001- I would like to call the meeting of the Prince William County school board meeting to order. Purpose of the meeting is being conducted electronically under the authority granted by the Virginia code 2.2370 8.283. And the authority granted by the general assembly on April 22, 2020 through amendment 28 to House Bill 29, which permits the school board to meet electronically during the pendency of the current state of emergency for the purpose of addressing the impact of the pandemic on the operation of Prince William County public schools, and for transacting such business as is statutorily required or necessary to continue operations of the Prince William County public schools in the discharge of its lawful purposes, duties and responsibilities. A motion is in order for the approval of the closed session agenda. - Mr. Chairman. - Ms.
002Williams. - I move that the, excuse me, I move that the Prince William County School Board approve the closed session agenda as recommended. - Do I have a second. Ms. Wall seconds. Any discussion, please vote. Ms. Jesse, how do you vote? - [Jessie] Yes. - Ms. Jesse votes, yes. Ms. Raulston, how do you vote? Please, unmute. - Hit the space bar, Ms. Raulston. - There you go. - [Raulston] Okay, is that better? - Yes, ma'am yes. - [Raulston] Okay, yes. - Yes, Ms. Raulston's, yes. Ms. Jackson, how do you vote? Oh, she did, she voted. I did you have it, everything. The motion passes eight, yes. Second, moving on to the motion to enter closed session the motions in order, Ms. Williams. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I move that the, excuse me. I move
003that pursuant to Virginia code 2.2-3711, the Prince William County School Board enter closed session for the following reasons. One, to consult with division counsel regarding legal authority for virtual school board meetings, which matters require provision of legal advice under VA code 2.2-3711A8 and two, to consult with division counsel and staff regarding specific personnel and student matters requiring the provision of legal advice and actual or probable litigation under VA code 2.237-11A127N8 And three, to consult with division counsel and staff regarding specific legal matters relating to the return to learn and return to work and health plans as they relate to the provision of educational services to special education students, most vulnerable English language learners and students with interrupted learning. Which matters require the provision of legal advice under code VA 2.23711A78N4. to discuss the performance and
004evaluation of the division superintendent in order to establish a mutually agreed upon and annual performance goals for the 2020/2021 school year as provided by regulation 211-1, evaluation of the superintendent under VA code 2.2-3711A1N5 to dispense with the attendance of the superintendent under VA code 22.1-69 as needed. - Is there a second. - [Zargarpur] I second. - Ms. Zargarpur seconds. Any discussion, please vote. Ms. Jesse, how do you vote? - [Ms. Jesse] Yes. - Ms. Jessie votes, yes. Ms. Raulston, how do you vote? - [Raulston] Yes. - Ms. Raulston vote, yes. Ms. Jackson, she voted. Eight, yes, the motion passes. The Prince William County School Board will now enter closed session and return open session in approximately one hour. (instrumental music) I would like to call the Prince William County, the meeting of the public. Oh
005my God, hold on. Hold on, I might be wrong here. We're coming out of closed session, everyone. And we just have a couple of votes to do, and we're gonna move on to the closed session certification motion's in order Ms. Williams. - [Williams] No, not yet. - Oh, we have an action item, I'm sorry. We have an action item first. Yes. - Mr. Chairman. - Ms. Williams. - I move that the Princeton County school board approve the school board's recommended goals and performance strategies for the presentation for presentation to the superintendent for the 2020/21 school year. And further that the school board approve and authorized the chairman's August 26th 2020 correspondence to the superintendent. - Do I have a second? Ms. Wall, Ms. Jessie, both second. Any discussion? Okay, seeing no discussion either here or
006on Zoom, please vote. And Ms. Jesse, how do you vote? - [Ms. Jesse] Yes. - Miss Jessie votes, yes. Ms. Raulston, how do you vote? - [Raulston] Yes. - Ms. Raulston votes, yes. The vote is eight yes unanimous, the motion passes. Next, we have a closed session certification the motion is in order. - Mr. Chairman. - Ms. Williams. - I move that pursuant to Virginia code 2.2-3712, the closed session of the Prince William County school board meeting of August 26, 2020 be certified by adopting the following resolution. Now therefore be it resolved at the Prince William County school board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge, one, only public visits matters, lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements were discussed in that close meeting to which this certification resolution applies. And two, only
007such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed session meeting were heard and discussed or considered by the school board. - Do I have a second? Ms. Wall seconds. Any discussion? Seeing there's no discussion, please vote. Ms. Jesse, how do you vote? - [Ms. Jesse] Yes. - Ms. Jessie votes, yes. Ms. Raulston, how do you vote? - [Raulston] Yes. - Ms. Raulston votes, yes. The vote is eight yes unanimous, motion passes. We're moving on now. I would like to call the Prince William County school board to order. The purpose of our meeting, primarily informational. This meeting of the Prince William County School Board is being conducted electronically under the authority granted by the Virginia code 2.23708.283. And the authority granted by the general assembly on April 22nd, 2020 through amendment 28
008to house bill 29, which permits the school board to meet electronically during the pendency of the current state of emergency for the purpose of addressing the impact of the pandemic on the operations of Prince William County schools and for transacting such business as his statutory required or necessary to continue operations of the Prince William County public schools and the discharge of its lawful purposes, duties and responsibilities. We have a motion approval of the public meeting agenda motion's in order, Ms. Williams, 9.01. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman, the Prince William County School Board approve the public meeting agenda as recommend. - Do I have a second. - [Wall] Second. - Ms. Wall seconds, any discussion. Ms. Raulston seconds as well. Any discussion, please vote. Ms. Jesse, how do you vote? - [Ms. Jesse] Yes. - Ms.
009Jessie votes, yes. Ms. Raulston, how do you vote? - [Raulston] Yes. - Ms. Raulston votes, yes. The vote is eight, yes unanimous, motion passes. Next, we're gonna go to 10.01 board matters. It's a public health update by Dr. Alison Ansher, the Prince William County Health Department. I will thank miss Lisa Zargarpur of the Kohl's district, our member who helped arrange this update. And I'm gonna turn it over to Ms. Zargarpur to introduce Dr. Ansher. - Thank you, Dr. Lateef. Dr. Ansher, I'm so glad you are going to be able to be with us tonight to report on what COVID looks like in Prince William County. I am also very grateful that you have provided a presentation for us. And before we begin, would you mind giving us just a quick bio of yourself? - Doctor
010Ansher, please unmute. - [Ansher] That would help. - Yes, thank you. - Good evening, thank you for this opportunity. I'm the health director for Prince Wayne County Manassas City and Manassas Park. And I've been, I was acting until from 2004 to 2006, when the health director was part of the national guard and overseas. And then in 2006, I became the health director for the district. So I've been a health director for quite a long time, but of course have not experienced anything like COVID-19 in the past. This is quite a challenge. Prior to coming to the health district, I was an OBGYN working for a staff model HMO in the Washington DC area. - Thank you. I am looking forward to all the information that you can help just provide so that we as a
011board. But also the people who are watching can understand a little bit about what the health department does in terms of getting information about COVID, the cases that exist in the County and all the other things that... You know, we get these reports in the paper and they give us just a tiny little piece of information. So I'm looking very forward to what you have to say to us this evening. - Jason, can you help Dr. Ansher get the slide presentation up? Oh, that's great, wow. I wish everything worked out fast, okay. - Okay. - [Lateef] All right, Dr. Ansher, take it away. - I'm just gonna give a little background, but we can go ahead and start with the presentation if you like. Basically this is the public health view. The metrics I'm going
012to present only take into consideration the public health view. It's not meant to be the only metrics or information that the school board would take to consider whether the school should open more and have more students in for in-person learning. Or if there was a reason to regress. Just to get a little bit of background, we shouldn't talk about whether schools are safe to let kids come back to in-person learning. We all know how important in-person learning is for our students. We should talk about, how can we make it safer for students and staff to come back to schools? And again, begin in-person learning. We all recognize when people gather together we're more likely to see cases of COVID-19. And that doesn't mean that if we do see a case in the school that it
013actually came from inside the school, there's community, transmission of COVID-19. So it's very possible someone could have gotten infected in the community, be asymptomatic and not even realize they're infected, come into the school as they are appropriately should and then we end up having a case in a school. It's very important not to panic if there is a case in this school. That doesn't mean we have to close down the schools, it's gonna be a case by case basis. And some of the public health mitigation strategies can help limit the number of people exposed and having to close down a school, because there is a case in the school. Recent studies do show that pediatric patients do spread COVID-19 and are more likely to be asymptomatic. Some recent studies have shown that smaller children are
014more likely to have a higher presence of the virus in their nerys than even adults in the ICU. Currently, we're seeing a larger portion of cases in our community and in Northern Virginia and actually across the state and the Latinex population. And we believe that children are becoming infected by a transmission within the household. After all, many of the parents from the Latinex families are the ones who were out there working, and don't have the opportunity to stay home and tell telework. As we know, adults and children who have chronic diseases are more likely to have bad outcomes from COVID-19 infection. We talk about bringing children with developmental or intellectual disabilities in. And it's good that if we bring them in carefully and slowly and first, because they are more likely to have COVID, co-morbid
015medical conditions such as respiratory disease, endocrine, nutritional, metabolic, and potentially diseases of the circulatory system that make them at greater risk for severe illness from COVID-19. So bringing them in initially not only do they often benefit most from in-person classes, but also that will allow them to come in and everybody gets situated before we add additional children to the mix. There's some mitigating strategies that are recommended that can help limit the transmission of COVID-19 in the schools. And some of the consideration for the schools as they begin to open up and determine which students should come back and how rapidly students should come back are things like the amount of community transmission of COVID-19, the ability to implement strategies to prevent the spread of the virus, such as physical distancing, at least six feet, cloth
016face coverings, frequent hand hygiene, cohorting students, so that you keep the same group of students together and possibly the same teacher, or just switch the teacher if there's different subjects. So that if there is a case in that classroom, it could be limited to that classroom. And it would not require the entire school to be shut down. Preparing what to do when somebody reports that they're either not feeling well with symptoms consistent with COVID-19, or if someone comes in and says that "I have had had close contact with the case." And what to do, how to contact the health district. We've provided information to Theresa Paul. And I had been meeting with administration from the school system every week to talk about how much community transmission is going on presently. And we talk about the
017updates from the CDC and how to manage if there is a case or someone who's come in contact with the case would be managed in the school. I believe you're already requesting that families do home-based symptom screening and notify you if there is a child who is ill and keep the child home if they're ill. And hopefully we'll connect with their healthcare provider and obtain testing if it's appropriate. I'm gonna talk now a little bit about the metrics that the Virginia department of health has put together. These metrics are a measure of the number of cases, as well as the health care capacity. And using these metrics, it helps us determine how much community transmission is present. We're gonna initially look at Northern Virginia because as we know, virus still can cross boundaries. And a
018lot of the people in our community live here, but may work outside of our community in another Northern Virginia community or actually in the national Capitol region. This picture right here is a picture of the state. And we right here, this is the Northern Virginia region. And right now the amount of transmission in the region is moderate and fluctuating. Weekly, we get a report of how, what the community transmission is like. And it's based on the weighting of the metrics, the burden and the trends. And it's done weekly because if it was done daily, it would fluctuate too much. But the actual metrics are done daily. As you see that this, the metrics that are weighted are from the week prior to this week. So this is really a picture of where we are the
019week before. Next slide please. So as you see in Northern Virginia, we have a moderate burden and a moderate community transmission. Next slide, please. Okay, this will show you, this dial shows you how the metrics are weighted and how it's determined that we're a moderate burden. As you can see under burden, there's flags. These flags are based on CDC flags and because we're above eight below 16, that the flag for 16, we're in the range of moderate burden. Now this week, we're at 8.4. Last week, we were at 9.3. So the trend is decreasing, but the weights were done over the week of the metrics that we're gonna go over, we're gonna follow, it put us at 11.9 and that falls it's greater than seven, but less than 15. We fall in the category of
020fluctuate. Next slide, please. Okay, here we go. For the region, the first metric we look at is what is the case incidence rate for 100,000. The incidents is new cases. The flag is the low end is five, the upper end is 10. We're at 11.8 as a region, so that we're above the upper limits. And that's why that round circle is red. But if you look at the graph and if you look at the cases, the cases have actually been decreasing over a number of days, but it hasn't met the threshold of 14 days. So it's considered fluctuating. Going on to the second metric, what is the PCR. PCR is the most accurate type of COVID-19 testing. So we use that to determine what is the percent positivity rate for COVID-19 in the region. The
021percent positivity rate is at 8.5, which is below 10, whereas that's where we want to be. And as you can see from the graph, it's decreasing, but we haven't quite met the 14 day threshold so that it's considered fluctuating. The last metric right here is on this screen is what is the percent of... I'm sorry, what is the rate of outbreaks per 100, 000? We're below the 0.04, but as you can see from the graph, it's fluctuated and we haven't met the threshold, so it's considered fluctuating. Next slide, please. The next measure is what percent of cases are among healthcare workers. And we see that it's below the flag at 1% and it's been decreasing for 18 days. The threshold is seven days, so it's considered decreasing. The next metric is what is the visit
022rate per 100,000 for individuals with COVID like illness. At nine we're above the upper flag of six, but the rate has been decreasing as you can see by the graph. And it has been decreasing at least at the threshold of 14 days. So we consider that metric a decreasing metric. What is the rate of current conformed COVID ICU hospitalizations per 100,000. We're at 4.2, so we're above the flag of 3.5. But again, the number of days have decreased and have met the threshold. So this metric is considered a decreasing trend or decreasing metric. Next slide, please. What is the percent of hospital beds that are currently occupied. Now this is all hospital beds, this is not just COVID-19 beds. And this is a metric of medical surge or medical capacity. The hospitals tend to plan
023on having staffing for 120% of the beds. And here the flag is 90% or at 70.7. The metric has been decreasing over 18 days of the threshold of seven days. So this metric is considered decreasing. These hospital metrics are metrics of hospital or healthcare capacity. This last metric is how many hospitals have reported trouble acquiring PPE in the last seven days. Because this metric is dependent on the hospitals reporting and they don't always report, we don't have a trend. But we did have one hospital flag that they needed help with PPE that has been taken care of. And so presently, there's no hospitals to reporting today. There's no hospitals reporting a shortage of PPE. So with these metrics, certain of the metrics have a greater weight because we're able to obtain that data and are
024certain on the accuracy of the data. So that the way the Virginia department of health determines community transmission is by weighting these metrics, adding them up, viewing the trend and determine putting it through an algorithm to determine what type of community transmission our community has. Now, I'm going to show you the metrics for Prince William County. But remember we're not just impacted by our community alone, we're impacted by community transmission, not only in Northern Virginia, but also in the national capital region. As you can see for Prince William County, the K incidents rate for a 100,000 is greater than the region, it's at 14.7. It has been increasing over the last seven days, but has not met the threshold of 14 days of increase. So it's considered fluctuating. What is the percent positivity rate in
025Prince William County is 7.6, as you note that it's greater than the region as a whole, but it is below 10%. And looking at the graph, you can see that it's been pretty steady. It has not met. It has been decreasing a little bit, but it has not met the 14 day threshold, so it's considered fluctuating. Outbreaks, the rate of outbreaks in Prince William health district, excuse me, Prince William County is considered fluctuating because for the same reason, even though it's been decreasing, it has not met the threshold of 14 days. I will tell you though, in the last two days, we had reported four incidents of outbreaks in work site setting. Next slide, please. And lastly, what percent of cases are among the healthcare workers? These are the health care workers in our community.
