Board of Education Parent Community Advisory Council Committee Meeting March 4, 2026

001Good evening everyone and welcome to Women's History Month. Today is March the 4th. It is 2 days before my son's 16th birthday. Look at that. So, we are here the parent community advisory council kicking off the month of March. And um Miss Lawrence, can you go ahead and move into doing roll call, please? >> Yes. Ready? Uh, Will Bronson, >> where is it? >> Gracia Heretta, Kamika Harris, >> present. >> Christopher Smith, Christopher Smith, Akimra, I'm here. Teresa Smith. Teresa Smith. I thought I saw vice chair. >> I am here but it's not picking up. I'm on two different devices but I'm present. Thanks. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Excuse me. Are we doing the roll call? We're still in a practice session. We're not in the live session yet. So, do we have to

002do that in the live session, Mrs. Milhouse? >> Yes, we should have started the meeting already. Miss Woodridge, did you start recording? >> She's recording. Yes. >> It still says we're in a practice. There we go. Okay. >> Do you want me to start over, >> please? >> Okay. Uh, sorry. Give me one second. >> So, let me start over. >> Okay. >> We'll call the meeting to order at 7:05. Miss Lawrence, can you take roll call, please? >> Yes. Will Bronson, >> present. >> Gracia Heretta. >> Gracia Hereta. Kamika Harris, >> present. >> Christopher Smith. Christopher Smith. Aim Lawrence. Present. Teresa Smith >> present. >> Chair Milhouse >> present. >> Yosida Rojos Hinton Yosida Rojos Hinton Candace Perkins >> present. >> Dr. Sheila Jackson, >> present. >> Miss Robin Walsh, >> present. >> Travon

003Suki, >> present. >> Carleta Lundy, >> present. >> James Williams, >> present. >> Dr. Dr. Aalina Huggin. Dr. Avelina Huggin. All right. Chair Milhouse, we do have quorum. >> Hey, sorry. Hey, this is Chris Smith. I'm here as well. Sorry, I had trouble with the link. >> Oh, that's okay. >> Gotcha. Thank you. >> So, great. I'm excited to We are here today to kick off our March meeting. We have so many guests present with us. Um we have a special guest, a new um board liaison that I cannot wait to introduce. But before we get into that, we will move into item 3.1, the adoption of the agenda, the adoption of the March 4th, 2026 meeting agenda. Can I get a motion from the floor? >> Caretta Lundy. So moved. >> Can someone second,

004please? >> Candace Fergen second. >> Thank you. Are there any opposing remarks, comments? To move forward, we will adopt the agenda for March 4th. As it stands, we will move now to item 4.1, the approval of the January 7th, 2026 meeting minutes. So move Jackson. >> I'm sorry. Was someone Dr. Jackson? I have as Okay. Dr. Jackson recorded. Is there a second? >> Second. Teresa Smith. Second. Bronson. So, Miss Lawrence, who did you record for second? >> Uh, Vice Chair Smith, I heard her first. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, do we have anyone opposing? Hearing none, we will move forward in um the adoption of the January 7, 2026 meeting minutes. And now we are moving into the most exciting part of the agenda, the report of the chair. that would be me. And so

005I am excited um for us to be here. We were not in session in February because we were supposed to be a part of the session for the dollars and decisions and um that did get uh I guess canled Dr. Jackson or rescheduled. It was canceled because we ended up having um the session after that. Correct. >> It's okay. >> That is correct. I'm sorry I cannot turn stuff on. Yes. >> No, it's okay. But I am I am very thrilled and excited for those of us who were able to attend um the sessions that provided um some insight into what the school system was doing as it relates to preparing for the FY27 budget. So um I also want to take this time to introduce our new board liaison. Many of you know that

006um our previous board member liaison, Miss um Walker, resigned and she is moving forward in her campaign to um run for district 9 seat on the county council, but she has been since replaced by um board member Jackson Saunders, who I'm going to give a few minutes of my time um so she can introduce herself. And I just want to say welcome to her. and you have a few minutes. >> Thank you very much uh Chair Milhouse and to um everyone assembled. It's a pleasure uh to join you this evening. My first opportunity to meet you. Your reput your reputation precedes you and that's a good thing. I um just by way of background and and thank to the the office um at at Sasser because they've shared a little bit about myself um with

007your chair by way of introduction. But I'd like to take the opportunity to say that my 35 years of experience um as a school psychologist in the District of Columbia Public Schools I believe shapes me for this moment in time. And certainly um the key to that is working collaboratively. And that's what I plan to do. I know that no one person can push this mount this uh this vehicle up the hill. And um it's a strong one. It's a heavy one, but with us together, I know that it can be done successfully. Um as I indicated earlier, I am a 35-year veteran. I am a retired school psychologist from DC public schools. And so the full uh breath of and weight of what I have to offer for students and parents and families here

008in Prince George's County um is full. I am the recipient of the National School Psychologist of the Year award. Um the first African-American recipient of that award. I'm extremely proud of that because the focus here to has not been on urban school children and that is my heart. That's my passion and that's who I am here to serve. And so I want to listen. I want to hear. I want to connect and engage. And certainly I want to advocate for the residents of Prince George's County in general and specifically um for those in District 9. So thank you for welcoming me here. Um I'm going to lean as I've told your chair on her knowledge and her expertise and I hope you don't mind if I do the same with you as well. So thank

009you for the opportunity. And board member Jackson Saunders, I I want to say I wanted to give you a few seconds to toot your horn because I was going to follow up behind you to say after speaking with her today um I was very excited to hear the buzzwords equity, family engagement, partnership and um that really stood out to me and we spoke about leadership and succession planning and so I am excited in the work that she you know um shared with me that she did. I I did read the bio, but it's one thing to read about it and then another thing to stand alongside you to see, you know, what you will bring to the table that we can glean from you. And so I'm excited that you will be able to have

