors have been conducting lunch bunches and small groups virtually additionally our school counselling department started the initiative of no one eats alone which we have now adapted to include virtual and in-person students based on our current student data we have identified in-person students who will be working with our site-based multi-tiered support specialist and school counselors to begin a four week tier two academic intervention support program this program is to assist with bridging any gaps in their learning and with parental permission they are temporarily being rotated out of encore classes some additional strategies we have found to support virtual and hybrid learning are to engage in-person and virtual students in breakout rooms to help make connections with and between

032students with the addition of in-person students our teachers have identified technological problems that certain students were having at home and now better understand why they were struggling and have been able to assist more virtual students little by little more cameras are being turned on so our zoomies and roomies can communicate with and connect with each other and some of our teachers have begun to adopt new flipped classroom teaching methods to be able to focus on virtual learners providing one-on-one help as needed thank you for providing me this opportunity to share parkside's journey it is important for me to mention how vital the collaboration has been with my middle level colleagues at the middle level all principals have met weekly with mr bixby and the teamwork support and guidance we have received has been outstanding i'm

033extremely proud to work for prince william county schools and immensely honored to be the principal of parkside my teachers staff students and community have risen above unprecedented challenges and have continued to keep what is important at the forefront and that is our students it is now my pleasure to introduce mr brandon bulls principal of potomac high school mr bulls please unmute sorry my mistake uh good evening dr latif and school board members i i think i see my school board member uh mr wilk there as well for the potomac district um good evening i also want to say good evening to dr waltz and the superintendent staff who have been great potomac high school supporters uh throughout this virtual learning journey my name is brandon bowes i'm proud principal here at potomac senior high school

034and i'd like to share with you just a little bit about potomac high school's journey and covet 19 response uh while we've been away from the building and now that we've returned to the building we're proud to support 73 of our students via virtual learning right now 27 of our students are in person here in the building uh either on tuesdays and thursdays or on wednesdays and fridays 97 of our staff members have returned to the building as well so we're uh glad about that and recently an additional three percent of our students have elected to return in person for uh for instruction for fourth quarter for april 6th and beyond our potomac teachers and administrators continue to analyze student data during virtual learning to see areas of growth and areas of strength what we've

035recognized is that we have several students who have had banner years or who are having banner years academically via virtual learning the limited distractions the the more uh inclusive access to uh school resources and uh activities online uh have all been of benefit to to our students um in marking period too for instance courses like algebra two and chemistry are seeing students perform as well if not better than they did last year which is quite a testimony to our students and staff that said we've also noted that noticed that we've had some students who've struggled with virtual learning we're paying special attention to our 9th grade students with the understanding that 9th grade to 10th grade matriculation is a really strong indicator of on-time graduation three years later given the student achievement data we've offered

036several interventions and supports for student learning i'd like to mention a few of those i don't have time to mention them all but i'll mention just a few here over the past month and a half or so we've implemented virtual uh virtual learning remediation and recovery at potomac we've had teachers sign up to provide intervention and support to students in person on mondays and saturdays and we've serviced 80 plus students collaborative learning teams so teacher teams have determined essential understandings of quarter one and quarter two and used uh in-person instruction labs feedback and virtual platforms such as edmentum which has seen success over at independence and desmos for math just to name a few to assess student learning we've also budgeted for six sections to be offered uh in core and elective subjects to artificially

037reduce class sizes uh so we're trying to do our best to make sure that uh students receiving as much individualized support as possible and we're also supporting students mental health and social and emotional well-being through our school counseling department offering mental health mondays and also through our self-paced uh potomac advisory modules which is an in-house program that we have in place to make sure that our students have an opportunity again on a volunteer and self-paced basis to walk through uh supports for social emotional wellness and mental health in addition to all of that we have day-to-day uh practices that we implement that assist us with just making sure that each day's instruction is as valuable as possible we're continuing with our with our school-wide implementation of professional learning communities or plcs for instructional design and

038for lesson planning our teachers collaboratively focus on what we want students to know and be able to do what evidence of mastery looks like what support and interventions are offered when a student does not show mastery and what support is offered when the student has showed matt show mastery for extension all that being said none of the planning interventions or supports mentioned would be of any effect if it weren't for our potomac high school staff from our custodians to our counselors to our teachers administrators of classified support staff members i couldn't be more proud our staff has pulled together not pulled apart during this pandemic and i'm humbled and appreciative and grateful on behalf of our students and community for our fantastic staff so that's just a little bit of what's going on to support

039our learners and to support our teachers during virtual learning and throughout this pen i like to turn it over to mr jarcelyn hart associate superintendent of western elementary schools to facilitate a school board principal q and a with these outstanding leaders thank you good evening chairman latif to the school board and dr waltz thank you for another opportunity to facilitate the voices of principals our frontline leaders we welcome your comments and questions at this time chairman latif at your pleasure all right um so let me um let me let me ask um just maybe a first question and i know we got some q a answers and and some sort of um a little bit of academic data but i know our our principal um miss mcdonald mentioned it and it's not necessarily a specific

040question for miss mcdonald maybe an associate or or ms mcdonnell can answer but um she she read off some of the numbers for mastery in math mastery and english where are we in those mastery levels across the elementary division and we'll start with elementary first relative to where we were last year i mean it's one thing to know what we're doing this year but i have no idea how that compares to last year and the number this year means little to me unless i know what happened last year so do we have any data and can and if you don't have it now can the board get that data asap so we can absolutely get that data one of my colleagues nathaniel provencio may have it readily available so i'm going to defer to mr

041provencio and if he does not have it you can rest assured we can provide it for you immediately thank you justin dr latif yes one of the things that we always try to look at is contextual data now obviously last year at this time was a lot different from from this year at this time so we want to make sure that we're always comparing apples to apples oranges oranges and that but what we'll do is we'll continue to be able to to provide math data something that's very very important to us one of the things that we look at is for elementary levels formative assessment data throughout our units we look at it by standard we have concurrent data meetings with our school principals almost weekly on this data refining our instruction aligning our resources

042so they can do the best that they can but yes last year was a different context than this year so and i understand that and some of the data you guys provide in the q a which i do appreciate showed improvement from the fall to now right and so if you have that data that's also great too it wasn't it was very sparse there was no improvement data on math that was provided to the board there was some improvement on pals again it was broken up by grade but not by school i think you guys did a nice job breaking it up by school in the in the fall and i understand it's apples and oranges but this might be a simpleton question because i'm not you know i am a simpleton in some ways

043um but for me in in as i heard from each of your principals we're going to fix the loss of learning right we're going to reconstitute that or re revisit it and do this how do you know what your loss of learning is if you aren't comparing it to last year so what drives that because just the improvement from the fall to now sure there's improvement but how do we know what the loss of learning is which is what we're talking about right i'm using your own principles words how do we know what that is if we're not looking at last year yeah that's a that's a very excellent question i'll give you just a little bit of context that's that's relevant right now at this point in our math instruction for our grades three

044four and five we're starting to get into some units that we did not necessarily have the opportunity to get into so fourth graders now were third graders last year when the pandemic started they lost some of this instructional opportunities because instruction was we were just on survival mode right so we're having to circle back around at this point to make sure that we're spiraling back to make sure that our fourth graders are getting the information that was maybe lost in third grade same with fifth grade and fourth grade so looking at the contextual data about what they didn't have an opportunity to really dig deep in it's starting to come back now good good news is we're getting more students back in we're starting to have our tutoring programs we're starting to have remediation results

045remediation that's coming in so we can try to make up but it is the reality that there was some lost instruction last year and we're doing everything we can to circle back and as we're assessing students we are seeing some some deficits that we need to really double down on and try to prepare for and and i really appreciate that and i don't want anyone to take this any means that i'm picking on you particularly or elementary i want the same answers for middle school which i haven't seen any data i want the same i want to see what grades are happening at the high school level it's not you know i i mean i appreciate the the idea that some are doing better some are doing worse but some doesn't mean anything to me

046i can tell you that before this meeting started there was um some members of the press who saw that we were having an update on academics and they said dr latif what data are they referring to to give you in the update because there's nothing attached here and um and so i answer to the public um you know fortunately or unfortunately and so i have to have some kind of data you know as i look in and how as we you know as you elegantly pointed out you know we are improving and that's great the loss of learning and because we want to create a summer school we want to do something i i hope we have a way to identify how we're how we're losing that learning so i appreciate this this this panel

047and that's really my questions are the same for the middle and the high school i don't need an answer from them but you know i know we had a question about you know how many f students were getting and i was higher in in this we haven't heard anything about that since so i'd like some some data on that i'm going to go next to um miss i'm i'm done so and that's it i'll go to miss williams chairman of t what what's that miss heart i'm sorry would you like to hear any additional information about the data or you're ready to move on to another topic if you have data i think the board over here is looking at me like shaking their head yes we'd like to hear data okay so i believe

048that dr quesada can add to where we are regarding student achievement data dr corsada please good evening dr latif school board members dr walt and every everyone um we certainly can provide you i heard everything you asked dr latifah and we can provide additional information just for quick things that i can say you reference starting with elementary you reference the question about comparison to last year i remember back there was an update um a while ago at mid at mid-year point that did show and compare um quarter one and quarter two this year and last year for k through two and three through five the numbers are lower this year but um like for example in grades um overall at elementary school 76 percent of students were at or above grade level in reading at

049the end of the second quarter and this year it was 68 percent at that point it got closer um than it was at uh first first quarter um also for secondary school for middle and high school the percent of students um getting f's um that we at the end of the second quarter um was in a board update and i can provide additional information in response to that with more detail at the school level as you requested but um the proportions obviously are a little high or higher this year but what happened was the gap um the gap that existed in first quarter um was there and then the slopes of the lines not to get too nerdy on you the slopes of the lines from first quarter to second quarter um didn't get any

050worse so what we've seen in the past is from first quarter to second quarter more students um have traditionally ended up with um with f's then so more more students higher proportion had f's in two or more classes in second quarter than in first quarter this year that's the same um you're seeing similar trends there were more as a starting point right but it seems like it's leveled some and then we can look at that again and i can um we can pull things and we'll work with the level associate colleagues to provide you um lots of information um just a caution moving when we get to third quarter because third quarter so comparisons can happen to last year up until pretty much now because if you recall at the end if this were at

051the point like last year when um things shut down and then grading and everything kind of ceased in the traditional sense and so there'd have to be some caveats for um last year but we'll certainly be looking at that as we end um the third quarter so um the level associates and the principles um have information that they're looking at and certainly um anything that is uh requested by the board can most obviously be provided dr thank you so much and and i'll go on to the next um next board member questions but uh and you don't have to answer this now but we have pals at the elementary level i know we've talked about that are there similar types of tests that we're looking at at the middle and high school level uh and

052what are those if you are using them you don't have to answer that now you can provide that data to the board i saw miss williams was next up for a question um thank you dr latif my questions sort of piggyback on yours um so i just kind of want to start there while we're we're still on this and and i think it's good because this perspective first let me back up i want to thank all of the principals who came um to speak on the panel tonight um always nice to see my store always nice to see my frat um wonderful to hear from you doctor i'm going to pronounce your name wrong i'm sorry can you say it for me please but just think of boynton beach boynton okay i'm horrible at i

053just would rather ask than chop it up but thank you um because i think it's an important perspective and it shows the differences between our schools what services are being implemented it gives the public a little bit more knowledge on the communication that principals have with each other what they're doing internally and i think it's also a great opportunity to publicly acknowledge the staff and everyone who helps run the building and make our student academic progress possible um so i do appreciate that greatly um dr quesada uh in addition to what dr um latif was asking um i think that we'd also like to know sort of as a board and for the public's knowledge because we get asked these questions a lot um you know how do we determine when a student maybe doctor

054said you might not be the right one for this one but how do we determine when a student needs a support um what does that look like at each level elementary middle and high school what what are the types of things that trigger that response is it like a bad report card is it a test is it you know student attitude because the average person and sometimes even a parent doesn't know that information and i think the goal right now is for all of us to do our part to support our students so i think that would be helpful as well and then what are the supports that are implemented once we determine that a student needs some additional support and i know that that varies right at elementary middle and high school but maybe

055some examples ms mcdonald was talking about tier one like what is the difference between a tier one support and a tier two support you know so that we're knowledgeable as board members but also parents when they hear this terminology they would have no clue what is the difference between a tier one or tier two support what does that really look like um also knowing that um recognizing that the the the growth where our students are now is not going to be the same as it were in a normal year right so sort of like we look at inflation right could we look at the comparisons from this year to last year acknowledging that there is there was a loss of learning but i remember a chart that showed very similar growth right in reading for

056elementary but i don't know that the public sort of can digest that something that's very easily digestible in my house we say i say like example four dummies right like the book series so that people can kind of understand yes maybe there's a uh students are reading 64 percent of students are reading it on a grade on or above grade at level but we would expect to see that because of so many months of school lost but the growth pattern is maybe the same from this year to last year like maybe students are growing at the same rate even though they were already behind i think those that's the kind of data that we're really looking for to be able to determine how are we doing how what what are are we really servicing our

057students academically we know it's working but how is it working what does it look like what what could we be doing more and i think this is important too because we are we just were made aware that we're going to hopefully get additional funding we're going to do a robust summer school program when we think about those kinds of things how should we be thinking about that as a board from a funding level as well what what should we be thinking to dedicate our resources to because that's in addition to the superintendent's responsibility that's also something that the public has an expectation of board members so i think that's where from my perspective that's where a lot of these questions are generating from and then um let's see what are the and i'm also interested