026It's at 3.2%, which is below the flag. Although a 5%, although it has been increasing, but it hasn't been increasing past the threshold of seven days, so it's considered fluctuating. Now we don't have measures locally on the hospital, per se, because as we all know our hospital or healthcare group, the hospitals is very regionally focused. And so those are the metrics. And again, I just wanna repeat, these metrics are not all that the school board should consider when determining when or whether to open up the schools to more students or students at all for in-person learning. There's other factors that you all would consider and are much more expert in it. This is just meant to depict what type of community transmission we are having in the district as well as in the national capitol
027region. And again, I just want to reiterate how important those public health mitigation strategies are in order for us to safely get the kids back and not have to regress and not see a significant number of cases in our school community. So the social distancing six feet apart because it's caused by droplet that spread. The face coverings to limit transmission and protect each other, the cohorting of children in classes to limit those who are in contact with cases and require quarantine. And so to limit where the exposure is, limit where we need to close, or whether we need to just close a room and just infect a room, but not close the entire school down. Also remember just because there is a case in this school, it doesn't mean that there's an outbreak in this
028school or it's because it was there's caused by a contact in the school. With community transmission, people can get infected in the community, go to the grocery store, what have you, be a symptomatic and not realize that they're infected. So not intentionally come into the school, but can transmit it to others. Very important that frequent hand hygiene for the students and staff, avoiding large gatherings, limiting activity where social distancing is not possible and protecting our high risk individuals from the school by paying attention and religiously doing these mitigation strategies. There's also concern recently whether the virus can also be airborne. So it's very important that the ventilation, the HBAC systems are up to the best possible functioning that they can be, as well as if possible to safely open windows increases ventilation will decrease the
029concentration of the virus. So more to come on that. We're not sure the extent of airborne transmission, the risks that COVID-19 presents that way. If anybody has any questions, I'll do my best to answer them. And anything I can't answer, I certainly will try and find out the answer and make sure you're provided the best answer possible. I don't envy you all. The board has a very difficult task in front of them. We all know that every day, there's changes in the information we get about the COVID-19 virus. We look forward to getting a vaccine, but that doesn't mean the virus goes away. So we still have to pay attention to the public health mitigation strategies of the time. - Thank you, Dr. Ansher. I think the biggest takeaways is that this is not just
030a one number issue, there's a lot of things that are looked at when it comes to public health and that the school division is regularly in contact with the health department in regular meetings to take in this information. The other thing that I got from this whole thing is that the best practices for keeping our staff, our students and ourselves safe, is to make sure we are masked, that we are regularly washing our hands and practicing distancing. And those things I've heard that those are such strong basic strategies. The CDC has been recommending it for a long time. Nothing's really changed in that regard. So, I really appreciate the time that you spent to come in. We've also got inside our schools. There's some barriers that get put up in the offices and in places
031where there's a little bit more public traffic, perhaps. We've got hand sanitation all over the buildings, we've got one of the schools I walked into, they had already spread the desks out, this was two weeks ago. And they had six feet distance front, back and sides. They were making sure I know they were checking on HVAC. So I know all these things have been going on for a long time. So I'm really thankful that you came in and that you were able to give us sort of this picture. But I also realized that this is not, like I said, not a one number thing that there's a lot of things to consider when we're talking about the public health of all of us. - Just one more comment, there's a lot of data that the
032general public can look at that's public at vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus. And also on the County website, the Prince William County website there, the email address is there and they also use the VDH site to put together data for the communities so the community knows a little more what's going on. So, that data is a little as much broader than just the information or the metrics we're looking at here. Should I go into the chat or. Or you can see here, have you all go in to the chat. - No, no, you don't have to do that. I don't know what, okay. All right, do any board members have any quick questions or comments? We'll start down here with Ms. Jennifer Wall. - I'll leave this on, I guess. Dr. Asher, thank you for coming and speaking to
033us tonight. I have a question. Some areas of the country have had really great success in driving down their numbers. I'm thinking of like New York city, for example. Other places where they've seen a rapid decline in their cases. Could you speak to give us some idea of what you would like to see Prince William County do better or even our region do better in order to get our numbers down even further? Like what would make the biggest difference? 'Cause if we get those numbers down even better, I think people feel even more comfortable with-- - I think part of the challenge is some of the zip codes that have a larger number of cases that is driving up that percent positivity. There are parents that are going to work. And unfortunately there's transmission within
034the household. Sometimes there's generations living in the household together. There tends to be a larger family living together. And it's tough to do some of these mitigating strategies that work, it's just not possible. So, trying to help those families where they're at, the County has provided them face coverings, they've provided information, they've provided hand sanitizer to them. Part of the challenge is they can't really social distance. So it really would mean wearing masks at home in the household. But that's a challenge when you have the main caretaker of kids who's who is ill. So I think the County is doing an excellent job of offering testing and making testing available across the County. The challenge is certain people have to work and they have no choice and their jobs don't always allow them to follow
035those mitigation strategies. So it is a challenge and there is household transmission that unfortunately is difficult to prevent. - Ms. Wall. - Oh, sorry, there's one other comment. I wanna say that unlike some of the other Northern Virginia communities where they're seeing a large number of folks gathering at bars and restaurants and not social distancing and not wearing face coverings, our community is more family oriented. So we really don't have that issue, but we are seeing the greatest increase in cases in 20 to 40 year olds. And those are probably the folks that are going out working. And so even though we're seeing the same age range as some of the other Northern Virginia communities, it's not for the same reasons. - Ms. Wall. - I have a second question for you. I heard a
036really interesting report about a contact tracing effort in Massachusetts. And so I was wondering if you could speak to where we are in our contact tracing efforts, because I'm an early on in the pandemic and in places like Europe and other places, they've used that very effectively and that's really helped drive down infection rates as well. So I don't know much about our efforts in Prince William County or if it's even Prince William County or if it's larger than that. But I would be interested to know about that because I think that's also something that may be really effective that we could hear about. - Okay. Yes, we have hired almost 200 people and continue to hire, bring on more people every week. We've hired what we've called a case investigator. And that case investigator,
037let me back up. There is an electronic reporting system for that the laboratories put results in this electronic reporting system. So that notifies us, who's tested positive. So we have many case investigators that we assign them cases each day. And what those case investigators do is they contact those cases, they ensure that they're not so ill, that they should really be in the hospital. They give them education as to when they should call their healthcare provider. And they determine who has been in close contact with that case. And also put them into a monitoring system because they're supposed to be on isolation. And that monitoring system is an electronic system where they daily need to report their symptoms. And we keep in contact with them, again to ensure that they're not getting ill, such that
038they should seek whether emergency care or contact their healthcare provider. Then those contacts are referred to our contact tracers. And what a contact tracer does, they interview these contacts, see if they have any symptoms. If they have symptoms, then they are considered a case. And then a case investigator will question them and go through that whole process again and find out who their close contacts are. Those that are not ill will be go on quarantine for 14 days after the last time they came in contact with the case. Going on quarantine, we do it in the least restrictive fashion. They stay at home and they isolate themselves at home. They also are entered into an electronic system where they're monitored daily to ensure that they're not developing symptoms and that they're staying on quarantine. We
039have supervisors that supervise these groups. 'Cause you can imagine one person, two people couldn't supervise over 200 people and we're continuing to bring on more staff to do that. The contact case investigation and contact tracing. Right now we have seven supervisors. So those case investigators and contact tracers are broken up into seven, under seven different supervisors. We also have hired a COVID-19 epidemiologist who will do quality assurance to ensure that we are contacting these people. The goal is to contact the case within 24 hours of the time it's reported to us. We've been able to do that 87% of the time at this point. Sometimes we call an individual and they're not there in the first 24 hours. One of our challenges is, as you've heard, although it's gotten better, people are getting tested and
040the results are not coming back, for now, it's up to five and a half days. Obviously the ideal way to do contact tracing and case investigation, it would be to get the case within a day or two of the time they test positive. So that has impacted a little bit of how efficient or how well the contact tracing works to limit the spread of COVID-19. - Thank you, that was great. I appreciate it. - Okay, great. Well, Dr, Ansher, I think we all really appreciate the time you spend with Theresa Pope, Gina Bellamy, Denise Hebner, our pandemic team. I know you're giving them regular updates on what's happening here and what the state is telling us. And we can't thank you enough for giving us that great advice. - [Ansher] Well, and we're very appreciative
041of how open they have been to meet with us and work with us because this is a community effort. And so, out of bad things, sometimes good things happen. And the three, our nurse manager meets with Theresa Paul and the two other nurses that direct the school health programs in the cities. And they learn from each other. We're trying to make things as consistent as possible. But we ha we have not met with the cities on a weekly basis as we have the County. So having that relationship, which started with H1N1 has really been positive. So as I say, out of something bad, often something good occurs. - Well, wonderful. Thank you so much for your time. I know you don't have that much time to give to us with everything that's going on. We
042really appreciate it. - [Ansher] Thank you for having me. - Ms. Jesse. No, hold on, we have one question from one board member, Ms. Jesse. - I guess a couple of questions. You mentioned zip codes. I read a report from the superintendents in Fargo. You said there are certain zip codes that have higher percentages. Do you have information on that? - Yes. 20109, 20110, and 20111 as well as 22192 and 22193. And actually that information, is at that website that I mentioned. If you go to that website, it gives a list of all the zip codes in Virginia, and you can pick out the zip codes in the health district. - The other question I have is the information on pediatric. Your pediatric report, where there are young kids really can carry the virus. What's
043your advice to teachers because teachers are very... I hear a lot of people talking about the kids, so the kids safety. Our teachers are, are not nurses, and they've not dealt with infectious diseases. And it is a virus that you can't see. What is your advice to teachers? And I heard you said a slow rollout. What's your guys to teacher's classroom. - It's social distancing. And I know sometimes that's tough for teachers, particularly certain kids like to hug and even having the mask on a teacher could be scary. But masking the kids, wearing a mask and a social distance, keeping the distance and making sure that, I'm sure that you're a janitorial staff is very knowledgeable and knows that they need to areas that are touched frequently, that they need to clean more often than
044they did before. Really important, the hand hygiene for the teachers, as well as the students, everything that we mentioned for the students that's important for the teachers. - I appreciate that, thank you. - Thank you very much. Okay, excellent. I think Dr. Ansher, thank you. I'd be remiss to say, and you brought up the point about since H1N1. Dr. Waltz has done a terrific job over the years of making sure we have a good relationship with you all and his team working closely with you all. It just hasn't been COVID, it's been H1N1, it was Ebola, and it's been the flu every year. And I know Dr. Waltz puts together a really serious effort. We're one of the only counties I think in the state who has a nurse in every school, which is-- -
045[Ansher] Well, and just one last comment, it's really this year of all years, it's really important for folks to get the flu vaccine, 'cause many of the symptoms are very similar during a normal flu season, the hospitals get overwhelmed, the emergency rooms. So having the combination would not be good. So please, any messaging to parents to have their kids as appropriate, get the flu vaccine would be great. - Wonderful. - [Ansher] As well as staff. - I'm sure we'll do that. And thank you for your continued support to the superintendent and his staff. Have a wonderful evening Dr. Ansher. - [Ansher] Thank you for inviting me. - Dr. Waltz, this will lead right into your update. - Thank you so much Chairman Lateef and members of the board and our community. So tonight we were
046asked to actually have some presentations. We have a short presentation, so it's not going to be like the big one that we had when we had the returned to learning and return to work and health plan. It's not quite that involved, but it does speak to specific interests of the school board. And I have a number of people who will be assisting and we would just like to give a brief overview. First of all, we're going to ask you to please hold your questions until we get through the presentation. So, unlike the one that was very, very long, this has about 23 slides to it. And some of those will move rather quickly. And then I'll defer to the chairman at the end. As was discussed in the last meeting, if there are new questions,
047we would like those at the chairman's request. The chairman that has requested that those questions be vetted by division counsel, Mary McGowan. So much like we do in the budget season, we produced a document for you today trying to answer questions from last time. And we would like to continue in that vein by asking you to send your questions no later than the close of business on Friday to division council, Mary McGowan, through her email. And then she will vet those and we will do a similar thing next time. So with that said, our return to learn and return to work update starts right now. Next slide, please. Next slide please. Thank you. So I'm not going to read this entire thing to you, but the point of this is essentially that on July 15th,
048the board unanimously put together and voted, as I said, unanimously on how we were going to move forward for this first quarter. And again, it's there for you to read it if you need to. But the main point is to say, we have been extremely hard since its adoption on July 15th. And we are excited and enthusiastic about trying to bring our most vulnerable learners back to school who may have difficulty learning virtually. And before I continue, I would just like to say a special shout out to all the teachers who are working so hard. And I wanna say that general comment, but specifically for special educators and EL teachers that have students who might be dually identified as EL and special ed, these teachers have been doing extra ordinary work to get the IEP
049taken care of and to get a classroom set up, to get professional development. So again, some of this applies to all teachers, but I especially wanna give a shout out to those who are getting ready to receive students in person. Next slide please. So again, our implementation is based upon the Virginia department of education, local state and federal approvals of our plans. So the health plan was reviewed and approved by the Prince William health district. And again, I appreciate the good doctor being here and she did a great job of explaining things and kind of reviewing some of the things we talked about, but also reinforcing and talking about how to use the data. So Dr. Ansher, we certainly appreciate your presence here this evening, and we certainly appreciate your ongoing work over the years.
