December 8, 2020 - Prince William County School Board/BOCS Joint Work Session

001okay so i'd like to call the joint meeting of the prince william county school board and prince william county board of county supervisors to order um the purpose of the joint meeting between the prince william county school board and the board of county supervisors is to discuss the first quarter general revenue update and outlook to receive an implicit bias presentation to receive a presentation on the smart beginnings pre-k program due to medical conditions related to the pandemic to prevent their physical attendance school board members lily jesse adelle jackson diane ralston are participating in this meeting through electronic means as permitted by virginia code 2.23708.2 a 1 a and 2 in the school board policy 139 school board member participation meetings by electronic means there will be no citizen comment time this evening at this point

002i will turn it over to mr martino for the budget outlook and presentation thank you chair latif we have our director of finance michelle atreid at the podium there she's going to be presenting the material hi good evening uh michelle latrium the county's director of finance next slide please i am here tonight to present to you the fy 21 first quarter revenue update and outlook our principles of sound financial management require us to report to the board 45 days after the end of each quarter on our revenues our general revenues and those are the revenues that we share with the schools in accordance with the revenue sharing agreement we have a formal process for updating our revenues and projecting the revenues and it's through a revenue committee and a member of the school board of

003the member of the school staff sits on that committee with us john wallingford is typically present as is the school director of finance we also have a number of folks throughout the county and subject matter experts which i'll cover on the next slide but some of the things that we do each year is we look at all the trends we look nationally we look at the state we look regionally and we look at our local trends we also rely on those subject matter experts that i spoke of those are people like our development services director economic development planning our industry like real estate brokers commercial brokers et cetera all of our projections are data driven and they're typically very conservative we don't want to miss our revenues obviously shortfalls can be painful so we do

004use conservative assumptions and you'll see there on this chart our trends over the last 10 years we have been within 98 to 99 accuracy in all years and um this really then this this revenue projection then allows the board to set the tax policy um each year during the budget process the process kicks off in the fall and so we're in the revenue committee process right now it continues typically through mid-january and we have been a projected revenues to present to the county executive for his proposed budget to present to the board of county supervisors next slide please this next slide shows some of our revenue forecast uh our revenue forecast members um you'll see here this year we brought in for example john layman he's the chief economist for the virginia department of taxation

005he comes in every every year and speaks to us we bring in a member of the federal reserve bank of richmond who speaks about the economy a member from the virginia realtor association the local builder industry real estate brokers typically try to get somebody from nada the national automotive association and then retailers as well as along with county staff that's shown there on the right next slide please just to remind you this is the fy21 adopted general revenues just over 1.1 billion dollars these are the revenues that are shared with the schools after we take out the recreation tax which goes directly for transportation and you'll see that the two largest sources are real estate tax and personal property comprising about 85 percent of our taxes the next largest source is our sales tax which

006is about 5.9 next slide please these are economic indicators different things that we look at to measure how the economy is doing we used to compare this with the prior year of the same time like so september to september but since the pandemic we have gone to comparing it to the prior quarter because it's just more relevant and you'll see we have a sliding scale here in the middle gray means we're neutral um so the trends haven't changed from last quarter enough to make us feel like we want to put it in the green although you'll see for example the unemployment rate in virginia it has gone from 8.1 percent to 6.2 percent while that's positive and would be a green trend we don't feel that given that the coverage pandemic is still here there's

007still people unemployed that it's enough to warrant a positive outlook we're really kind of neutral at this point and so this slide is really a number of indicators from across both virginia and prince william county and you'll see that we're pretty neutral in all of them next slide please this one looks at the local real estate market the local real estate market on the residential side is very strong right now we are seeing houses on the market less than 15 days in many cases we're seeing anywhere from six to ten percent appreciation so that's good news um for the taxes tax base for this next year because the activity of this year is what forms the january 1 assessed values however on commercial some of the impacts are yet to be seen and so we

008have a feeling that commercial won't be as strong as as a residential certain sectors are doing very well for example while you might think retail is not doing well our sales tax is very strong right now um there's a couple theories for that some of it is people are working at home so maybe they're doing their shopping in prince william where they used to perhaps shop in fairfax or dc or where their place near their place of employment at the state level they're also still seeing very strong sales tax so you'll see here on this chart um from june for example in the state it was 5.4 percent and now 7.5 and in the county we were at 4.1 now 9.1 percent so a very strong sales tax base the other area on here is

009um billing permits the activities is still um relatively neutral compared to last year not a whole lot more building activity than we had in the prior year so we're keeping that in the in the gray next slide please this slide shows the adopted general revenue forecast after recreation is taken out and you'll see we are updating it negatively 3.5 million dollars and it's primarily in two areas investment income and that's because interest rates are very low we also were very proactive in keeping a very strong liquidity level so that the the board of county supervisors were able to move the tax due dates to us help our community as much as possible the other areas is in big franchise fees across the state across the nation savings rates are um on the on the decline

010and so those two areas we've made an adjustment downward the good news is the sales tax is still very strong and so we're watching it very carefully and perhaps next quarter we may do a positive adjustment to sales tax that will offset some of that but for now we decided it was too early to really make that call excuse me the next slide shows the shortfall if the shortfall remains through year end 3.5 million dollars that shortfall gets shared in accordance with the revenue share agreement so it would be a 1.5 million dollars shortfall to the county and then 2 million dollars to the state and this is of course before all of our fund balances our required contribution to the unassigned fund balance is funded at 7.5 percent next slide please i think we're

011maybe off on there go to slide nine please on cares act um i wanna i wanna talk a little bit about some of the other funding sources that you've had this year that have have helped with revenues both on the county and the school side the county was the recipient of 82.1 million dollars of coronavis relief funds approximately one-third of that we provided to the schools 20 million dollars was provided initially to support the purchase of computer devices to support distant learning another 5 million was then provided for further computer equipment or ppe and then 3.2 million was provided for audio visual equipment so in total about 20 what is that 25 28 million dollars next slide please slide 10. uh the joint cova task force was also established and did a couple of initial

012initiatives here shown on this slide uh the first was there was state funding that was secured for hot spots and i'm gonna go through some of these in a little more detail over the next two slides uh there was also efforts towards a network capacity expansion technology upgrades library hot spots for students to connect to wi-fi eoc warehouse support so this is our emergency operations center we were able to secure ppe for the schools and then finally a four-way child care agreement with alpha best in the county and the schools and then also through the boys and girls club and up to two million dollars was provided for after school care next slide please on the libraries a couple things they did was that improved wi-fi access through the library parking uh they've also partnered

013with various schools to suppress supply library cards and digital library card access for families to support virtual learning and then virtual learning for to support the school's stem and steam activities slide 12. the departments of department of information technology secured that hot spot grant so a little over 4 000 hot spots were provided for 1.2 million dollars with care the additional cares act fund in addition they secured 100 chromebooks through the libraries uh to support schools they also provided access to the amazon web services contract center for school free of charge and then our our position in iron mountain the data center the schools also joined into that data center and that we were able to leverage joint technology there as well on the uncertainty slides um today like i said the commercial real estate

014market is still very unclear it's much more clear on residential we think it's going to be strong through the remainder of the year there frankly is just not enough inventory on the market so that's what's keeping that residential market very strong sales tax continues to be strong but we know certain sectors of commercial will likely have reduced gross receipts which will affect impact our be poll tax revenue our business and professional occupational license and finally interest income will continue to remain hampered we also know there's going to be future budget stresses this year as we continue to respond to this pandemic and cares act funding dries up we're going to have to still continue with some of these economic recovery efforts community feeding efforts for example homeless services testing and that will likely move into

015vaccinations and then some of the ongoing costs is this ppe enhanced cleanings the increased um technology usage for to support laptops virtual learning virtual meetings and remote access so all of those things will continue to be budget press pressures that we'll have to watch over the next year any questions please um i had a quick one sure and this might require mr wallingford to help answer too just because i think it's important for all of us when we talked about the budget for this school year we talked about the state general assembly holding schools they they use the word harmless for enrollment so students you know schools get allocated monies based on our enrollment so our enrollment's down three and a half percent and i think it's about 15 million dollars that the general assembly

016has not funded us yet we don't have those monies and so if mr wallingford can you speak to that real quick about how much money that is what the enrollment drop is and what we if you guys have made any projections or anticipated concerns about that how that'll affect us for the rest of the year because that will also be a stress to you as well so thank you dr latif i'm going to give you round numbers just for the sake of the conversation here we forecast about 92 000 students in this current year the current budget year we ended up having about 89 000 students or a reduction of about 3 000 students the per pupil amount that we receive from the state is approximately it's a little over 5 000 about fifty two

017hundred dollars that loss because of enrollment reductions from from our forecast is about fifteen million to fifteen to sixteen million dollars uh the general assembly has been having conversations about holding us harmless on that in other words they would provide us revenue to the extent of what their forecasts were for our enrollment in the current year we're waiting for the january session to take place to see whether or not that hold harmless actually comes comes to fruition thank you thank you mr wallingford and then the um on that do you do you anticipate are there any thoughts on projections for next year's enrollment well like ms hatchery just said we've just begun our revenue forecasting process we will find out from the state in a december to january time frame what we think next year's