058to know sorry also we talked some of the principles talked a little bit about students returning if we could get some more data on how many students in addition have elected to come back fourth quarter right because we'll have that information as well i think some principles principals know but we we don't know as a board has there been a significant amount of growth in students returning to a building for the fourth quarter now that they've had it you know students who are in have had the opportunity to be in are we seeing a decline what what does that look like too so i'm not sure who the best person to answer those questions we don't need them now um i don't need the answers now um but i think those are the more d

059and more depth look at what we're asking for in addition to what's being presented tonight thank you so much williams um i think your questions are spot on and um if you would give us the the green light we'd like to address at least the first two questions at each level and so i'd like to ask our principals if they could prepare to answer these two questions how do we know that our students are not learning and what do we do to support them with filling these learning gaps there will be some similarities and differences from elementary middle to high school but we're going to start with elementary so we're going to ask miss mcdonald if she would share with us how do we know how our youngsters are doing when they're not meeting the

060targets or the standards and then what do we do as a result thank you miss hart um so in the in at bellaire we do have an rti which is response to intervention process that's the formal um the formal language here that we usually use to identify students taking a look at just regular summative data formative data things like that and this current reality we take data like classroom behavior are students participating in their class are they are their cameras on um are they attending school we look at assessment data of course student involvement and engagement answering questions within class we also look at when we look at the attend the assessment data we take a look at where the kid was come march 2020 and then where we would expect them to be as

061they enter into that next grade level and so once we identify the gap that is that student has demonstrated we then tap into the resources of our title 1 math title 1 reading teacher our reading specialist and they begin some intervention some intervention type of supports they pull students in small groups and breakout rooms where they focus on phonic-based skills that a lot of our k2 kids didn't get the opportunity to strengthen from march to september they also work in programs that have support lessons like lexia which isn't a phenomenal program that has really helped build our children um our students chronic phonemic awareness their phonics their their literacy their decoding it is a phenomenal program so that that program that intervention that we put in place for our kids they're on it every day

062about 20 or so minutes a day meeting those reading goals and math we work through programs like dream box where the students are able to um on their particular level be extended or be remediated at their own pace so we we literally um pinpoint those particular areas by just watching and plugging into our kids academic and behavioral data okay so um thank you miss mcdonald um if i could add to what you're saying we we typically have pals tutors just to assist our students who have not passed the pals um screener again the small groups for reading and math we engage our reading resource teachers with small groups and co-teaching with our classroom teachers and we also believe in co-teaching for our esol learners as well as our students with disabilities so those are just

063a few more strategies that we use once we determine that a youngster needs extra support and time with filling some learning gaps let's listen to um dr boynton regarding middle school support thank you mrs hart so um at the middle school level and um at parkside in particular we are we fully embrace um the standard-based um learning and standard based assessment and with that we are constantly on a daily basis doing um formative assessments we're doing quick checks we're checking in with our students we are able to determine during the 90-minute class period um whether a child is becoming close to mastery of the the target that we are learning um our teachers can then allow our students to go into a breakout room and do conferencing with the teacher they can talk about what

064it is that they're missing at the middle school level a lot of times it's lack of focus because we are dealing with tweens so there's a lot of distractions at the middle level um so our grade book is really our data at the middle level and we truly live by our gradebook our gradebook is real data it's authentic data it tells us has our children have our children mastered um the targets that we are working with them we don't need to necessarily use any other data um parksite is one of the schools piloting a mastery connect that we will be hopefully using next year we're using the assessment tools and quizzes that are available in canvas we also uh have been using naiku for a number of years so we have a number of very

065targeted driven assessments that we can provide as benchmarks that we can use to gauge how our students are learning so i think for the for us is very much you that gradebook at parkside we've been doing standard based um learning and grading for um well over six years now and so we have something that we um call pips which are panthers in progress so if any of our students have missed one of the targets that's on a summative assessment or the teachers feel that they need to just give it another try then we call them our panthers in progress and they get an opportunity just as the regulation states to be able to retake either a portion of the assessment or all of the assessment after they have gone through some reteaching and some remediation

066or some additional work for our for our teachers so there is a there's a number of things that we can do monday office hours have been phenomenal to invite children who maybe have been struggling um with the quick checks or the teachers have noticed that the formative assessments are not doing so well um and so they can invite children highly encourage children to come to these um office hours where they are much smaller groups the children are much more comfortable turning their cameras on and they can have even if it is virtual eye contact they can have eye contact and really problem solve with the teachers so so for us it's really embracing standard based learning and grading using that gradebook as our driving force and really using that opportunity to re-teach and reassess our

067children as they are ready for that thank you so much dr boynton um your longevity with with standards-based grading and learning and teaching gives us lots of validity and um we thank you for honing in on that honing in on that particular component of student mastery last let's listen to our principal from the high school and his name is mr bowles and let's let's talk about what we do when our students um when we determine if students are not making adequate progress and how we provide support to fill and close those gaps well first i'd like to celebrate uh what miss mcdonald and dr boynton mentioned all of that is spot on with some of the practices that we're replicating at potomac high school we're looking at formative data we don't wait on tests we

068don't wait on summative data towards the end of a unit uh instead we look at formative assessments all the way throughout so that we can provide intervention as soon as we recognize the need for it we're also taking a look at attendance data and checking out student engagement to make sure that uh we're using that as an indicator for student success to we know that students who don't attend or aren't engaged have less likelihood of doing well on uh formative or summative assessments and and similar to what dr boynton mentioned uh our central hub for all of this is really the gradebook uh we're looking at specific and individual standards we're identifying uh because it can be the case that a student can as opposed to just saying the students doing poorly in this class

069there can be areas where the student is actually doing well and so we want to separate the two we want to identify the areas of strength and then also identify the areas of weakness and really address that i do want to make mention of three different things kind of beyond what miss mcdonald and dr boynton mentioned first i want to mention the collaboration piece that our teachers are doing a fantastic job of at potomac we're not relying on individual teachers identifying individual student needs alone they're doing this in teacher teams and so not only are we able to identify when there are students who have deficit we're able to identify when teams have deficits in other words sometimes it's the case that our teacher teams as reflective practitioners look and say hey look we may

070not have spent enough time on this standard or on this target and so collaboratively we need to work together to address that because this wasn't one teacher here or there this was our entire team where our students showed some deficits and so that's really the power of the plc model that we're implementing is that we're not looking at kind of individual trends we're looking at departmental and subject area trends as well and able to address that as a team as well you could see things like compacting where students who are struggling would all kind of go to one teacher who's providing some individualized feedback and support while students who need to be pushed forward are working with another teacher and we can kind of break it up and go into groups in that way we

071can use programs like ixl to make sure that we're giving prescriptive practice to students they're not just practicing everything all over again from unit three but specifically targets two five and seven are where this student needs support and we can provide them with kind of a prescriptive list and so i'd like to make mention of that i do know that at the high school level and probably across the board but certainly at the high school level we really emphasize that grades are not static uh it's not the case that uh that you know once a student does uh struggle or does poorly on an assessment that that's just in the books and it's been in stone instead our teachers take it upon themselves to to to recognize that to provide interventions and support and to

072give the student further regulation opportunities to retake and to be reassessed on specific areas of deficit i'll mention this last thing and then and then i'll be done uh i will say another strong suit of uh this virtual learning model that we've kind of uh dealt with some growing pains but i think that there is productive pain is that we are also finding new ways to assess student mastery it was the case under traditional learning where you know we kind of assess students traditionally as well multiple choice paper and pencil things like that under this virtual learning model it's really provided us more flexibility than we've ever had instructionally to assess students through project-based learning uh models or or allowing students to record videos explaining allowing students to create presentations to explain their mastery and

073so it's really opened the doorway to a whole new way of assessing student mastery in the first place so use of rubrics really using those grade books in creative ways are are things that we're all kind of um exploring and getting better and better at i think division wide and i'd like to make sense of that too okay um thank you to the three principals for sharing how they resp how they address um students who are not meeting expectations and work even harder or differently to help them do that we may want to mention that the monday office hours are a time when we can extend the instructional day for for students and then many of us have already started the before or after school tutorials or remediation and lastly um mr bowles hit on

074this a little bit we have youngsters that are knocking it out of the park and and so it's it's important that we are providing enrichment and advancement for those youngsters as well great ability yeah so i had ms argenport and then miss jessie miss argan form thank you dr latif um so i'd like to i don't know if this can be a short answer but we don't need a huge long thing about it um in elementary school our teachers are generalists for the most part so they know more about the continuum of you know content from k to one to two to three so they can do something it's called vertical articulation what does that look like in middle and high school and and um short answers please but so so for example my daughter

075was in biology last year and biology stopped on march what 15th or something right so there was no new instruction after that and she got whatever her grade was well presuming she wants to take biology in in college i don't know if she knows all the things she needs to know and whether it's going to be more of a challenge or not um so so that's kind of one side concern because that's a compartmentalized subject but then you have subjects like foreign language or math that connect one year to the next to the next so i just very quickly can you speak to how those kinds of things may work let's start with the um high school this time mr boles how are probably making connections vertically by content and a grade level or i

076i i hate to repeat but i would go back to using those those grade books and depending on the collaboration piece it's important in the grade book it kind of again gives us if a student did struggle in a course or did do well in a course for that matter it does tell us strengths and weaknesses for individual students and so we ask for our teacher teams to make sure that they're communicating uh vertically for students going from one grade to the next or one class to the next uh what student strengths are and what student weaknesses are and then of course beyond the individual student strengths and weaknesses we also look at as a plc or as a as a as a as a group what what are some strong suits that the group

077showed overall on assessments and what are some things that we know uh need to be addressed as they move on to the next class and so our teacher teams work collaboratively to make sure that everybody's getting uh the very best possible as they move from one class to the next and dr boynton similarly please thank you at parkside um not only do we have our collaborative learning teams that are by departments we also have monthly department meetings and so those are where we do our vertical alignment where our three grade levels are talking about their pacing again going back to the grade book the grade book is really um the hub of everything so our teachers are able to show each other um how their students are doing based on the learning targets which are

078clearly identified in the grade books so it's that collaboration over these monthly meetings where they can talk about um my sixth grade teachers can share well we we got we were working on integers and we worked through this but i think you're gonna have to relook at it again next year because we had this percentage so it sees ongoing conversations where they are truly working together and they can assist each other um i have seventh grade teachers that are masters at teaching a certain standard and they're able to share with the sixth grade teachers well have you tried it this way this has worked for us so it's that true level of alignment where we are making sure that there is that constant flow both in math and language arts and our other content areas

079um can i ask a quick follow-up then um is there um do you feel like you're going to need any special extra time or training or materials or resources that um we as a board need to be thinking about in terms of like budgeting for moving forward i know we're already going to do a budget for for now but um just do you see a need for i guess cares money could technically be used for that too um buy more books thank you mr wilk um but uh yeah is there anything that that you off the top of your head think that we can do as a board to support you second thing is i understand teachers have a very hard time with grades getting things out of canvas and into um parent view that

080they're that's very time consuming and i'm really really imploring whoever's job it is to look at this to take that off their plates get some somehow make the computer talk to the other computer whatever it is so that they aren't spending all this extra time transferring grades constantly um that's it in chairman leticia's absence um i am so sorry yes he walked out of here um if there's a response that's fine if not we can think and move on i was going to ask mr guilfoyle if he would speak to the technology integration between canvas and parent view please yes good evening uh um yeah we actually have provided that update and uh to the board last week in the update in a written update um but i'm happy to to go over that the

081essentially the challenge that we face between canvas and the hub integration is one that is simply uh it's never existed and it doesn't exist anywhere in the united states right now in terms of the gradebook integration between those two systems and uh the the challenge that we face is that right now the the hub is our system of record for grading it's the permanent record if you will you know that's a as if you think of it in terms of that is the student's permanent record all their information regarding their data is there and canvas is really our is what we call our learning management system that is that is something that the teachers use for their assignments and for tracking the students on their individual assignments giving them feedback individual assessments as the principles

082have discussed this evening so that's not a permanent record the challenge that we face is that the those two systems uh there's a lot of complexity when you start trying to have those things simply pass information back and forth and there's a lot of room for error and right now neither vendor has a system in place that's a proven system that's a reliable system it's something that they're working towards and again no one in the united states has it right now between those two systems um and so we don't feel that for this year that's going to be feasible there's simply too much room for error as especially as we enter into the last quarter of the year we wouldn't want to introduce a system where the grades are going into their permanent record if

083you will and are wrong or create complexities especially for for transcripts as we're moving towards that season for universities um it is something that we're looking at and something we're working with the vendors on and ideally down the road we understand that yeah it would be great if you could just push one button and it goes through some of the other complexities that are involved is our grades our grading schemes are are complex in prince william county and they vary by grade they vary by level we have some grades that use letters some grades that use numbers and when you start trying to talk about algorithms and having to ensure that you know uh you have an s and s and s and s minus how does the computer average those things out so we

084start to look at those things and the complexities involved the other issue is that there's no uh comment passed back which we know that that's important that we want to make sure that our our teachers are giving that feedback in terms of those comments and so they would still have to go into the the hub and enter those as well i think it's important to remember that for 25 years we've had some sort of a student information system where the teachers have had to keep their grade book and then enter those grades so i understand this year uh you know in an ideal world it'd be great to just have it be able to pass back and forth but this is not necessarily different from past years except that they've had to learn canvas extremely