010access to this wonderful group of amazing individuals, parent and community partners. And um you have me for 2.5 more months. Um some others may be here another year or so, but my term is ending this year. um how excited. But I'm I'm looking forward to the work that you will be doing and how we will work alongside of you. So um thank you and welcome again. I also want to um share that um we got a message from one of our members, Miss Candace Perkins, who represents District 9, who provided a notice to the group that we will send out that she has decided to throw her hat in the running for the District 9 Board of Education seat. And so, um, as always when we're talking about succession and who will move forward and

011who will move up, um, I'm excited about individuals moving into a position that they want to support work globally. I'm excited of new membership coming in and I am hoping that we will work collectively as a group to make sure that we support the school system um to move forward and at that point I have nothing else to share in my report of the chair. Is there anyone else who would like to add anything? Vice Chair Smith. Um, Miss Lawrence, >> I think you hit the high items. Chair Milhouse, I don't have anything to add. >> Okay. There was nothing else from the box that I have been remissed and I may not have remembered, but um there was nothing else. Oh, I do want to also give kudos to um Vice Chair Smith who

012had me in Annapolis for a couple of days advocating on um some bills that she is moving forward and if you can just take a second or two um Chair Smith to share with the group what you are doing in that space. >> Thanks Chair Mhouse. Um, this is actually a good segue just hearing the bio for for our board members liaison. Um, Senate House Bill 549 as well as Senate I'm saying Senate House Bill, Senate Bill 549 as well as Senate Bill 550 is dealing with the continuity of care for mental health. I have been advocating to allow surrogates to be involved in that process. And to tie this into the school system, you have students who may have emotional needs and once they turn 18, the way the law is currently structured, that

013surrogate cannot be involved in that treatment process, especially when it's a crisis. So, I'm hoping with um the amendments that these two bills will bring to the table, it would allow the surrogate to be involved and continue help in order to help the continuity of care of that patient who may be experiencing a mental health crisis. Thank you, Chairman House. >> Thank you for your work. And at this time, this concludes the report of the chair if hearing no other um comments. And so we will move into now the report of the superintendent design. I do want to also state that I am excited about our special guest tonight that will focus on um what's happening with transportation as well as the climate and culture survey. And so they are always departments that bring me

014so much excitement about what's happening, how are we moving our children back and forth and what is happening in welcoming everyone into the schoolhouse. So, thank you all for being here. And Dr. Jackson, Miss Welsh, who would like to go first? >> Uh, if it's okay, Mrs. Walsh, I'll go first because I am very brief tonight and I know you have some hard-hitting information to share. I just wanted to let everyone know what I had uh put into the document are just some things I wanted to share. Because of the snow days, we had to update our schedule of family institute sessions. We actually held one last night and Miss Perkins was there. I saw you. Um, thank you all so much for your support. Please help us publicize these bi-weekly sessions uh because it's

015an opportunity to get pertinent information out to families where they can actually talk to leaders in the school system. Um, so that's one thing. The second thing is I actually shared the actual PowerPoint from last night. This session that we held last night was teaching everyone about the assessments that our children started in the fall and now are really getting ready to get into for the spring. And so all of the information that parents and families need to know about what what's going to happen for their children as well as how to access that data once the assessments are done. So that actual PowerPoint from last night is now shared with you. And that was it for me. Thank you all for everything, for all of your support and your input. >> Thank you, Dr.

016Jackson. And I remember you sent a couple of emails that we may have missed um about a couple of upcoming um parent leaders sessions maybe. >> Oh, Mrs. Milhouse, thank you so much. Monday evening um and I will make sure that everyone gets that flyer. We have our quarterly conversation for leaders of parent organizations and all of you will be invited to that. Uh speaking uh at that will be our chief of staff uh Dr. Deianne Collins as well as some of I think the leaders that are here tonight. Um so we hope that you can join us. It'll be a very very meaningful conversation, some updates about what's going on in the system and especially about focus areas that that are under them. So thank you Mrs. Milhouse. That's Monday evening. I'll make sure

017um that um it's shared with everyone. >> You're welcome, Dr. Jackson. And I see that interim um Superintendent Joseph, thank you for um coming on board. We're going to go ahead and give you some of Dr. Jackson's time because she reclaimed her time, so we going to give it to you. >> Anything you like to share and say or anything, >> Chair Milhouse, before you move to that, um I do see that Miss Perkins has her hand raised. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Dr. Joseph, just give us one second. >> Sure, >> Miss Perkins. >> Thank you, Miss Lawrence. Thank you, Chair Mhouse. Um, Dr. Jackson, I just wanted to just say um thank you. I know when we kind of first started this group of the feedback of what the family institution offered and communicated,

018it was a a gap, right? And I just want to say thank you for being able to receive that and your team working to kind of modify what we're able to do to help continue to force that communication on and relay that information. I've seen the change in how you know the timing of when we're receiving this information um so that we can spread that to the community and they are receiving it. Um so I just wanted to say thank you for being receptive to that feedback that we gave last fall. um when we kind of first started breaking down what this means and how the value of it is and what we can do to have help families engage in this. >> Thank you so much, Miss Perkins. And again, thank all of you.