018revenues will be from a state perspective michelle i expect we'll be getting right before the holidays like we typically do late in late december and that's when we'll actually begin to take a look at uh what the impacts are on the budget and so we have just just um because we haven't been held harmless technically yet we have made adjustments to staffing across the division because of the drops in enrollment moving students from school moving positions from schools that might be under enrolled sure so there's a process that the school division goes through every year we reconcile student enrollment on september 30th we put out our budget in may and the following september we count the students who actually come across the doors across the threshold and make adjustments and across 100 schools in the

019division some will see more students than were forecast some will see fewer students than forecast and this adjustment process takes place we encourage our principals to start making those adjustments early in july and august or at least planning for what adjustments might take place this year was a significant year in my 27 years here this is the biggest enrollment a reduction from the prior year forecast that we've had and so it did create a little stress on schools and and they're scrambling a bit to make things work right now thank you mr wallingford any other questions mr chairman mr kimlin thank you there were a few slides that i was missing from my uh slide deck if we just get those at some point that that would be great yeah michelle i'm not sure if

020you noticed that but there's a different slide deck was up on the screen so if you can share those yep we'll send it hi lily jesse i just want to look at slide eight again just an explanation i think you use the word state instead of school side eight yeah i think miss atrod you said on the on that was a slide talking about the revenue shortfall and um at the end of the year we would divide that up and i think language-wise you had said 2 million for the state i think you meant to say 2 million for the school yes is that correct that's correct and is that the slide miss jesse is that the correct slide you wanted yeah that's the point that i wanted and i also want to ask mr

021wallaford uh when we look at uh the school revenue based on the september 30th enrollment has there been some uh increase in our funding or not funding but budget uh based on our lack of use of buses and not lack of use of students in building has there been some way to compensate for that lost in enrollment does that question make sense mrs jesse i'm not sure i understand the question here's what i'd say we haven't made any centrally we haven't made any adjustments to the transportation budget uh or to school budgets with the one exception that i mentioned and that's the change in enrollment between uh the budget adopted in late april early may and what we actually counted on september 30th i guess i'm asking are there any early savings uh with the

022uh usual you know usually we have school students in school and we have buses and we have use of facilities and costs for facilities are you seeing any uh savings in those areas uh so i understand your question mrs jesse uh as you're aware you've been around the school division for a couple of years and a principal for many years 95 percent of the budget in a school goes to salaries and we've we've not furloughed or even talked about furloughing or making any staffing adjustments from that perspective so the expenditures that you would normally see in a school those are pretty much intact now there are some operational savings for items like materials and supplies because people aren't in the buildings but we're uh as you're aware we're beginning to bring students into the buildings

023and so we'll see those expenses start to accrue again thank you if i may um the one thing i would add too like the schools i'm experiencing a revenue shortfall with your state revenues perhaps the county too with our agency revenues that's an area that's not shared with the schools those are specific revenues for specific programs but we are projecting a 10 million dollar agency shortfall those are primarily due to programs such as our parks and recs if you think about our chin centers our dlc rec centers they're not at full capacity our sports leagues all of our fields those those type of things so we are looking at a shortfall there we are looking to cover that with expenditure savings through the year projecting about a two percent expenditure savings and that will be

024about breakeven and so that does not put us in a position right now projected to fund all of our reserves and so we are we're closely watching revenues and expenditures and all of these things and we may have to make adjustments as the year year goes on i guess the final question is uh i'm not sure the slide but you talked about uh two million dollars in after school uh care how you support it could you explain that a little bit more sure so there was cares act funding that went towards child care initiatives and so funding went to the alphabet program which i believe alphabet is a contract for the schools currently used for after-school care and so additional funding was provided so they could increase their capacity and have child care services for

025families and i think maybe even at reduced cost or scholarships perhaps was that 2 million did i miss did you say 2 million 2 million that's correct okay thank you okay mr chairman oh miss lawson supervisor michelle do we know the performance of that alphabet scholarship program do we know if that's been completely allocated or do does anybody here know what the status of that is because the funds have to be spent by the end of the year correct thank you michelle casciato we allocated 2 million dollars to the program but it is a reimbursement piece so alphabet submits receipts and then receives funding we did an upfront payment of half a million dollars to get them started and they've been submitting receipts against that as of the first week of december i think we

026had expended roughly six hundred thousand dollars they do not expect that they will be using the full allocation before december thirtieth which is the deadline date because it is karazak funding madam chair thank you can um can families uh resubmit if if it's not being utilized um you know we want to use up as much as possible to give families a relief so do you know if there's an opportunity for families to i don't know all the details of that program but if there's money left you know there's capacity in that in that grant program are we allowing people to go back in for a second dip in in essence everybody who is in the program right now with alphabet is there as a 100 percent scholarship student um so they are accommodating everybody that

027they can accommodate in terms of demand and as well as supply so they have opened some additional sites um they have had some success in staffing up but it has been a challenge for them as well and as the schools have continued to reopen and bring back um a grade or two that has limited the amount of use that alphabets can have in some of those schools so it's been a little bit of a balancing act um and i believe that they are doing their absolute best to accommodate as many people as they can but just logistically and with the count and understanding when the school calendar ends we are expecting that they will not be able to use the full allocation thank you okay okay miss wall thank you thank you mr chairman um

028the um information about the 82.1 million in cares money i'm curious i know maybe there will be more carriage money coming do we factor in any revenue forecast i don't know if it's a revenue forecast but money coming through additional cares funding and how would that impact so right now we aren't forecasting additional funding although there is talk that there could be another round of funding that may come sometime after the first of the year there's also talks at that extent that cares act funding deadline could be extended beyond december 30th that has not happened yet so it's something we're watching carefully um but we are not planning on now that those dollars would be would be in hand until we're certain okay thank you very much mr appreciate it and thank you guys um

029and thank you mr supervisor lawson for bringing up that program excellent program and the county had moved exceptionally quickly to to put that out there and miss casiato that's fantastic news that we have 100 supply and 100 demand all met that's incredible congratulations and good work on that and thank you dr wallace in the school division for doing all of that as well our next presentation will be on implicit bias uh presentation by maria burjo's burgos she's our supervisor of global learning and cultural uh responsive instruction um miss mr chairman yeah mr campbell and i'm not sure if i i said mr chairman or madam chair are you are you running the meeting mr chairman or well okay mr chairman and madam chair um i i guess i i was surprised to see this on

030the agenda i know i had asked about this at the last board meeting it was basic last combined meeting was was basically shot down on getting any additional information i i'm wondering just as a start what is the purpose behind this presentation uh is this an informational briefing on what you're training teachers on is this an informational briefing on what you're training students on what what is this presentation and why is it part of our joint school board meeting a number of members uh on a my board and and i know i think miss franklin had asked for just some thoughts on what we do just for cultural bias training within the school division so miss maria burgos we'll we'll talk about that as well and um miss williams sorry the purpose really is because

031it's my request so i just want to answer you directly is we're all elected leaders in a mandarin majority county so i thought it would be very wise of us to learn about implicit bias the state of virginia and the school division has taken a sense a very progressive stance and following anti-racism policy training and um i had asked i want to say probably about november of last year for us to have a joint board meeting and this to be included so that we could better serve our constituents and better be informed of our own biases so this evening's presentation is not to say what we do specifically in the school division because we have our own equity committee we're coming out later on in this year 2020 with some more information regarding that but

032really to help us better understand how we should be looking at things how we our own biases affect our own judgments and for an educational purpose that's really where it comes from uh mr chairman mr camelin well i i don't think this is an appropriate venue and frankly uh school board member vice chair sorry advicer williams i don't think it's your place to tell the board of county supervisors what sort of training we need on on have you seen evidence that you think that this uh implicit bias is a problem on the board of county supervisors i didn't agree to this kind of training we we were not informed that we were going to be come here and be trained on any implicit bias that that you seem to think that the members of the

033board of county supervisor have i think this is frankly highly insulting because you're insinuating that somehow members of the board of county supervisors hold these implicit uh biases against different racial groups and i i don't think this is an appropriate play if the board of county supervisors wants training on implicit bias then we will decide as board of county supervisors how to train us ourselves but to have the school board come and say to the board of county supervisors we're going to train you on implicit bias your own implicit bias i think is highly offensive and inappropriate the fact that we're talking about this when we've got a global pandemic happening we've got kids who are floundering at home when we're trying to figure out how we're going to fund schools for for for next

034year we're taking time during a joint meeting to talk about this uh i i find this very disturbing and and i object to to this type of training in this meeting thank you mr canlin your objection is noted but um implicit bias is something that every human being walking the earth has and that was pretty much the point of this is just to infer information so that we're all aware that everybody has this it's not specific to you personally or to your board it's just good leadership and it's fine if you object that's no problem we're all allowed to have our own opinions and perspectives and i respectfully disagree with you and i thank you so much for sharing uh i would like to add willy jesse uh this slides i looked at the slides

035this afternoon and uh i'd like to say that the school board has not seen these slides so i think it's not about the board of supervisors i think it's about all of us as community leaders and as elected officials perhaps it came from ms williams from the school board but we're all in this field of dealing with uh our populations and it is something that we all need to be aware it's an awareness uh when i looked at the slides today i learned a lot and i think all of us will learn a lot tonight but uh it's not something that i wanted to make sure you understood that this is not something where the school board has been trained on seeing these slides and been trained on it and now we're saying you need