085rapidly under duress uh i don't think anybody would have in an ideal world said let's roll out canvas in two months um but we did it and um so we're going to continue to work on this and we know that that's a challenge um and it's something that's on our radar but we just feel like it's not really uh the we don't want to create more problems as we move into the last quarter of the year okay great well let me because we we've really got to move a little bit so miss jessie's next i want to make a couple of comments i'm not sure i have a lot of questions first of all congratulations to mrs mcdonald i had the opportunity to work with her and what she won't tell you tonight is that

086she is part of a national video on data use of data and driving instructions so congratulations to you um mr mr bowles and you've mentioned the plc model and i noticed that you talked about the four critical questions which are are children learning how do we know what are we going to do about the ones that have not what are we going to do about the ones that already learned are you trained in the deform model or the plc model uh or are there just elements of it you know i just want to know where you are on that thank you for asking miss jesse yes i am and our uh we actually have a committee a guiding coalition here at the school we were planning on getting uh plc training through solution tree last

087summer but we've had some things changed quickly right around this time last year and so this year we're going to have our guiding coalition trained and everybody already has copies of learning by doing and we're kind of reflecting and circling back to that regularly and and talking more and more about kind of how we can make sure that um it's not a luck of the draw for students as to whether they get a high quality instructional experience or not we don't want it to be just a roll of the dice as to whether you get the very best teaching and learning experience we want to make sure that it's equitable we want to make sure that we're leveraging the collective genius in our teacher teams and uh using that collective genius to make sure that

088every student has an equitable experience and that our students who get a b in algebra one in mr bowles class are comparable to the students who get a b in miss mcdonald's algebra one class so things that we're working towards we're certainly not a finished product at potomac but that's the direction that we're going well thank you very much i also wanted to i sort of when i read this i thought that we were going to get more academic information so i just want to clarify a couple of things some things that i think are important for the board to to follow up on one is the af students the students that we talked about that are who were a students and suddenly became f students i think dr chief talked about that and we

089talked i think at some point we're really going to need a report on that the when you disaggregate the data uh i'm interested in knowing the learning of virtual kids versus those who are in school learning is there a difference in that uh disaggregation of african-american versus hispanic uh reading versus math and also i'm i have a question i was in a school yesterday because i'm you know i'm free now i'm out i'm away from virtual i'm out of my zoom room and being at that school yesterday i heard the principal say well good luck on your sols can you guys tell me where where are we maybe dr walters someone else or someone else could answer this question are kids taking sols and i heard and i also heard that some students who are

090virtual may take a different format versus those that are in school and how does that monitor can you just give me an update on where we are with the sol testing thank you dr casada would you please um update the board regarding the um status of learning assessment sure mrs jesse i'll give you a real quick reader's digest right now and we can provide some additional information um along with what's just to let you know what's gone to you know families and schools so the federal and state governments are requiring um standardized assessments and in virginia those assessments are the standards of learning assessments and so um those assessments have to be administered in person and the expectation is that um students take those um however there's the understanding um from the state that um

091there may be students because they're virtual um whose parents um aren't going to have them come in and take the test because of covid and that's completely understandable and there's no penalty for the student on that there's technical ways they what they call it and what that means but students and schools by the way are not penalized for that at the high school level um there's some options for students to defer taking exams to the following year because high school students need to earn verified credits for graduation so there can be more detail on this and the state keeps evolving and when you've just mentioned mrs jesse about students who are virtual taking a different form of a test the state literally just started developing these remote assessments that can be used to gauge student

092progress but they won't be part of any type of accountability system because they're they're parallel to and similar to the sols but not exactly the same but they are not even yet built they're literally getting done right now so um we were planning to provide as we got a little bit more on what those look like to provide you with more information we can certainly do that but um that's that's where it stands and i want to commend our schools particularly our high schools who've already had students testing because the the sol writing window is occurring as we speak and our schools have done herculean things to provide opportunities for the students in the building and remember high school students for the most part haven't been there very long as well as working with collaboratively

093collaboratively um with offices like transportation for students who are virtual but come and take those assessments perhaps on a monday so um that's what's happening right now and as it's gearing up for the larger scale we'll provide additional um information um i hope that's that's the quick that's the quick version okay uh the opt out how do you have the number of students that have opt out and what is what's the date for the tests okay so um there are many many different dates for this test the state has been very good at providing extended windows and we've taken full advantage of extending windows to provide lots and lots of opportunities in school set schedules and sols schools can set multiple dates for individual tests there's not a set date for any one exam in

094terms of what the state calls refusals that's the terminology they use or people have their students not test that's still coming in and so that's not something i have that i can speak to at this moment but that's because the bulk of the testing hasn't occurred yet there's the writing testing that's going on in high school and there were some small numbers of tests for students that were based on last year students who needed tests in what they call a fall administration um but the bulk of the assessment for sol is happening uh later in the school year and um we will collect and provide that information but those decisions for the most part have not yet been made and confirmed but that's conversations that are ongoing um and that information once it's once we

095have it can be provided uh i want to thank the principals for sharing with us so dr waltz and the staff uh i would like to see uh we've had everybody in this room but teachers and i i don't know if you're going to do a town hall with teachers but i would like to have some teachers talk about what they're seeing in their classrooms because you know i've been a principal before and i know what i said everything is wonderful in my school and uh you know that's what we do but at the same time and you know it's this top-down bottom-up kind of thing that we have to have going i'd like to see some teachers uh involved and i would like for them to talk about their challenges and solutions i'd like

096for them to address the question of where do we go from here i'd like for them to address the question of what do we do differently what have we learned and what will we do differently i don't know when we can uh provide that but i would like to see some teachers uh in this board room because that i've just you know my experience and many experience of people on this board they are such professionals and at the end of the day they're the people who do the work so i'd like to see some teachers in the boardroom if possible down the road and then finally i asked to have the equity report card data presented at some point so i'd like to see that also presented thank you thank you miss jessie miss wall

097thank you um dr latif i my question is i guess i'll begin with a comment i i agree with my colleagues who have asked for or would request more specific data from all grade levels to show the extent of learning loss if any so we can assess the extent of what we will need to do to help all of our students coming going forward that's going to be a very important decision starting you know remediation starts now i mean it started yesterday it's been going on the whole year but we have the summer we have into the next fall so if we could get data [Music] to get an assessment of where we are and and i appreciate dr boynton what you were saying about you know the importance of the gradebook and i would

098be interested not also what ms jesse said you know the a's to f's i would think that would be a very important number but i also think that it would be very important to look at a's to b's b's to c c's to d's and d's to f's because i think that we if we look at that we might see that we could see some trends you know students who were a students and maybe that now they're not you know maybe they're b students you know just et cetera we i would like to know that if if i think that um there isn't a problem then then great i mean well if the data shows that we're doing okay then great but if the data shows us where we need to hone in on tailoring

099our remediation to actually help every kid not just some kids but i think every student is going to experience at least my suspicion is every student is going to experience some remediation or some loss of learning this year your high flyers and you know kids that need extra support so i reiterate and support my colleagues in requesting more specific data that's disaggregated for virtual and in-person perhaps specific subgroups of students like ms jesse was saying and my other and my colleagues as well i really support that and to the question of you know the data that we have this year obviously it's going to be apples to oranges right and last year we stopped at mar march 13th but maybe we could compare our data this year knowing that it's really different with historical data

100like generally speaking where are middle school students at this time of year historically not that i mean obviously it's going to be different because we're in a pandemic and we all know that but that might help us understand the bigger picture like what we're up against and and make a difference for our children so that they don't have years and years of learning loss as sometimes data shows from historic events like katrina and things like that you know sometimes you know kids never really recover the data says a lot of times kids never really recover so i just don't want that to be the case for our kids so i i guess that's not really a question but that would be a comment if we can start looking at that data disaggregate the data and

101really see what that data is going to tell us as we move forward so that we can be really effective i don't know if anybody wants to comment on that but thank you for listening to what i had to say and thank you very much principals for being here i really appreciate your taking the time to come and talk with us and share your insights and what's going on in your schools thank you mrs wall we'll be certain to collaborate with the level associates and the office of student learning to get some more specificity regarding the student achievement data wonderful thank you um okay miss ralston did you have anything to add okay okay great no i heard a lot of good things okay lots of good things and how our students are working after

102all the time that they've had off so i think that we are going to be okay that's all thank you okay um we asked a lot of questions and i know that's um we really appreciate the time dr waltz back to you okay thank you chairman lady thank you to our panelists and to miss heart mr verbencio and that concludes our academic update outstanding okay next we'll go to um come on 1501 the the annual comprehensive annual financial report the kafir which comes from the external auditors and i think that's mr wallingford correct or dr waltz remember great should i begin sure go for it mr walker this is my favorite part of the year dr latif members of the board and dr walt uh tonight before we get started i'd like to briefly uh

103recognize a couple of folks who made this work possible kathleen addison our acting director finance renegade passin our supervisor of accounting services and the rest of the staff the office of finance have worked incredibly hard this year i just like to to thank those folks for the work they do and uh mentioned to lisa thorne we're anxiously awaiting your return so uh tonight i'd like to introduce our external auditors a gentleman named mr greg miller he's a director with cherry becker and holland our external auditors uh he and his colleague laura beckler a manager for the firm will be making this presentation this evening greg go ahead thank you mr lockford uh to the board i appreciate the opportunity to present the results of our audit for the fiscal year and the june 30 uh

1042020 uh you should have slide deck which is being presented and we'll go through that in the next five please so our next slide covers the engagement services before we get too far in the details i i did want to let the board know that we did present uh in detail um a lot more detail we're talking here to the joint audit committee back in january that included board members as well to go through the total contract with prince william county that includes the audit for prince william county public schools but that contract includes a financial statement on it as well as compliance aspects and also some other deliverables including examinations and agreed-upon procedures from a financial audit perspective those audits include not just the overall county but also includes prince william county schools under

105a separate contract we also audit the prince william county student activity funds and then within the school's comprehensive manual financial report there's a discretely presented component unit which is the prince william county public schools foundation that's included within the comprehensive annual financial report but it is not audited by jerry becker that audit that entity is audited by other auditors and we make reference to their opinion within our opinion on the overall financial statements included in your comprehensive annual financial report from a compliance perspective our audit has to be performed not only under the generally accepted auditing standards except in the united states but also an additional layer of auditing standards known as the governmental auditing standards issued by the comptroller in the united states so that is a layer of review on internal controls and

106compliance with items that might have the material impact to the financial statements with the nature of federal funding we also have to perform audit procedures over the expenditure of federal awards in corners with title ii of the code of federal registrations that's the uniform guidance and then also as being a a board within the commonwealth of virginia we have to follow certain audit specifications as outlined by the auditor of public accounts some of those specifications include additional deliverables one of which is an examination and that examination is testing the census data that's provided by the schools to the virginia retirement system that census data then goes into the actuarial analysis on determining the amount of pension and oped liabilities that the school board then records on the face of their financial statements within the comprehensive

107annual financial report so we have to perform testing over that data and then lastly as part of the school's disbursement process the school cuts checks on behalf of the counties so the county has asked for an agreed upon procedures on that memorandum of understanding and we do those agreed upon procedures between the procedures that are agreed upon between uh the county and the schools as a separative next slide please so within our audit service deliverables uh there's a couple reports within the comprehensive analysis financial report i don't know if mr wallhard had a copy of that report for you but it's a fairly thick document and it does take a significant amount of time for school staff to compile that information and then get it to us to to review and test so i do

108want to appreciate uh a sudden just acknowledge what mr wonker was saying and thanks to that whole team uh we did have to transition everything uh from a typical on-site uh testing environment to where everything was done remotely so that required some items that might not historically have been in electronic format being converted to an electronic format in order for us to complete the audit so from a financial audit standpoint uh within that comprehensive annual financial report there's multiple sections there's an introductory section financial section and within the financial section there's required supplementary information as well as other supplementary information and our audit is designed to provide different levels of assurance depending on those sections so the first report our auditor's report is a full opinion is what you think of when you think of

109an audit and that covers the basic audit or the basic financial statements as well as the notes to the basic financial statements and we designed our tests in order to provide sufficient audit evidence to base our opinion off of and as of um for the fiscal year end of june 30 uh we had a clean opinion or it's an unmodified which is a clean opinion what the type of opinion you're looking for also within uh the financial section is supplementary information our audit procedures are not quite as um intense on that information uh but the information that's used to make that info to develop that information and supplementary information has been subjected to our audit procedures so based upon the the scope of the testing that was performed from that data we can provide it

110in relation to opinion so we have a clean opinion that the information contained within the supplementary information section is in agreeance with the financial statements in all material respects and then the last section which is uh includes the introductory section as well as the required supplementary information in the statistical section because our audit does not involve performing testing over that those sections our opinion does not provide any assurance and we don't have an opinion on that information again as i mentioned the education foundation or spark for um prince william schools was audited by other auditors so our report does um reference those auditors uh for their opinion on those set of financial statements as i mentioned there's an examination on the census data provided to the virginia retirement system and we had a unmodified or

111clean opinion on the accuracy and completeness of that information provided to the virginia retirement system and then lastly we also completed um the it says in process on here so uh price it updated this from when we changed um board dates from from the previous month but we have issued uh our agreed-upon procedures over the mou for the disbursements disbursement of cash on for the for the schools next slide from a compliance standpoint as i mentioned we have to perform our audit under government auditing standards the government honor standards requires us to uh assess internal controls of over financial reporting for any particular entity but not for the purposes of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of those interior controls the purpose of assessing those is to help us design audit procedures that are appropriate