050And, we had a pandemic set in place back when we were dealing with some of these N1H1, and it was a very aggressive and we build a lot of great relationships and we are very thankful for that communication, especially between her office herself, Theresa Pope, Gina Bellamy, Denise Hedner. We've got a great team working. We also did get some feedback from the Virginia department of education who felt our plans that we sent to them were extremely detailed. They put it in writing and they had no recommendations for changes. So we got a very positive email back from BDOE. So again, the purpose of this slide is just to show that these are all plans that were approved by the board and then have been approved by the approval agencies or departments within the state and
051local government. So those are the cornerstones on which we are doing our work. So the next slide we will, Denise Hedner, associate superintendent for special education and student services on the health plan. Ms. Hedner. - Good evening, Dr. Lateef, school board members, Dr. Waltz. I wanna start by thanking our team. I have the privilege of working with some of the hardest and most amazing leaders, not just in our division, but in education. I know that our schools and office of administrators are working and giving 110% to ensure that we're ready for the approaching school year. We're all working hard because the kids and our staff members are very, very important to us. This is a critical time for us to work together as a school community, to remove barriers and to support one another. We
052are never stronger than when we work together toward the common goal of helping our kids. I'm confident that together we can make great things happen for all of our kids. On July 15th, you heard me speak about the development of our return to learning health plan. And at that time I shared that this plan was thoughtfully created as if it were our own family members returning to work or to learning in our buildings. This remains true today. Our Prince William County school team remains committed to ensuring our school family's health and wellbeing, and that it is top priority. Our goal is to support the vision of the division and create the safest learning environment possible for all. As we navigate these unprecedented times. While the health plan falls under the office of student services, the
053plan was developed in collaboration and effort from our human resources facilities, student learning, risk management, and with input from our local health district and was reviewed by our division counsel. Our plan has been, as Dr. Waltz mentioned, submitted and accepted by BDOE. To ensure consistent implementation across our schools, we've created a flow of information to make sure that our staff has access too and available to us, we are available to staff for questions. In collaboration, with the office of human resources, we have trained over 470 school and department leaders on our protocols and procedures. This included opportunities to ask questions and provided leaders with information that they are taking back and turn keying at the school level. Our school health response team that includes an administrator, a school nurse, and one additional staff member from
054each school has met and we will continue to meet weekly or as needed. We have materials available on our internet and our intranet for teams. And at this meeting, we'll make sure that we effectively communicate any changes or updates. Our health services leadership team continues to meet weekly with our health district review local health information and to review the latest updates from CDC. And I would like to thank Dr. Ansher for being available and responsive, not just to meeting once a week, but to our calls and our emails. She's always there for us. And her partnership is so valuable as with the rest of the health district. Our staff and student help will be monitored by protocols that are in place for when someone is not well. As always, proper communication to our school board
055and school community will be made. Please note that we do not do contact tracing in our schools, but we do work to assist the health department with information that will allow for proper notification to individuals so that they can work with the health to make safe decisions. We continue to promote healthy and socially responsible behaviors that create a culture of acceptable absenteeism. One aspect of this is the implementation of a daily health screening questionnaire that students and staff will be asked to complete prior to coming to our school buildings. Our buildings have been prepared to receive our staff members and our students to include inspection and maintenance or a ventilation system, additional plexiglass and high traffic areas. We're implementing systems to monitor who is in our buildings and in our classrooms. And we have modified
056the contents of our classrooms to ensure that physical distancing is promoted in the school setting. Our staff is prepared to help our students adhere to the recommended safety protocols of maintaining physical distance and wearing a face coverings. Our staff and students have the option of oriented face covering of their choice. However, we're prepared to provide masks if needed. To assist students who cannot wear a mask or a face covering due to medical need or a documented disability, we've purchased clear personal barriers as a mitigation strategy. We recognize that an important part of our health plan is our students' mental health. And Mr. Slater, director of student services will be addressing that at a later time. In order to help our parents and our students understand our expectations and adjust to the new school environment, our
057office student services has partnered with our media team and developed a series of videos as a communication tool. Jason, if you could please start the student help video at this time. (instrumental music) - [Voice Over] When students return to school, keeping them safe will start before they leave home. Parents will need to do a health check by asking their students some questions. Here's a list of screening questions that have been provided by the CDC. When asking the questions, it is important to know that the symptom has just started. It is not related to an existing health condition. Do you have a temperature of 100.4 degrees, Fahrenheit or higher when taken by mouth? Do you have a sore throat? Do you have a new uncontrolled cough, that causes difficulty breathing. For students with a chronic cough
058to the allergies or asthma, is there a change in their cough from their baseline? Do you have diarrhea, vomiting or abdominal pain? Do you have a new onset of a severe headache with a fever? Have you had at least 15 minutes of close contact, meaning within six feet with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19. If you answered yes to any of the symptoms questions, and yes to the question about being in contact with another person who was tested positive for COVID-19, you will need to stay home. Your parent or guardian should contact a doctor. Also been to contact your school to request an excused absence. Your parent or guardian will receive information about when can return to school. - Teachers can provide your assignments virtually as long as you feel well, enough to
059complete schoolwork. - All right, thank you very much for that. And as I promised last time, we are producing a lot of these very short videos to help people and they are, some of them are already live and they will also be closed captions and produced in other languages. So I promised that I would share just a few samples, which we have sprinkled through tonight's presentation. Next up we have John Wallingford, the associate superintendent for finance and risk management to talk about personal protective equipment, or as we often hear PPE. Mr. Wallingford, please. - Thank you, Dr. Waltz, good evening. OSHA defines four risk levels to our employees. High, very high, medium and low. Prince William County schools staff recently went through a process of classifying each of our 640 over 640 different job categories
060into these four groups. Prince William County school and school divisions in general, do not have very high risk employees. This process was performed through the collaboration of HR, human resources, risk management, the presidents of both of our associations, but PWEA and VPE, and several other employees from different parts of the organization. We have four classifications, low, medium, and high. And the PPE provided to each of those is a face covering for low risk employees for moderate risk employees, that would be face covering and gloves. And then for our high risk employees, that would be an N-95 respirator, plastic face shield, Kevlar sleeves, a disposable gown and nitrile gloves. We recently, I spent about two and a half weeks, allocated two and a half million dollars to schools and departments to help defer the cost of
061that PPE that we'll be providing. PPA has been delivered to all schools for all of our low and medium risk employees. And for many of our high risk employees, today and tomorrow, the office of special education has been delivering it in a pickup at the Kelly center, PPE for many of our high risk employees, teachers, and teacher's aides for students with special needs. N-95, the respirators that are used, or the mass that are used by our high risk employees have to be fitted to ensure a proper fit to prevent infection of the virus. That started Monday this week at Piney branch, the Kelley leadership center and Williams. We're testing approximately 200 to 210 employees a day and by the time we're done, we'll have tested well over 2000 employees. That testing should be done several
062days before school starts. Inventory, I have some good news about inventory. We received a very large shipment of the N-95 respirators. They've been difficult to procure. We currently have about 47,500 of those in place. We also received nitrile gloves, the rubber gloves that folks wear if they're medium or high risk employees. Supply services in collaboration with risk management will be providing immediate delivery on the first day of school throughout the first several weeks of school. Immediate delivery drive time delivery to schools if they have a situation where there is no PPE available. And finally, mobile hand sanitizer stations and wall stations had been mounted throughout the schools. And we have plenty of the eight and 10 ounce pump bottles available through our distribution center. Jason, please, if you would please play the video on nurses.
063(instrumental music) - [Voice Over] Student health and wellbeing is a top priority in Prince William County public schools. Each of our schools has a school nurse who is there to help students that feel ill at any time during the school day. Our school nurses or healthcare professionals who will comfort students and help them understand any physical concerns that they may have. If a student feels sick during the school day, they can request to go to the school clinic. Depending on the type of illness, students may be taken to another room near the clinic. Students should not be alarmed by the school nurses appearance. For added safety, they may be wearing a gown, gloves and a face shield. - Alright, thank you very much. And I wanted, before I introduce the next person, I just want
064to say something in a little different way than Mr. Wallingford, who talked about the PBE delivery. I just want to, the kind of the teacher in me is coming out. I wanna make sure that everyone understands that a basic supply of PPE has been delivered to every school. There are some very specific PPE that Mr. Wallingford went through that is being distributed to certain teachers and instructional people, folks in the school that will need more complex PPE. That's being distributed through the Kelly leadership center now. What I wanted to just explain a little bit more is if a school has a specific need that they discover on a particular day, we need another face shield. They can call, we have a number and we have a person Ron Crow, and it will be immediately delivered
065to the school. So I just wanna make sure there's a clear understanding. It's not that some schools may not have PPE, it's just, there could come a day when a specific product is needed in a short amount of time. And we have a delivery system much like when you order a pizza, prepared and ready to go for that. So with that, I would like to invite Ms. Amy White. And Ms. Amy White is the associate superintendent for human resources. And she's going to take on the next two slides on our return to work. And before she does, I just wanna say that this is Amy's last official school board meeting. She may still be around to help us from time to time, but she is going to retire at the end of this month. And
066she has done an exemplary job as the associate superintendent for many years prior to that, she was the director of human resources. And prior to that, she was a principal and achieved the national blue ribbon status at Springwood Elementary School. So that's where I first met her when I came a little over 15 years ago. But anyway on behalf of the administration, everyone whose lives you have touched in this school division and on behalf of our school board, I would like to thank you for a fantastic career and exemplary work. So with that, I will turn it over to you for return to work. - Thank you so much Dr. Waltz, and I will briefly say it has been a wonderful, wonderful experience. It's been like pleasure to serve. Thank you. Good evening. Tonight, my
067goal is to share with you highlights from our work so the bullets on my slide have a context. I can assure you, we have kept a laser like focus on the needs of our students and our employees during the president emergency. Director of human resources, Dr. Eagle is with me on the panel tonight as she was the facilitator of our logistics task force and will be available to assist you with any additional information you would find valuable. On slides, eight and nine, you can see the essential information contained in our two major frameworks, which are available on the intranet. The return to work guide for supervisors and the return to work employee guide and checklist. The logistics task force for these guides was comprised of 45 employees from schools and central offices who represented administrative,
068certified and classified personnel as well as three members of our professional associations. They have met twice a week since June. The work could not have been done without the strength, the hand in hand support of HR benefits facilities, risk management, student services, accountability, finance, and transportation and IT, they've been amazing. First, the PWCs return to work guide for supervisors. This provides guidance to every supervisor and administrator on best practices for returning employees to work after COVID. It addresses schedules and staffing plans, identifying staff members who might be at increased risk, reasonable accommodations and leave under the Family's First Coronavirus Response Act, telework agreements, cleaning protocols, communication guidelines, and templates. Workplace, safe workplace habits, signage, visitor protocols. What to do when you receive a COVID-19 notification. And if you don't have all the answers at your
069fingertips, knowing who to call. Professional development sessions on these responsibilities were conducted on Zoom and were attended by nearly 500 Prince William County schools administrators. Second, 15,000 Prince William County schools employees received a return to work check list with links to a safe return to work training video, the PWCs returned to work employee guide and the employee attestation form, which is a COVID-19 self-check of your health. Every employee must sign this form, it's kept in records. And upon clocking in at work or logging in on their work computer, employees will be prompted to agree to a statement, affirming they have conducted their daily screening and they have no new symptoms. We have received almost 7,000 employee responses as of today. Next slide. The employee guide describes safe workplace behaviors, mitigation measures, personal work area cleaning,
070enhanced cleaning and sanitizing, using leave, PPE and PWCs employee support and employee confidentiality. This checklist and guide demonstrate how seriously we have focused on employee health and wellbeing. Third, every employee was sent an employee form to recurrent to work. We had a 96% return rate. To identify personal health, family health and child care concerns with returning to work. All supervisors were given information that impacted staffing decisions, and we continue to work with them on a daily basis and their employees to try to see how we can best meet their needs in light of what we are required to provide our students. Our department continuously updates employee FAQs, which include many of the questions that you as board members have submitted. And finally, we have a clearing house committee. It was formed to review all school
071and office return to work plans, which each of us is required to submit against our guidelines, as well as address utilization of present employees whose primary job responsibilities cannot be done virtually. I think you would probably agree with me that one of the best things we can do to support our employees and our students is to support our leaders. So much is about leadership, reminding our administrators to focus, not only on the physical plant and CDC guidelines, but on making a focused effort to build physical and emotional safety for our employees, as they learn how to teach and learn in a virtual environment, or as they return to work on site. every one of us most, especially the superintendent is committed doing this every single day. Thank you. - Thank you, Ms. White. And if
072we can move to the next slide. And I would like to introduce at this point in time, Ms. Christie Taylor, the director of professional development. - Good evening, Dr. Waltz, chairman Lateef and school board members. As we embark on our new reality and new school year, we continue to reflect, reimagine and redesign our high quality professional learning that is aligned to our strategic plan. We also continue to make updates and identify the needs of our teachers leaders and other staff members related to the professional learning plan. Under Dr. Waltz's leadership in supporting equity beginning in the spring of last year, we entered into a collaboration with Dr. Lisa Williams, who is a nationally recognized expert in the field to improve outcomes for our marginalized students. This will include updates to our current equity work and
073in our modules for leaders, teachers, and all employees in the division. Within this, we will look at reducing biases and then also impacts of trauma for our teachers and our students. We will continue to build bridges through facilitated community conversations that will address racial trauma, equity and cultural awareness and anti-racism within the Prince William County community. Thank you Dr. Waltz for your support and leadership as we continue to support our employee stakeholders. - Thank you, Ms. Taylor. Next up we have Ken Bassett who will spend a little time on our return to learn plan. Mr. Bassett, director of student learning. - Good evening chairman Lateef, members of the board and Dr. Waltz. Throughout the spring and summer, staff have been working with teachers to prepare for all of the possible scenarios for reopening school in
074a 50/50 model, as well as virtually. We're making our final preparations for our 100% virtual program with transitions prepared to return to a 50/50 model during the second quarter. Our preparations have incorporated elements of various best practices for the scenarios that we're presented with during this distance learning phase of the pandemic. Next slide please. So unlike the spring, we have a unified platform from which to deliver instruction. The syncs to our schools have gun and common course templates have been deployed to provide consistent look and feel for our students across grade levels and subjects. Hundreds of teachers contributed to course builds this summer and many of our courses will provide teachers with lessons to get them started right out of the gate. Next slide. Teacher training began in late March and it continues up to
075this very day. Training has reached thousands of teachers and has been provided in multiple formats as you can see here from our slide, to meet the various needs of teachers and their range of level of expertise. Our outreach and training also extends to the community where we're providing data. I'm sorry, pointer sessions in various languages. And so far I've served over 1000 families. We've added more of these sessions for those who wish to participate this and next. And these sessions are also recorded and available on demand on the Prince William County website. So, speaking of community engagement, I'd like to introduce next Lynn Cologne, director of English language programs and services who's going to discuss our support for the English language learners. - Good evening, chairman, Lateef, members of the board and Dr. Waltz. Tonight,
076I would like to share with you the efforts of our school division and our office as it relates to the return to learn plan for English learners. As part of our commitment to English learners, we focus on a guiding question to identify who would return in person. It is important to know that while we serve a significant number of ELs, we focus on the most vulnerable of these students. As a result, school teams of educators and school leaders have identified students with the greatest difficulty learning in a virtual setting to include dually identified students and students with interrupted formal education. Schools follow a process that also includes collaboration with parents as they too are part of this process, having the choice of selecting the virtual option, if they choose to. Every EL student in our
077school division received services that are documented in the student service delivery plan. This plan combined with other data sources are part of the decision making. The process is individualized because we recognize that each student's language proficiency strengths and growth areas are very unique. Our school division is known for our robust training protocols and expectations around collaboration, and co-planning. We continue to make this practice a priority for all educators in our school division. Recently, we had over 600 educators, attend a virtual conference during one day, hosted by our office for co-teaching best practices and tools in a virtual environment. More sessions are taking place this week, and we are confident that our teachers will be in tune to the needs of their students. What strategies are effective and what supports they need the most. Our team
078has had the opportunity to attend virtual co planning meetings. And our teachers in Prince William County schools continue to look at ways to collaborate and design great experiences for students. I will say that we stand ready to support our teachers, students, and families with the tools they need. Our team has scheduled support sessions, curriculum units, parents as parented partners in education training, translations, and interpretations and professional learning that it is relevant to the current needs. We are ready and available to do what I often call, life together with our teachers, students, and families. Thank you, Dr. Waltz and school board for always supporting our office and making sure all English learners in our school division are welcomed. - Thank you very much. Next up, we have our director of special education, Michelle Roper. - Good
079evening, Chairman Lateef, school board members and Dr. Waltz. I want to thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak with you this evening about what's happening with special education. Things are quiet and calm and simple right now with special ed. While it may be a complicated time, there is one thing I know for sure, it is that our special education staff, administrators, and the office of special education stand ready to implement whatever is needed for our students, no matter what it takes. Some of the things we have done this week include handing out PPE to all related service providers and itinerant staff and providing technology and whatever form is needed to them as well. We are scheduling days off days for staff to pick up materials required for both virtual and in person instruction.