019Uh we are only as good as our community and the input that we get. So, thank you all for that. >> Thank you. Are there any other hands that I may be missing? No. So, Dr. Joseph. >> Well, thank you. Oh, just a question for you. How much time would you like me to talk and how much time do we have to answer answer questions that'll help me frame for this evening? >> So, I don't know cuz I didn't, you know, have a special slot for you because you are whatever you want to talk about. We're here to advise you. So, what you tell me what you need and we'll make it work. >> So, we don't have a time slot. So, you know, you want me to say start off with five minutes? >>

020Sure. Five is perfect. Thank you. And I'll do that. But, um, you know, thank you. Thank you all. You know, this work is important and uh you know, I had a meeting, my one-on-one yesterday with Dr. Jackson, and one of the things uh you know, we talked about was like I'm I'm very much a pragmatist and a realist. And I know, you know, like I don't know if we're going to get $50 million, right? We we've only gotten the minimum for the past few years. Right now, we're required to get one additional million. Um you know, I met with the county executive today. I just got off with the Senate delegation uh a moment ago before I joined I joined here. Uh because if we're going to get help, it's probably going to come from

021the state uh not uh not not the county. Um but whatever we do, regardless regardless if we get if we get nothing, uh our children deserve us to focus on improvement. And so yeah, we've got to be committed uh towards that. And one of the things I talked to Dr. Jackson about was um in our meeting today was that we've got lots of resources still in the county, but I don't think our families know how to access them. And one of the things we have to do a better job of is curating resources, particularly around reading and mathematics. The whole families know the resources that are available to them for free and the services that are available for free and to provide a a more curated focused support. You know, I've been I I go

022I visit schools weekly and we had our cabinet meeting today and uh when I spoke with our cabinet, you know, one of the things I continued to talk about was the variance that I see. I went in some schools and you see highquality inquirybased learning. I went into another. I asked students, "Hey, what are you guys working on?" And the kids just all scream packets, you know, and and and and I and I and I just kind of walked out, you know, shaking my head. uh saying we we've got work to do and and and and like I said, even with no resources, we've got to figure out how to have more job embedded professional development. We've got to lock in on reading and mathematics. It's wonderful to see uh Vanessa and Cheryl here with

023us in the strategic planning work um because I had a great a great conversation with them yesterday and it reminded me um their conversation as they were talking about vision and mission and refining and and looking at act getting ready to move into the action plan for our strategic plan. What it reminded me of was that clarity in structures and processes are important and and you know I I charged our curriculum and instruction team to put together a crossf functional group to look at expectations. Uh a teaching and learning framework is needed here to communicate what's expected. What does highquality teaching look like in Prince George's County? What are the expectations and non-expectations? I said, I couldn't be mad at the person with packets in their class and the kids communicating the objective was completing

024the packet if we've not taught them that packets aren't acceptable to do. We don't we don't have time for busy time. And if we've not communicated what rigor rigorous instruction is to us, if we've not laid that out clearly, then that's on us and and we've got to own that and we've got to do something about it. And so you'll see between now and the ex end of the year um people being pushed to be clearer about our instructional expectations especially for reading a math as we look to next year. locking in on how we would deploy job embedded uh professional development in reading and mathematics and how we better curate materials and have a deployment plan to communicate with parents about how to utilize the materials that we have available to us. Like we've

025just got to create that coherence and we're committed to do so. I can stop. And so my question to you would be I guess my question for for advice would be um as it relates to curating materials in reading and mathematics um uh what what suggestions would you have for Dr. Jackson as we think about how to do that better? I don't know if it's would it make sense to have the you know the head of um different departments over things you know meeting with you all to show what's there so you can kind of see what's available to be able to offer to us the best way to deploy I mean we how do we get the information out because it could be overwhelming I mean we got a lot of stuff what what's

026the most effective way to help parents know what's there know how to use it and work with Okay. Um, Vice Chair Smith. >> Thanks, Chair Milhouse. Um, I do have a question, but I also think I have, um, a response to the question that, um, interim superintendent Joseph just posed. I think when, um, what is it called? at the beginning of the school year. O like we have open house but I don't think it's called open house but where the families come out at the beginning of the school year. It would be >> back to school nights. >> Back to school night. Thank you Dr. Jackson. I think it would be very helpful if such information is presented there you know at the overview level because I do realize that there are a lot of

027resources available for families but again we don't know what we don't know. And I think that that is one avenue that we could possibly I apologize for the background noise that we could utilize um to get that information in front of parents. Um the other thing that I wanted to mention because this district offers um instruction in different languages, Chinese, French, and English for some of the resources. I think it would be good if they could also be offered in those languages. Um especially in math. I know for my particular child instruction for mathematics is only done in the foreign language. So um I know that we have a tutoring program that's in place, but currently right now that's a free resource, but it's not offered in French. So, and um and I don't know

028if that's intentional, but I do I did want to ask if that is something that we could explore considering that we do offer instruction in different languages. Thanks. >> Yeah, I can I can look into that and send a response. I I don't know the answer. >> Dr. Jackson, if you could just send make that note >> and follow up with Dr. White on that. And and so, um, Superintendent Joseph, just so I'm clear on how you really want this to go, um, I know this is recorded, so I don't know if, um, Director Adeline, is anybody kind of gathering some of the questions. Um, you know, so that way you can provide Dr. Joseph that question so he can get back with the answer. I mean I know this is recorded but I just

029want to make sure that somewhere somehow this is being collected um in that discussion outside of the meeting minutes which will not probably have the level of detail. Um so Mr. Smith you have the next and then Miss Harris um you will go after Mr. Smith. >> Thank you chair and Dr. Joseph thank you for joining us. Um it's a great question you pro and um something I think about often. I think as much as you mentioned structure and framework around like how the teaching environment, I think you can take advant I think the same thing should be proposed to how the the schools themselves communicate with families. And I think if you were to take a broad swath across the county, you're going to find an even worse disparity that you're seeing in classrooms

030versus how this the school system is communicating to families. And I think your best touch is going to be to reach all of anything you want to do in the county is going to be through the schools, right? so exclusive that we use class dojo and various systems with it. But I think it's very disperate and I think you put a more structured environment framework for how they connect with families. It would increase all the communications to every single event that PGCPS has. >> Thank you. We Yeah, we talked about that. I talked about that um just yesterday with with folks that I think it was today in in our cabinet meeting. And I said the agent of change is schools and we we can I said I said we're sort of like I charge