036to have it we're both receiving this training at the same time thank you madam chair supervisor lawson thank you uh supervisor caroline thank you for bringing this up because i wholeheartedly agree with you matter of fact i don't know if the school board members that are new or the board of county supervisors members that are new are aware that on january 9 2017 miss williams and miss jesse with then chairman ryan sawyer sent a letter to the department of justice because our boards collabor work in a collaborative manner for 20 million dollars of school construction funding 10 million for the 13th high school to add 500 seats because we've for the last several years have had very overcrowded high schools in the west end of the county and in the east end it has been

037the elementary schools in more recent years and we worked in a very bipartisan manner to find the funding supervisor canlin and supervisor frank principe worked together and they they were the spearheads of it but the vote was a very bipartisan vote it came with a lot of drama from the chairman and miss williams and miss jesse and then when they lost they followed up with a department of justice complaint about supervisor canlan myself and other members of the then boards so frankly miss williams i have a hard time taking you serious that you truly want to work together with people that don't look like you or think politically like you when you file a doj complaint about me because of a vote that i that that i took and i proudly stand by to help

038our students so i'm not going to sit in a training session i agree with supervisor caitlin i find it offensive that during this historic pandemic when we've got families and teachers and everybody in the school division that are doing everything they can to survive this that you find this a priority when our boards maybe meet twice a year so i i i'll object matter of fact i'm going to pack up and leave because i'm offended that you find that i need to be trained and that this is also a priority to you when you're the one on record ms lawson yeah enough please no no no ma'am it's not enough she's she's literally she's she's it's not enough she's the one that's trying to shove us down our throats it's not enough you have gone

039on too long no i haven't care absolutely no no you can't have if you agree to this first of all on sunday no we couldn't even get the presentation so i had time to look at it on sunday night i went to the i went to look for it and it wasn't available for dispatch we are going through a difficult time in our society where i am i'm like if i have any implicit you're not no you've taken this way this is all about critical race theory anti-americanism and i am going to object to it and i'm leaving you are somehow thinking that this is a politically motivated thing this is about you you're wrong supervisor you are so slutter because of 500 votes i'm not going to sit here when she filed a complaint

040with the doj because we increased funding for the high school and then 10 million dollars it was like giving away cancer to her she wouldn't take it for 10 million dollars so i can't take her seriously she's the one that doesn't listen that was in 2017 and we've worked together very successfully since this time because both both boards have had several 8-0 votes since that time i'm sorry you're going to miss out on an informational not training session but i'm sure your constituents who you represent which is a diverse population would love to know that you you're not interested in being open-minded to sit i just remember justin was another vote so the complaint was about making this political instead of just an educational leader i appreciate your thoughts one sec just real quick um

041the agenda was noted and posted a week ago i received no email from either you mr canlin or you miss lawson regarding your objection to this item on the agenda now i recognize and hear your objection duly noted we recognize that this is a presentation that is not to insult anyone this is a new board i don't answer for what happened in 2017 and i don't think madam chair wheeler does as well at this point we'd like to go ahead and move forward mr mr chairman i just have two two questions but let me and dually noted for the public i was not my email is readily available no one reached out to me to object to this mr chairman i i will address that it's common courtesy to put supporting information on the topics

042that we're going to provide we as the board of county super supervisors you had our revenue projection report in here uh it's it's common courtesy but i i did want to um you could shake your head it doesn't make it not true but i didn't want to ask did the school board spend any money taxpayer money on this this training this material we have a whole office dedication okay so the answer is yes and then i guess my second question is is this being taught to our children in our schools because because i know about this and i find this highly offensive and if this is being taught to our children in our school district i think the the parents of prince william county need to know that so i would ask you madam vice

043chair mr chairman is this being taught to our kids in prince william county schools let's go through the presentation is that is that a non-answer are you just refusing to answer me or you don't want to answer we we we do cultural bias training to the kids our our our division leaders and our um uh teachers and everyone in the division and are they instructed to teach us to the children now dr wallace do you want to answer that question i'll refer that to miss goss associate superintendent who supervises professional learning so good evening this this specific training that you're seeing here um this is a this um uh training that mrs burgos and mrs taylor and dr williams uh this is for our professional educators in in the school division and it's an opportunity

044to foster like the title says inclusivity and equity this this exact training is not provided to students no okay thank you mr chairman and just for clarification we did not receive the slides on the revenue projecting in the materials to as well so you know there's a little bit of that back and forth okay so i will move forward with the presentation miss lawson if you want to say something and then uh so on sunday night when i was doing my homework for tuesday's board meetings uh i noticed that the dispatch did not have the material for um your present your your two items tonight i don't know why your board didn't receive the material for the revenue presentation that because it was dispersed to us mr martino can answer that um that's on me

045then we'll make sure that the next time we ever have a meeting like this we'll make sure the materials get back and forth okay but uh i emailed the our board clerk this morning to see if it had if your two items had been disseminated and your your staff had not even sent it to her she had to go to your your website to look at look for it and then and that was 11 o'clock so that's on me i'll make sure that so in all fairness i mean we had a two o'clock work session with a lot of other things going on so i didn't even have proper time i would have certainly reached out to you had i known exactly what this presentation was going to be a few days ago but i

046didn't have the opportunity because i didn't know it wasn't posted but i spent some time out in the parking lot looking through it and i have serious problems about it uh specifically all the critical race theory that is embedded through it and uh i'm not gonna sit here and and be and you've even even missed goss used the word trained that it's training for the board of county supervisors if we if we think if i if i think that supervisor bodhi and i have unkind un unconscious bias then that's up to him and i to to get our own training or work through it i don't need the school board to tell our board how we need to be trained any more than i have plans to train you guys on table manners it's just

047it doesn't work that way if you don't want to participate you're welcome to leave we need to move on i am you know whatever is going on here on my court you're welcome to leave i'm going to well hopefully that you'll come back for the the smart beginnings greater prince william you can go sit down in the hallway if you want that's fine just leave and let us get on with that it's it's very but but i do have the department of justice letter for anyone who wants a copy of it because i was like you do with this yeah yeah when when the member who brought it accused me of racial discrimination over something over over 500 seats are you kidding me it has a lot to do with it and it tells me

048a lot a lot about her you know they're going through this training also it's not like they're trying so it is training it is training information training you know i'm open minded thank you please leave mr chairman madam chair mr mr angry right let me go on a record is saying uh you know my family reminds me daily of my unconscious biases i have no problem sitting in this seminar workshop training whatever you want to call it and participate so i thank you all for putting this together all right thank you madam chair i'd just like to apologize for our board members who i consider were rude supervisor franklin just out of clarity um i thought they cared about equity yeah i thought so too i just was one of the clarification it's also about

049inclusivity as well okay miss burgos i think supervisor bailey oh right i'm sorry sorry dr latif please excuse me just want to say to you um as the school board representative and vice chair for this august group thank you for having the foresight progressive thought that you might want to share this information with us i don't i don't see this as an insult at all and i don't see this as training but an opportunity to grow and to and to build relationships within these two boards to build more relationships to serve our children to equip us with things that we might have be blindsided by so i apologize to you for anything that may have been it doesn't seem like it was offensive to you madam chair supervisor bodhi thank you and i'm just saying

050this because my name was brought up by another supervisor i welcome the opportunity to share a leadership opportunity to learn because we are as elected leaders have this most diverse community in the entire commonwealth of virginia where to make budgetary decisions operational decisions staff decisions every single year on this and if we have blind spots in this not serving certain segments of our community because of our own biases i would welcome the opportunity to at least be aware of them so i'm a better leader so i wanted to thank you for putting this on one quickly i'm sorry the only thing that the other thing that i wanted to add is we're all learning how to disseminate information we're all learning how to conduct specific meetings so please in it please just get the information

051to us as soon as you can we understand that covet is hit and everything is not in a rhythm as it was before so if you could please we'd appreciate it that's all me thank you i'll turn it back to you miss burgos please take it good evening my name is christy dugan taylor and i um the director of the office of professional learning and tonight we were asked to provide a um short information on raising awareness of unconscious bias to foster inclusivity and equity i would like to welcome ms maria burgos supervisor of global learning and culturally responsive instruction next slide please also i am pleased to introduce dr lisa williams a national consultant on the topics of equity and access on public education who have been working with us since march 2020 so

052maria i'd like to invite you to begin the presentation please don't mute miss burgos chrissy says that every time i'm on mute and speak that i owe her a quarter so i told her by now she can um buy herself a car thank you chrissy for the introduction i work in the office of professional learning and this is informative for tonight not training as training requires dialogue from all participants our county is comprised of 104 different ethnicities and 122 different languages we're the verse county and growing i am a social thinker who leads to work with equity and inclusion through a lens of love and accounting and accountability for myself and for those who i have the privilege to engage with and collaborate with such as tonight so thank you for the invitation implicit biases

053is also a guess tonight in the room and it's sitting quietly among us making positive connection making neutral connections and maybe making negative assumptions about who we are and our intentions this is why it's so vital to raise awareness of unconscious bias to foster inclusivity and equity as leaders we owe it to ourselves and those we serve to reduce our implicit associations to promote equity and inclusivity next slide uncon unconscious bias is a positive step for any organization who wants to recognize and address these hidden biases that can influence workplace decisions and climates and as leaders is a must do these are the four areas that we're going to touch on today the first one is defining implicit bias the second one is examining the relationship between implicit bias and the dimensions of who we