080And we'll be contacting parents soon to drive through, to pick up materials, manipulative kits, instructional items for students who have those needs. We've held hundreds of meetings since March with schools and clusters and individually, and we'll continue to support as we move forward. As we continue to work for the completion of our IEPs, I wanna take a moment to thank all of our special educators and administrators who are working so hard to ensure our students' needs are met through the creation of thoughtful IEPs that will help our students be successful in our new learning reality. While the task is labor intensive, I cannot think of a time where it has been more important to have conversations around our students' needs than now. The number of IEP is completed daily is astonishing, and we close the
081gap to meeting our goal of having IEPs completed before a child's first day of service. Once this task is complete, we will be able to have a laser focus on the instruction that is about to begin in a couple of weeks. I would also like to thank our parents for all they're doing and the partnership that we continue to build with them. This last three years, we have focused on that partnership and it is needed now more than ever. We are dedicated to adapting to whatever the situation may be and are here for them to provide support in whatever way we can. Parents should feel free to reach out to their school, to call me, to reach out to the parent resource center or to take advantage of some of our community partners like CAC
082and SEPTA. It's important to understand that under IDEA, we have an obligation to meet the needs of our students with or suspected of having a disability. We have to acknowledge that learning virtually may be extremely difficult for some of our most vulnerable students. At this time, our division we'll be utilizing both in person and virtual instruction, depending on IEP team decision, in order to meet the needs of these learners. Even if there is a need to reduce in-person learning due to community health, there would likely be students who would still receive in-person instruction, and we would still be required to complete new IEPs. My sincere hope is that we all work together to get through this while providing as much support and encouragement as we can, to one another. Thank you for allowing me to
083be here tonight, and we are gonna do all we can to get through this time together. - Thank you very much. Our director of student services, Rebecca Schlader is up next for return to learn counseling. - Thank you and Jason, if we could go to the next slide. Awesome. Good evening, chairman Lateef, members of the school board and Dr. Waltz. My name is Becca Schlader and I'm proud to serve as the director of the wonderful department of student services. I have with me this evening, some of the most wonderful professionals I've had the privilege of working with in my career, Dr. Debbie Ransom, supervisor of elementary counseling and related services, Dr. Richmond Hill, supervisor of secondary counseling and student support services, and Mrs. Teresa Polk, supervisor of student health services. There are a little blocks
084on the screen for you all. This evening, I will briefly share some information with you about the mental health supports that we are planning to have in place for our students when they returned to learning on September 8th. All of us know that these past few months have taken an emotional toll on both our students and parents. Our school based mental health, health and support professionals are poised to offer needed services to our students. Please know that the focus areas shared on this slide are an addition to our already robust multi-tiered intervention system delivered by school counselors, social workers, psychologists, nurses, and attendance officers. This year will certainly present challenges for us. But I can attest to the fact that these caring professionals are ready to jump in and support our students. Teachers and administrators
085have received a social, emotional toolkit to support their teaching endeavors. In this toolkit, they will find ready to go lessons and activities to support social and emotional wellness for our students. Our school based mental health support professionals will be providing services virtually and in-person as needed starting with the first day of school. Staff in my office has been laser focused on training as many employees as possible about adverse childhood experiences and the impact they have on student wellbeing and learning. It is important to understand that our training sessions delivered to well over 2,500 staff members are focused on building resilience in our students through thoughtful interventions. This summer, 30 of our staff members, including myself, became trained as youth mental health first aid instructors. We will have offerings throughout the school year and hope to
086train hundreds if not thousands of our teachers, bus drivers and other school based support staff. Finally, we are working tirelessly to ensure that we have a social emotional needs assessment, ready to deliver to all PWSES parents and guardians during the first week of school. The results of this survey will allow us to immediately wrap support around our students who need it the most. Thank you for allowing me to share with you this evening. As a leader, I am humbled to serve beside such wonderful invested staff members. Now, Jason, if you can show our short video vignette about counseling services. (instrumental music) - [Voice Over] We know that these past few months have been scary and filled with uncertainty for many students. When students return to school, teachers partnering with school counselors will do their best
087to address any stress or fears that students may have about returning to school. During the school day, if a student ever needs assistance, or just wants to talk to someone, they can ask any adult for help and the right person will be made available to assist them. It is important to understand that this is a stressful time for everyone. Prince William County public schools encourages students to show kindness. An extra bit of kindness can make a big difference in everyone's day. - All right, thank you. Next up, we have Dera Dugger, the director of the office of student management and alternative programs. And she's going to talk a little bit about modifications to our code of behavior. Thank you, Dr. Waltz. Good evening, chairman Dr. Lateef, members of the school board and Dr. Waltz. I
088am Dera Dugger, and I serve as the director of office of student management and alternative programs. Modifications for the 2020/21 code of behavior were submitted to ensure students and families clearly understand behavior expectations and student dress and appearance in a virtual learning environment. Additionally, the code of behavior modifications assist with setting the requirement of wearing PPE during in-person learning. School-based administrators were solicited for feedback to address stakeholder concerns. Modifications to the 2020/21 code of behavior include the adding language and to include virtual classrooms, modifying the dress code to include the requirement of wearing PPE and clearly defining the appropriate behavior category for noncompliance. School administrators will receive an implementation guide to ensure consistency in managing student behavior and to bring awareness to discipline practices that impact students disproportionately. To ensure safety for all and reiterate
089the CDC guidelines, families will acknowledge receipt of the code of behavior and their return to learn packet. Thank you, Dr. Waltz and school board members for your support and ensuring the safety of all students and staff who serve Prince William County schools. - Thank you very much. Our associate superintendent for high schools, Mikey Mulgrew, will spend a little bit of time talking about a sample day. - Good evening, Dr. Lateef, members of the school board, Dr. Waltz. This is a high school schedule for this year. And if Jason, you can help me, I would be very appreciative by pointing the cursor. At the very top, we're gonna take, if you'd said where it says example. At the very top, it says three teachers in a building, all of whom happened to have third and six
090periods off. So the teachers have seven periods in their day. Third period, all three of these teachers will share the same periods off. So they both have two periods of planning. Let's take three different teachers. One being an EL teacher, in-person. Teacher two is a self contained program teacher. That teacher would be in person for the first quarter. And teacher three is a general education teacher, virtual, let's make her a chemistry teacher. On the first day, we would understand that on Monday, all three teachers would have virtually the same day or essentially the same day. I'm not going to use virtually. But essentially they would have the same day. On Tuesday, the students would arrive, Tuesdays and Thursdays, the students would arrive around 8:30 to 8:40, somewhere in that area. And between 8:30 and 8:40,
091in-person students would arrive at around that time, teacher assistant security and administration would assist the teachers, would assist the students with getting into the building. The self contained program teacher would be similar to the EL and chemistry teacher would be available for flex and virtual tutoring for 8:30 to 8:50. At 8:50, self-contained teachers and EL teachers would be supervised by teacher assistants. From 8:50 until 10:10, the EL teacher would provide instruction to students. So would the similar to what the chemistry teacher would be doing. If I'm teaching chemistry at 8:50, I'm going to be answering any student's questions, talking to them about yesterday's lessons, going over anything that would be done during that time period. And once we hit 10:10, then the students would go on for the rest of the day. The teachers themselves
092would have a non encumbered lunch at 11:30 and then block four through six, they would have that period of time. Six period would be their planning time. All three of these teachers have the exact same period time. And then virtual hours would be available from 2:50 till 3:30. On Wednesday, it would be very similar, but we have block one to work with. So the two students would go to their first period class. Again, third period, they would have all three of these teachers, whether they're in-person or teaching virtually or a chemistry teacher, they also have a planning period that day. So this is how the high school schedule would work. And we were trying to show that there would be comparable schedules between the El teacher in-person, the self contained program teacher and the chemistry
093teacher in our case that was working virtually. Thank you very much, I appreciate it. Jason, can you put on the video please? (instrumental music) - [Voice Over] When students return to school, riding a school bus will be different. All students will be asked to wear a face covering when boarding and riding on any Prince William County public school bus. The seats will be marked show students where to sit or bus drivers will direct students to a seat or writers can sit a safe distance from other students. If a student is riding the bus with a sibling or another student that lives in the same home, they may sit together in a seat. When students are boarding or exiting the bus, they will be asked to maintain at least three, preferably six feet of physical distance
094between each other. The school division wants the bus riding experience to be safe and enjoyable. - Okay, thank you. And our last staff member to present, and then I'll do a wrap up, will be Matt Gilfoyle, the associate superintendent for technology and communications. - Thank you, Dr. Waltz. Good evening, everyone. Just a brief update just to let you know where we are on the technology support. And we've really been talking about this since January, when we initially started talking about digital equity in the school division. And then of course, as you know, we've accelerated that work since that time. So we'd spent quite a time, trying to reach every family to see if they needed devices or internet support. And we have identified that about 50% of our student population do require a device and
095that we are still continuing to outreach to families. Schools are continuing to give families the opportunity to provide us updated information if they need to do so. The bottom line is that we are working towards having every student who needs one will be provided a device. As due to the volume and the size of the orders that we have placed, some of which we were unable to place until late January, oh sorry, late July in part, because we did receive some additional funding from the board of supervisors, which was of great help. However, due to shipping and preparation time, we may have some families at the elementary school level who may need to share a device in the near term. But our goal will be to eventually get all those students, their own devices, so
096they won't have to share devices. We have ordered about 44,000 new devices. We already had 26,000 devices that we had ready to go. These are kind of older devices ready to go. And we'll have 7,000 more by the end of the first week. So, the combination of our older devices and our newer devices, we will have distributed 44,000 devices by the first day of school. So this is a monumental undertaking primarily of our schools, school based staff along with our individual T specs. And it's really been a collaborative team effort. And it really did is taking a community effort to get this done. And I know that everyone is hard at work on doing this as we speak. As our newer devices are received, they will go where our needs remain. And then we will
097continue and plan to continue towards the school board's goal of having digital equity, starting at the high school level, where every student, every high schooler would have the same laptop. That we will continue that work as much as we can, based on our budget availability on the needs. We also announced to the board earlier that we are moving towards sponsoring every family who qualifies for Comcast cares internet. One of the main qualifications for that is that any student who receives free and reduced lunch can qualify for Comcast cares. So we are collaborating with our food services department who maintains that information. And we're going to ensure that those families who need internet, who've identified they need internet and qualify, we are gonna make sure that we reach out to them in collaboration with our schools.