031I told my cabinet today you know I mean Rihanna and Chris Brown were actually the two most popular R&B uh stars of 2025. I said and and we sitting around a table with a bunch of stars. I said but here's the thing. It's not about whether we can dance. We got to be forel Williams down and we we got to help other folk get it right. You know, I said, "It's a shift." I said, "It's a shift." And I think we miss a lot cuz we thinking something happening up here, but then at the ground level, something totally different is happening. And and we got to merge. We We got to we got to close that uh reality gap fast. >> Thank you, Miss Harris. >> Hi, good evening. Thank you, Dr. Joseph, for attending

032today. So, I started thinking about your question. I grow up in the Caribbean. The first day of school orientation, every student, every parent is there. You get a booklet. This is what your kid is going to be is a summary of what your kid is going to be achieving throughout that year. So the parent has an idea exactly what it is that that kid is going to be achieving. Also, there are curriculum booklets that you can actually purchase to know what and gives examples of like certain maths quiz or certain English that they're supposed to be practicing that you can actually purchase. Parents are willing to purchase it if if it's available. Most times I have to ask my son's teacher, can I get a copy of your teacher's plan is? No, I can't give

033it to you, but I can give a summary of what exactly is done. Now as central office yes you might say schools need to get this done but who is assessing or who is auditing that these schools are getting these activities done. What are the penalties for not doing it? Cuz if there isn't then they will just do whatever they would like. For example, I know that we were supposed to have special education back to school separate from regular back to school. I know I didn't have a special education back to school event where all the special eds or the special um students and parents get together get a full overview of what exactly was supposed to happen and I know that might have not happened at other schools as well and that is what

034I'm looking at. Yes, it was a requirement. What are the assessments? What are the penalties? Who follow up to ensure that these actions are done throughout the school? >> Well, you're right. Thomas Stone, right? Yeah, I mean all schools were required to have a special education parent meeting. I can follow up with uh Cassandra Lacader, Dr. Lacader to check what happened at uh Thomas Stone if that did not happen. But it was the understanding and the follow-through would be from the associate superintendent and the principal supervisor to answer your question about accountability uh on on that. But I do like the idea about I mean we could produce a document with that that that could go out to all parents that that could be created you know by us in central office in terms of

035par a parent resources piece. We create a booklet we could put the things on the website as well. But but I do know that people pay more attention to what the schools distribute than what happens at the district level. Um so so we're mindful uh of of that. But we've got, you know, we've got to be mindful of cost because, you know, uh, printing things can get expensive, you know, when you're doing it across, you know, acrossund, you know, 200 schools, but but we could if we created a digital content of something like we create the product, give it to schools to distribute how they distribute it, whether they put it on their website or print it, you know, it could be something we look into. But I but I do think correlate the best

036way to correlate it, you know, that that's amanable for families uh is something we got to think about because I do I do recognize and I'm sensitive to, you know, many families and parents don't go on any school's website or anything. It's got to be given to them by hand uh in multiple languages uh to make it work. And so that those are some of the complexities we deal with. >> Thank you, Miss Perkins. Thank you, Chair Mahaus. I was just going to offer up um I just wanted to hear what everyone was saying as far as recommendation, but to back up with that suggestion to disseminate that in the summertime. We know that you all have the data um to see where our scholars are doing well in whether it's elementary, middle, and high

037school and what areas they need to get improved on. So, when we talk about preparation of going forward and walking into the school year, having that to give to them at the end of this school year, um, will help support that summer gap that we're always talking about where we just, you know, that's that's the term that I don't like to use. But the point is that you know I think by now the front office has the data, the staff, um the technology because I agree I do believe that we should give something to families but because you all are actively working on things right the links to it would be helpful because as you're working it on the back end families still have the most upto-date information but they do need a paper right

038they do need to see where to go in all the language to have that source data, but I do think that they need to have something that they can take home at the end of the school year, like this school year, to prepare them walking into next. And then for those who are coming into our county, what does it even look like to experience education in our county? That's an intro packet. So, it's two different variations of packets that you would provide to our families. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Silki. >> Good evening everybody. Um and nice to finally meet you. Uh Dr. Joseph, I've seen the newsletters of you joining so it is kind of cool to see you in person. Me put my myself on the camera. Um so my question is has

039there any been talks of I guess um parent doing more parent engagement with the county or more incentive incentivized uh activities for parents to come in and join. Um, one thing if we kind of address the elephant in the room, we all of us are are parents, but we're pretty proactive. And a lot of parents aren't. And that's just the cold hard reality of things. A lot of parents aren't. And if the parents aren't active, the students are going to say, "Well, what's the point? Mom, dad doesn't really care, so why should I care?" Um, and I think a sense of ownership and figuring out how they can have that build that sense of ownership with their school system and say like we are the ones we're the backbone of it and if they can

040feel that way I think they'll be more incentivized to participate reach out figure things out look at the resources that are available but um has has any has any talks come about on that matter or any activities that we can start doing to add more hey parent engagement come up. We want you to we want to see you there besides just the back to school night or maybe like the oneoff come read with your child night. >> Yeah. So from the district level there there we we do we do a lot of things. However, I think the real parent engagement takes place at individual schoolh houses and building the capacity at the schoolhouse. >> We have provided support uh and I know Dr. Jackson has worked um you know we've given them some resources at

041the school level and we have parent uh you know parent uh assistance at at many of our schools that that work for that engagement. But you know it's a bifurcated approach. We we've got district stuff we do, but the real stuff happens I mean at at the schoolhouse >> and ensuring that the schools work uh on that. But but it's been a priority. Like I said, we we gave them resources at the beginning part of our my superintendent meetings. Dr. Jackson works with them on family engagement work and we've been partnering to do that from the beginning of this year as we we deemed it something we wanted to prioritize. >> Okay. And then uh that'll lead my to my next question, you know, that sense of ownership. Has has this county thought like, >>

042excuse me, has the county thought about uh for raising money in issuing bonds so parents can can purchase and help fund their schools? >> No, we're actually uh Dr. Moss at the last board meeting initiated an idea that we we need uh all stakeholders at the table to look at uh our funding challenges. Uh so we're in the process right now of identifying parents, union folks, teachers, principles, um the delegation, people from the county to come together to look at what what are possibilities to do different things and and hopefully come with some recommendations. U so that that is just getting underway. The goal is within 90 days to provide uh an update to the public on what this collective body um thinks are possible solutions that we want to pursue. >> Thank you. So,