054are our own culture and what we bring to the workplace environment the next is a review of how biases influences our decisions in interactions on a daily basis as human beings and finally just a few little strategies um to consider as we wrap up the evening on this particular presentation next slide please implicit biases refers to the unconscious thinking structures that influence our perceptions and behaviors and actions towards a person a group or any given situation is part of our safety mechanisms in the brain that's constantly scanning to say are we safe or not learning about implicit biases should include information about the neuroscience of bias within the context of also examining those historical racial structures that give rise to and perpetuates inequities and learning institutions and organizations today next bullet implicit bias is not

055the same as explicit bias where a person is aware of their actions on a conscious level implicit bias can be both neutral as i said earlier positive or negative in most cases people who generally care about fairness and equity will hold these unconscious biases that could lead them to react in ways that is very opposite from their held beliefs and values next bullet implicit bias is one of the critical factors that promote inequality resulting in unsafe and underproductive working environments implicit bias and its effects plays out in three key processes within the brain that is priming association and assumptions that we'll look at in just a minute next slide the first is priming and this is a psychological phenomena in which words image sound and any other stimulus is used to elicit associated responses and

056influence our decisions for example advertisers know this and use it to their advantage as they use priming to influence sales here's a prime example a call for action from nike restaurants may also use infl use it to influence consumption next slide associations work hand in hand with priming and our decisions of culture we have an innate in inability to associ we have an innate ability to associate two things together very quickly because we have these systems in the brains that create shortcuts for example what you're seeing above is an example of how we will cook quickly associate is reigning cats and dogs per se clique the next one that is a common association is a word like speak and span and the last one which you'll see coming down in the next click is peanut

057butter and jelly but based on your experience you might say peanut butter and allergies think about priming again and consider who we often see as nurses engineers landscaping yards being sent out of classrooms or jailed the more often that we see two things together the stronger the associations brain cells as we know when they fire together they wire together this is the highway of how unexamined assumptions uphold inequity click please when it comes to people how we have primed to make associations is influenced by ads books social medias policies and practice that have been applied throughout our history to include and exclude um groups of people our brains familiarity with diverse people and social settings influence our associations next slide for example i purposely put this picture for you as we because i know that

058your brain will be scanning and looking for an association of what is this right in front of me your brain does the same thing all day every day because it's constantly scanning for safety and making those association if you're familiar with this fruit you know it smells fantastic but you can't even eat it so in often many places it's used to fragrance a room is called a buddha plant next slide while there are many examples throughout history these are a few examples of historical priming associations and assumptions expressed in defining humans click one example includes a research publication of carlinos who published his stem in adrial in 1758 his research focused on defining and categorizing humans into four categories lianes believed people were born with these traits click please as you review these categorize categories

059note that his categorizations and other published works throughout histories are examples of stereotypes that still impact explicit and implicit social biases today earlier i provided an example of who i am and touched upon internal external and organization dimensions of who i am actually i left out the fact that i'm a latino woman so that would have been part of my internal influence when people are asked to define their culture most folks will express traits within that green area what we call the internal dimension and also their physical features this model is visual of it's a visual of how complex we experience and inter and interpret life as individuals this is our individual culture influence our workplace productivity our decision our climate our decision our our leadership and more our unconscious mind makes up 90 percent

060of our decisions without with our unawareness and is where to make cognitive shortcuts using dimensions of our individual culture to make associations and assumptions next slide that is why the national equity project and many organizations um say that as leaders for equity we have to examine and unpack and mitigate our own biases and dismantle the policies and structures that hold inequity in place we call this leading from the inside out everyone has biases as we said before but this is the cumulative impact of racism and other isms that exist in society when these associative bias assumptions are expressed we must examine how it is getting built into organizational practices policies and culture setting organizational goals to become equity-minded and to us is building equity when we commit to intentionally noticing how our own lived experience

061have been shaped have shaped our beliefs our attitudes and action and make a commitment to address and dismantle racism and other forms of systemic oppression we can begin the work of reducing the negative cumulative effects of emotional states of mind and physiological responses experienced historically today by blacks indigenous and people of color health institutes like centerra have called implicit bias a detriment to health and have labeled this cycle racial battle fatigue the following are just a few examples of social and behavioral biases present and day-to-day living as professionals and members of our community next slide first impressions are lasting impressions have you heard that before well the thing about it is that researchers will tell you that it takes about 18 intentional interactions to change that perk first impression if that first impression wasn't good

062negative bias plays a role in that it's a survival instinct that we all have it is known as the positive and negative asymmetry that refers to our tendency to focus on learn from and use negative information far more than positive information what research says is that we remember traumatic experiences better than positive ones that we recall insults better than praise that we think about negative things more frequently than positive ones according to the journal of psychological science our subconscious mind processes around a million pieces of information per second while our conscious mind processes around 40 pieces of information per second reflect as you will the last time that you looked at data where did your attention draw to did you look at all the growth areas and positives or did you cue in on those

063areas that need to continue to grow when you were given a picture the last time of a family photo where everyone was smiling did you cue in on that one person in the corner who didn't want to smile clearly not smiling next slide please these are examples of those first impressions these are examples of those negative impressions and their influence what you're looking at now are also some examples because there are many because when we say implicit biases it's really the big umbrella of all these different behavior and social biases that play a role in our day-to-day interactions our question here is are there common claims about employees community members students maybe your own family members that you suspect are under informed by these biases i know the writing is small and we can offer

064that on a closer look so you can look at these biases but we just wanted to post these so that folks can understand that there are many social and behalf and behavioral biases that guide our decisions every day and it's so vital as leaders and educators and members of the community to be aware of these because they play such a pivotal role in the decisions that we make so how can we reduce our implicit associations next slide first note that we can start recognizing the moments in which we are most likely to make decisions um that that to make decisions that made by we excuse me we are most likely to make this bias decisions when these factors are in place the first one is vagueness when you don't have enough information the likelihood of

065bias actions being in place is pretty good the next one is cognitive overload this includes mental fatigue lack of sleep hunger and other distractions the third one is time constraints when you're working under time pressures and rushing and the last one where biased decisions may be impacted by behavior is overconfidence when you're too confident to consider the opinions of others to make objective decisions now what can we do i'm just offering just a few because we are limited in time but these are just a few things that we can do to reduce our implicit associations because they will never really go away they're part of our brain mechanisms to check and to look out the window and to see how everybody's doing and to also safeguard ourselves but consider taking the implicit bias association test

066it comes from harvard and universities as uva who have collaborated and this is a free online on resource that evaluates associations you have between concepts evaluations and stereotypes um you take it it's not broadcasted it's just to give you information before taking it though i do recommend reviewing a document called making the sense of your iat results this document from the current institute for the study of race and ethnicity provides a research-based topology of some common reactions to the aita one knowing our difference is so vital because all of us are different acknowledging differences conscious consciously slows down the processes of priming associations and assumptions our brains are malleable and we can build synopsis to become more inclusive and equitable and all that we do in our practices but guess this requires intent it requires

067lots of intent to reduce negative biases associated with our differences the last one is seek friendships from people from different groups why do we want to do that we do it because we want to increase our brains familiarity to expand your point of view this also creates safety associations in the brain and builds a counter narrative to influence new mental associations that are more positive and more in line with who we are the last one's a minor fold protocol is a process of checking your implicit biases and it's really four steps that it comes with the first one is to evaluate your own assumptions predictions and biases that you may have about people about culture about disability you must first consider how your interactions how you interact and your expectations with those that you interact

068with the second one is describe describe behaviors without interpretation to consider appropriate and consistent ways that you may want to respond their third one is consider the many ways that people demonstrate engagement and how culture influences the way that folks respond and interact with each other in their workplace community and learning and of course the other is interpret behaviors to support rather than to inhibit relationships here are some more books if you want to look more into the subject matter and also the national equity institute is also a great site to visit for information on this topic next slide once again unconscious training is a forward direction for organizations who are seeking to positively influence the workplace climate productivity and decisions next click gracias por su tiempo tension esta noche thank you very much for

069the time i was just gonna say thank you very much for that interesting presentation i'm always glad to take a look at myself and think about all my implicit biases one way or another so with that anyone have any questions comments thoughts supervisor angry you're like thank you thank you madam chair you know um i just really a comment um i'm not new to this okay military we do this training all the time i mean if if you want to see an organization that is successful in uh creating unity and i mean don't get me wrong we have our issues on the side but the main focus of it all this is how we do it you you have to come in to contact with those things that you know you're uncomfortable with or you

070know what you're unconscious about and and you deal with them you know we always say check your feelings and your emotions at the door when you come together in a group we need to function as a group and that's that's you know what i see here and every time we do this and this is what our third time they're doing this jointly together second or third you know this to me is a good uh step in the right direction for us because i've been saying this since i've been on the board that we should have more of these meetings but this isn't even just about us this helps us in our communities in our districts you know and everything that we do because you have to be you know pretty much in tune with who