112in the circumstances and then also we look at compliance with certain provisions of laws regulations contracts and grants that could have a direct material impact on developing the amounts and disclosures included within the financial statements so as a result of those procedures we identified we did not identify any material weaknesses in internal controls and there was no uh reportable instances of non-compliance that would be required from a gas perspective i also mentioned that we have to perform a few additional procedures that are specifications issued by the auditor public accounts those are particular certain provisions of laws and regulations specific to virginia so as a result of that testing we did identify um certain issues from a conflict of interest uh filing form perspective so we did have a reportable instance of non-compliance as it relates

113to the console conventions and then lastly from a single audit perspective or the audit of the expenditure of federal awards uh again we have to evaluate internal controls over compliance for the purpose of reporting on compliance but again not for the effectiveness of internal controls and then we also have to examine evidence in order to support that the compliance requirements were met however since we are cpas and we are not attorneys it is not a legal opinion uh that there is no non-compliance but as a result of our testing we are anticipating no reported material weaknesses or not compliance related to the school programs and i say that's anticipated because that one has not fully finished yet the single audit is done in connection with the county's single audit um testing so we're still working

114through on the county side of some of those items next slide please so these next couple slides are required communications as i mentioned we went through these uh in fairly well detailed with the joint audit committee but laura is going to walk through the rest of these communications with you tonight thanks greg and good evening so these are as greg mentioned the required communications that we are required to communicate to those charged with governance at the conclusion of our audit um so this year the school board did not adopt any new accounting policies during the year due to covid there was a gatsby statement that was issued that delayed the implementation of several new accounting standards delayed a year which will go over those that will be effective for the upcoming years at the end

115of this slide there are estimates within some of the financial statement line items those amounts don't necessarily tie directly to an invoice or a cash receipt or a check we do review those estimates and compare to historical trends or industry norms and then we do test the reasonableness of these estimates some of these estimates do include the allowance for doubtful accounts which is based on management's estimate of the collection based on historical trends for those customers and then also pension and opeb liabilities those are calculations that are completed by actuaries who are professionals in that field and we do not compute those calculations however we do compare the assumptions that they're using to compute those liabilities and compared to industry norms and then we also test underlying source documentation also capital asset useful lives are

116an estimate which is management's estimate of how long the capital asset is expected to last pollution remediation liabilities are also on the financial statements and that's an estimate of how or what the cost will be to close those out and then risk management claim liabilities and compensated absences are also estimates included in the financial statements and those are also based on historical trends we are required to report and compile any adjustments that are made during the audit as a result of our procedures and we're pleased to report that this year there were no such adjustments that came about through our audit procedures there are there were no disagreements with management that arose during the course of our audit nor were there any difficulties encountered in performing the audit this year as greg mentioned we just

117want to recognize the finance team renee and taft specifically for all the hard work that they put in to the audit this past year we can't audit what we don't have so we really do appreciate their cooperation and providing things timely and and completely as well in some cases management may consult with other accountants on auditing or accounting matters similar to obtaining a second opinion on certain situations and we're required to report our knowledge of any instances and to our knowledge we are not aware of any consultations that occur during the year with other accountants we have requested and obtained a representation from management that was signed as of the report date january 25th 2021 which that is management taking responsibility of the financial statements and providing that what they gave us for performing our

118audit was complete and accurate to their knowledge we greg and i and jerry becker as a firm are independent to the school board and appearance and in fact which helps put weight behind our opinion if we weren't independent then it wouldn't mean as much when we issue our opinion and then lastly as i mentioned the gatsby statement 95 was issued in 2020 which postponed the effective date a year or more um just giving entities a longer time to implement certain accounting changes so the two accounting change or the two accounting standards that will be have the largest effect on the school board is gasby 84 which deals with fiduciary activities and that will be effective for the current year fiscal year 2021 and this implementation will change the layout of where certain activity is reported

119within the financial statements the biggest consideration for the school board is going to be around the student activity funds and where they are reported currently they're reported as an agency fund but going forward after the implementation of this standard they're going to be reported as a governmental fund and they're going to be on the accrual basis additionally gatsby 87 which deals with leases i think we've talked about this for a couple years now it will be effective for fiscal year 2022 and currently we report leases as capital or operating however going forward when the standard is implemented it will effectively eliminate the operating leases and therefore be therefore will be a right of use asset and liability on the financial statements for all leases we want to thank you for your time this evening and

120open it up to any questions that you may have on the next slide is our contact information so feel free to contact us via email if you have any further questions after tonight any questions miss jesse i'm not sure what my question is because you know i just got this huge book and uh you know one of my concerns as a board to be honest with you is that you get this information i do read the materials when i get them so for me i i would just like to have the information earlier so that i can read and ask questions that are related to the information the one question i do have and i hope it's an intelligent question and i know mr wallerford will be kind to me and say that it's an

121okay question lily am i in slide i think it's the second slide where you talk about your financial audits and you say that is this report a report of your services or is this report a report of your results that's the first question and if you're looking at in that green area you're looking at activity funds are you auditing only activity funds and it's probably somewhere in this book that answers that question are we looking at school activity funds or are we looking at other type of funds in the county so mrs jesse this year go ahead mr miller all right slide two the intent of slide two is is to outline what we were engaged to do so those that's the scope of our services uh that are being provided to prince william schools

122um on slide three is the results of those services and the results are also included in that big document that you had in your hands in regard to the student activity funds that is an engagement that was procured separately that one is procured by the school board we happen to also do that work as well that is a separate set of financial statements that are issued separately of the comprehensive annual financial report but the amount in there in that student activity fund financial statements are also included as an agency fund within the comprehensive annual financial report so in terms of your audit of activity funds at all the school levels what were your findings so we we had a i don't have all that information readily available in front of me we did issue a

123report that had some best practice uh recommendations for management in regards to the student activity funds um but the the scope of this service was or this communication was on the comprehensive financial report but i can get you that information yeah i just know that with all those schools that activity funds are something that you really have to be very careful about and that there are generally some findings i was on that audit committee for a while and i know that there were some findings there so when used in this slide i'm looking at this slide and the thing that hit me it says our opinion on a 220 financial statement is unmodified or a clean opinion dated january 25th 2021 so excuse my naivete but what does it mean what does that mean unmodified

124or clean opinion sure so the professional terminology in in the audit world is unmodified and that means our opinion is clean if you will so that's what you're looking for uh if we were to have issues we could have a modified opinion which would mean that your financial statements are in all material respect and compliance with generally accepted accounting principles except for the pieces that we don't think they are and we would spell that out in our report you could also have an adverse opinion or disclaimer of opinion so adverse is saying nope it's all wrong and disclaimer saying there's not enough evidence for us to even reach a conclusion on what our opinion should be so unmodified is the professional term for the type of report that you're looking for on your financial statements

125okay thank you very much and i really would have liked to have had this report a little bit earlier because i could have read this and asked i hope i asked intelligent questions but thank you miss uh williams um thank you chairman of the team so i'm sure it's pretty well known i'm very slow at digesting financial information i say that all the time moments like these i miss mr toronto um so in addition to what miss jesse asked for um for look at report on student funds one thing i don't think we talk about much is a spark report and i noted that you don't audit spark so maybe mr wallingford if you could um refresh at least my memory on what our involvement is in as far as the school division board where

126the clear lines are for spark and and how that impacts us and um if we should or should not be looking at those audit reports as well so thank you mrs willem williams excuse me uh spark is uh uh technically a separate entity that have their own uh financial operation and they have their own audits done every year mr miller gets that information he incorporates it uh into their audit work and it's incorporated into the cafe the annual financial statements that you've received that we issue they have a couple of employees who actually sit on the third floor sit in this facility and they provide support and in some cases funding to support the school division so go ahead mrs williams i was just going to say do we do we look at those do

127we have a copy of those reports can we look at those to see if if they're sharing space i would imagine that there would be some overlap in some kind of way that i am not 100 knowledgeable because i don't live in the finance world but maybe it could be explained to us how that impacts us at a later date i'm sure we don't need to have a detailed discussion right now um but what that how that impacts us as a school division and things of that nature so that's uh that's information that we can certainly provide and what i would say is that we do receive their financial statements from their auditors and incorporate it into this so although you don't have that information in front of you right now it's something that we

128do get thank you i appreciate it yes so you know miss williams brings up a good point and i think greg and or laura and we talked about this in the joint audit committee and i can't remember if we did or we did it offline or um in the committee but gatsby 85 the one we the we delayed because of the pandemic i think it's 85 talks about the student funds but my concern was our question was are we going to have to um treat sparks foundation differently with the new gatsby no so we did talk about this a little bit in the joint audit committee that was a virtual uh setting as well so gas 384 which has to do with fiduciary activities will not or should not have um a significant impact on

129how spark is treated so spark is a component unit and it's not i don't believe it would meet the definition of a fiduciary activity student activity funds also would possibly not meet that definition so because of that it currently sits as a fiduciary fund within the comprehensive annual financial report and with the implementation of gas v84 that will move into the governmental funds um and be recorded there so essentially it's just it's a geography move within the set of financial statements um it's not much of a change from what they're accounting for or necessarily how the numbers are being reported it's just moving what type of fund it it lives in within the overall financial statements um so i hope that addresses your question yeah no i think that does and then um i don't

130see any other questions here on the calf or i first of all and miss jesse good point just so you know cherry beckert is engaged with us in a year-long process regularly and so this is the report we have to provide it to the board regularly once a year but you may feel free to look through it now and and they have their numbers and phone numbers there you you are entirely uh uh empowered to give them a call and ask them any questions at any time regarding the report so this is the presentation of the report certainly for anyone to look at i i want to thank cherry becker um dr yes miss williams i stand by my earlier comment that when we come to a board meeting and there's a report and there

131is a full report booklet i think for me personally as a board member i'd like to have it beforehand because i think i really could have asked for more questions and and just so you know and i was on the audit committee earlier and i know that they make this report but the slides the slides were more of a summary so i'm just asking for no i 100 agree with you and we'd like to get that information i'm not saying we won't do that but what i want to tell you is that you're always entitled to go through it we could bring cherry becker back for another presentation if there are further questions at any time that is the engagement in the service slide that you saw in in in i haven't seen this level

132of enthusiasm for the external audit in a long time and so um greg and laura we thank you i think it's important for the community to recognize that cherry beckert has been with us working with both the county government and and with us and they provide the external reviews of frankly dr waltz's award-winning finance department that continues to win awards and we don't win those awards unless we get these clean opinions that are consistent regular and consis at least the four years i've overseen this have no significant material weaknesses so we continue to appreciate the hard work of our finance team dr waltz and and thank you all for the hard work you do to help us provide to the public the important data they need to know that that we are handling their money

133responsibly dr waltz you have anything to add no thank you but i appreciate the report and i'm again impressed with how our financial team manages all of our money thank you thank you dr waltz wonderful mr wallingford i think or dr waltz i think we now move to the next item on the agenda which is the uh fiscal year 2022 budget cip approval thank you and i'll turn it over to uh actually the chair to call for a vote please right so at this point we have um you know done a number of work sessions um i think members have gotten their questions answered at this point um i would like to call for a vote on the fiscal year 2022 budget unless there's any further questions or concerns that we might have here at

134this point as seeing no oh i have to read a conflict of interest statement oh yeah oh mr wilk has to read a conflict of interest statement yes please mr wilson yes potomac member thank you chairman latif as i do every year uh pursuant to virginia's conflict of interest act i'm informing the public that my wife is employed as a teacher in prince william county schools but i'm able to participate fairly in this transaction which applies to all prince william county school employees thank you at this point i'd ask the board to oh we need her someone needs to offer the motion mrs argoport yes please let's do that first mr chairman yes i should i move that the prince william county school board won approved the fiscal year 2022 cip and the fiscal year

1352022 school budget in the total amount of one billion six hundred sixty million two hundred fifty three thousand seven hundred and twelve dollars and further to approve approve the revenue sharing agreement between the school board prince william county school ask pardon me the prince william board of county supervisors and the prince william county school board that provides 57.23 percent of general county revenues to be transferred to the school division for the operations of fiscal year 2022 and further three direct the superintendent to forward the requested school budget by fund totals to the prince william board of county supervisors and further four request the prince william board of county supervisors to approve and appropriate the fiscal year 2022 school budget by lump sum appropriation in the amount of 1 billion 660 million 253 hundred and twelve

136dollars by fund totals as in previous years we have a second mr chairman i would like to second thank ms sargopour for reading that because i hated it last year yes miss williams seconds the motion at this point i should ask for any discussion as seeing no hands up for a discussion at this point i will call for the vote please put the vote up ms and miss ralston how do you vote on this year's fiscal 22-22 budget yes miss ralston votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous commotion is eight yes unanimous unanimous passage of the fiscal 2020 2022 budget and cip thank you to our finance staff dr walls congratulations on another incredible effort and uh and i i just think a budget loaded with really important and exciting things that will help

137us continue to move this school division furth forward what we'll like to do is at this point mr wallingford if you want to or dr waltz want to present the fiscal 2021 year-end spending approval and then we'd like to take a break for about 10 minutes yeah mr wallingford latif members of the board and dr waltz i have no presentation this evening on this topic just uh just a few brief remarks uh our forecast for available uh year-end spending uh totals uh 223 million six hundred thousand dollars twenty three million six hundred thousand dollars i wanna provide a little context on that number it sounds like a very large number but there are two three things i'd like to share the first is in prior years we've seen numbers at year-end like this this is