043are there any other questions? Because I I don't I want to let everyone speak before I um add and ask any questions. Mr. Suki, you still have your hand up. you you have another followup. >> Go ahead and lower that. >> Okay. Thank you. And um so Dr. Joseph, I want to start with what you just last stated about the all stakeholder um at the table. Um what does that look like? And will the parent and community advisory council um uh be a part of that stakeholder group? How are you all going about selecting individuals? I mean you have an advisory team here. So will we receive an invitation to the table? >> This this initiative is being led by Dr. Moss. Uh so it's a boardled entity. Uh we of course we're we're there

044supporting it. Um but um we met today and my he's going to I believe he's asked each board member to identify board identify parents to be a part of the committee and that's how the parents will be formulated from each board member. >> So so it could be someone from uh PCAP or not. I think that's something um if you're interested, I would say reach out to your uh district board representative because they're going to submit names probably next week. Uh I I would assume to Dr. Moss. Um I'm I'm charged with getting the principles, the teachers, the business community >> um the business community um involved and I was I was putting feelers out to those individuals. So I reached out to the chamber of commerce for the business folks. Uh I reached out

045to the unions for the teachers and uh and then I reached out to the union presidents uh to be a part of it. Um from what I needed to do, uh he he has put a cadence together of what the 90 days would look like and work would look like. Um that that was just >> discussed. I think they're going to give an update at the next board meeting >> what's happening. And I know in speaking with him today, he was working by the end of this week to get the dates locked in, tenative dates, uh, to be able to so when we invite people, there'd be a schedule. Uh, but that's all I know up until this point. But if you reach out to Dr. Moss, he can answer his vision for that process.

046>> Interesting. Thank you for that. Um I I just want to add this that you you have community members, you have parents who were identified by the board. And so when we talk about engagement, when we talk about partnership, when you have a group of individuals that are here to serve, you know, it would be, you know, I guess interesting to me as the chair of this committee to figure out how would this group be overlooked and be, you know, the individuals that are here. there's no need for them to go and ask their board member to be a part of something from an advisory perspective. But I thank you for that. So any of you all who are interested, you heard your superintendent say, "Hey, you know, reach out to your board member and

047put your name in the hat." Um because it's not yet been advertised about the process and how people are being identified or selected for that. So the other piece that I wanted to talk about is that when you talked about curating u materials for reading and mathematics and the question posed was you know how do we um get this information to parents and letting them know about it was that the question um how do we kind of >> what's the best way because you know I think as a system >> we miss and struggle sometimes we we we do we put stuff out but people don't really get it. >> And so I think I think we need new approaches uh to make sure people know what's going on and get the materials and things

048that are out there. Uh because like I said, I I think just looking at overall uh engagement, you know, or people understanding what's happening, you know, putting thing on putting things on an a website or or put pushing it out. I think we miss a lot. And so figuring out the best way uh would be helpful, you know. >> And and so what what I've heard continuously right now in the cadence is starting at the schoolhouse, right? That's the first relationship that I should have as a parent, right? That should be base for me. Um, and if that is base for me, that should be some type of continuity from schoolhouse to schoolhouse and how information is accessible to parents. Um, I think it was Chris who mentioned that there's some disparity in how information

049may get from parent to parent and schoolhouse to schoolhouse. I do know Dr. Jackson and her team, they do, you know, a a bangup job in getting information out, but they don't have the autonomy to make sure that it is being disseminated to families once it gets into the schoolhouse. And so, um, one of the things that I would like to know is, do you know if there are, um, any continuous improvement practices that you already have in place to identify how information is being disseminated and what quality controls the school houses have in place? >> I don't for to be honest with you, I don't for communications in that in that method. Um, >> not not that comes not that comes up to me, you know. I would say and and Dr. Jackson, please

050jump in. I mean, the we meet with principles monthly, the associate superintendent do, and then they have principal supervisors. We call them instructional directors here that that work with them. >> You know, they're the the principal supervisor, the instructional director is the one who actually does the observations and evaluations of uh principles. you know, we this year we created what we called the monitoring calendar to say these are the things that are important we want schools to focus on so we can have some consistency across how we're supervising what we're asking for. Um but the implementation of that has been inconsistent. We're in the process right now of revisiting the whole school improvement process, our focus, how how do we lock in kind of what's our theory of action for monitoring uh in in in

051in this current moment. I mean, that's that was our cabinet meeting today. Really locking in to make sure that there's there's coherence because there's a lot, you know, when you have I think we have what do we have, Dr. Jackson? maybe um 14 or 16 instructional directors across the district. >> There are 16. >> You have 16 instructional directors across the district. And then we have, you know, an associate superintendent for elementary, middle, high school, and innovation. Uh four that oversee them. Making sure that consistency happens um is is is a huge exercise. uh and and that's something that you know and and when we look at school improvement planning processes today we identified only about 50% of schools actually document that they've gone through their school improvement cycle the plan do study act model.