098They will essentially be provided a code, they'll go into Comcast cares, they'll register and their internet will be taken care of. There'll be no charge to them if they qualify. For those who don't have internet access to Comcast, such as those that might live in rural areas, we will be providing take home hotspots that they can take home if they have cellular access. We also know though that there may be families who have neither cellular nor broadband access. In those cases, we have installed wifi parking lots. We have 36 currently available across the County and all magisterial districts across the County. And students and families would be able to use those. In addition, we are aware that schools are working in a school by school decision, but some schools are gonna be doing some wifi
099cafes where the students can come in at set times to access the internet if necessary. So we are trying to provide a multitude of solutions for every student and family who needs access. We are aware that, of course there'll be a lot of questions, I'm sure, around internet accessing all these new tools, Canvas, Zoom. So we're encouraging families in the next week or two. Many schools are doing what they're calling a tech week to encourage everyone to get online, try out these tools, make sure you've tested them before that first day. But we do know there'll be questions. So if you have a question about basic things like how to reset your password, we've set up an easy website, pwcs.edu/helpdesk. I have the most commonly asked questions that a lot of things you can kind
100of help yourself to solve. But if necessary, we do have a help desk. We don't have a massive customer service desk, but we do have some folks that are very hard at work. And will answer those questions if necessary. And then lastly, we were already looking towards that second quarter where the school board has indicated that we were interested in moving toward 50% model. And we know that that may require a heavy burden on our internal networks within the schools. So we are going to be hard at work and upgrading our networks from 10 gigs to 40 gigs across the school division. And that work is already underway. So we are going to be positioning with an eye towards that second quarter already as well. - Thank you very much. Next slide please. So a
101few key reminders to wrap up. Obviously health and doing everything we can to improve safety is number one. Our first day of school in person and virtual is September 8th, most students will be virtual. Students schedules will be available in parent view honor before September 4th. Number five, we wanna make sure you test your technology before that first day. So log into Canvas, make sure you have your password. Log in to Zoom, make sure your students are comfortable using the technology before the first day arrives. And finally visit pwcs.edu for additional details, our frequently asked questions, look for the school and other official sources, including schools for the most recent information. And that, chairman Lateef and members of the board, concludes our presentation and what we were asked to cover for this evening. Thank you
102very much. - Thank you, Dr. Waltz, really appreciate all the updates and all the hard work everyone is doing. I'd like to also say an echo your comments about congratulations to Amy White. Amy, thank you for all that you do for the school division. I always appreciate the fact that you're not afraid to tell me things I don't like to hear and are always very honest with the board whenever asked. And no one expects to retire in a pandemic, and we certainly will lose you at a very important time, but we look forward to working with you as you follow up in ROP. So thank you for everything you do, and it'll be enormous shoes to fill for whoever takes your job afterwards. We'll just go around the room. I'd like the board members to
103indicate either by raising their hand or their mic, letting me know who has a question first or we'll start. We'll just go around, we'll start. We'll go one in the room and one out of the room. We'll start with Lisa's Zargarpur first. - All right, thank you everybody for that report. I'm gonna push some buttons right now though. I know that we voted to have the special education students who qualified through their IEPs, come in first. We get a lot of emails from parents, from teachers and some of the emails that we get from teachers, they're like, these IPEs are getting done. We got a lot of work to do, ready to go. I'll get some other emails where they feel a lot swamped and I'm not sure what words of wisdom we can have
104here, but there are a lot of special education teachers who are having to learn this new IEP system and which is overwhelming in and of itself, 'cause it's a new thing. And then they've got to figure out Canvas, which is another new thing. And then we've got some people who are moving into positions that they're a little bit different than what they're used to. And I know they're gonna be offered all these trainings, but I'm concerned about them being, I don't wanna say overworked, but they do have a lot on their plate and there's a lot of expectation on their shoulders right now. And I would like to know if anyone has thoughts on what we as a division can do to help them manage this incredible load that they're all taking on because they
105are working so hard. Yeah, they're working so hard. And I just wonder if there's some thoughts, some dots we can connect for them, something like that. Thank you. - [Dr. Waltz] I certainly recognize the challenge that's facing everyone. And I'm going to use the analogy I use last week about when we do summer construction, that every day for the construction department, it's like a week. And the same holds true with what's being unfolded in terms of when we started coming back to school last week and the ongoing training that's going on. I've gotten a lot of feedback about, once some of this training has occurred, we've gotten some very positive feedback. I don't know if I'm Kim Bassett, are you still on the line? I know you were one of the people that shared with
106the staff. If you could give a 60 second or less response to the feedback that you were getting that you shared with the staff last week. - Yes, sir. Thank you for the opportunity Dr. Waltz. It's just that we had a number of teachers who had come back and they were really pleasantly surprised by the amount of support that they had available to them in a number of the courses that their teacher colleagues had worked on over the course of the summer. Some of the feedback was, I got an email from a principal who said, "My teachers came in on Monday "and they were anxious and nervous." They went to the elementary staff development day that we provided on Tuesday, and they came back excited and ready and I couldn't think of higher praise that
107we would have wanted to hear from folks in the field. So we're working hard to make sure that everybody has that kind of an experience. It's been a very heavy lift, no kidding about that. And we're still working through challenges that we have, but every single day, everybody's putting everything they've got into it because we know that that's what our kids deserve and what our teachers deserve. - Ms. Hedner, I would like to give you an opportunity. And also if you wanna ask any one on your staff to comment as well. Perhaps Dr. Roper or whomever you choose, or if you wanna handle yourself, that's fine as well. - Sure, I'm always happy to bring in the lifeline a little help. So I think I have really listened. I've talked with several of our board
108members and some of our teachers. And we are really working and looking at creative ways on how we can support our staff. One example of how we've been created is the office of student services is supporting the completion of IEPs by mobilizing our attendance officers to assist in reaching out to parents who were having difficulty connecting with in order to get some efforts to take the load off of the schools and off of the teachers for that parent contact, but really to help connect in unique ways. We've talked, I've talked with our level associate teams and our principals and understanding that we can find additional technology support. We have a help desk available, we have a specific help desk available to help with the Virginia IEP. While the IEP itself is different, the system is
109actually the same system and it is all from PCG ed plan. So there are a few new components on the IEP, but the overall functioning is the same functioning that the teachers should be familiar with. I'm gonna take the ball I'm gonna toss it to the amazing Dr. Roper who spent all day today, all day today outside of Kelly leadership building, participating in handing out of PPE. And so I'm gonna turn it over to you, Dr. Roper. - Thank you. Yeah, so it was a little toasty today, but we had fun and it was wonderful to see people. Yes, we acknowledged that it is a lot to handle and we've offered every support that we possibly can to teachers, including offering to go in and fill things out for them. Some of the coordinators in
110the office of special ed have completed all the transportation forms for our staff. So, I mean, we are all in ready to do whatever we need. None of us will sleep if it's gonna help everybody. So if a teacher needs anything, all they have to do is reach out to us and we will do whatever we can to help them. Regardless of what type of situation we're in, we're gonna have to write new IEPs. And so whatever we can do to assist is what we're gonna do. - Thank you. Yeah, so what we'll do is I'll go next to, I saw Ms. Jackson had her hand up. Ms. Jackson. - All right, thank you, Dr. Lateef. Thank you for the presentation today. I know everybody has been working very hard. I have some followup questions,
111so I'll just start with a few and then hopefully we can circle back for more later. Also wanted to think Mrs. Amy White for answering my many, many questions and creating an environment in which I felt comfortable asking them. I have concerns about the workload as well. I have a lot of concerns about the workload for special educators. And it's not just coming from the fact that I was once a special educator. It's coming from the many emails that I am getting and phone calls. They're overworked and I just wanna explain to the public why they are overworked. The IEP system is new, and in some instances, it's not copying paste. It's taking on average from what I've been told about two and a half to three and a half hours to write them. And
112that doesn't include an IEP meeting. So on the low side, that is about 60 hours of writing IEPs if you have a caseload of about 15. And this doesn't account for the complex IEPs technology or language barriers. Many teachers don't know if they're gonna be virtual or in person. And some have been told that they have to do both. Special educators and ELL teachers are traditional tasks with additional work. When school starts, they face the same responsibilities of general educators with the boating of idea, DOJ and other documentation requirements. There are checkpoints to be made, rooms to be set up, lessons to be written, files to be bad. And now instructional materials to be remade, I really appreciate the offer to teachers for help. Sometimes they're not comfortable to reach out because there is a
113need for chain of command and or fear of retribution, or just other things that may or may not be valid to them. So I know that there was a mention of a hotline in the questions that were answered. And thank you again for answering those questions. The part of the hotline for safety concerns when they call for special ed, are we collecting data on what kind of questions are being asked. And can you speak to anything else that we can do to even the playing field between those who have a lot more questions on answered? Because they don't know if they're going virtual or they can't attend trainings because they have to write IEPs. Like, is there something that outside the box that the school system could do to even the playing field, besides answering
114questions? - Ms. White, the question around, if a teacher doesn't know what they're teaching, what would be your response to that? I mean, most of these things, I would suggest that they go to their administrator or their department head or someone in special education who has a administrative coordinator or supervisor over their area. I mean, we're all in this together. We have done nothing but say over and over to people, if you need help, please reach out. That is what we're here to do. We are here to help you to be successful. So I think continuing to encourage that. But Ms. White, I'll let you respond. - Dr. Waltz, you're absolutely right. The principal should know at this time who's working in which position. I will tell you that because those tier one employees who
115may need an accommodation, that is ever changing the dynamics or the parents who decide they wanna put their children in school or have them schooled at home virtually. So we have a framework for staffing, but it can change just because of the nature of the pandemic. If there's any particular school that you're seeing a pattern of problems, let us know and we will assist those administrators to get that information out to their teachers if there's anything we can do. - And I just wanna finish by adding that, as I mentioned last week, I continue to meet with the leadership in the school division. And so since our last meeting, I met with all the middle school principals. So I had an opportunity to dialogue with each and every one of, it's about almost 20 middle
116school administrators and here both the positives, any concerns that they had. And they're feeling very, very, very good about the opening. I'm also gonna be doing the same thing with each elementary principal over a three day period starting tomorrow. So I'm encouraged by the feedback that I'm getting. And as I said, I think each day the feeling will get better as we get closer and closer and more training and more questions are answered. - Okay, next, I'll go to Laurie Williams. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I'm just gonna say to keep it simple ditto to what Ms. Jackson said with a huge concern with staff burnout, because if you are burnt out, you can't do your job and you can't perform well. And that is a huge concern for mine, not only for special education
117teachers, but for everyone. But specifically just special education teachers. I know what it's like because I work two full time jobs and I'm a single parent, right now working school board, which was supposed to be part time is now full time and a full time job and having to raise children. And your mind turns into mush. So no matter how feel good you feel and how, what your intentions are, sometimes you just cannot physically get it done in a way that is up to par for your job. And I am really concerned about our special education teachers across the board being able to function and complete their goals that meet the needs of our students and themselves as well as the rest of our staff. And I think that that is a common shared concern
118from the entire board. And anyone's welcome to correct me on that. But my concern, because I think special ed is gonna continue to come up. But my primary concern is I'm really, I don't understand what a toolkit for race and related and pandemic trauma is. I don't know what that is because I know that historically, and I'm not speaking just for the school division, and as a society, when we talk about diversity training and race information and race training, we hand people like worksheets, or we send them through a PowerPoint. And then we say, check, you're trained. But this is a really big deal, like super big, laymen, huge level to the point like sports teams are not even playing now, which I say that because apparently in this country, sports rules the world for
119most people. So like, I just use that as an example to say how momentous and how large this is when you're talking about people of color, interacting with people who are not of color and having the ability to speak the same language and understand when there is trauma and what trauma looks like, and now we are going into people's homes. So I'm very concerned about that. I think it's great that we have a survey, but I would really like a deeper understanding of what that toolkit is and how our teachers who are not of color are going to be able to understand whatever it is that they're provided. And then in turn interact with those students. And one thing I asked very specifically for was to look at a standard operating procedure or some sort
120of outline of how teachers are going to conduct themselves virtually, because we're entering people's homes. So I still haven't seen anything that says, as a teacher, I can do this. Or my expectations for teachers are this, or this is what it means when I enter your home virtually, I will be able to conduct myself in XYZ manner. How we deal with teacher biases, because everybody has biases. Everybody has biases. How we're going to deal with biases when teachers run across an unfamiliar home environment and then are expected to teach without prejudice to those students, that is a very big deal. That will affect how I interact with somebody. And I'm really concerned about that. I'm also really concerned about whatever updates were made to the code of behavior, because as a board annually, we vote
121on those. And it is a huge concern of mine with school to prison pipeline. What did our disciplinary actions, what does that mean, what's that look like? And I think the sooner that we can get that information out to our parents and our students and what the expectations are, the better we're able to work together as a team. But my primary concern is that toolkit, I don't know what that means. I don't know what that looks like. And I know historically as a society, we have not done a good job. So it is gonna be a mandate coming down from the state to be anti-racist schools and to behave in anti-racist manner. And I know this because I've sat on the trainings and I've gone to the committee meetings. Matter of fact, there's one tomorrow,
122there's a listening session I'm participating in. So I would just like some more detailed information and our ability as a division to translate that out and not just on the internet, not just on a video, but how do we reach those families that don't have internet that don't see the school website, because those are the ones that are gonna be really impacted. And that's a large group of people. So that's really, really important 'cause they're even more traumatized 'cause you throw on economics on top of that. So I'm really, really concerned. Thank you. - [Ms. Jesse] Dr. Lateef. - Ms. Jesse. - Hi, good evening. Again, I'm here for special education teachers and I'm here for teachers in general. My concern is that even tonight, and by the way, you guys did a tremendous presentation.
123It was done in such a systematic way, I love the videos. The bottom line is that teachers are still very, very scared about this. And tonight I noticed that there's a small percentage of virus problems with the health community. And it's because one, that's what they were trained for. They were trained to do infectious diseases. They have the equipment there, they have the PPE, they had the environmental fertilization or whatever you wanna call it. But when you look at teachers, the difference between a teacher and a nurse in this situation that we're dealing with. The nurse knows that what's in front of her is a COVID patient, that patient is contained. And so she is going to do better in that environment. Teachers do not know whether or not the students they're dealing with or
124the parents or their coworkers have the virus. So there's no drill for it, there is no fire drill, there's no COVID drill. They are working in an environment that is playing scary. And tonight, I've heard about how excited people are, but I have to tell you, people are still afraid of this environment. The other issue I wanna deal with is equity. Equity to exposure, equity in terms of time. Special education teachers are being exposed at a much higher rate because they're in that classroom from 8:30, I think until 3:30. Regular ed teachers are teaching maybe three hours a day. But they can do their lessons from their home, they can do their lesson from vacation sites. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but they have that liberty. And so special education teachers are
125being required to be in an environment for long periods of time. And I think that we need to be very specific about what they're asking. I think there are people in that building right now telling you what they need. The problem is that we haven't had no environment where they can express their needs because we've had these emergency meetings. So I've been listening to them and listened to it. There were like 97 people on a feed yesterday, I listened. They're excited and they are so dedicated. They really wanna work with these kids. They're asking and I don't know if this would be in a motion or something you want to really reconsider and look at and bring back and put on the agenda for a vote. They're asking for the following. They're asking me that