138our forecast for what we expect at year end forecasts made as of the end of december in prior years we've seen that number from as small as eight or nine million dollars to as much as 34 million dollars the 34 million dollar number was a function of the great recession the years 2007 8 9 and the division's plan on actually saving money over time so that we could come out of the recession from a financial perspective on kind of an easy landing as opposed to a crash landing this number is large it's not as large it's a third less than the largest we've experienced in the past even 10 years the other thing i'd share with you is that one of the reasons the number is as large as it is is because when we

139came back to school we experienced an enrollment loss or reduction enrollment from the forecast of about 27 2800 students one would expect that that would cost us a substantial amount of money from the state and what happened was the state held us harmless in that enrollment loss the problem with that enrollment loss funding that no loss funding was that we were uncertain of that until just a month ago and so what we what we didn't do is we didn't plow that money back into the schools which we could have done in august or september had we known so we find ourselves with a pretty substantial amount of money that will be available to us at the end of the year the one thing that staff would recommend at this point is that we like we

140have in many years prior added three hundred and thirty three thousand three hundred and thirty three dollars to the sinking fund for our 800 megahertz system that we will have to replace in several years okay mr crow and his team will put in extraordinarily expensive devices on our buses and in the hands of security folks and we're moving we're we're approaching the point where we'll have enough money to do that staff also would recommend that the balance of that uh 23 million dollars be reserved until the middle of april when we have a better understanding of what's going to happen with tax rates and what our revenue picture actually will be coming from the county thank you any questions at this point emotions in order i forgot to ask that at the beginning mrs argapoor

141this item's on for action it is 1503. mr chairman i move that the prince william county school board approved the fiscal year 2019 year end 2021. oh it says 2019 here sorry 2021 year-end spending per the detachment any do i have a second mr chairman miss williams next second any discussion further discussion questions concerns thoughts um i think somebody mr stevens somebody's on oh well okay that's great so at this point please vote uh miss ralston how do you vote yes miss ralston votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed okay wonderful um so uh thank you for that folks thank you again we will take a break um and return at nine five zero nine fifty thank you okay could everyone please return to their seats and we will move on to

142sixteen right 1601 we have the student representative caroline silvera one of our student representatives joining us this evening here live and in person from hilton high school miss caroline thank you guys okay so i'd first like to start by seconding miss jesse's request to the superintendent and his staff for including teachers in a panel i know that i'm not a voting member of the board but i spend every day in a virtual classroom with my teachers and i've seen their struggles their accomplishments with online learning so i think it's really important that we do put teachers at the forefront and include them in the conversation all right so it is a very busy time of the year as we get closer to the end of the school year students become increasingly concerned about things such

143as graduation prom ap exams and finals i'm going to address all these concerns but first i'd like to begin with some good news so my friend and fellow student senator sairell greer from garfield high school he recently was named a jefferson scholar at the university of virginia yes we are so so proud of him and for those that don't know the jefferson scholarship program is a full scholarship a full tuition scholarship to the university of virginia and it's highly selective so i know that he's making prince william proud prince william county proud and definitely the student senate all right today governor northam announced new new guidance for outdoor graduation events according to his office graduation events held outdoors will be capped at five thousand people or thirty percent of the venue capacity events held indoors

144may have up to five hundred people or thirty percent of the venue capacity he releases guidance early to help high schools plan graduation with these new regulations socially distance outdoor graduation ceremonies possibly on football fields of local high schools or college campuses are possible doable and should be looked at as a first option my colleague ashley menjavar wrote a letter in favor of outdoor graduation ceremonies and i support her statement kobet is still present but cases are going down social distancing is possible outside mask will be required and more virginians are getting the covet vaccine every day additionally this year we have already put on in-person events that have been safe such as in-person learning s.a.t testing and athletic games which can have up to 250 people there i am asking that principles administration and

145central office are transparent and include student voice and plans regarding graduation prom and end of the year testing additionally a countywide graduation guidance plan from the superintendent's office would be appreciated just so everybody's on the same page finally in regards to final examinations students are asking for leniency and understanding because the school year has been unique we cannot administer final exams the same way that we have before i understand that the office student learning has put a proposal for but i have not seen it so here are some options that the student center has come up with one finals can only help a student's grade not hurt it two they are optional completely three finals are project-based only four finals are optional and can only help a student's grade we are open to providing additional

146student feedback and have been working with principals at each of our individual schools regarding this matter thank you all for your time and consideration i know this was a lot but i'm happy to follow up with anyone who is interested or has any questions wonderful wonderful wonderful thank you very much next up is dr walt's superintendent's time thank you very much good evening again i would like to begin tonight with a moment of silence for our three staff members who passed away from covet 19 since it's been about a year since this all started uh dinorah mahaya custodian of potomac view elementary floor cervantes food and nutrition services employees employee at woodbridge middle school and richard zuckerneck math teacher at garfield high school please join me in a moment of silence i would also like

147to share a video that was on national broadcast jack jake tapper from cnn broadcasting before we go today we want to remember just one of the more than 528 thousand lives lost decoded in the us today we're remembering richard zuckernick who was a math teacher at garfield high school in woodbridge virginia and had battled covet for the past few months his principal announced his death in a letter to parents last night zuckernek was known for inspiring even the most reluctant of students in math and in engineering and he had a really cool job outside of class serving as an umpire for a little league world series regional tournament to the students and staff at garfield high and to the zuckernick family made his memory be a blessing so that that was a very very nice

148national tribute and i did go out to garfield last week and i had an opportunity to talk with the principal and several of the staff members there i talked with the person he team teaches with and also the math department chair who are both very very close to him and they reiterated exactly what you just heard even the most unwilling student he could captivate and draw them into mathematics and help them to enjoy it and also to be successful i also want to take a moment just to recognize the fact that we've lost several hundred people in prince william county and across the united states and we certainly realize that there are parents and loved ones and grandparents and we all know someone who has suffered or who has passed away so this tribute is

149meant to represent all of us uh in in terms of a tribute to any one of us who have suffered or lost their lives to covet so a year into the pandemic it's become clear how crucial it is to ensure equity in education march is the virginia school boards association equity and education month as a division we have been working hard to use equity as a lens when making decisions check out this video for more details march is equity and education month in prince william county public schools in 2017 pwcs began addressing equity in our schools through intensive professional development and training modules the result understanding of and accountability for equitable practices at every level of the division pwcs formed the superintendent's advisory council on equity composed of teachers administrators parents students and community members

150to provide an equity lens for issues facing the division such as funding allocations based on need and access to resources school equity teams and partners like the virginia department of education culturally responsive curriculum specialists and parents and community leaders continue to ensure that equity inclusion and cultural competency reaches all parts of the classroom the pandemic provided new opportunities to put our equity training to work schools provided supplies for virtual and in-person learning devices are available to every student internet access is available to every student meals are provided to all students for free and students can access materials inside and outside the classroom as for the future of equity in pwcs there is more work to be done by continuing to look at education through an equity lens we can address bias promote cultural competency and

151truly value diversity in our school division [Music] so i'm looking forward to seeing all the great things that are going to be done across our school division during equity month our teachers and staff members continue to shine during the pandemic i would like to recognize dr patrick ware music teacher at fitzgerald elementary school who has recently been named vice president of diversity equity and inclusion for the american orth show work association or aosa the new position will oversee the important work to elevate the importance of identifying and supporting diversity equity and inclusion throughout all aspects of aosa's national programs i would also like to thank our teachers and staff who have continued to successfully return students in person who have chosen to do so this has been a tremendous team effort by all our schools

152and employees including more than 225 central office and retirement opportunity program employees also known as roppers who volunteered to work in our schools to cover for staff who were out due to reactions to the second vaccinations our school division also continues to earn awards during a pandemic the association of school business officials international has awarded pwcs with the meritorious budget award for the 2020 21st school budget year this is the 23rd consecutive year that pwcs has earned this award and pwcs was the first school division in virginia to earn this award in 1997 this award recognizes best practices for budget presentations for school districts congratulations to john wallingford associate superintendent for finance risk management and his staff for their continuous outstanding work in this area and tonight couldn't be a better night than an 8-0

153unanimous vote on the school budget and i would like to personally thank the school board for their endorsement of the budget a very exciting way to end my 16th year thank you is that it dr waltz yes sir okay okay thank you thank you very much um for that report next we'll go to uh the superintendent's update on the pandemic dr waltz thank you again and as you know we've been providing these pandemic updates for the past few months during board matters on the agenda at the request of the chairman as the school board considered the return to in-person learning following my update this evening ms denise hebner associate superintendent for special education and student services who along with her team will provide further details on the latest health information now that all grades have

154returned in person with a virtual option and the decisions have been operationalized at the request of the school board chairman further pandemic updates after tonight will continue to be provided in our weekly email covid19 health updates and other written briefings for the school board on an as needed basis pwcs is still waiting uh for further information from the virginia department of education on the specific amounts that may be available to local school divisions under the american rescue plan recently signed into law pwcs will have to apply to receive the available funds for approved purposes as these details become available we will share them all with the school board and at this time let me couple more quick things here i'm pleased tonight to announce that for those pwcs employees who currently have students receiving scholarships

155to attend alphabets we will be extending those scholarships through the remainder of the school year additionally the county is taking under consideration the same extension for county employees and citizens who are also receiving the alpha best scholarships the covid19 dashboard remains on the pwcs website and will continue to be updated the numbers of covid19 cases in pwcs are dynamic and as of monday march 15th from march 7th to 13th we had 49 confirmed cases of students and staff equal to the previous week february 28 through march 6 when we had 71 cases i will now turn it over to miss hebner for a further health update this evening date this evening's presentation is streamlined and includes an update on the virginia department of education the virginia department of health guidance community transmission update and a

156review of school impact data next slide please on this slide you will see sorry next slide when the slide gets here on this slide you will see a comparison of the newly updated cdc guidance with the new updated virginia department of health and virginia department of education guidance that was released on march 9th this guidance is titled the revised interim guidance for reopening pre-pre-k through 12. this new document incorporates and replaces the interim guidance for reopening for pre-k-12 schools that came out in january the phase guidance for virginia schools that was last updated in july the interim vdh guidance for mitigation measures in the k-12 setting which was last updated in october and it also incorporates elements of the cdc k-12 operational strategy that was released in february so at this time you may be

157asking yourself what guidance should we follow the virginia department of health recommends that the cdc operational strategy be considered including the revised indicators and threshold it's best used together with the revised interim guidance for the pre-k 12 school opening school reopening both the cdc and the new virginia guidance stress adherence to all mitigation strategies and that it is critical no matter what the level of community transmission that we implement these with fidelity the virginia department health recognizes that universal masking for persons ages five and older in schools is required per executive order 72 and with the vdoe they strongly encourage masks during play and sports as far as distancing the cdc uses six feet throughout the guidance but includes to the greatest extent possible during low and moderate transmission in the virginia guidance physical distancing

158for all levels of transmission is optimal at six feet or more to the greatest extent possible it recognizes that six feet is not always possible and that three feet is acceptable it does stress that distancing of less than six feet is not acceptable in times of substantial and high transmission a hybrid or reduced attendance model is suggested and intended to maximize opportunities for the physical distancing between students and staff however in-person learning may occur if schools are experiencing success with strict mitigation strategies the next area of comparison is the sports and extracurricular both the cdc and the vdh prioritize instruction before sports and extracurriculars both state the decision should be made by school-specific information with the virginia guidance there's a more intentional and explicit process referring to the level of impact school in the school

159and that data and there's a methodology that is to assess that so school impact is assessed through outbreak data information student absenteeism staff capacity and or assessment of the mitigation strategies and implementation as far as testing the cdc and the virginia department of education and virginia department of health suggest that testing be recommended to staff and parents in cases of illness both documents suggest screening tests as feasible it should be noted that if you if you visit the cdc website it will show that the cdc does not necessarily or currently recommend that schools conduct symptom screening for all students in grades k through 12 on a routine basis next slide please in order to write our schools and our community with information about local metrics the cdc provides a covet data tracker here you'll see

160the metrics on a seven-day average that end on march 14th the positivity rate is right around six percent and falls in the moderate category the measure for the number of new cases remains just barely in the high category the threshold to measure for high is greater than 100. substantial transmission is range 50 to 99. this means that action should be based on the highest of the two measures it's important to note that a transition down to substantial would not reduce any of the layered mitigation strategies that have helped us achieve success so far next slide please here you'll see the virginia department of health school metrics dashboard that reflects the cdc transmission thresholds we are currently for new cases just again barely in the high category we're currently at 100.4 as of march 13th and

161as you can see it is just greater than 100. the positivity rate is currently at 6.2 and is in the moderate category you'll note that secondary indicators are indicate that we are in the low and moderate today the prince william county health district shared with us that coveted like illness emergency visits have increased 11 percent compared to the previous week two of the five districts experienced decreases in covid like illness and ed visits compared to the previous week but visits did increase in fairfax loudoun and in prince william kovalek illness ed visits decreased or remained stable among most age groups except for age groups from 0 to 9 40 to 49 and 50 to 59 years of age next slide please this slide reflects the combined indicators and again when the indicators suggest two different

162levels the actions correspond to the highest threshold should be considered at any level of community transmission all schools have the option to provide in-person instruction as long as they're being successful and have strict adherence to the mitigation strategies a virtual option will remain in place for our students and at this time i will turn the presentation over to miss theresa polk okay good evening chairman latif members of the board and dr waltz next slide please thank you mrs heedner on this slide you will see data regarding those situations in which students had to quarantine during the period of march 1st to march 14th you will note that most of our closed contacts are not ill and are being quarantined per cdc guidelines as a precaution during this time period it has been reported to us