052So there's work that needs to be done uh that we recognize just on the monitoring piece, let alone the implementation. And so um communications, parent communications, I don't think have historically been um as focused on as monitoring reading, mathematics, special education was a big thing that we we locked in on the monitor this year. >> Would that would that be accurate, Dr. Jackson? That is exactly how things have unfolded for us. Uh we we also talked about um schools what can they focus on and many of them >> focus on the the core of mathematics and reading and so our team does push you can't do that without engaging families effectively. Um, principles have been going through and assistant principles have been going through monthly well training sessions with us about how to better engage

053families and that is something they are actually working to develop their own plan that goes into their school improvement plan for engaging families. How do we better build those partnerships so that um, as Dr. Joseph is saying that parents are seen as a priority. Their engagement, their input, and their action is part of what's in the plan to help us move forward. >> Can I interject from Superintendent House? I mean, um Joseph, what what I want to just share is um I we we mentioned this some years ago about the school system really defining um what family engagement looks like, right? in in coming up with the new PGCPS family engagement model. Um I I hear that parents are not always actively engaged. Maybe you know whatever the story is about a parent because they

054cannot be in the seat. But I can tell you I guarantee that every parent that has a child in the school system wants their child to excel. um if we move into a space that we look at those families as co-creators and partners in education and make it clear on what that would look like for them. Um what I could share is that a teacher that my child had in kindergarten, one thing that she did that was so very helpful, like I'm an engaged parent. I teach my kids at home. I send them to the school system to continue to learn. But what I always said to the teacher is tell me what I need to know. So whatever you're doing in the classroom, I can make sure there's an extension at home and then

055there's a continuous loop of learning, right? That I'm not going off the h kilter and doing something different. I am now going to be on target on what you're telling me to do. I've also experienced in asking teachers that same question. You don't need to worry about it because I'm we're we're doing it in the classroom. you cannot do it without me. And so you will always have this this tugof-war unless we are telling parents this is what I need you to do. Not every parent is going to show up how you need them to show up. But if we say to the parent more than just read 15 minutes a day, right? if we give them more examples of what they can do in their 15 minutes versus setting aside that time. But while

056you're talking about cooking or groceries, because that reading piece is there, how do you incorporate math into the day? It it really is how do we spell it out for the parent to pick up and do the check mark? How do we work with the parent groups to continue to be that peer partner to model that? But I agree with what you're saying. It starts at the schoolhouse. The relationship has to start there. But the problem is many of the relationships are broken there as well. And so how do we rebuild? Last year I had a problem with the teacher. I got to go back to the same school. I got to be involved with the same teacher, maybe the same administrator. So how do we work on building that um repairing that relationship, right?

057and and so some of that work has to start with the schoolhouse. But here here's my point. When Dr. Jackson's department continues to get cut year after year after year after year after year. When we talk about how do we improve engagement, when we look at the department that is at the heart of that if they don't have the funds to do the work, then what kind of happens to it being dismantled in the schoolhouse? So if it's not serious on the district level and not saying that you're not taking it seriously cuz I know you just got here but when we look at the importance of building that continuity from home to classroom and the work that used to happen in PGCPS it is not happening now. So there is a you know silo

058it's a separation of church and state. So you can have all the resources you can give me all the information if there is no trust there. If I don't understand what I need to do to be a part of the continuity of learning, then I'm just dropping my child off and you better do what's right. And if you don't and my child isn't learning, I'm going to blame you. You have all the resources. You are right. I use probably every resource that you have, but I also get overwhelmed when I get the benchmark test and I'm saying, well, which resource will help work best to close the gap? So there there are several things that I think that you can do that are lowhanging fruit like do some testing training with parents how to use

059the benchmark data to close the gap. You know what resources kind of align with the math and the language arts in pushing it through the schoolhouse so we're getting it because we get a lot of robocalls. We get a lot of class dojoos. So it's an underutilized way to get information to us. I've been working with the bus driver and saying, "Hey, the kids are sitting on the bus maybe two hours, maybe an hour and a half. Here are a bunch of books I got from the school. They put on the bus." So, guess what the kids get to do while they're riding? They either get to read, they may do some math activities, and those who want to be on that phone, you can stay on your phone, but we're pushing those additional resources.

060Wherever the child is, we're trying to meet them. But it really is about how are we making sure that we're mending the relationships because there's a breakdown in trust between the home and the schoolhouse. >> Superintendent, may I borrow just a moment of your time? This is Vanessa. >> Hi, Vanessa. Yes. >> Hi. Um so Marjgerice has gone in um and pulled one of the data points from our climate and culture survey um where we can share with you all parents preferred method of communicating. We have worked with the communications team to add two questions to our climate and culture survey um over the last 3 years from 2023 to 2025 about their satisfaction with our translation services as well as how effectively the district communicates with parents. And so while it is not broken

061down on a school level, what we can continue to do is trickle that information down and work with schools to say, "Hey, over year over year, parents have expressed that the district is increasingly communicating better with parents." This year around 72% of parents said, "The district effectively communicates with us." Um, which is a 5% increase from last year. So we know we're doing a better job. >> What's the sample size of the survey? Um, I can give you that um number. It's not in the data point I'm looking at, but our overall parent group is families 19,000 um 7,83. >> Okay. >> And for that question, it was 5,874 >> For that particular question, 5,000. And can I just also add my two cents that the the parent and community advisory council has been working

062with your team over the past three or four years really providing feedback and support. And so I I want to give us kudos for supporting the increase in your participation in the survey and the feedback that we've also provided in um you know rounding out some of those questions and adding questions. So you all have been doing um some amazing work in getting the word out in communicating and um I just want to give the team some kudos for that because we we haven't got any kudos. Thank you all. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. So we can definitely share that as well as Marjgerice can share parents preferred method. So as we work to increase engagement and work with Dr. Jackson, we can absolutely, you know, begin to share this is how they want

063us to communicate with them on a school level and then we can work we can work through that. >> Yes. And that was part of our 2023 report um as it relates to the climate and culture survey and including questions addressing inequality, lack of systemic equitable engagement practices and ways to better communicate with families. So, um thank you for that, Miss Lawrence. So, um, sorry, I had my hand raised for a while. So, one of the things I I made a note because I knew I was going to forget, but then I forgot the second thing that I didn't make a note about because I was listening. Um, so one of the things about resources is I would love to see some type of text for help um type of system where we could text

064in to a number and have a link to the resource hub broken down, you know, like maybe even a virtual assistant type of person to kind of walk families through that need a little bit of extra uh guidance. But just like a a text where we can text help to a number and it links to a resource hub or um something as simple as that. I know that not everyone has a phone, but I think a large enough number of people have a phone where that could be useful when you're looking for help. Um, so that was one of the suggestions that I had to answer your first question, Dr. Joseph. Um, then the second thing is not really a question, just more of a statement is that um, as Chair Milhouse has said, like