126school start for in-person learning two weeks from now, give them time to breathe. They just want time to do the Canvas stuff, do the ed services, get their rooms ready. And that's what they're asking, they're asking for that. Also asking in some situations as I've been researching that today, I'm finding that to be very interesting. They're also asking for a modified schedule. They're saying that, and I said that to Mr. Imbar and to several people, that in some instances, special education teachers are going to be there from 8:30 in the morning until 3:30. The afternoon schedule, in many instances, it's going to be art music and PE. So they're pretty much just turning the screen off. They're asking us, is it possible to modify the schedule so the special education students are there for a
127half day and teachers are there for a half day. Or maybe they could do some other kinds of things. But they want to bemuse their exposure to the virus. Thirdly, they are concerned about the hazard pay came up. I know Mr. Wallingford dealt with it with us. But I would really like for that to be addressed in a public forum so that they know that it is something that maybe we could have done, but we're not gonna be able to do and why. Finally the scary part of this. Like tonight, I heard they have 2995 masks. Well until maybe two weeks ago, I didn't know what it was. And so these teachers get this thing. There are 2000 people are gonna have near 995 masks. So they feel like they're walking into a hostile environment
128when that's not what they signed up for, people. And all the slides and all the presentations are not gonna help that. And it's not just Prince William County, 'cause I know you guys are doing the best that you can. But I don't. I see this, my husband and I were in DC. And we saw on hospital heroes for nurses, blue wave for nurses, the empire building was sprayed in blue. Where's the blue wave for teachers. I don't see, I see everybody talking about the kids, I don't see them talking about teachers. So my concern is whether or not we can give them more equity. They ask for two weeks delay, that feasibility piece that we talked about. They said from the following reason, to learn Canvas, to complete their IEPs, to hold meetings, to set
129up rooms to teaching in person. Down South, we would say we're wearing them out. And they're also looking at us, sitting in our room and I'm sitting in my office here and I have a medical reason that I'm here. But we're putting one group of teachers in an exposure situation and they are asking us for help. We don't have to call them and ask them, they've told you what they want. So, I guess my question is, can we look at a two hour, I mean a half day. And I can we look at a two week delay for the special ed, in-person special ed, but doing some virtual teaching during that time. But I've talked to a few principals and they're saying, "Well, you know, we can work something out." So I guess that's my
130question. If I need to put in the form of a motion, I right now I'm just making it a question. - Well, I would say on those questions, before our next board meeting, maybe we can have that on the closed session. My understanding is we should not be responding to that in the public session from division counsel. On the other big issue, Ms. Jessie on hazard pay. I'd like Mr. Wallingford to respond to that, please. - Dr. Waltz, are you gonna also, when we look next time at the possibility of modification of the schedule, because some people have art an afternoon. I'm finding that some people have other things going on and teachers are concerned that they're doing they're teaching indirect, it's structured and they're also required to do virtual and it's very difficult for
131them. So if you could put both those items for discussion to put on the agenda for next week, I would appreciate it. - Okay. We can do the hazard pay right now. - Okay, thank you. - You're welcome. - Very good. - Dr. Waltz, thank you. Mrs. Jesse, you and I spoke several days ago about hazard pay and I shared several thoughts with you about it. The first is this, the care's act funding that we received at $9.3 million. That was all spent in fiscal 2020 in the previous school year. So the funding source currently doesn't even exist from which we could provide hazard pay. A couple of other thoughts, hazard pay for the couple of hundred teachers and other potentially other employees, we have in the schools right now. The cost of that, and
132I didn't share this with you the other day, but the cost of that could run as much as $5 million, assuming that we were paying it like we did with our classified employees in the fourth quarter of last year. We were paying those folks basically one and a half times or an overtime rate to compensate them for their direct contact was with students, other children and other employees. The equity issue, if we were to choose to provide hazard pay for more folks, the numbers would be substantially higher, a number that we probably couldn't even deal with. So while hazard pay is certainly an issue to talk about from a financial perspective, it will be a very challenging thing. One last thought, the general assemblies in Richmond in their special session. And we're looking at revenue
133decreases both potentially because of the budget changes and because of enrollment changes. So there are a lot of things to consider with regard to providing that kind of additional pay. - Okay, while you're on. Can I ask you a question about the PPE? There was a concern that some of the equipment that was sent out was not up to standard or a question about that. And I'd have to have that person get back with you. And who selected? Did your office do that or did Theresa Polk office to who made those decisions and how do we come up with 2000 people. Who decided that? - So there are several questions, Mrs. Jesse, you just asked. There is a collaborative effort between student services, Ms. Polk, risk management, HR, finance, and supply services who have all
134gotten together to try and make sure that we have sufficient PPE in place. I assure you, we have no PPE that we are providing to employees that is not either approved or appropriate PPE currently. For example, the N-95s, those N-95s are NIOSH approved. We're providing a better PPE for our teachers and staff in many cases than you see at a healthcare facilities. Frankly, we're doing a very good job. We're doing much better than the other school divisions locally. If I recall all the questions correctly, the last question you asked is who decided who gets what PPE and the 2000 employees. That's a longer conversation, I'll try to make it brief. And we can certainly talk offline if you'd like. But, like I mentioned in a couple of minute presentation I provided, OSHA provides guidance, risk
135management, the nurses, HR, they all got together and went through a process to assign risk of levels for every one of our 640 different job titles. We had to go through about, we have 17,000 employees or 11,000 FTEs. It's a great deal of effort involved. And we assign risk to different categories of employees. Based on that risk level, low, medium, and high, we provide PPE that's all guided by OSHA regulations. So there were several hands in that effort. - Well, I don't know if you're going to ask this question about the PPE, when I think 2000 N-95 masks, that was one of the concerns that teachers brought to me was that one is gonna be scary with all this stuff. Of course and I know we have to deal with that. But that cap of
136mask, will they be trying to teach in that mask all day. How long can they be in the mask? And the other question that came to me was that they have to have that mask for five days. Could you answer that or someone else? - No, I can answer that question, Ms. Jesse. The N-95 needs to be worn if a teacher is in close proximity to students or special ed teachers and TAs or kindergarten and kindergarten TAs, transportation folks, they're all hot categorized as high risk employees. So they will be wearing that PPE gowns, gloves. Other PPE will be available to them. If they're in a situation where they're not near students, they certainly don't need to wear those masks. But we are requiring face coverings of some kind when you're in a building. -
137How well the bus drivers, 'cause I got a call from a bus driver, also very concerned about bus drivers and their safety. Will they wear PPE and they're concerned that, especially some of these special needs bus. I know Dr. Waltz said there was an aid on every bus, but there's always been an aid on special education buses. That they are concerned about these kids who move it around and will they wear PPE. What kind of protective measures, maybe that's not your ballywick, for bus drivers because the bus driver is also concerned. - I can certainly answer that question as well, Mrs. Jessie. Bus drivers, particularly in the first quarter of the year, those students will be predominantly special ed students with some EL students. Those folks are all categorized as high risk as well. We'll
138provide them N-95 phase shields and Kevlar sleeves that they can put over their arms, they'll have substantial protection. - Bringing you food. - Yeah, that's that's my daughter. - Well, I just wanna close by saying that sometimes when we were... I've worked with that central and it at school, but I've also worked in institutions for kids who were severely and profoundly handicapped. And I know that you're in a territory that you can't predict what they're gonna do. You are gonna have to handle with care some of those kids, they're going to be more, some are not gonna wear a mask. They're not gonna be socially distanced. So if teachers are saying to me that, I don't know, we meant to was somehow the people who were online and talking to me and sending email to
139me and probably do some that all four of them, other board members. They feel that their needs have not been addressed. And I don't know how we fix that, but I think we need to fix it. Thank you. - Thank you, Ms. Jesse. Thank you. And Mr. Wallingford, did you say, I thought you had said at some point. How many N-95 masks came in. - We had 30,000 N-95 is delivered to our loading dock today. Actually it was yesterday, late yesterday. We have 47,000 N-95 currently in stock. - Great and as a point you made earlier, I, as a physician in the community, can't still get an N-95 mask. But you guys have done an outstanding job in procuring the things we need, I appreciate it. Next, we'll go to Jennifer Wall. - All right,
140thanks Mr. Chairman. I have, I just wanna say thank you to all the community members, parents, teachers, everybody who has emailed the board. It's kind of overwhelming, but it has also helped us understand all of the issues and the wide diverging opinions that members of the community have from the special ed parents to the special ed teachers and everybody in between. So I just wanted to say, thank you. I have two questions. I'm not gonna speak for a long time or anything like that. But one of my first questions is where are we... One thing that I've been hearing from parents is, where are we on the guidelines for attendance? How is attendance going to be taken? How are we thinking of this differently? And I understand that this might be, maybe this might be
141a site based decision. I'm not sure if this is a division wide policy. Obviously I know it's gonna have to be flexible because some students won't be able to log into the class at the time that the class is happening due to maybe technology concerns or maybe they're working or helping younger siblings. But if we could get just a little bit of idea from a parent perspective on what the division is thinking about attendance. And maybe it's too soon, but I would like to know, and I have one additional short question after that. - [Waltz] Yes, so if you could get that question to Ms. McGowan, it's something that we're working on, but if you could forward that question to her by Friday, close the business, we'll at least have an update for you. And
142point made where we'll be working on getting that information out to students and parents when it's just a little bit closer. - Okay, that's great. I know there are so many questions that parents have for all these things, but I do appreciate that. Maybe this question might be able to be answered today. The question has to do with, I appreciate hearing about what we've been able to do for our employees that have childcare needs. But I am also hearing from parents that they have been bumped from the list for SAC because of that additional inflow of requests. And so I just would like to hear what we are doing. I don't like to see a situation where we're kind of pitting members of the community against teachers. So I was wondering if there was any
143update in expanding locations and available seat space in our afterschool program. - [Waltz] Direct that one to Ms Hedner, please. - Sure, it's a very timely question. I just today received information from the staff at Alphabest that our sites are filling up and we will be in the process of looking at additional sites and trying to open additional slots. Of course, that's a partnership. So, if we have the space available, Alphabest has to be able to be sure that they can actually staff it. But it is our goal to expand to full service, to meet the needs of all of our community. And again, we recognize that we have essential workers and our parents have needs as well. So it's our goal to meet all of those needs. - Alright, thanks. - Ms. Raulston. -
144Not much. I don't think I have much of anything to contribute today. But let me ask, how often do you see our work for the good of African American children? That's it. - Well, hello Ms. Raulston. - Hello. - Let me just say that, absolutely it's our responsibility to provide a great education for every child. But we are certainly sensitive to the fact that black children, African American children, what they have witnessed and continue to witness as recently as I think it was or day before, horrific kinds of things. And this undoubtedly affects children and their families. And so that's part of what we're trying to do with the training, is to make sure that our counselors and our teachers have the, it's called a tool kit, but it's basic a toolkit is nothing more
145than different ideas and strategies to help teachers and other adults who may be working with students to be able to open up conversations with them. And quite frankly, I'm concerned not just about students and their families, but employees as well. I mean, I just can't imagine. And we can't take anything for granted that somehow, well, we'll just focus on teaching and learning and that's what's on the news. No, people have been deeply affected by this. And we are making every effort to provide a comprehensive training. And I don't know if Ms. Taylor is still on the line. But if you might want to speak to that because I think there've been a couple of questions about that. I don't know if Ms. Taylor is still. - [Taylor] Dr. Waltz, Thank you. I am still here.
146So one of the things I wanna address around talking about toolkits. I've been working with our office. Number one, Ms. Burgers is working with a team of five professional development specialists that share their time between my office and minister Bassett's office. So they are working-- - Camera, can we get Ms. Taylor on camera? - Sorry, I thought it came on. And they are currently working on things that are far beyond toolkits in terms of access and implementation with the curriculum. The other thing in terms of the work that we have been doing and continue to do is that when staff engages in equity training, particularly in discussions around race, it compliments the social and emotional learning of our students in our schools and well helps develop the climate and culture of the adults in the
147instruction that goes along in the classroom. As staff builds competency and racial equity, it's likely to see decreases in incidents of racial microaggressions. And when these do happen, the community has a mechanism for repair and is aligned similar to a restorative practice. - And thank you very much. And since you only had the one question Ms. Raulston, we're gonna go just a little bit deeper in there. I would like next to just get Dr. Ransom, because I know that you folks are working hard with the counselors, not just counselors, it's social workers and psychologists. But I know in particular from, for one thing, attending your two hour event the other day on the training, and by the way, congratulations on that and great job. It was highly, highly successful. But would you mind spending just
148a minute or two on that Ms. Ransom? I think you're on mute. - There, I am so sorry. Thank you so much for allowing us to present you the equity committee. One of our business focus is on adverse childhood events. One of the things that man try to do in the presentation, especially to the equity committee was to make sure that we understand all types of adverse events that our children have experienced. And we talked a lot about the issues around historical trauma, what that meant to children. The information was well, well received. We did that presentation at eight a presentation to the equity committee because we wanted to make sure that there was a clear connection between what ACEs, what trauma is and how we can be a better community in trying to address
149what's going on with our students across the board. I am so happy to so many people have gone through the ACEs training. Some of our principals have asked for followup information 'cause they want a more rigorous type of information for them because they see this as important. And as we work with our students, we know that as we start school, we have been very, very mindful of this. What I'm trying to say to many of folks is that before we can do education, we have to do regulation. And that is a regulation of students' emotions, that our students have been through so much. And we have to make sure that we're addressing those issues before we can expect kids to sit quietly in a Zoom meeting. But thank you for that opportunity. - Thank you
150so much. I know Dr. Ranson is the person who works closest with our elementary counselors. And I would like to give an equal opportunity to Dr. Hill who works with our high school counselors. And again, I got a deeper understanding of what we're rolling out literally as we speak and as we've done in the summer and even our Tripoli, I thought the keynote, he was just absolutely amazing and right on the money on so many of these things. But Dr. Hill, if you wouldn't mind talking a little bit from the secondary lens, please. - Thank you so much, Dr. Waltz. I will say that our secondary counselors just as Dr. Ransom was mentioning our elementary counselors. They are poised to provide support and be listening ears. And just, I guess, a safe Haven for our
151secondary students in our middle and a high schools. They have reached out to me and have reached out to our office for resources, for support. We've had conversations about being prepared to support students and have some of those tough conversations about racism, about biases, about what is going on in our country. And one thing that I am happy to say is that a large majority of our school counselors have said, "We cannot be silent. "We must be there to support all of our students. "We have to be listening ears, we have to learn more. "We have to address some of our own biases "so that we can provide support and provide "appropriate counseling supports as well "throughout the school year now, more than ever." And so I have been encouraging our school counselors and some
152of our administrators to really take a close look at the Anti-Defamation leagues, no place for hate program. That is such a strong program, it is free of charge to us. The staff members in the Washington DC region support our schools tremendously. They don't just bring them on and leave them out without any support or provide resources, curriculum, recommendation for activities, they help schools look at even looking at their own cultures and needs assessments and what it is that they need at their school as it relates to race relations and just equity and anti-biased and anti hate. And so I am a resource and I'm happy to speak with any school, any administrator. And I shared with several counselors, let's take advantage of those resources with the no place for hate program so that we can
153stretch that program out to all of our schools in Prince William County. Right now, we're at about 22 or 24 schools. And we really needed in all of our schools in Prince William County. So we stand by as a secondary counseling team, ready to what our students, our parents. I know that we've had schools that have had, the school counseling directors and the administrators have come together to create opportunities for listening sessions for the community, to hear what the needs are from the parents and from the students and how school counselors and other professionals in the building can assist our students, not just on students of color, but all students, because all of our students are interested in making sure that we have a harmonious environment and that all students accepted and welcome. - [Ms.