163that 220 students have been quarantined [Music] in the lower part of the same slide you will see our student positive case data broken out by student learning environment we see that the majority of our positive cases are for those students in the virtual 50 virtual 50 in person learning four days a week in all situations the number of positive cases account for less than one percent of the student population next slide please on this slide you will see data regarding those situations in which staff members have to quarantine during the period of march 1st to march 14th again you will see that most of our closed contacts are not ill and are being quarantined per cdc guidelines as a precaution during this time period it has been reported to us that 78 staff members have

164been quarantined and on the bottom of this slide you will finally see that our staff members staff member positive case data broken out by work environment you will see that our in-person staff members are affected by positive cases at a higher rate than our virtual staff members in all situations the number of positive cases account for less than one percent of the staff member population i will now turn the presentation over to our superintendent dr waltz thank you and so were we going to have an update on vaccinations i can give that myself for explanations yes i'm sorry i apologize i wasn't supposed to turn it over well it's really good news miss pope so i figure you might want to do it i just wanted you to get in there with me okay an

165update on the vaccinations i apologize uh we have had 17 000 second doses have been completed and that includes prince william county school staff and community all prince william county staff members have been offered the opportunity to receive the first of the vaccine and the majority of our second doses are complete second dose clinics were held on february 19 23 24 and 28 and march 1st 7th 8th 14th and 15th the clinics have been moved from unity reed high school to the kelly leadership center novant youth health uva continues to work to partner with the health district to provide vaccines to the community and prince william county school staff in the future and again i must give a shout out to the school nurses who have been very instrumental in assisting with administration of the

166vaccines and now i will turn it over to you dr walt and i will say amen to that very nice comment to the nurses and again what a great job to our whole entire pandemic team and and everybody who's been involved from every part of this school division that's really really great news so thank you miss hebner and your entire team thank you miss heedner as lead of the pandemic and everyone who has worked so hard to get us to where we are tonight so we in tonight's pandemic report on good news and back to you chairman latif that was great news thank you dr waltz and it's not i don't think it's hyperbole to say that um miss polk miss and um miss um miss hebner and you all everyone in the school division

167in nevada have really saved lives so that effort is um we just can't thank you all enough for the hard work these clinics have been amazing um okay so we'll go on next to the um next uh 18 what am i at 18 1802 uh we have a motion on for action miss wall thank you mr chairman i move that the prince william county school board direct the division superintendent and staff to prepare and present to the school board by may 5th 2021 a reopening plan for the 2021-22 school year which provides for five days a week of full-time in-person instruction for all students in all grade levels and further that the plan provide an option for 100 virtual instruction for all students in all grade levels you have a second mr chairman i second

168miss williams of the woodbridge district seconds um at this point we'll have discussion on the motion and i'll start with ms wall thank you mr chairman i want to begin by thanking ms williams for work for working with me on this motion um and uh community members who have reached out repeatedly to request this advancement of our return to learning plans for next fall from the beginning of the pandemic we have all sought to balance the academic social emotional needs of students with the actual risk of transmission in schools and so as we look ahead to the next six months i'm reminded of the old adage which says plan to prepare or prepare to fail and so for a successful rollout for next fall and for our students and teachers sake we must begin to

169plan now and that starts with letting our families know what to expect for the fall in a very concrete way i am confident that we can return all students to five days a week in-person instruction for the 21-22 school year it really is the best option for our students and staff i also recognize the need to support families who require access to virtual learning due to particular health needs or other special circumstances i appreciate the advocacy of members of this board on this issue and i will let them speak more directly to it but i'm making this motion for five specific reasons one this is what children need returning five days a week is essential for academic progress and for the social emotional mental and physical health of children we have a lot of work

170to do to help our children through the effects of the pandemic returning to a five day a week schedule will greatly assist our efforts in helping children of all ages to be successful learners second reason is that this is what families need families need certainty of what to expect in the fall offering five days a week earns the trust of our families to stay with us in many cases decisions are being made right now for deposits on private schools and other options moreover many families who have left last year will not come back and we do want them to come back in addition many families who need schooling five days a week cannot afford other schooling options like private schools which can be very expensive this has created further inequities due to economic factors families

171continue to wear a heavy burden as they juggle work and family demands under the hybrid model increasing numbers of workers are being called back to the workplace making five days of instruction even more important to our community the third reason is this is what we can do we've shown our that our mitigation efforts are effective our rates of infection are less than one percent of our student and teacher population we have shown that we can return our students to buildings in a way that is safe even given higher levels of community transmission data from around the nation is increasingly supporting the conclusion that we can safely reduce physical distancing without compromising safety schools are not hotbeds of transmission like we once supposed continued vaccination will drive down the rate of infection in our communities and

172those levels will continue to fall throughout the spring and into the summer by the end of may every adult who chooses to be vaccinated will be able to do so or at least that is the goal vaccinations are making a big difference the fourth reason is this is what we ought to do hybrid instruction while necessary at this time has proven difficult for teachers and students and while it was intended to be a stop measure it's not a long-term sustainable solution and especially the model of hybrid instruction that we've had to employ in many of our classrooms where students follow along on their computers as the teacher teaches to the teacher's computer is is less effective and we all we all know that this is putting a great strain on our teachers and students and

173the fifth reason is this is what we should prepare to do our neighboring jurisdictions have announced plans for five days a week five days in-person instruction in the fall for similar reasons offering five days a week in person instruction is best for students and teachers and offering flexibility of a virtual option accommodates the special needs and particular circumstances and it's also very important so for these reasons i urge the board to support this motion thank you miss wall miss williams thank you dr latif um and i also want to thank my board member ms wall for um opening the opportunity for discussion on this motion with me because we do sit on opposite sides of the spectrum of this um and i think the one thing that we can agree on is that we do

174need to plan now and inform our parents what our thought process is as a board what we can expect to look forward to and and really begin this discussion wholeheartedly and look at all the factors involved i appreciate this motion provides 100 virtual instruction because that's i think where we do differ i don't believe that in person five days a week is the most valuable option for all of our students i think this pandemic has really proven that we can provide a better sense of equity for all types of learners by using multiple forms of instruction i do think that we can agree that hybrid is just not working and we need to ensure that we provide a pathway for education that is clear for in-person students and for students who do want to stay

175home and be 100 virtual in the fall vaccines are not a cure and students are not yet eligible for vaccines on on hold they are a safeguard and another layer of mitigation but they aren't a cure and with the this virus ongoing and mutating there is still a lot of concern from a lot of families about how we do proceed if new variants will cause us to end up where we are now what can we do and what makes each family feel safe and as a school division and a public school division we should be accommodating to that um and mindful of that and respectful of that not only for our students but for our staff members as well and i know that prince william county schools has taken the lead on returning students to

176buildings during this pandemic being out in the forefront of all the ways that we provide instructions and safeguards for our students and staff and i see no reason why we should change that course now i know that many other school divisions are planning for five day or this or that but we have not looked to other school divisions we have been a lighthouse during this pandemic and i would like for prince william county schools to continue to do so i i just want to make sure that when we do enter down this road that our virtual program is just as robust and and well thought out as our in-person instruction and provides those students with the same sense of community and academic uh opportunities as the students who do choose to return in person and

177i think too we also need to consider that we are an overcrowded school division in order to be effective in our mitigation strategies we need to take that into consideration and providing 100 virtual option really is a part of that consideration if every student is not sitting in a seat in a building it reduces our overcrowding issue and that's just a fact and it's something that really needs to be looked at and valued i respect everyone's right whether you retur whether you choose to learn in a building or you choose to learn from the comfort of some other environment but i think that we need to acknowledge both we need to let our schools our school families know that we are serious in our thinking and we need to continue to provide as many equitable

178educational opportunities as we can and really continue to be a model for northern virginia area and the rest of the state in the way that we do that and i just again would like to thank ms wahl for working with me on this and for us being examples of how two individuals who sit on different ends of the spectrum can meet in the middle think together collaboratively and set an example for all of those out there in the community because i do believe and i think as well correct me if i'm wrong we are all tired of being pitted against one another as to which one is better when we have learned that there are valuable options and things for both or all of us that we can move forward on together so thank you

179and i hope that the board will support this and love to hear other input from board members i see mr wilke and then we go to mr thank you uh miss williams and miss wall i appreciate the resolution i think it is a good compromise as someone uh who's kind of been more in the favor of in person uh i will say one thing i disagree in some sense that was said earlier is i don't think it's special circumstances or illness anymore the new york times had an article that virtual education is here to stay the days of the brick and mortar traditional schools those days are done school systems all over the country just use the millions and millions of dollars of federal stimulus funds to buy software one-to-one chromebooks ipads etc the opportunities

180of what we have the potential to do utilizing virtual instruction even having the tools for in person to be global citizens to have intervention strategies it's just unbelievable the opportunities that we have and we're fortunate to be in a state where we don't technically have school of choice where we have neighboring school systems that are on top of each other in ohio and michigan in the midwest who are competing to get kids to leave one school system and to enroll in the other that's the opportunity for them offer a robust virtual option so my ass would be same with what you were saying is moving forward we need a clear plan and it can't just be having kids enroll in virtual virginia because if we have that we pay for those kids to enroll and

181then we're losing kids and we have staff we need our own robust system and our own plan that's very deliberative and well thought especially at the secondary level because when building those master schedules as i've learned to do thanks to mr mall group mr beach and all that good stuff watching all that at a high school level we need to be very deliberate in how we do this what courses are going to be offered pretty much only in person as an option or will kids have to come in what courses will kids have virtual will the kids have to commit to a semester of virtual so that the schedule doesn't change at least or will it be a full year these are things we have to sort out i'm not giving my position i'm just

182saying these are questions that we have to sort out especially at the secondary level when we have all these different courses but to go back to what you know miss williams said and well miss wall i ultimately agree about the in-person need as i've always but like what miss william was saying williams was saying is we've been at the forefront of this the lighthouse we can really leverage the opportunity of technology to do so much more now to do so much more absences vacations these things that we can do to make sure that we continue instruction extended summer options i mean not all we talk about equity right i mean we have programs that sometimes kids are not able to go to because it might be at one school or the other think about the

183ability to consolidate resources think about the money that we can save in transportation think about having professional development that's normally hosted the klc that everyone has to drive to and we pay mileage for with staff that could be done virtually there are just so many opportunities and what we can do moving forward with this it's just it's very exciting to see what we can do so to your point yes a hundred percent support trying to find a model for five days i think concurrent hybrid has been very difficult um seeing it firsthand and walking in classrooms and you know it has not been easy it's it's definitely been a band-aid right now to try to make something happen but i think as much as we can move away from that model and there may be

184situations where very select situations and classes where it might have to be a method deployed but offering that in-person or the virtual selection i think is the way to go and i'm excited about the opportunities and possibilities of what we can really do with technology and virtual instruction moving forward so i thank both of you for coming up with this resolution and i fully support it miss jesse first of all i want to say up front that i support full day learning and i really think we need to get back to five days a week and i read that fairfax came up with their five-day plan but the difference between fairfax and what we're doing tonight is that the superintendent presented his plan i love the plan of looking at both but i don't think

185that the board should become the superintendent and i think the superintendent i think it should be on for information and a recommendation to the superintendent but for one thing i you know i i i didn't know about this plan until late because it came on the agenda late but there are several factors i think we need to consider first again i want to say this again i believe we need to go back to full day five days a week and virtual for some i'm not sure when you look at the virtual mahala i was at high school yesterday i mean earlier this week and there were three kids in the class in the room and the rest were virtual i don't know i don't know if we know what these kids are going to do

186because they're they're just a different group of kids and i think some of those kids when we we need to go back and figure out why some of these kids did not come back and whether the use of space the use of our staffing all those are factors but i think the superintendent is a person who should be making these decisions and i think that uh i have this thing about waiting till the dust settles and the dust is not settled we're getting a new superintendent have we factored in and we vote for this uh that they this new superintendent is not going to have the authority to develop a plan i think the superintendent we haven't asked him if he's planning to develop a plan so i i i just you know you know

187the superintendent and i've had differences but the last meeting of the so i think we've taken away the authority from him and i think that this is a good recommendation i love the recommendation but i think that the superintendent like the superintendent in fairfax i have the washington post he came to the board with a plan and i think we should need to let the superintendent come with a plan but i think we should also let him know that we recommend five days because i do recommend five days i don't think that the board should vote and without input from the superintendent and i think we said at the last time we voted we said the superintendent had the right to make the decision but what we're doing we are making decisions for him and

188not allowing him to bring the plan to us and he's going to have to at some point be in concert or at least have some conversation with the new superintendent coming in so for that reason i can't vote for this but the idea and the concept i really like the concept it's williams and then i'll go to miss um zargoport okay that's right ms all right thank you dr latif um uh i i support this motion um i think it's important to set expectations to set them early uh it's been an interesting year to say the least but whatever we can do to make concurrent instruction not a thing it would be like a huge priority it requires time not so much maybe in elementary school because i think they have a lot more wiggle

189room but in some we'll just say some schools maybe more than others but middle and high school have a lot more scheduling concerns with their classes and the levels that they offer and an advantage to virtual school can be that maybe a seventh or eighth grader can access some high school courses and perhaps that's something that they could be you know i know some children take classes over the summer uh in to to just add more credits or free up their their um their schedules so there's a lot of potential for how virtual can be used anyway moving forward but i really think it's important to set expectations and the more time we have to work on this the better i am grateful that miss wall and miss williams worked on this over the week