071you are and and what you uh deal with in your head in your own head so you know thank you for this training that was really good presentation so i appreciate that and thank you for your time and you know just thanks supervisor cody jesse can i see the slide with the different biases bandwagon effect ostrich and group could what could you show that slide again maria i don't have the slide deck oh there there you go okay i i found this would be a fascinating slide especially when it comes to us as uh elected officials uh we are elected officials and i think we need to look at some of us represent uh african-american groups and minority groups some of us represent more middle class groups and when the ostrich effect i when i

072looked at that one i thought the tendency to ignore dangerous or risky situation or something else less likely to trigger our discomfort uh boundaries is one thing that we deal with and racial issues are another thing that is another thing and you're always teetering back and forth with your own beliefs and the beliefs of your constituents and you're trying to please your constituents but at the same time you're looking at this line that you cannot cross because of your own belief and i i just think that's a very interesting slide when it comes to us as leaders we are leaders of a minority majority um i am in the lake ridge aquaporin district and dr taurean who kind of convinced me to run for this office said always remember your district but then i had

073to also realize that the bigger picture is all of the districts that i represent all of these people and when i was thinking about the uh scholarships and for daycare my first attendance my first reaction was did they get the information did they feel comfortable coming in that we need to we need to do more with that population when i ran for the board i said i was going to be a voice for the voiceless kind of casually and now that i've been on the board i realize it's a very serious uh situation that we're dealing with and also the bandwagon you know it's just easy to be on the bandwagon and my bias um was when we started dealing with the um gay community and i grew up in the south and i grew

074up in a family that it was something that we thought was to be honest we laughed at people who didn't act like us and it was my kids who are who are high school high schoolers at the time that i realized that they didn't grow up in that environment they didn't have those feelings so i guess i'm here to say that all of us have biases and i'm really sorry that people felt that this was something to attack them personally but i think that all of us need to realize when you look at those slides all of us have biased and i think you get a wonderful presentation and you look like a professor so thank you did a great job thank you maria thank you miss jesse and just to note biases can also

075be very favorable and positive like if you ask me he's one of the most intelligent girls in the world i would say my girl so they do have a way of influencing positively as well thank you super supervisor body you have a comment thank you thank you miss burgos for the informative and very comprehensive presentation i want to take a a note from supervisor angry's book for a moment and say leadership comes from the top tone tones from the top we are the elected leaders of this county and you know we run the most the largest employers in the county to me how can we say that we want our business community our communities that we serve and we represent to be inclusive forward-looking and embrace the diversity we have unless we ourselves are willing

076to take a look at ourselves and see how we're being inclusive so i again always welcome the opportunity to have conversations like this to look at ourselves in a very honest and holistic way because let's face it we have the most diverse community in the commonwealth that means that our workforce from both the county side and the school board side is probably also one of the most diverse we have and we can still do a lot more things to improve that diversity as well but until we are able to say that we want to acknowledge that we have these biases good bad ugly net neutral and that we want to do better by that how can we expect our workforce we want to do something like that how can we expect the business community want

077to do that how do we expect the people that we seek to thrive in our community to want to do better unless we want to do better so i just wanted to say that and i just want to again highlight that the tone that we set matters and i just want everyone who's in the room right now to remember who's in the room and who left the room thank you supervisor bailey yes thank you ma'am chair um i want to say three things one is i want to say thank you to maria burgos you've been on the battlefield for us for a very long time it's great to see you continue on the battlefield for your community you're doing an outstanding job and i want to say thank you to um to the school board

078for having the courage to present this um that's key i want to say thank you to dr waltz dr walt uh um we've had some great conversations one of the conversations i don't know if you remember or not is when you stop learning you stop growing and so i courage to do this hats off to you um i want to say to the reporters that are in the room um because i know you're here i can feel you on my back report the good news it's easy to report the bad news but report the good news the good news is that two boards in this county got together and we talked about diversity and inclusion to to move our county forward identifying the cultures and having respect for the cultures that are in our community

079so report that along with all the negative stuff that you're going to report because i think that's important for our community to hear and then lastly i am i sent a text to my son but i thought about it because i said man i'm ashamed right now but i'm not ashamed because supervisor angry you said something very clear if we are leaders we got to feel the fear and do it anyway to be successful we're going to be criticized we're going to argue we're going to say some things that's going to be offensive but if we are truly leaders and devoted to this community we have to feel the fear and do it anyway so i just want to say thank you very much to mr chairman i know i've gotten on your nerds you're

080my friend i don't care but you are a great leader i know you're a great leader and you are a fearless leader for allowing us to be in this community of leaders to have this training not training information thank you so upcoming next we have the smart beginnings oh i didn't see your light is there oh okay gotta go i'm a light sorry no please i just wanted to take a second um i think it is important to take a look at ourselves and improve and learn and grow and keep an open mind and set the tone as leaders i do think however we should be sensitive to the complaints that were made earlier because um you know that the complaint was that you know this isn't the right venue or that they didn't have

081really knowledge about this beforehand um it is a mistake to not be transparent about um you know what's coming up in a meeting and i agree the information was really pretty late in coming um the materials were late and getting posted and then we've had um some you know discussion or i guess back and forth about what was this training or was this a presentation and what was it and that kind of like uh one of those points in the slide was um vagueness and how that can lead to bias and i think we saw a good example of that tonight where um there was just kind of some vagueness and it led to kind of this sense of misunderstanding and perhaps understanding depending on your viewpoint because words matter you know we have to

082be precise and is it a training or is it a presentation is it information is it to help guide us what exactly is it and we should we should be sensitive to those kinds of complaints and listen to people because you know to be on the opposite side of the table or the opposite side of an issue you know to express a minority opinion is pretty difficult and it's hard to um you know kind of feel misunderstood i mean i'm i've been misunderstood a number of times i'm currently have a number of teachers who are misunderstanding me continuing to misunderstand me even though the more i say you know like teachers are great etc i'm misunderstood and it's a very painful place to be um so i think you know going forward you know we

083need to understand um this is just i guess my comment that it's important that we respect one another on the board of county supervisors on the school board we're both separate government entities and we have strengths and weaknesses and we shouldn't we shouldn't we should listen to each other and we should be sensitive to the fact that we are um equally you know important government boards um and that we have that we can listen to each other and i think transparency and communication and precision of language will make a difference as we go forward i would like to add something to this because i can't walk away from tonight and leave this sense that the board of supervisors did not if i recall at the legislative breakfast the issue of bias training came up and

084there were questions about whether or not this was going to be done and why are we doing it i think what we have here is not a lack of transparency because i think that dr latif or someone is jesse we can't hear you you're muted uh uh we all knew it and it was reinforced tonight if you feel that this is subject is going to make you uncomfortable i think that you can go behind closed doors and talk to the chair and talk to mrs williams about it and i think that's where we are i want to also add that last year mrs williams and i were the two representatives on this board where we had these meetings and i we sometimes i think we felt that they were unproductive but we really made uh

085we we talked about our agenda and so i i just don't want to walk away with anyone in this room thinking that members of this board cannot collaborate because we have in the past and i hope we continue in the future thank you madam chair uh supervisor franklin sure um miss wahl i actually want to um thank you for your comments and to let you know that i actually really appreciate the fact that you said that um and even more so i i appreciate the fact that you said that and that you're still here that means a great deal i'm just going to speak on behalf of everybody the fact that you're willing to have that difficult of a discussion and that you're willing to say actually i think a little bit differently on this

086on these parts but i'm still going to stay here listen to the information make up my mind however i make it up but i just really appreciate the fact that you are still in this room and engaging on this topic because you're absolutely right being the minority on an issue can be very difficult um and supervisor bailey was talking about or was talking about fear and so a lot of that comes with that but the fact that you know you said that you're still here you're still facing the issue i really really respect that and i'm not just blowing smoke i want you to know that so thank you madam chair thank you um i want to piggyback off what supervisor franklin said i was just over here thinking um i really appreciate what you

087said miss well i think it it matters and it makes a difference um i can speak from being a member of a minority group and having to be the one to have to say things and it is a very difficult position to be in so i really do appreciate that um moving forward from from that point i do want to specifically make note that we did discuss this in our last joint board meeting that it was going to be on the agenda and at the time i i personally offered for supervisor kanlan anybody else who wanted to know a little bit more about what i had in mind to speak with them and i did not get taken up on that offer and the offer still stands i mean this board has done along with

088the board of county supervisors spectacular work we have had eight zero votes on both boards we have proven to our community that we can work together and i hope that we can continue to work together for me personally i asked for this training i asked for this information sentence what i originally asked for was actually a training a year ago when both boards were first elected and reconsidered that because we're not all in a place where we can receive training if we don't understand the topic at hand and thought it would be behoove us to really just start on the same page and really understand what biases are because i think there's a lot of misconception about biases most people generally hear the word implicit bias and think automatically it deals with race and as

089we learn tonight it deals with all of our isms it deals with both positive and negative associations i cannot thank miss burgos enough for the presentation that she made this evening for the time and energy that you spent on it miss burgos and the way that you um really took the reins and demonstrated and taught all of us that implicit bias doesn't just deal with race issues it deals with all of our isms it deals with just the fact that we are all humans and we all have them um and you connected that to within the framework to that it's important to us as leaders and and who people who run organizations um miss supervisor bode mentioned that you know the school board is the school division is the largest employer in the county and