065we're an engaged body. Um, we want to help. I and this and now I'm going to speak for myself. I personally feel very um overlooked and not useful um when I'm hearing things like you know um reach out to your board member if you want to be involved like we're here for a purpose and to be quite honest I haven't really felt purposeful um in this role. Um I often feel overlooked like I I want to give advice, I want to help. I want to do all the things. Um, which is why I joined PCA. Um, however, not really feeling useful. So, just wanted to speak personally um, and let you know that that like I, you know, and I think I can speak for most people on PAC like we want to be able

066to help without having to go through yet another hoop to offer our assistance and help of reaching out to our like we're here for a reason. So, just wanted to um to name that. Thank you. >> Thank Thank you, Miss Lawrence. Um and Miss Smith, >> Miss Milhouse, um Miss Lawrence just set me up. So, um just to piggy off that, I hear that we can contact our board members, but as Miss Lawrence and U, Chair Mailhouse has already stated, PAC is in place. We're already in place. So my question is, can board member CJ take it back to the board of education that Pac is not overlooked and that we should be leveraged as a resource in this process for this work group that board member Moss has put in place. >> Thank you,

067Vice Chair Smith and um board member Jackson Saunders. Um, I hope you were able to kind of gather that. And um um Superintendent Joseph, th this this is a a key example of when we're talking about engaging with parents and and and getting information out um when it it appears that um individuals may want to circumvent what's in place um because it doesn't always align with, you know, someone's goal, someone's agenda. you know, maybe everyone's, you know, the thought process may be a little bit diverse. Um, when you have a group of individuals that are here, um, we appreciate you coming and asking how to make sure that parents know about, um, the resources so we can really begin to see some improvement in our um, language arts, English language arts, mathematics area, right? How

068do we make sure that people are connected to those resources? You know what I believe, and this is from my perspective, the school system sometimes doesn't recognize is that when the parent is engaged and asking questions and needing a support because it doesn't look like what they want and it doesn't show up in a way that doesn't really push for a different level of support that it is overlooked, right? That it's not heard. And so I'm hoping that you all um were able to gather what everyone was sharing about um things that we can do. I think it was really high level. I'm quite sure that we can probably sit down and have a more robust conversation about um some ideas that we can come up with. Um, and one thing that we did before

069is we did the jump start your engagement and the focus was how do you get parents at the beginning of the school year understanding how to get involved, making sure that they register um for the communication so they can be a part of any communication that's coming out from the board members. So, they are in parent view, whatever databases and systems you need them in. But when you can engage with me in the beginning as a co-creator and a partner in education as your equal partner in education um then you you get a different outcome. And so um I don't know if we need any further discussion about this. I don't know if that was helpful. I know it was kind of high level um and it may not be as concrete. Um, >> if

070you if you work closely, yeah, I think that was helpful. But I know I'll ask Dr. Jackson to follow up with you all as we just like I said, we just had the conversation today, you know, and I gave her the charge to think about how we we approach this in the work. So, we're at we're right at the beginning of the sausage making, so it's the perfect time to have you actively uh engaged. >> I mean, well, we're already actively engaged, so you know, like we're just like engaged with this. We're here. >> And look, since I've been here, I think when we first met, I told you I would. It's important. Family engagement is more than lip service to me. And I said I'd show up at every meeting that you had and

071I said when we as we worked to do things, you know, we when we had the parent when we had our budget meetings, but everything I think about doing that that that has impact, I I want to make sure you're in, you know, on this. It's been a whirlwind of a year uh thus far. But if there's things that you know you feel I could be doing better to bring you in and engage, please let me know. But but I I made it a commitment unless unless there's something that was crazy on my calendar. You if I can show up, I definitely do because it's important. We we we have we need to hear from you as engaged stakeholders uh to to improve the school system. We we can't do it alone. That's one thing

072I know. >> I I appreciate that. And a question was asked, is there anything that can be done differently you all um as it relates to the engagement if you haven't already communicated that? And I'm quite sure that we can um circle back and um send you some ideas and other ways and you know, but I want to say thank you for one for showing up. Um, and you know, one of the things that was very important to us is being here with the entire group so everyone could be able to provide their input. Um, and so I do appreciate you um, attending. And is there any other hand up before we move on? Um, Dr. Joseph, you took 29,000 minutes, so you got to give somebody some. But no, this was a really good

073conversation and we appreciate it. No further hands. So that means Miss Welsh, you have two minutes. Let me just >> Well, thank you so much. >> Um, good evening everyone. Um, I I actually do have very short information and um, B, the board office, could you please uh, post the little the little sheet I had? So it makes it much easier to everyone can see it. Um, well, I'm going to talk and maybe they'll get posted, but in the meantime, because I don't want to waste your time. So, I just want to let you know that policy 0126, which is student safety, prevention of child sexual abuse, and reporting suspected child abuse and neglect, is out public comment right now, and it will be out until 5:00 on March 10th. So, it's actually uh a

074little less than another week. So if you um have the opportunity to read the policy and you have any comments that you want to provide, please make sure to submit them um on the website so that the committee then will review the comments. We do review all the comments that come in and do take them seriously. Um which then brings us to policy uh 0105. Um oh, and that's so small you can hardly read it. Is can you make the print just a slightly larger please? Maybe just a tad there. Perfect. Thank you. Um, that's excellent. Thank you. So, um, even better. Now, so the second one I wanted to talk about was quickly policy 0. Oh, that's a little too large. Please, you can make it smaller there. Uh, policy 0105. And this is