190and um were able to put this together i plan on supporting it um i'll go to let me let me miss williams had a quick thing and then i'll go to okay miss jackson i'm sorry ms jackson okay um five days a week asks us to continue to maintain a growth mindset this virus and the immunizations have changed and may continue to change what it is best practice we also must be able to adjust with what the pandemic throws at us following cdc vdoa regulations is a must the leader of operations has access to qualitative and quantitative data that the board does not when implementing plans i look to them for a way to create a robust virtual program without impacting the funding of schools moreover i hope we can learn from our experiences that

191concurrent teaching and the stress that it places on staff and students is not working i strongly believe that we cannot and should not ask teachers to simultaneously plan for five days in person and five days online i also want to thank miss williams and miss wall for collaborating on this resolution and seeking feedback i strongly believe that collaboration is what is needed and i appreciate your leadership on this miss williams thank you um chairman latif i i want to be very clear and my ask for this and and the speaking uh and speaking on this motion i think historically when the school board has made an ask of the superintendent we ask for some sort of um final whatever version final plan final implementation it's set in stone and gold and we just vote up

192or down i'm looking at this as as an opportunity to have the public acknowledge know that we are thinking about this as a school division as a board um we're looking for what dr walter's input and his staff as input is um i i think one of the the biggest takeaways from this pandemic is that you you really can't have a final anything during a pandemic but i think it's important that we as a board speak to this and say this is an appropriate time to open this conversation we're not here to make a decision for the superintendent this is not by design to force the superintendent to present us an inflexible absolutely perfect this is gold what we're going to go for in in the fall either i don't think we take advantage enough

193of the opportunity to use these meetings as discussion points and um opportunities to see what staff is thinking what we should be thinking of as a board how we should be having this conversation publicly so that everybody is aware i don't want it to be um interpreted as we're trying to um do the superintendent's job because i don't think that wasn't really the intent um i'm sorry yeah so and um i think that that's important to note because dr welts has been at least in my tenure one of the most professional superintendents and and pristine plan presenters well thought out considered um presentation present i mean just phenomenal and i'd hate to have him felt locked in to something that he's going to present and then we're going to vote on may 5th and that's

194just going to be it forever and ever i don't think you can do these things in pandemic so um that's i just wanted to follow up with that just of my history and knowledge i haven't seen dr waltz pull out his note card in pen but that is his historical practice and i think we've sort of learned as a board just kind of shift and and start these conversations and develop these things instead of always just having to have it one way or an up or down vote i think it's time to be a little bit more of a two-way street when it comes to these type of discussions and activities so i'd also like to hear a little bit of input from dr waltz while we were in discussion about the feasibility of the

195timeline what he thinks he can present to us in may just a little bit of expectations because i don't want the public to be misconstrued and think may 5th this is going to be it for the fall year um and or anything like that so i i'm that's pretty much all i had to say thank you thank you let me just address you know that um and i'd like to hear from dr wallace dr waltz and i chatted about this briefly the other day and and i know he had mentioned he's already been thinking about what what to do for the fall and and you know we've chatted about his general always you know concerns about when we would like to announce stuff we want to get it right and um and i think the

196record of what we've accomplished over this year has been um really really amazing dr waltz could you could you address your your thinking on the fall for five days and and you know um the board again is as i had mentioned in our conversation you know we want to provide um some reassurance to the public for those that are anxious about what are we going to do in the fall that we do have a direction and this resolution really this directive really just asked the superintendent to come up with his plan and his version for what he'd like to do in the fall regards to um both virtual and um in person recognizing also that if we're still under a state of emergency we may have to abide by sb 1303 which is the new

197state law so dr waltz did you have any uh comments here you're on mute sir is that better okay so i yes you called me day before yesterday uh about the directive and you know certainly i believe i speak for most people that we hope given the progress with vaccinations and keeping safety at the forefront of our decision making we've already been making plans to have instruction five days a week beginning with the new school year in august we also if health concerns prevail uh or quite frankly whether they do or not expanding our virtual opportunities as we've talked in the budget work sessions and throughout this entire pandemic but more specifically through the funding uh where we talked about creating as part of our rollout of our technology plan a virtual high school and

198then putting in a position to do a pilot at an elementary school so i guess my uh my reaction to this and also you know we can make every effort to bifurcate teaching online and and try to avoid the concurrent teaching but with some classes where you have one teacher um who's teaching you know ap something that that there's only one of in a high school um there there are certainly some challenges to the virtual piece of this i guess what i would be more comfortable with um and i can't think of a single time i've done this in 23 years of being a superintendent but since you're asking me my opinion i would simply ask that you insert in the last line after virtual instruction to the extent possible for all students in all

199grade levels because to stand up a completely independent program virtually in this length of time we haven't talked about uh doing that for this fall until literally uh this resolution came forward a day before yesterday so um i mean obviously if you voted as it stands we'll certainly do our best to come back and tell you what we think we can realistically do um you know i don't have a lot to lose being a short timer but i will say this i think the worst thing we could do is come back with a plan that fully promises everything this resolution says knowing full well that's just logistically or for whatever reason it's impossible certainly planning school for five days a week we've had you know a hundred years experience uh in that and and again

200our planning is moving forward with that and our planning is expanding the virtual but i think with the virtual it's going to take a combination of options that would include what we do in our own school division and expansion of that but also the efforts that have been put into virtual virginia uh from the briefing that we received from the state superintendent uh there are some real possibilities there as well and they're standing up a full virtual program for elementary at a significantly reduced rate and for some uh for at least some of the learners it's going to be free so um that's my that's my input that's my suggestion thank you dr waltz so the um so one just some of the logic just on on the reason why we said 100 virtual is

201um and it hasn't been signed into law yet but the concern that sb 1303 would require us to do 100 virtual for everyone if those students asked if we're still under the state of emergency so i think that was the logic where that came from but i don't think if there's any board members with an objection the line would say um basically to the greatest extent possible at the end of that last sentence is there a miss williams i i think this is a good opportunity for us to know and the public to know if we can or can't do something i mean i think that's part of planning um and that's sort of what i was hin stating earlier if it if it isn't feasible if this isn't right then we'll know in that

202plan and it's not a deficit on on you dr waltz or the administration it is a more of a realistic option of what we can and can't do by saying you know we couldn't i'm just throwing this out there for example we couldn't do 100 virtual for kindergarten because xyz reason this would be our alternative or there is no alternative that's where i'm coming from and and also allowing for i don't know maybe you had i'm gonna use an expression i use in my house like a super secret spy plan for this great virtual program that like under other circumstances you'd you know we couldn't kick off for whatever reason but now here's an opportunity we sort of don't know those things we've only hinted around this conversation in the budget and um and and

203those times and i think this would be a great opportunity to really have that discussion um and if there isn't anything then there just isn't anything and i think this board is a if if it isn't please correct me board members but i think this board is okay with that and okay with learning those things so we know how to sort of look towards the future because we understand better what our capabilities are and what they aren't and not just in a manner that we're used to discussing which would be sort of siloed right in in a budget time or um by by single request only we talk about this subject matter um in this particular light and i'm just sort of looking for more general opportunity to have this discussion so we really understand

204because we don't want you know you you've been our superintendent for 16 years and done a fantastic job but there may be some things that you would introduce to us that would might be inter institutional knowledge that we'd leave with you not intentionally but just because you're you know this is the life that you lead and have been leading for over a decade um so that's where i'm coming from i can't speak for everybody else but that's sort of what i'm looking for and emotion is really the best way to um to do that i didn't want to lock it in to to make it one way or the other so definitive right and before i go to miss jesse just to clarify dr waltz i think this was just asking for a plan we

205weren't intending to vote on any plan when you come back it was just something where we started letting the public know we are preparing for this and if if we come back and we can't do as ms williams said 100 virtual for xyz or reasons or virtual virginia's providing this great thing we can concentrate on our part of it that's really what we'd like to know and see where we're at doctor yeah yeah if i could just respond to to both your comments and miss williams so you know if you just leave the resolution to read exactly as it was read i'm i'm actually more comfortable with that if we don't have a lot of extemporaneous like there absolutely cannot be any concurrent teaching teachers absolutely have to be bifurcated uh we can't use virtual

206virginia it has to be better than that if we can just have none of those other restrictions um you know i i accept it as written let me just give you a just a i'll try to keep it very very brief we have some teachers who enjoy teaching concurrently and can do it successfully and and we have others that don't feel the same way so i'm simply saying if we can explore all the options and see you know logistically what we can do and bring back this plan you know you could leave it as it is it's just please don't layer on the restrictions until we see what we can do we'll try to optimize and bring the very best plan back i i the entire most of the board here is shaking their heads

207saying you know and in if you look at the language as is we we don't each board member layered on their own sort of personal opinion of where they were and their personal and and just like this entire year has been contentious on where we sit on these matters um we didn't put those words in this resolute we we just ask you to come to us with the best plan you think we can do for prince william county schools on a virtual especially since if that's the law you know and we might have to do that or you know the the five days we'd love to have us back return to normal i'm going to go to i'm going to go to miss jesse because she had her hand up then i'll go to miss

208wall miss jesse okay uh miss williams and i talked about this today because uh i i just learned about this plan today so i had no input to this however i will say again i support five days of learning and i support virtual learning but there are questions when i looked i asked one of the principals at the high school i said why do you think these kids didn't come back so i thought about it she said well you know and i said well they've been at home they can get up when they want to get up they don't have to come to school so the thing that the fairfax superintendent said will we have virtual learning for all or will we just let students choose if they're over 18 not to come to school

209if they don't want to so there are all kinds of factors and i i just if dr waltz is pleased with this i will support it but i i want you guys to hear what he said he said the following we have been planning for this they have looked at the factors we don't even know some factors and i don't and i think dr latif you said something that was important to me that we're not going to vote on this because you've got a new superintendent coming in you have to realize that so i can support something where we don't vote on it and we give the superintendent the authority that he should have had before when we in my mind just just in my mind that we said we give you authority but then

210we took it away i just don't want that to happen again because we have a new person coming in and i don't want that new person to think that we are going to within two or three days come up with a vote that ties that person to our a date and five days and 100 virtual i just think that we need to really think it through and look at the metrics we think everything is going to be great but when he comes with his plan if this plan i just don't want us to to say we're going to vote on it and we don't like your plan we're going to vote on it i just think that we have to give the superintendent the authority that we said he should have as long as i

211can feel that from this plan and i have to ask you miss williams and i have to ask you miss walls because apparently the two of you came up with this plan are we going to be back where the superintendent comes in and we and we say you have the authority but we take it away from him okay i'm going to just go to ms wall and then miss williams and then i think we can wrap up the discussion so the um the intent behind this more than anything is to let families know what we're going to offer in the fall and time is of the essence so it's always good to be really straightforward within you know with families so they know what we're thinking and what we're planning now obviously the language is

212very sparse on purpose to allow for flexibility that was the intent that we we let people the public know what we're thinking about and that um the superintendent and staff have full um responsibility to to think of the options and think what they can do and offer um you know offer something within these very broad parameters um so um that's that's you're exactly right dr waltz um you were thinking you said just you were already thinking five days in person for everyone and that's what this provides lets people know that they can rely on it and plan for it that's really important for our division going forward for families making really critical decisions this week and next week for other options if we don't provide this now the language is written i think you write

213dr waltz it doesn't preclude the existence of some concurrent instruction that may have to happen in some of our very specialized high school classes for instance where maybe you have one or two students who choose to be 100 virtual but the you know the class is conducted in person so they you know we use our technology and they zoom in i there are a number of i'm not you know i'm not the expert we're not the experts on this but i know that our superintendent and staff are and they can figure these things out and there's absolutely room for that um it's also not implying that we're going to vote on this this is just please bring us a plan um and and let the public know it's it's more for the benefit of the

214public let the public know what we're thinking um and certainly as the pandemic evolves as it will um and and hopefully evolves in a good direction um then you know we we can have other options within this basic framework of five five days a week week of instruction um in person with a virtual option and so um yeah there are many options that we there are many ways and that we could do this but i think the way that it's written is does allow for the flexibility that is needed ms williams thank you um chairman latif yeah i i have no desire to have a vote on a plan presented it is purely for information only it is to allow the public to get a little insight on what we're thinking as a school division

215um i have not been a fan this entire time of changing the superintendent's plan was presented and even when we did so at a very first vote i mean you know i put up a minor tantrum to make sure that we stopped so that we could include him in the discussion um and to ask questions that like we just wouldn't think of because we're not superintendents so i'm going to continue to hold that position i am not as i said before any plan presented i don't believe it should be set in stone i think there are a lot of considerations as ms jesse said and this is not to lock us into anything but i think it is to give to the public and us as board members an opportunity to think about what it

216would look like in the fall to see what dr waltz um thinks it would look like in the fall again i cannot reiterate enough i think dr waltz has done a stellar job in leading us through this pandemic presenting us with information and opportunities on what we should or should not be doing or thinking about during the pandemic i will continue to support dr waltz and his efforts with that i would like to see as we have before have all levels of involvement in this plan and opportunities for input teachers specifically that's always an ask so ms jesse reminded me of that and i think that we're continuing with that theme but i can't emphasize enough that this is not a plan to be voted on this is not a plan to tie dr waltz