154Jesse] Dr. Waltz. - Hold on, Ms. Jesse, we're going in order here. We still have many. - [Ms. Jesse] I just wanted him to bring Ms. Come back to me. Thank you. - Mr. Wilk. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a number of questions relating to these topics. First, I wanna go back to slides 12 and 13, and going back to Ms. Zargarpur and Ms. Williams, and another couple of people have reiterated this. Ms. Jackson, about the Canvas. Respectfully, Mr. Bassett, I think the additional trainings are lovely, but when our special education teachers are having to do them at nine o'clock at night or 10 o'clock at night, I don't know if it actually lessens the workload for them. So what I'm suggesting and understanding education technology, knowing on the back end, there's a
155hierarchy and a district account in individual school accounts, who is managing the district Canvas page, is that Mr. Guilfoy? Okay. - Mr. Guilfoy, are you there? - Yeah, sorry, I thought Mr. Bassett was taking that question. So yes, I can at least give it a high level. So the aim is the way it operates is that essentially the IT office stood it up, just like any other technology that we've support. And we support technology for all different departments. As it's moved into operational, the student learning office under Ms. Goss and Mr. Bassett have really led the work this summer to create those learning modules that you're discussing, Mr. Wilk. So in terms of the specifics on the content creation, I would need to turn to Mr. Bassett who's led that work along with the army
156of folks that summer, so he can get into the specifics. - Okay, thank you, Mr. Guifoy. Mr. Bassett, before I jump in there. So that kind of goes to my next question about who's managing it. A lot of education technology and software allows you to build like a base page model with standard things that potentially could be imported from a file, we could label it, what special education, standard templates, something like that until they're able to get the training and support. I've been asking this with administrative calls multiple nights. I received a nice email from Ms. Goss, very detailed. A lot of it was focused on additional trainings, site base, where, people are helping at the school level. But I'm looking for more direction at the central office level and some type of standard template
157for the meanwhile that they could possibly use import set up a baseline page until they're able to kind of survive and get through the IEP process. Is that a possibility sir, or is that something that the functionality of Canvas cannot do? - So, I have three solutions that I can share with you, Mr. Wilk. The first is that for teachers who are teaching self contained classes, and I've had a number of them contact me directly who are looking for a below grade level content, which is a particular challenge that they encounter. What we've shared with them as a very rapid solution for them to have a lot of content at their fingertips, is to go to the Canvas comments where we have K through eight, actually K through 12 courses provided by virtual Virginia that
158would give them instant access to all four core subject areas for all of those grade levels. So if you had a middle school teacher who needed some elementary level content to work with the student in a self contained setting, they could hit the comments for that content and be able to pull it right in to their course. The other solution that we have shared with special educators is that in those cases where they are in a co-teaching situation where they are collaborating with a grade level teacher, like when you were a civics teacher, if you had a special education teacher, what we would ask is that the general education teacher would add their co-teaching partner to the people's tab of their Canvas course. That makes their teaching partner a coequal partner in that course and
159allows them to have access to all the same things that the teacher does. So that provides two quick solutions for those two different groups of teachers. One additional area that we're still working on some solutions for is for those teachers that do not have either of those situations, where they do not have a course of their own. And that is something that is on our hot projects list, if you will, to try to stand up some solutions where we can create some new courses to do something very similar to what you just described, which is for them to have a, a core shell, if you will, that we can plant a template into. That they can at least have some common structure that's similar to what we've provided to other teachers. And those teachers would
160be in a position to do one of two different things. They could import content from courses that we have available that are in the comments or modules that we have available in the comments, either through virtual Virginia or from a variety of other sources. So it wouldn't be the case that special education teachers would be without instructional material. And I don't know if Dr. Roper wanted to share anything in addition to that, but those are some of the solutions that she and I have shared with teachers that we've corresponded with over the past several days as the implementation has rolled out. - If I could just add that also we have a CLT team that works on adding modules for students that have intellectual disabilities and autism. So those modules are being added as we
161speak. In addition, we have many TeachTown products and many other products like touch math and Edmark. And so today I sent an updated list to all the school based administrators of all the web based platforms that we have that would support our students with disabilities, that from varying ability. So we have things like teaching them basics. And I had mentioned touch math and ed Mark, and some Lindamood bell products and Spire. And so we have products for all students of all different abilities that can provide an incredible amount of support and can be added in addition to Canvas, that students will be able to utilize. - Thank you, Mr. Bassett and Dr. Roper. Dr. Roper, why have you... I have a question about the IEP process and my understanding of it. I'm trying to get
162better and Ms. Huebner and I have talked about this multiple nights. She's been so kind to take calls up to 10 o'clock at night. So I appreciate her. So understand there's a new system. I hear a lot about the copy paste thing. I understand, being a parent myself and going through the IEP process, that a lot of the things in the spring are very similar with goals, different components with that. I'm sure there's modifications in the sense of what parents have experienced potentially with their child and their regression over their summer. My question is, it seems like a lot of the time is being spent because there might be a lack of guidance from the office of special education when it comes to developing plans in a all virtual scenario or a in-person scenario. So
163from a guideline standpoint, do we have anything from the OSC coming down on kind of a number? I know they're all individualized and every child is different. But do we have any guidelines from the office of special education for developing these plans, which I imagine is probably the most labor intensive part of this when they're after these meetings with these parents, or as they're preparing for these meetings with their parents, trying to look at the previous IEPs determining if the child does warrant in-person instruction, or even if that child does warrant in-person instruction. The plan of what occurs potentially if we go down the road and it does go all virtual, what are we doing in that scenario from a central office standpoint, the better support our individual schools. Because, the teachers, as I know,
164understand talking to a number of special education teachers. They're overwhelmed our speech pathologists, our specialists, the people who have to come in these rooms and attend these meetings. And let's not forget the administrators at each of the building who have to be represented in each of these IEP meetings. So people are juggling a lot right now. So my question is from a centralized standpoint again, what are we doing to support an offer when it comes to guidelines for developing plans for the in person, if a child is deemed or is determined, they need that instruction. And then what about the all virtual setting potentially if a child is going all virtual, 'cause the parents elect and the IEP team may not chosen that for them, what are those scenarios? What is the time allocation in
165all that, and how are we proposing that and supporting our teachers there. - Okay, I'll and do my best to get to that as best I can. And I know miss Hebner will jump in if I forget anything. But as far as IEPs, I understand the challenge that it creates for having to create so many documents. The good news is that once we have those completed before school begins, we're really gonna be able to focus on the instructional piece and what we're gonna do once the IPEs are complete. We have provided since March, I would say hundreds of cluster meetings where we've met on Zoom, both with teachers and with administrators, and then sometimes together. We've offered to talk through, is there a challenging situation that we're unsure how we should handle, how are we
166gonna provide instruction? What are we gonna do? And so we've offered meetings on a weekly basis at this point. So, I mean, honestly, we just wanna be here to support the teachers as they're going through this. I shared several documents that have been refined over the past several months, that include professional development that we offer. We've added professional development courses that will be based on virtual learning. So, it will cover things like math, language arts, social skills, and behavior. And then we're gonna create a parent training as well for virtual learning. So we have a lot of web based modules that are gonna be coming out in the next month that are really gonna help us look at this change that we've all experienced. There's a lot of things that we might never have thought
167of before all of these things occurred, that now we're working really hard in. We provided lists today in the same topic areas that are multiple pages long that share what we can provide virtually to our staff and what we can provide in person. So, as I sit here, we've unpacked thousands of boxes of materials, Spire kits, all kinds of materials for teachers. So we have things to share with our teachers that we've always had. But for those who will be providing in person instruction, we have a list of the materials that they can use for that. And for those who are virtual, we have a list of materials that they can use for that. So we shared lists for math, language arts, social skills today. And if they're highlighted in green, that means they're virtual.
168So really, we would never want anyone to feel like the office of special education isn't here for them. We are about 40 staff members for through administration. We're trying to support 12,000 kids with disabilities. And I mean, we will do anything we can. I have never met a more dedicated group of people through texting me as I sit here, we will do anything that we need to do. So I feel very blessed to work with the people I do. And I know that no one in this office would feel comfortable with people saying that they don't feel like they've been supported. That is not what we would ever want people to feel. We want them to feel like we are here for them and we will keep at it every day. - So I would
169just like to jump in and just briefly say that everything that dr Roper is talking about today has been in response to questions, concerns from our teachers, our staff members, and that have been brought forward from our school board. We as a team and the office of special education feel very, very lucky because obviously we have a lot of support from our leadership team. I know Dr. Waltz is a huge supporter of our special education program and all of the U.S school board members as well have expressed concern. And I do agree with Dr. Roper that our team and our special educators are some of the most dedicated people and individuals that we work with. I'd like to acknowledge the fact that this is overwhelming for everyone. I think it's important to remember that. And
170at every level we want to do better, we want to do more, we want to be able to provide people with specific answers. And then Mr. Wilk, I appreciate that you commented on the fact that it is individualized, because what we are finding is that there is no one formula for any child, as you know. And sometimes we do have to look at the goals and say, "Okay, that goal can't be accomplished virtually "in the way that we wrote it. "We need to readjust that." But I think that when we were getting into the IEPs, as I'm talking to special education teachers and the ones we're talking through what the child really needs, teens are able to get to that point. But I am finding that some people want us to give them the exact
171language we can not do because every child is different, every schedule is different, and every situation is unique. But I really want to encourage any teacher that is listening to please reach out to your cluster teams, to Dr. Roper, we are here to help and we're committed to doing so. - Thank you, Ms. Hedner and Dr. Roper, I wasn't questioning your team. I'm relaying information that is coming back to me from that. So can you help me better understand really, and I appreciate you guys talking about the IEP process, what potentially in this process could be, I'm hearing, someone's, Ms. Zargarpur, you said six to seven hours for one or something like that. If someone decided that number, I don't remember who's. Someone on this board. - [Zargarpur] Not me. - No, okay, not you.
172But I'm curious what potentially could be taking that long in an IEP process. Can you help me understand that I'm not on the back end? I've never written an IEP. I've been on the front end as a parent, but I've also been there as a teacher, the general ed teacher representing the team. But I've never written one. So I guess I'm trying to better where the time consumption is to better help me understand from what is coming to me. - [Waltz] So I'm gonna start with Ms. Hedner and if you wanna defer to Dr. Roper, I'll let you take the lead. - So Mr. Wilk, it would really be a great opportunity to speak with that staff member if they're willing to come forward and let us help, because I'm really having a hard time
173understanding what would take six to seven hours as a former special education teacher. I do know that usually when you are crafting something from scratch. So it could be the situation where, or a person didn't know the child or the IEP was from scratch. So it's very hard to speak to that generally. And Dr. Roper, if you have a better answer, you can come in and jump in. But our new system, and it should be very familiar to our staff members and function the same way. There are a few new components on the IEP page and the IEP itself. But in general, I really don't have a good explanation as to if it's an existing preexisting IEP, what would take six to seven hours to create. So I would love to help that person. -
174Yes, we would definitely be here to provide support to anyone that it's taking that long for. I mean, really the system is quite similar. It's got amazing features in it. Again, as Ms. Hedner said, it's the same publisher. So, it has things in it now, like it can translate documents automatically, which we did not have before. So you click a button and your documents are in Spanish and English with one click. So there's some things in there that are really impressive. And there is an element of taking the information from the present level that existed before and pulling it forward and then adding new information about how the student did during closure and if they participated in ESY. But, typically I'm not sure it would really take that amount of time. I've done it myself
175several times. So, if anyone needs support, if it's taken that long for them, we're happy to help them in any way. Like I said, everyone in my office has been offering to do all of that work for teachers, whatever help they need. - And I do just wanna add that, I'm not questioning or doubting anything that has been said. And if someone is really struggling for six or seven hours, that breaks my heart because I really want to help that teacher and find a better way to do it. There's a joke among some of my close friends or staff members that sometimes people say, do you like to Denise it, 'cause I can tend to be a six and seven hour focus on one little thing personally, because I liked the detail. So I really
176in general, wanna encourage teachers to please let us help you if that is something that your experience or talk to us so we can understand that. - And I want to add just from my experience from working with both of you, that I know there's sometimes a fear of retaliation, but you two have been amazing, your office has been amazing, not sharing going back to the principal and saying, Misty, misty, sorry, I can't even talk right now. Ms. Sims or something said, blankety blank, blah, blah blah. You guys have worked diligently. I even remember at the last board meeting, we forwarded a concern with the permission from the teacher and you were right on it. It might've been like nine o'clock at night or something like that. So I truly thank you. I'm just conveying
177things that I'm hearing from teachers. I have three quick questions, Dr. Lateef that no. Okay. These kind of go with the general moving more towards just the overall population, not just sped, but ELL students and are all students, especially as well, socioeconomic and such. I wanna talk a little bit more, assuming we do get that cares act funding when Congress and the president can actually work together and pass this. I know there's a lot of allocations for school divisions. When it comes to that, I know we've talked about the 10G to 40G knowing how bandwidth is, and there's this concern that teachers can't be live and do it all together 'cause the system might crash and something like that. You don't have to get back to me right away, Mr. Guilfoy. But can we look
178into what it would cost to go any beyond 40 to an additional area to a performance where we can get our system more caught up in a sense when it comes to bandwidth and hoping that we don't have crashes and stuff where teachers can do live potential instruction for the virtual students as well. So we're not just adding another thing on their plate where they have to do the filming of that individually and put that up later for those students going virtual. - Dr. Waltz, you're on mute. Dr. Waltz, you're still muted. - [Waltz] Sorry, did you wanna answer that now? Or do you want to-- - [Guilfoy] I can address it. - [Waltz] Sure. - So Mr. Wilk, so we actually have been working to identify the, the bandwidth needs of the division based
179on real data and essentially math. We've been looking at all the systems that we run. As you know, we've been pushing since I got here about two years ago, we've been pushing a cloud first model. So we've been moving as many of our products to the cloud that we rely on as possible. It's a more efficient way to operate. And so many of our systems do run from the cloud, but that does mean that you need the bandwidth to get to them. So, excuse me. So we have been looking at that closely and we wanna ensure that we don't necessarily overbuy our bandwidth either because essentially as a school division, we have to pay an internet subscription fee, just like you do at home. So you only wanna buy the bandwidth you really need, you
180don't wanna necessarily buy beyond what you need. 'Cause then you're paying for something you're not using. So we believe we've right-sized it at 40G. But certainly I have provided the pricing to Mr. Wallingford and he and I have been discussing that. And we do know what it would take to upgrade that. And we're looking at ensuring all the equipment that we purchase, that we would be able to upgrade to faster speeds if we needed to. And that essentially the infrastructure would be there. And then if we need to up the internet subscription piece, if you will, we would be able to do so. - No, I appreciate it. It makes me think of my own discussions at home where we talked about the premium Verizon package versus the other one. And I've been arguing with
181my spouse saying, we don't need that one. - Exactly, exactly. I'm doing the same thing at my house where we're gonna have four people Zooming every day and we're trying to decide what the right bandwidth package is. - Okay, that's good. Maybe you're the next one real quick. So I may be Mr. Mulgrew too. I understand the high school principals are getting hotspots potentially, especially for well helping students who may not have the internet at home. My question would be how are those allocated? Was it standard across the board based off the total student enrollment or did we take into consideration socioeconomics, because when we talk a lot about our ELL learners in certain parts of the County. Are we giving the same number of hotspots to battlefield as we're given to freedom or Garfield?