090both boards are responsible for the most diverse county in the state of virginia that that's amazing and it's a lot of responsibility to for myself personally i'm not familiar with every single individual culture that exists within prince william county or every language or every individual and working on my biases both positive and negative is a full-time job for me something that i enjoy doing and i i pride myself on continuing to work on because it's not a perfect thing it is a continual lifelong process and i really just want to appreciate i just want to really want to say that i appreciate you saying that and that you talked about the negative and the positive because the positive is also left out so and i want to say thank you to everyone who did remain

091in the room i'm a lifelong learner and i appreciate sharing that common characteristic with the people who do who did stay and i think it speaks volumes to our constituent base that we're all elected leaders and that we're willing to continue to grow because that's part of leadership so thank you very much i hope that each and every one of you will do some further study on your own but that is completely up to you and for the individuals who did not stay i respect your decision not to we all can't agree on the same things but i hope that you will take the opportunity to learn some little bit of information about what you missed out on tonight on your own and my offer still stands if anyone would like to have a continued

092conversation after this meeting so thank you thank you and as well i'd like to say i appreciate your comments um i we all have differences of opinions those opinions i believe in my opinion need to be expressed with respect and quietly and with some ability to discuss things i don't think it needs to be loud or rude or grandstanding and that's really what i take object to and we all have differences opinions and we can't get through that we need to talk about it calmly distinctly and and not make a show of it so with that we'll move on and go on to uh smart beginnings pre-k program our last item on the agenda this evening is a brief presentation from tanya soltis on the smart beginnings pre-k program ms solta served 37 years in

093education before retiring from prince william county schools in 2017. she participates in the retirement opportunity program working for the central elementary schools associate as well as in the offices of student and professional learning as a mentor and advisory since 2019 tanya has held the position of part-time executive director of smart beginnings greater prince william a program managed under spark pwcs education foundation that advocates for growth and development of the children birth through five leading to a successful start to school and eventually the workforce and welcome miss soltis thank you chair wheeler and supervisors as chair latif and um school board members and other members uh tonight i appreciate the time that you're giving us i'm gonna end since i'm at the end but with the beginning and i am going to talk about what happens

094with children from birth to age five uh as a retired principal myself for uh 18 years it was certainly a pleasure to receive the gift of five-year-olds in the school setting at the same time i could understand what happened prior to our having the privilege of receiving those children as students i'm representing 20 board members uh in greater prince william we serve manassas city manassas park and prince william county schools in the region and our board we met today and they send their thank yous but at the same time given the opportunity to present tonight to share with you about our organization and the fact that we continue to represent the voices of those who can't talk yet and those who begin to talk so with the next slide i'd like to share with you

095the vision and mission thank you jason and that is when i think about the voices of those who are first born i want to remind i want to say to you that from the early talk matters research the achievement gap begins at birth it's up to what happens to children after birth before they get to kindergarten that really does attribute to their development and growth and the brain we know uh from birth to age three uh as the most rapid time that the brain is growing and that there are a million neurals and connections per second that interactive talk is one of the strongest predictors of brain development as it builds vocabulary vocabulary drives language and reading skills and and even as early as age three and the predictor to age nine and ten in

096fact there's a lot of research of the gap between the wealthiest and then those that i call economically challenged uh and and the amount of word gapping that happens because they don't have that opportunity so 90 percent of the brain is developed by age five and our brains are shaped by our experiences so we know that ill-prepared early yields probably yield prepared when we're older when we think about kindergarten readiness one of what our organization stands for with three different pillars one is parent engagement one is professional development for child care directors and family day home directors and literacy workshops on reading literacy one way you know i'm not going to remind you of the statistics in prince william county schools as to the kindergarten readiness from the virginia kindergarten readiness program we look at

097the data of course from last fall to be more traditional in its sense because that was the beginning of a school year that we certainly uh were expecting it to be but the 56 of the kindergartners were overall rated as ready based on the four subjects that are given in literacy pre-math rereading social skills and self-regulation and when we think of also the student groups of our english language learners 36 of those were they have to pass all four of the subtests to be considered proficient so those are the numbers that they might have just missed one of the subtests in terms of benchmark students with disability only 38 were considered ready and economically challenged 43 so when we look at virginia department of education and they describe for us what makes a ready child

098what makes a ready family what makes a ready school and what makes a ready community and and that's how we appreciate the time that you're giving us tonight which of course is building collaborative partnerships convening area resources also is the tonight's presentation and we're very grateful we've had the opportunity to speak with some of you individually and yet also collectively uh next slide please so this is just a graphic of a partnerships that we have across prince william county we are the only organization that's solely dedicated to birth to five in prince william where is uh solely donor funded or grant applications but we do look at virginia early childhood foundation uh they have begun their 17 smart beginnings across the commonwealth of virginia and virginia early childhood foundation vecf is a guidepost for us

099and they did give monies to support the organization back in 2014 with the understanding that the county would or the organizations from our beginnings would continue to grow fiscally as well as physically which we certainly know has happened in prince william county for sure another organization that we collaborate with is the um with whom we collaborate is the libra the hospitals the three area hospitals haymarket novant and also centaura i can say that every child born in prince william county hospital is given a literacy kit from smart beginnings that consists of their first book milestone developmental milestones of what happens with a typical child from birth to five a wheel some bookmarks on why and how to read to your child and with the expectation of reading 1 000 books before kindergarten even if it's

100the same book it still counts if you the more that you can read to your child every day um even now when when we're in this notion of not being able to provide in the volunteer time with the parents we are the nursing staff thankfully has worked with us and are distributing our the 49 volunteers that we have in our organization are very proud too to be able to support our local libraries virginia quality is a licensed daycare like a rating system similar to like a hotel five star that comes out of vdoe and vecf and that was the future of licensed daycares being rated like that and that's also on their website so that more are looking toward growing and that's how our childcare daycare directors and and what we are able to provide

101for them next slide uh yes so you see that's blank it's blank because i want to take you back oops okay well that's all right you gave a little bit away to jason but that's fine um so i wanted to take you to last february we were planning an event uh that was to have be held march 21st 2020 some of you were already registered for it the work uh workforce development uh breakfast and we were very excited we had first lady northam all set to be a guest speaker along with other leaders in early childhood and we knew that secretary atif carney virginia department secretary was unable to be there because of a conflict that he had so he met with our executive board last february first and we began to talk about barriers

102and some obstacles that we were facing as a as an organization and um so he gave us some ideas that we were really looking for a coordinated effort for one stop repository or or a sense of that parents could come to and then we could route them to different area organizations that could be helpful for them um and then march 13th of course happened and so you can go ahead and click now jason and that is the covet 19 and the pandemic and what has happened since then so if you'll look i would like to remind you you can click that um there are 38 000 when we first when we pulled this data down in july now we know children have been born since then and we also know that some children have uh

103aged out to six but wanting you to know that this is who you represent that this is about seven percent of the population so it's a very considerable amount whose voice i'm here tonight to share with you thank you the next click these are some of the statistics that you are very much aware of that before the pandemic sixty percent of the birth of five-year-olds were already enrolled in our 372 licensed child care centers um that should read july 2020 i'm sure you all picked up on that mistake there i apologize in july 2020 60 of the child care programs in greater prince william were closed and we knew at that time not all would be reopening in october many have been able to reopen given the phasing in and given some of the restriction

104lifting but not all any of them that we are aware of are fully enrolled to their capacity and some of the reasons could be parents not working outside the home now doing teleworking maybe physical distancing the space of that child care center could be the parents limited confidence in the health and safety and measures in their daycare or child care or family home also financial burden to economically and you talk a little bit about that as you gave money to alphabets and scholarships to help and also staffing shortages we knew before coven that that preschool or you know birth to five is very difficult to have for staffing purposes and the impact is you are very well aware and and these day care centers and the family day cares they are small businesses and many

105of them are majority of them are owned by women and so as we have our daycare director forums and we connect and network with them we hope that we continue to support their needs and that led us to the cross-sector leadership action and we're certainly glad to be able to have the time with you tonight to remind you that we did have this legislative summit as a result of um secretary carney's uh invitation and we had state and local officials government officers and the three school division superintendents uh higher education from northern virginia community college and george mason and health agencies as well as businesses as supervisor bode reminded us of the many businesses in our in prince william county the first lady was able to speak at that legislative summit that was in september

106and jenna conway gave us a lot of great statistics as the chief readiness officer and the purpose for that summit was to raise awareness for the need for a birth to five agency in prince william county next slide so uh we also in raising awareness i would like to let you know as we look at surrounding jurisdictions you can click please thank you the surrounding jurisdictions you can see fairfax alexandria and arlington each have something devoted for birth to five families and the children that they serve in prince william county netflix please you can see there is no government-funded system in place and we are the only organization dedicated as i said before and that we are donor funded and volunteer so what we are looking at of course is the financial resources that are

107needed to be able to support these families thank you next slide click please okay so in the at the summit there were um actually 44 people of the 66 were able to be there so we broke out into three breakout sessions with prince william with nasa city and manassas park and we posed three questions for them one of which was what should be there are those who attended the role in supporting the services and programs for this constituency and you can click please and this is just to comply i compiled the frequency of responses and eight responses had to do with funding click please and you can see seven the the next three highest were about awareness child care challenges early childhood services click please and those are highlighted because we were very much affirmed