217or any division of staff's hands and say this is an absolute must of what the fall would look like this is just an opportunity to have a discussion and to show the public that we are thinking of these things um in a timely manner right because exactly i think ms wall makes a good point most of us parents are thinking about spring activities fall activities what we're going to do we've heard from our constituents people who do not want to return to the school division if there isn't going to be a virtual option people who do want to return who don't want to return if there isn't a five-day option and this sort of helps families make that decision or at least give them some guidance on which way we're looking at as a school

218division we may head so they can think about those things and i think that's important um i have constituents in my district who don't have no plans right now of thinking about five day a week in person miss wall has plenty of people who are like why are we not in five day a week in person right now so it's really just sort of just kind of cover our bases and have a discussion that's what i'm looking for um so i'm gonna leave it with that okay uh dr waltz it could you give me just a chance to make a comment before the vote i want to make sure i've heard from all the board members or or are they done um i i didn't let me check if miss ralston had her hand up

219did did miss ralston did you want to add anything i know i didn't hear from you okay yes i i did but it's gotten so convoluted um i'm one i'm confused and two i would wait to see whatever you bring okay great and miss zargapor oh you're good okay i think that was it dr waltz okay so my closing comment would be this one of the things i've learned to do many years ago is i try to put myself in other people's shoes and what what would they think kind of playing devil's advocate to myself so i want to clarify something again you know you can leave the resolution as it is but i wanted to tell you why i was thinking of those words and why they may not be necessary so let's say

220i'm watching this uh tonight and i'm asking myself how could the superintendent say to the extent possible on virtual when you're doing it now so that's what i want to clarify we can definitely do as good or better as we're doing now for kids to be a hundred percent virtual or go to school five days a week in person which we're pretty much experts at um i would like to say just to complete this that i'm so impressed by the creativity and all the ambitious work that our teachers support staff administration have done making the virtual product better and better i think every day and it's been amazing it's been a journey of a lifetime in a year but what i will simply say to you is that what i would like to bring back

221is also what we are currently working on we have quite a number of people working on some very creative endeavors with virtual so we have we have plans that i would like to share with you that day that we believe might be very attractive to certain students who may still want to do part in person and part virtual because of child care issues because of jobs they may have we have some things that i think will be very attractive to people in addition to just making one choice or the other so if the resolution includes five days virtual we know we can do that five days in person we know we can do that and some other options as well i'm good to go so so it doesn't preclude that dr waltz and you this

222board is i have to tell you um would be thrilled to hear of these creative things and and you know we we we just want again it's it's about telegraphing to the public where we stand on this and where this division believes and and it's good to hear your you know sort of thought process in the sense that you were thinking five days in the fall you were already you know on that and i think that's just important to let the public know and and this board you know we've been through a lot this year and i think this was the idea behind this and timeliness is an issue because we know the planning for all of that creative new stuff and and getting back to five days is the work you're doing right now

223and it can't be started july 1 it can't be started august 1. yeah i mean and so and that's the reason we asked for this so so thank you for for this and and again recognize that in a month we would love to hear from you this board would love to weigh in in a collaborative process on those great ideas and we know you're going to deliver that that kind of effort which you've always done so i we can't thank you enough so i'm going to vote to support this motion as well and just go ahead at this point we'll go for the vote and please vote and miss ralston how do you vote yes um can i have the vote am i on the right yep you're right you're right miss ralston we got

224it i can hear you and uh so miss ralston votes yes the vote is eight yes unanimous motion passed thank you okay we're moving on to board matters and uh while we have like a full group here um let which side should we start on uh mr wilk for the act of brevity i'm good tonight that's two in a row outstanding mr welcome miss jackson um thank you to the teachers and administrators at ellis elementary school in marcelo middle school for allowing me to stop by to see your wonderful schools i'm also thankful to the principals who spoke tonight i know that they all principals and administrators along with teachers of students of english language learners tas special education hearing itinerants ape autism specialists food service workers custodians and other essential staff have been in

225the building since september and i am very grateful um i also want to thank all the other brentford principals for taking time to either speak with me zoom with me or email me about how the staff is doing and input on the budget um as the board talks about data i just want to say to all the teachers out there it's not a reflection of the effort of the teachers it is only so that we know how to act as a governing body at least that's my opinion of it how i would act as a governing body i would also encourage the division to considering providing the whole picture a holistic approach when providing us data so that a student's achievement is not defined by one test and then lastly i believe it is imperative

226as demonstrated tonight that we need to collaborate in order to successfully finish the school year and for the public to please continue to follow cdc guidelines or as ms zagapo's guidelines every meeting um because our students face-to-face instruction depend on our choices thank you miss wall thank you madam vice chairman i have continued to spend time at the vaccination clinics that our division is running with the assistance of novant and i just want to thank everybody in the division who has been involved in that it's continuing to be amazing amazing experience lots of compliments from staff and community um and with our valued community partners it's just been really awesome and i've really enjoyed spending time there serving um giving of my time to help in such a an awesome thing that we've been doing

227so i want to thank ms hebner and her team and everybody else um i have taken time to speak with most of the principals in the gainesville district this last week to ask them their thoughts on how return to learn is going in their buildings and their thoughts on the budget which is one of the main reasons why i supported the budget is in talking with teachers and principals and getting getting their um their input on how this how they feel that this will assist them and their students and their journey as learners this week i was or i guess it was last week i attended a battlefield football game again because i have an ability to get into those games as a parent and it was very special we cheered for the seniors from

228the marching bobcats this year it's their final season of marching band and they are grateful that they were able to play at three games this well they have one more to go they played it two and they'll play it one more so i'm really thankful for those kids and for their positive attitudes to deal with what has been really a very hard year i was also able to find out a little bit about vex robotics competition that was held at bull run middle school on march 6th under the direction of denise carroll and i was surprised to learn that we've actually had a lot of robotics going on in our division which is really awesome and there were some teams there from middle school and high school who competed um in a very socially uh

229distancing mitigation acceptable way and they were thrilled to be there on the fields for many of them it was the first time their robots actually got on the fields and got to move around and there were some older former students who came up came to help and were able to give those kids you know the younger students some really good suggestions for the robot so i'm really happy to hear that that was happening the greatest concern that i hear from my constituents in the gainesville district is for five days a week for five days a week construction in the fall so i really do appreciate the support on that that motion they want to know what's coming in the fall they want to be prince william county students they want to stay with the division

230and they want their kids to have that option the second greatest concern i hear is people want to know is in metrics improve if we can expand the two day a week in person to four day a week in person because kids are thriving and and really appreciating the opportunity to be with their teachers never has there been as much enthusiasm for going to school as there has been in the last month or so um and i think we should capitalize on that and i think if we can mitigate um mitigate it we should we should look into that with serious um serious thought especially um if the cdc revises its guidance yet again to allow for three feet of um uh distance being acceptable so um i just wanna thank everybody for um supporting

231this motion tonight and thank you for your hard work on the board and and everybody across the division thank you so much for your hard work as well thank you miss miss thank you mr um chairman latif um i don't have a whole lot to say i am um [Music] excited to hear more about our uh reopening plans for the fall or what that would look like and i i can't emphasize enough that um i have no intention from my perspective to vote on this plan lock the superintendent in or make decisions for him but i think as a board we're learning and growing to ask questions and know think about things to try to remember to think about things or be knowledgeable of things that all of us may not think of because we're

232not the superintendents not to overstep bounds but it's to be more responsible when we it is time to make decisions and to be more knowledgeable um i also really appreciate the opportunity to continue to advocate for those who do want to remain virtual for whatever reason be it that we are still in a pandemic being that they are thriving and succeeding virtually um and to continue to advocate for virtual learning it is not going anywhere and part of what future companies what companies out there are asking for are digitally competent citizens and i think that that is our responsibility and i will continue to state that i think that one of the greatest blessings out of this pandemic is the opportunity to embrace virtual education or digital education and i think that we should really

233recognize that the leveling of playing field that it has provided for a lot of our students and our students families a lot of families came into this not knowing how to work in computer and now are computer literate and there's so much value in that and we don't speak enough about all of the good things that have come from this pandemic and i think it is time to do so and to end my comments i also want to thank dr waltz again and secondarily this board but primarily dr waltz because prince william county really has been a leader and how we educate our students in this pandemic we were the first ones to bring any students back in a building on day one and we don't celebrate that enough and we don't talk about it

234enough and i just would like to see us continue as a division to be a lighthouse for other divisions to look at and spend less time comparing what other divisions are doing to prince william but it should be prince other divisions looking at prince william for what we are doing as we continue to lead the path and finally if we could as a board talk a little bit more about sols for publicly so that parents can understand what it means when you opt out of an sol how that affects the division what are the pros and cons it doesn't need to be a 15-page powerpoint but i think that there's a lack of understanding and i think it's critical right now for our parents and our students and our families to understand at what grade

235level what impact that makes if you choose not to take an sol and what that will look like as we bring students in for sol testing so that's all i have thank you miss jesse uh good evening as you know i have been i am now limited but i am out and i have been out and about and i went on what i call a gratitude tour for my schools and many of you know that i often give these cups away so this is a cup that i presented to my district and it's a gratitude cup and the gratitude cup says this gratitude cup is for you for your your cups are full and running over but i and i didn't i'd like to share just a few thoughts for all the teachers because i

236wasn't presumptuous enough to say that i should give a cup to the district but i think that all of us would share with the first couple of thoughts in this uh tribute it says to everyone in the fields of learning that made opening schools a success this cup is for you to those who drove buses fed the students manage the phones in the office clean the buildings and maintain them this cup is for you to all that taught teachers teacher assistants specialists and athletic staff this cup is for you to all principals administrators central office staff and volunteers this cup is for you to every nurse who manage the school staff environment and work in concert with the health department and hospitals this cup is for you it says my cup is full of gratitude

237and amazement really to all of you who are touching students daily when i see how truly dedicated you are to the goals of this system your cuff was so full that it sometimes overflowed but these teachers and these staff they just found another cup and so i think that all of us can agree to that i went uh i had a wonderful time i visited some schools and i want to share just a couple of things and i don't have a lot of time here but woodbridge high school kudos to the facilities people i don't know if they're still here but that school is amazing the the glass that new gymnasium i could not believe how beautiful it was really magnificent and for me i think because i do a lot of decorating maybe because

238i'm a female but i looked at the brick and the brick from 45 years ago now matches the new brick it's all in concert and antietam i went to several schools but antietam i came during dismissal and i cannot tell you how what i felt when i saw all those kids with mass they were in line the parents were in line and i just want to thank dr waltz and his staff and to the teachers you will be included in this next phase thank you miss arge report sorry miss ralston uh i'll just pass thank you thank you mr awesome mr argorport thank you dr latif i'll make this very quick um i did get a chance to meet with the principals the high school principals in the kohl's district for my three schools and

239some of the staff and some of the teachers just to hear about how things have been going and what they you know we're looking at in terms of the future so um i i will just reiterate that it is as much as we can start planning today and setting expectations will be good for august and september please do not forget to wear your mask wash your hands keep your distance if you're not feeling well stay home last thing i want to also just take it take just a moment this this pandemic has been really really hard for everybody and dr waltz mentioned our three employees earlier and in his comments he also discussed how this has touched everyone's lives and to begin healing and moving forward i mean it seems like there's so many bright

240things on the horizon we have the vaccine our numbers are getting lower please still remember kindness still remember that we all are receiving information out of this pandemic and transmitting information in our own ways so with that i just want to say have a good night take care of yourselves god bless okay ms argopour's record of continuing to recommend we wash our hands has continued to lead us down to a six percent positivity rate or 6.2 miss hebner and we're right at 100.4 we are right about to break back into the yellow here so we we need to continue doing everything miss arguable recommends um you know i'd like to echo miss wall's statement and and ask the superintendent and the staff to consider you know if there is space as we move forward over

241the next few weeks and you know um if there's smaller groups of classes maybe allowing some students if principals could decide to do four days a week for those kids that are going in i know there are special considerations given especially the special ed level but if there is space um and we uh metrics change i urge you all to consider um you know expanding the in person as as we move forward or at least allowing the kids to go from two to four days um who those who've chosen to go in so thank you this night has been a huge night and and and i've listened to all your marks and and so i'll be the only one in board matters to say we passed an incredible budget this evening this budget is um

242dr waltz's 16th budget and the the budget in in the tradition of prince william county schools is always the superintendent's proposed budget until this evening where it becomes the prince william county school board's adopted budget in the budget for our entire division for the next fiscal year and so tonight it becomes our budget and dr waltz on the four budgets i've sat they have all been unanimous i don't know what the votes were in prior budgets but i want to congratulate you for putting together an incredible budget this year um in the context of the most challenging times we have ever faced as a as a school division as a as a commonwealth and as a country and so i can't thank you enough your finance team john wallingford all of the folks in the

243finance office so many of them so many names so many folks so many people we don't see regularly um in in and who've just done an incredible work and and this is just something that we should celebrate they're the highlights of this budget please they're they're on um the prince william county twitter feed dr waltz has been sharing them over the last few weeks the the highlights are on our facebook page their highlights are on the website and and those are a five percent raise for teachers a dollar priorities for teaching assistants there is pre-k expansion programs um throughout the division there is more monies for economically disadvantaged student per school there are some fantastic um really good things in this budget that will move this division forward so i can't thank this board enough

244for again voting unanimously on an incredible budget um in in and we are excited to move forward with this for the next next fiscal year with all of that i i wish everyone a wonderful evening the this meeting is adjourned [Music] [Applause] [Music] you