182Or how are those allocations going when it comes to hotspots for students having the internet potentially at home? - Yeah, I can address that. So as I discussed in my slide. so our first solution is the Comcast care solution. And that is available again to any student who qualifies for free and reduced lunch. And we will be working, as I mentioned with Mr. Russo's office to make sure we identify those families that qualify and making sure they're aware, they qualify. And again, it's provided in multiple languages. And so families can go in, they can call a number and they can speak to somebody in other languages if they need to. And they'll be provided a code that gives them free internet. So that's the first solution. The other piece of this is that all of
183this data is tied to those surveys that we did over the summer. And then schools have been following up with individual phone calls in multiple languages. Some cases you have social workers at schools who have been personally calling people to identify every single family. And we're updating that information in parent view. So we know by student across the whole school division, what their internet need is and what their device needs are. So these are based on real numbers. And so we were allocating based on those real numbers. So the first allocation though is the Comcast cares codes, will be based on those numbers and those that qualify. And then the second piece of that would be those hotspots for those areas that don't have the Comcast cares access. And again, it's based on the real
184data that we have. So if a school says they have four, that would be the number. If they say they have 200, that's the number. So we're, we're making sure that the same thing is true for our devices. Again, we're trying to right size it, we're not over buying our under buying. We're trying to match the needs where they are so that we can make sure that it's allocated. So if a school has a 600 devices that they need, we're gonna make sure they get the 600 devices. - Okay, thank you. Last question, slide 23 concerns communication. Thank you, Mr. Guilfoy. Are we as, I guess this is probably standard, but our superintendents monitoring communication from individual buildings. So what I'm asking is, is there a minimum standard for how much the building administration should
185be conveying to their parents about to start a school and all that? Or is this again a site based decision on how often a principal wants to go out there and communicate to their communities about the start of school and all the various things that are gonna be offered and protected and whatever, stuff like that. So I guess, I don't know who wants to... Dr. Waltz, if you wanna assign that to someone. Dr. Waltz, you're on mute, sir. - Thank you. I'll start from a division wide perspective. So we have a communication strategy that we push out valuable information throughout the school division, through the scoop and the divisions Twitter account and Facebook. And it's pushed the individual emails. Like for example, the surveys and that sort of thing. And then I'll pass it to
186Mr. Gilfoyle to just expound a little bit on that. And then I'm gonna call on one of the level associates to respond from a building perspective, please. - Yeah, so in terms of those back to school notifications, at the division wide level, we're gonna be providing sort of the division wide information. So we've been providing those updates regularly throughout the summer and we'll continue to do so. We're pushing those out in multiple forms. And when there's critical needs, as we've discussed earlier in other board meetings, we're ensuring that we call folks, we text them. Just as in any other school year though, ultimately things really come down to the school level. So those details about your child's schedule, the issuance of those devices, your teacher, et cetera. As I know, as a parent, of course
187you have a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions as a parent and those ultimately get answered at the school. And we're basically now transitioning from more of a division wide approach to that school based approach just as we do in any other year. And I'll turn it back to Dr. Waltz to kind of answer from a level associate how those things are handled at the school level. - So if I have a level associate that wants to volunteer, will you raise your hand? We'll start with Mr. Bixby. Mr. Bixby. - Thank you, Dr. Waltz. Mr. Wilk, great question. Middle school principals have been meeting with me on Thursday afternoons all summer for each of these activities. Be it back to school night orientation, distribution of devices. We have a little sub work
188group or principals at the middle level, they get together, they develop norms. We meet, we roll them out so that our communication is consistent within the same week. Right now, for example, as you know, from the updates you've received, we're receiving devices from the vendor and our schools are on notice to develop plans and to roll them out as soon as those devices arrive. So we are trying very hard to be consistent across our 19 middle schools. - And we'll go next to Mr. Mulgrew and then to Ms. Hart. - I would agree Mr. Wilk, at the high school level, we meet probably twice a week and sometimes a little bit more. We do establish minimum expectations like for back to school night, we've all agreed that the principals will be able to do something
189before school starts and then set expectations for the teachers. So we've been doing that and we've been working together for two to three times a week for probably four or five months now. And that communication would come out. We all agree on how it will be done. And then we go ahead and work with it. So I'm working with 14. So we have that ability and that's how we're beginning the process of communicating. But there is a minimum definitely established. - Ms. Hart. - Good evening to the chairman and school board and Dr. Waltz. On behalf of the elementary associates, I'm very happy to say that we take communication extremely important or extremely seriously. We meet without respective principal groups at least once a week. Those meetings tend to run at least two hours long.
190They consist of information coupled with questions and answers. Also an opportunity for principals to share the great ideas that they're doing so that we're not working in isolation. Communication has not stopped since we have experienced the COVID pandemic. We have open houses that have been scheduled and we'll be scheduling soon. We've had like middle school device pickups more than one time. We even have some principals that are providing instructional resources support for families. Phone calls are in place and home visits have happened as well. And so communication, if I could kind of go out on a limb is probably stronger than it was before COVID, because people want to know, and we want them to know what we know. The challenge with communication though, has been this process is changing almost hourly, sometimes even opinions,
191even sooner than that period of time. And so as we get information that's relevant and we're able to share it, we do share it. And the expectation is that our principal share with their staffs and their communities. We are more than willing to continue that and do a better job. - Mr. Prevencio and then we'll end with Mr. Erickson. Mr. Prevencio. - Yes, I mean, first and foremost, Dr. Waltz, chairman Lateef and the board. I would be remiss, I think if we didn't say how amazing our principals have been with handling the communication that we've been doing, trying to get out accurate information to their teachers and to their communities and to their parents and the high level of transparency and communication that's going on with every one of our principals is second to none.
192So I would be remiss if I didn't applaud our principals for doing an amazing job with communicating with their families, both inside their school based families and their community families with this information. With that being said, every school is different, every community is slightly different. Some schools need to have a little bit more proactive communication with their communities. Some communities need to have a communication in multiple languages. And our principals have been just doing a tremendous job with that and partnering with their parent liaison and the communication teams to make sure that our parents and our families have the most accurate information real time, whether that's the parent view surveys or making sure that device pickup is there. And so our principals and our school sites are just been doing a amazing job. - Mr.
193Erickson, you want to bookend it. - Yes, thank you, Dr. Waltz. Mr. Wilk, I don't want to be redundant, but we we've been working real hard and consistent communication among the principals. We were meeting weekly. I've started office hours on some days that we don't meet in order to answer any questions that are coming up and yeah, we're working to align through questions and discussions as our groups. And then the communication part is about. Thank you. - Thank you. Dr. Waltz, that was very comprehensive and your team. Thank you so much for that. - [Waltz] You're welcome. - Okay, I know there were a couple of board members who had a couple of extra questions. We'll start with Ms. Jesse. Please unmute Ms. Jesse. - Hi, I just wanted to, so many people have been
194introduced tonight and so much has been said about what we're doing and that safety's done more and health has done more. And I would like to hear from Dr. Waltz if possible, the person we have not heard from is Theresa Polk and Gina Bell. And I'd like to hear about their health plan and assurances for what the nurses are gonna be doing at the school level. So can I hear from those two people. - Absolutely. So I was just sitting here thinking, I hope somebody else asked one more question about health, because we just kicked off with the nurses meeting a few days ago. And I had ended with a nurses meeting in the spring when we shut down. And of course, our nurses do such an impressive job. And as you know, I've shown
195off many times, what's behind me, which Theresa Polk is in the center of that. But it's all of our nurses with their masks on, but they, they had a great training. And Theresa, if you wouldn't mind just giving us a few thoughts because I know you're ready to go. And again, thank you for all your collaboration, not just within our school division, but outside of it. And you you've done a great job in Ms. Bellamy, if you'd like to call on her as well, when you're done. We'd appreciate a couple minutes from each of you, please. - Okay, thank you, Dr. Waltz and thank you to the chairman of the board school board members. The school nurses are all back on contract and working very diligently to be prepared for school to start. We, as
196Dr. Waltz mentioned, we had our back to school meeting with our staff on Friday, and we had several presenters to come in to speak with the nurses. But they are very excited and charged up and ready to go. They're going into their clinics now, making sure that they've received their PPE and getting things set up in preparation for the students. The school nurses during the summer have done a lot of professional development that was recommended for them on a weekly basis. All of our school nurses, like the majority of them tune in to educational sessions with our school health specialist at Virginia Department of Education, Virginia Department of Health. And they have learned and gained a lot of valuable information on those presentations. As Dr. Anne Sherman mentioned earlier, Gina and I collaborate every week
197with the nurse manager, from the Prince William health district and our colleagues in Manassas City of Manassas Park, because we feel very strongly that, because we're so close to proximity, we wanna be as consistent as possible with what we're doing in terms of managing the health clinics. And in preparation for students to return during this particular pandemic. We are also working collaboratively with the other departments, with the office of special education. Our nurses are ready, and I know some of them may have done some screenings for students that have to go through the eligibility process. But they are ready and available help in any way. Many of the nurses when we were out initially after the initial break provided some instruction alongside teachers virtually, and we gave them a virtual task to do when they
198were out during that period of time, starting on March 13th. Now that everybody's back on board, what we're doing is working toward, what the nurses will be doing on those days, that like, well, on that Monday, for instance, when the kids will not be in school, what their assignments will be on those days. We're working on some more virtual tasks for them. But they are very busy. We have quite a few new nurses on board. We had several nurses to resign and retire. So we have, as of now we have 10 new school nurses on board, but we are very excited about the fact that all of our schools have a full time nurse. And that is thanks to our superintendent putting that forward. And they're onboard, the 10 so far. We still have a
199couple to bring on board. But we've been interviewing since the end of April. So we will continue to push forward on that to make sure everybody is ready. We're excited about our group of nurses. We have a very diverse group of nurses. We got two male nurses and many of our nurses are bilingual. So we feel very prepared to serve our students. And I think it's a very busy, hectic time for all of us. All of us are a bit stressed because we're working long, long hours and even on the weekends and at night, whatever. But the job is here for us to do, to bring the students back safely, the staff back safely, and we're here to do that. And one of the things that the nurses will be available to do is to
200work with the staff in the schools, particularly those individuals who may have to wear the N-95 masks. The school nurses will be available to work with those staff members to help them understand and be more comfortable with what they're gonna have to do throughout the day. So we appreciate all the support. Our director, Mrs. Schlader, and our associate, Mrs. Hedner have given us a lot of... They've given us a lot of tasks, but they've also given us the support we need to do the job. And so we're working diligently to try to make sure we're prepared. - Thank you so much, Ms. Polk. She represented Mr. Bellamy too. We don't have her in, on this particular call, but so much. And I also wanted to mention that Mr. Mack Alandra, who's our director of benefits
201also let us know that the benefits office is setting up opportunities for employees to get their flu shots in September. So this aligns with the health department recommendation, which is good. And I think we're getting close to wrapping up. But one thing that I thought would be a good part of the wrap up is just to give you an updated number on the students that are actually going to be coming. As of last Wednesday, we reported, we thought at that point in time, it was gonna be 1,894. As of today, it is 1,663. So again, as we get closer to school, we will be fine tuning the literal number. I'll turn it back to chairman Lateef, please. - Okay, Adele, Ms. Jackson. - Thank you, Dr. Lateef. I just had a couple really quick questions
202as we wrap up. Dr. Waltz, you mentioned that this is the same procedure for budgeting. Does that mean you're going to post their questions that we ask you online? 'Cause some of the questions I asked were on behalf of special educators. - The questions, especially those regarding special education are vetted through Mary McGowan's office. So she will decide which ones are for public release and which ones need to be handled in closed session. So the questions that we actually answer in writing are those that we did not answer in person tonight. And yes, those questions that we sent you today will all be posted. - Thank you. And then, so then that I would just to piggyback on what Mr. Wilk said about like finding ways to help teachers prep. This might not be a
203question for now. I can definitely email it for Friday, but I was just like, in terms of best practice for students with IEPs, I was just wondering, maybe we could take as a district, some steps to help prime or prep students for returning to loan, like to show what their teachers would look like, or that way it kind of takes the workload off teachers that are writing IEPS. And then I would just add that we have really strong administrators and teachers, and I know that they're gonna do a great job, but everybody's working so hard. And sometimes that leads to a disconnect. So maybe if there's a way you could speak directly with the teachers, that might help. And that's it. Thank you. - Ms. Jackson and a number of members have asked that we
204go back into closed session for some legal questions regarding special ed. So a new link was sent around for a closed session. I will need emotion to go back into closed session specifically on number three. If you go back to your beginning, Laurie, just read the closed session for three. - Sure, I moved up Virginia, excuse me, that pursuant to Virginia code 2.2-3711, the Prince William County School Board enter closed session for the following reason, to consult with division counsel and staff regarding specific legal matters relating to return to learning return to work and health plans as they relate to the provision of educational services to special education students, most vulnerable English language learners and students with interrupted learning, which matters required provision of legal advice under VA code 2.2-3711A7N8. - Do I have a
205second? - [Jackson] I second. - Ms. Jackson seconds. Any discussion? Okay, please vote. Oh, okay. All in favor, aye. Aye, any opposed? Okay, so as seeing no opposition, because we didn't put it up on the screen, we have eight zero to go back into closed session. A new link was sent to everybody for a new closed session, the same way we normally do it. So take about five to 10 minutes to link back up into the closed session room and we'll do closed session starting at 9:35. Thank you. Okay, we are now entering back into open session. We need to do a closed session certification, the motions in order, Ms. Williams. - Thank you Mr. Chairman, I move that pursuant to Virginia code 2.2-3712, the closed session of the Prince William County school board meeting
206of August 26, 2020 be certified by adopting the following resolution. Now therefore be it resolved at the Prince William County school board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge. One, only public business matters lawfully them to from open meeting requirements were discussed in a closed meeting to which this certification resolution applies. And two, only such public business meeting matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed session meeting were heard and discussed or considered by the school board. - Do I have a second? Ms. Zargarpur seconds. Any discussion. Seeing no discussion, please vote. For those at home, Ms. Jesse, how do you vote? - [Ms. Jesse] For closed session? - Yeah, for certification. - [Ms. Jesse] Yes. - Yes, Ms. Jessie votes, yes. Ms. Jackson, how do you or she voted.
207Ms. Raulston, how do you vote? Yes, okay. Okay, you can unmute Ms. Raulston, but it looked like a yes. Give me a thumbs up, yes. Yes, go ahead and say though you're unmuted. - [Raulston] Yes. - Outstanding, thank you, Ms. Raulston. Thank you for your patience. Okay, so that was the end. So, to wrap up this evening's meeting before we adjourn, I wanna make a couple comments. We, as a school board had called these special meetings to hear updates from our superintendent and his staff on progress towards reopening of schools. As everyone knows, this is a very difficult issue. It's a complex issue in, in divisions around the country and around the world are dealing with this. We have heard over the last few weeks from many teachers, many students, many parents about their concerns
208and fears and challenges for opening up school. The board has consulted with legal counsel. We have heard from the superintendent and his staff. I think it is a general feeling of the board that overall we are gonna continue moving forward towards the plan we voted on back in July, towards the reopening for the school division as we voted on without any modifications at this time, we continue to have confidence in Dr. Waltz and his staff on their progress towards this effort. And everyone is working full time and overtime. And we understand that. We have heard a lot from teachers, especially our special education teachers. We wana make it crystal clear that as Dr. Roper pointed out earlier this evening, as Ms. Hedner pointed out earlier in this evening, as Dr. Waltz pointed out earlier in
209this evening, that we will continue to listen to our teachers, try to accommodate them, provide them the support they need. If they feel like they need more support, they should go to their administrators or their principals, or reach out to our special ed office. And we will try to be there for everything that we can be for our teachers as much as possible. And we have heard from our teachers. We are reading all those emails and I know some may be happy with what we're doing moving forward and some may not be. But at this time the school board will continue to move towards what we voted on last month. I'll ask Dr. Waltz to just comment briefly as he wishes on sort of a wrap up of this evening. Dr. Waltz, unmute please. -
210Thank you, chairman Lateef and members of the board. I just wanna thank everyone who helped put the presentation together. I wanna thank everyone who's working so hard to get ready for opening both in person and virtual. I want to give again a special shout out to special education teachers and also to the EL teachers have duly identified students. I know that there is a lot of work to get the IEPs. I just wanna say as a former classroom teacher, for quite a few years, one of the things I tried to create in my classroom was a climate to ask for help if you needed it or to not be afraid to ask a question. And I just wanna say, if you're a special educator and you're having a sense of overload, or you really need
211some help and trying to get everything done or everything managed, please reach out to your department chair, to your special ed lead at your building, the principal or assistant principal in charge of special ed. And as Dr. Roper and Ms. Hedner said, the office of special education, we are there to help you. All of those individuals want you to be successful and please don't hesitate to ask for some support or some help. We want to be there for you. And there's a whole lot of people who are working together where one team, and we want this to be a success for our students, for our staff and for our community and this school board. Thank you. - Thank you, Dr. Waltz. Without any further agenda items, this meeting will be adjourned. Thank you all. (instrumental
212music)