108that those were our mission statements for for smart beginnings and click again and these were the remaining ones that what should the role be of everyone who was attending there special education early identification mixed delivery which is an application uh grant and covid19 impact thank you the second question next slide the second question was what are additional resources could be put toward that and click please number one answer was partnerships which again we were affirmed because click please you can tell my pattern that that is the mission statement so it was really great to align that with what we're about click please and the other decisional resources are there too which looking at our three-year-olds looking at what first lady northam and governor northam are looking at too for preschool universal what richmond is now

109having for all four-year-olds looking at funding preschool screenings trying to get the best services for our children at the earliest time because we know that's what makes a difference next slide click again and the last question that we posed was how can smart beginnings assist everyone the stakeholders there in supporting young children and you can see the most again we were excited because that did uh go along with our agency and people don't even didn't even know we existed at some of the people around there next click and the next click okay and then those were the other and you can see that the presentation for tonight came out of that summit i would like to then say to you that was september um 17th and then from september 17th to november 16th we had

110a second summit so the first summit legislative summit the purpose of that was raising awareness the second summit was really okay we've talked about the why and the what and now we have to talk about the how and so if you'll click on the next slide one of the biggest factor is a regional agency and we were so excited at the second summit to have a former secretary of education under governor wilder dr jim dyke presented he's on the back to work virginia task force a powerful advocate and he has expectations of course for the health and income and beginnings with early childhood so i'd like to leave you with the thought of you know we do have a lot of support from richmond however and and everyone around this screen and those of you

111who are are in person uh you know i i don't doubt any of you have the best intentions and knowing that it really does start at the very beginning of life and and and we can make those changes and so what we're trying to provide is being able to be a solution seeker you know we do have a problem and we know that a lot of people are competing for your funding and looking at what we're going to be able to provide but we would like to think about the high quality health services high quality early learning whether it's public or private school to equalize and to have accessibility and access for all of our families and they deserve that as you know and we are grateful for your leadership and representing each of your

112constituencies and thinking about the youngest children that are being raised to maybe sit in seats like yours as they get older and that i'll leave you with you know looking at the board of county supervisors vision that we want prince william wants to be a community of choice a choice to live in a choice to work in and a choice that we really need to care for our youngest children thank you very much my um ms altus that was an excellent presentation um just want to add on here i'm going to ask dr waltz to comment and and i know many of you have heard me say this and i've said this publicly um you know since dr waltz has been superintendent of the school division our graduation rate has continued to rise almost every

113year and he is the one who brought a full day kindergarten he's also brought some pre-k programs and dr waltz can you just comment to the success of the full day kindergarten as you view it and as the current programs we have with the pre-k that i know the county did help with some of that funding and and we get state matching funds but can you comment to that yes thank you chairman latif and members of both boards good evening once again um very excited about the advancements that we've made with our young learners and as chairman latif mentioned in my second year which was 15 and a half years ago we implemented full day kindergarten across our entire school division uh as he mentioned the the effects of that one of the beauties of

114being here for quite a long time our daughter delaney was two and we moved here and she's a senior at hogan this year but to be able to see the data over time of things that get implemented and one of the things that chairman latif mentioned is that our graduation rate has actually increased every year since the federal government and state began measuring the on-time graduation rate in 2008 and certainly our success is a credit to every one of those kindergarten teachers because we were able to double the instructional time there's so much data available on how much learning takes place it's ms soltus and thank you again miss soltas for sharing your time with us this evening and and we work closely together over the years but the data that's available on just how

115much learning takes place in those very early years and it's really our chance to make huge gains at a very young age those gains also have a cost savings um there have been studies that have quantified that i don't have those numbers off the top of my head but certainly there's a lot of data that shows that the earlier you intervene with the child's positive educational experience the fewer students that go into special education or have additional needs also if you have second language learners and you're able to get them in school earlier they are like a sponge uh with a language and the earlier you start working with children in a in whatever language you want to refer to they just learn it at an incredible speed so there's lots of value to this

116and we've had a great partnership over the years with county government and the fact that the state gives us some assistance with pre-k and we've been expanding those programs little by little over the years in spite of a 10-year great recession and this year you were able to help us a little bit more and we were able to add a number of new additional pre-k classes the need is still great out there and we appreciate this partnership between our county government the state and uh you know your local support is very much appreciated thank you dr waltz if you could add to dr walter if you'd like to know it's for what dr heckman who's a nobel economist says for every one dollar you get a 13 return that's exactly right i think i think

117that's the highest return on investment in education is when you do it at the early age right uh miss wheeler i know you were at one of the um the legislative the summit and um and participated in that if you wanted to give us your thoughts i know you had some well you know what one of the things um it was pointed out is that we don't have an office of early childhood education in in prince william kent or the greater prince william area because that also really is manassas the city of manassas and manassas park and you know we can talk about equity among our our children across the entire county and and do nothing about it but if we want to start making real strides we need to start making sure that everyone

118has access to early education we've made i know the school systems made some strides that um in that but uh i think it was secretary carney who was talking about you know they really were looking at us and and saying either in partnership with the school system or the the county doing it separately you know can we establish an office of early education for our school children because as as great as our school system is and i love our school system we do have disparities across the county and these i mean it's it's those zero to five years and if we're going to invest in it we need to start investing in it now and so actually one of my questions to ms soltis is what are the next steps what are are people envisioning

119what are they you know what is the this state giving any support is there any you know what are some of the next steps that we could do well what we're trying to propose is that it would be a government funded agency chair wheeler and uh and everyone else who is here there is no state monies that we're aware of that will be there to support us that it would be local expectations expected monies um we have drawn up some proposals you know of what the staffing would look like based on our benchmarking surrounding areas and what we see as needs in prince william being that we're so large and being able to meet the diverse population that we have so we have some great ideas and a proposal but we just need to talk

120with someone you know or some people who could help support that financially i think mr mr will cut his hand up next thank you mr chairman thank you miss solstice superintendent waltz dr waltz i am proud to work with the superintendent ms solsus and the board in previous years as we expanded pre-k classrooms for the eastern end of the county hosted within our very own potomac district for the supervisors who did not know the district like miss supervisor bailey myself if you go back home on 234 head west you'll see paddy elementary on the right side of the road you'll see washington read on the left side of the road washington read was originally a k2 building the last couple years and i want to thank the county and the cip and my former predecessor

121miss betty covington for the renovations that occurred in the addition that came on paddy which allowed paddy to become a consolidated k5 building and then we had all those additional recently renovated classrooms on that side of the road so with the help of the bocs and our school division we were able to make washington read a full pre-k center and expand those opportunities and bring more kids back to school as we keep on saying there is no better indicator to success than identifying these kids early and bringing them into the school and that makes me even prouder that as a school division during the pandemic we have led the way in northern virginia of bringing in our pre-k our kindergartners our first graders our special needs students before any other division in this area now

122the studies are showing we're seeing all over different jurisdictions highlighting major achievement gaps that we're seeing all across the board with our students and as the pandemic continues i feel we're going to continue seeing these gaps as we navigate through this and you know what i fear is as we're seeing all this research and the importance of bringing kids back into school that you know we're not going to catch up on many of these kids these gaps are going to persist and we're going to see these effects many many years down the road so i have to think and i said to myself about what are the about these students who have not been identified yet like my own son was early on and actually had the benefit of having ms solstice as his principal

123in the child find program at montclair elementary what about the kids with literacy issues dyslexia a rising number of students like that or what are we going to see with our pal scores with other literacy issues from last year to this year as a result of the pandemic what about our youngest students who are right now trapped in learning environments where they have no books no supplies or educational resources at home and then of course what about our pre-k kids you know we are bringing them back we are phasing into the hybrid plan which we are doing and we're seeing the benefits i believe with this in person and learning and so like dr walt i do want to thank you dr latif mentioned the full day kindergarten that you had the foresight many many

124years ago to bring that to work with the division to expand pre-k um you know i do want to thank it's ironic i actually talked to secretary carney for the first time in five months on the way over here and he was talking about uh the importance of making that agency in prince william county uh depending on what the budget uh happens in the future and then of course miss solstice uh i love you to death you're amazing uh you are an outstanding principal like ms jesse says once you're a principal you're always a principal so i think of you as the principal of montclair elementary you were a true treasure to that community and uh i thank you for everything that you're doing and it's a pleasure uh to be here with you tonight

125thank you uh miss you hold on miss jessie miss williams had her hand up thank you dr latif um i i am so proud of the work that prince william county schools has done with our early childhood education programs and our expansion of pre-k i i know that we'll see some gaps continue and expand because of this pandemic and even before the pandemic hit i know this is a subject matter that's near and dear to several of our board members hearts i know ms jesse has has done a lot of work on this as well um i just want to remind our audience in our and our constituents that we do think about those who are deemed middle class um by the those lovely income brackets and still can't afford to put their children in

126preschool those are two parent working households i know because i was one of those at one time with my oldest son and then again as a single income household that met all the income requirements but pre-k is expensive and and on top of that not only do you pay for pre-k but you also compound it because you have to pay for day care on top of that and then all of the supplies and the materials and the time and effort to get your child to these educational programs that we know we have historical data on that says it is the best bang for our buck and the best outcome for all of us in society and in the long run so i would be excited and and very interested in supporting or working towards that

127development of an early edge childhood education uh center for our entire county um i can't speak for our school division i can speak for myself personally and i can i know i can speak for all of those families who are in the middle class or the lower middle class or anyone over that um four or five hundred percent percent of the poverty indicator because that's really what you have to be is it four or five hundred percent below poverty level to get um participation and i know in our county we still have wait lists for those seats for our students so i think that this is a topic that it really truly affects all of us whether it's us parents in the beginning or us as adults in the long run in functioning society with

128these individuals who haven't had the same opportunity that certain members of our society have just by simply because of the nature of the income their parents being able to afford it or they were one of the blessed individuals who were able to take part in in a program and granted that waiver that seat so i think this is a fantastic opportunity for us to look forward to working on in the future and hopefully we can get some funding for the state later on so thank you um miss jesse um hi i just wanted to say that i've been on the uh policy council for head start and preschool for the last seven years and uh tremendous work is being done and on a monthly basis these parents show up and those of you who are

129on the screen and there are many of you who are principals who were principals or our principals and you know how difficult it is to get parents to show up for parent advisory council i walked into those meetings and the room is full so they're doing a wonderful job with the policy council and with head start when i came to the county my background is in speech pathology and in audiology but language development is so very very important and i know the importance of preschool so tanya i'm very pleased with the work that you've done and you know you say once a principal always a principal once a parent always a principal so i want to share this little photo i don't know if you can see it and this is little jessica jesse had

130aged seven months and she's holding her book okay yes it is good night moon and the importance of literacy uh you know because i knew the importance of reading to her and i realized with both my babies and there is a reading voice there is a speaking voice and babies recognize and i know tanya knows this also right away i think getting that information out to parents the educational aspect of it is important and i guess i want to ask tonya are you guys do you meet with uh members of the head start do you have you made a connection do you have collaboration with that group also um yes i could speak to you know the committees that we have one of the school readiness committees we do have amanda wilder you know from

131prince william county schools we have manassas city and manassas park early childhood are on and also on our board so yes we have that connection um through through what we do i think getting books and you know and do you do you provide books at the hospital when the parents once they have their children you get to get that package yes and they have a choice of english or spanish we have all of our materials in in one of those two languages i think it's so important and to dr waltz um i was here when we had half day kindergarten i i think it did a great for great work great amount of improvement for literacy but for those of us who are principals and i know tommy you were one of them riding that

132kindergarten bus that half day kindergarten thing was a mess and i'm just glad that you were able to change that and it improved literacy but it helped principals feel better too because i'd rather write not really i had a good time on the bus with kennedy gardens because they told all the family secrets thank you venture gen wall all right thank you mr chairman um i uh well as a humanities english major who loves books and is a member of two book clubs currently and holds two library cards i think it's really important that we help all of our students have the kind of rich environment that they need as young children to be successful in school i think that's to our advantage i'm interested in the i don't know much about smart beginnings but

133i saw on one of your slides that said donor funded volunteer organization so do you have any employees that are paid or you completely a volunteer organization and then what kind of budget are we looking at to like what kind of operating budget do you have i guess you don't really have a budget i guess you maybe do i don't know um and then how many volunteers do you have right now and if we were to take what you're doing now and like make it into a government agency like what kind of size are we looking at i don't know if that's even i mean i think that's i'd like to know that if we if i if i might just lead off by asking ms goss to talk about what we have in place

134through the school division and then what we have had in place in great beginnings and what we're hoping to achieve uh with consideration from the county so if we could start with miscos associate superintendent for student learning and professional development and on our board of directors as well yes yes uh proud to serve on the board for smart beginnings but underneath our office of student learning we also have the office of preschool programs and that office oversees our preschool programs for head start as well as our other preschool preschoolers they provide 360 degrees of support for our families our families get family services health services mental health support and nutrition services and so our students and families can take advantage of of that support you heard mrs jesse speak about the policy council which is

135an integral part of our head start program and how we engage families in the decision-making and make them partners uh in the education of our earliest and youngest uh students uh in the district and so certainly um literacy but all of those skills that lead students to be able to participate and fully access school are a part of our preschool programming and smart beginnings is a partner to that work and certainly we collaborate with them and dr wilder you know collaborates with everyone in prince william county our other school divisions as well who serve our our youngest students including our private partners because it is a it's a full team approach um here in prince william county relative to getting our youngest students um to be able to be successful when they arrive in our

136kindergarten classrooms and so that preparation that happens in our preschool programming to get students used to books but also really participating in school enjoying school loving learning those social skills that are so important to their success uh all of that uh takes place uh in our programs and uh so that gives a kind of quick summary of of what that office of preschool programs uh does for our families and students who are able to take advantage of those opportunities and i believe i answered all of the questions dr waltz put out there dr waltz you mentioned also so um in what what i think we all want to hear too is as chair wheeler mentioned next steps and i know each year if we invest in early childhood pre-k there's matching dollars at the state

137but we've never maximized that match is that correct you are absolutely correct we send several million dollars uh back to the state and so what one one way to start or you know commit to this is to to get the matching funds to increase the size of the pre-k programs we do currently is that correct correct and then and then while working with smart beginnings to even further expand that is is something that we've talked about now in the last few months as well is that correct that's correct we've worked in partnership with smart speak smart beginning since its inception and uh i don't know miss uh soltis if you want to add anything about the kind of leadership that we had there and then uh we lost the funding for that and and again

138maybe just to very briefly articulate what we're hoping to have the county to assist sure i i and to answer also what ms wall was asking too um i am the only salaried person i'm a part-time uh i work about 20 hours a month uh but that's what i build on a contractual hourly um contract um but i give much more to service all others are volunteers um the amount of we have a lot of in-kind services through spark and through the communications department as well as that dr walt has talked about the leadership so we are grateful for that in kind as well as any monetary support but we all it's all donor driven and by organizations by communities by grants that we apply for and also we get manassas city and manassas park

139i do want to answer chair wheeler i failed to mention that that they too are interested and we are supposed to be setting up something with their mayors and their school boards so to see whether this regional program that is already in place for a couple different agencies that we might be able to model after auto after model did i answer dr waltz what you were asking and and chair latif yes yes so i i will oh one other thing though i should say that we're also interested remember this infant toddler you know that that yes their school age when they some of the children qualify at age three or three child fine but we're also looking at advocating with our parents and and knowing about that other development of that birth to age three

140thank you very much well i want to thank i know kenny beauty had participated in some of these this work in chair wheeler and one of the thoughts to put this on our joint agenda was to just outline some of the needs in the community and and and as we collectively think about how better to address these needs um this presentation was something to allow each of us to go back and think about what would benefit our district our community our county and um and i think if if you leave here remembering just one thing that ms soltas said is one dollar investment in early childhood education brings a 13 return on investment and i i think there's no better investment that our county can do especially with the growth that we see in our

141county the place where we are and the reason for people wanting to come here we do have great schools and we'd all like to see them become greater so with that i'll turn it over back to madam chair and if you want to conclude we can wrap it up yeah i guess we have to officially adjourn does anyone have any uh closing questions for ms soltis at all um any other further comments regarding um schools supervisor bailey i want to say one more thing i'm sorry when i reflect a little bit chair wheeler when you ask about what the next steps are we are in the process of actually doing our three-year strategic plan so we are convening stakeholders as we speak to look at our 2124 strategic plan that we we have that already

142in place two to offer to this office of early childhood okay thank you supervisor bailey i think it's fourth coming thank you madam chair but the question that i had was in terms of funding um with a pro with a um with a program like this what are we looking at in terms of funding overall is i mean is that a fair question because that is my burning question ms soltis yes money does burn one's pockets i think they say uh well uh we're looking at able to phase in something we were hoping to be able to start this office as early as july january 1 but we know that's really not reasonable so we would like to be able to start it as soon as possible even though you already have your budget set

143for this fiscal year so if we had something that we could at least upstart with an executive director who is working full-time as well as perhaps another part-time person to get things together to be able to propose to you in your next budget cycle which i know starting in january so that we could then say well this is what our fully funded office would be and we do have staffing uh roles and responsibilities that we feel would be um beneficial to the office like i said as we benchmark others so um i failed to kind of say i could say a range of salary you know of um forty to sixty thousand dollars for an interim kind of thing and then to look toward a range if we were looking at five staff members which

144is what we were looking at and be able to look at something depending on who's hired and what kind of benefit package there would be could be between three four hundred fifty thousand dollars thank you very much that's what i was looking for okay but again that's still negotiable right absolutely but it's an idea okay i want to say thank you for having us out again you know it's um it's been a difficult year and i think that this strength of having the partnership between the two boards has really helped us get through this year successfully albeit as successful as we can be during a pandemic right and um no one's expecting perfection i'm sure so thank you for having us uh with that i will take a motion to adjourn so moved second motion

145made by supervisor brodie seconded by supervisor bailey we have to do our official meeting is there any further discussion miss madden can you call the role please supervisor bode aye supervisor bailey aye supervisor angry supervisor canlin supervisor franklin aye supervisor lawson supervisor vega chair wheeler aye vote unanimous an adjourned r meeting