075the policy on parent, family, and community involvement, which you have been involved as we went through this process. And it has the policy of the superintendent the interim superintendent superintendent Joseph had actually made changes to the policy and it and it has been out for uh public comment now for a while but uh there was a public comment that came in and the committee after we discussed it at the last policy meeting really felt it would be important to get Pac's uh input on this to get your thoughts on on these two particular um pieces. So in the comment that came in, it talked about the fact that the policy itself does not have anything any specifics about accountability. And just just to give you a little overview, policies are are really more global. They're

076about the board's governance process and what they expect from basically from the superintendent and staff. And so it would then be the administrative procedure that would go into great detail about how this accountability will come about. Well, in the in the section on in the policy where it says amendments, uh it says implementation and responsibility. One of the amendments that the committee would like to make, but we thought it would be good just to get your input is where it says the superintendent is further directed to implement this policy by enacting an administrative procedure. Then adding the language um and it it can be changed certainly, but the idea being that that administrative procedure will include requirements regarding accountability in its implementation. Um, it sort of goes to the whole conversation we had this evening

077about ensuring that when you go to each schoolhouse that parents absolutely are heavily highly engaged in the entire process that the things are in place for informing parents about what's going on that parents actually play a role in the decision making for the school. And so and then the a the administrative procedure would actually have specifics about how that could be monitored and and uh some level of accountability in those particular things. And then the second thing was that um the policy already had in it the superintendent shall report to the board annually on or before July 31st on the implementation of this policy which actually sort of goes in line with the whole idea of accountability because if you have information and you've collected data as related to what you're monitoring then certainly that

078report could include that. Then the second piece was that the um the the public commenter had asked the fact that suggested that there be an opportunity for the superintendent uh working with Pekk uh actually discuss the report findings. So instead of just actually just reporting rep you know this is the report actually had a full discussion about the report the findings that are in that report and so we were the committee was actually very interested in hearing your thoughts on this and if you have any recommendations that they can consider any any uh comments or thoughts that you want to share. >> So item one, the superintendent is further directed to implement the policy. Um I mean it's somewhat seems slightly redundant. Can you can we go back up? I mean as if we're telling

079them how they should flush out the administrative procedures. Um I I guess it's necessary to say that it should have some, you know, accountability, you know, um component to it. I'm not sure if that's really necessary. And can we scroll to number two? Um I mean, because the administrative procedures will have a level of detail in it of what needs to happen and if the procedures are in place, they should have a continuous improvement component to it. Um, so I mean there there is no weight for me to say take it off or not. I don't you know it's there. I don't I'm not quite sure why. But to item number two when it says the superintendent in partnership with PAC shall discuss the report findings and and and what discuss it for what reason?

080What what come from a discussion? So the public comment that came in was that they're requesting a discussion that there there' be some type of discussion versus just a report and so and think like actually this evening there's been a very nice discussion about many aspects in terms of operation of schools and the role of parents and everything. So the same idea would be looking at that report and and whatever the findings are in the report for that year having again a discussion. And again just so you know these are this were this just were the results of public comment that uh the committee thought it would be good to get your input on. Does anyone hand up? >> I get it. It makes sense. But like that's Yeah, I miss No, you got a

081point. Like what for? Um, but if if it would if it said more specific That's real. If it said more specifically like we want you guys as PCA to scrutinize it, break it down, tell us what we need to improve on. And sorry, my son's in the background. We're playing video games. And then like all the other things that you want us to really do. Sure. >> But you're just saying discuss. >> All right, cool. This was nice. Um, and that's kind Yeah. And even as some of the members for said, are you really asking for advice and are you going to utilize it or are you just, "Yeah, we talked about it, dude. Uh, they said they were cool with it and that's not how it works. So what's the point? And I'll say

082it so bluntly. >> Yeah. And and Mr. Suki, thank you for taking the words out of my mouth. We, you know, we can have discussion. >> We can discussion. I appreciate it. >> Um, but the advisement piece and providing some recommendation based on the report itself. Um, I I think that's where it sits for me. If we're discussing it and there's some that advice that comes out with strong recommendations, then where does that ownership lie for accountability to do something with it? I you know, so I I'll put a pen in it. >> Madam Chair, you're on mute. >> I'm sorry, Miss Smith. I think your hand was up and I'm not sure. >> Yeah, I end up taking taking it back down because uh Mr. Suki pretty much covered it. If this this verbiage

083is to remain in place, I think we just need to add on to it that our role would be to advise and produce recommendations. Thank you. Are there any other um It's just hard for me to see it while the um the screen is being shared. Miss Lawrence, >> thank you. Um just Miss Welsh, just wanting to know like about and you may not have this answer, but like how many comments do you get like on average when a policyy's out for public comment? very few. Unfortunately, it's very few. We we encourage comments all the time and um we do advertise that but we uh we get a one some policies we get none and then some will get one or two. Uh once in a while there might be a policy that invokes a

084little bit more comments but we don't get a lot of comments. But I will tell you that the committee does take seriously the comments they do receive and the committee members um that's why they've asked that I bring this to you just because they they do take those comments seriously and we have made changes to policies based on comments we have received >> and then once you do that do you like communicate back to the folks that since it's not that many um I don't assume that it's a heavy lift to kind of communicate back I know obviously people that are invested will go back and check the policy and all that type of thing but do you ever like reach back out to the folks that submitted public comment just to kind of give

085a update? Just wondering. No, because uh wow. No, we I don't think we have I I don't even know if we have the identifying information that we could actually I mean we have the name of the person, but I don't know if we have the information how we could access you know get their get their information to actually come back to them and you know tell them but we do we will disc we always discuss any comments that we receive in the committee meeting and then the board members in the committee will will you know make different recommendations based on those comments. Okay. And then my last questions, and I apologize if anyone else has their hand raised. Um my last question is now that you've gotten the feedback from PCA uh about these two

086um amendments, then now what? >> So then I will take it back to the committee at the next committee meeting and share what you have said and then they'll make a determination of if they want to make any changes to the policy, if they want to add more language, they want to take the language away, you know, whatever they want to do. But I will be sharing all these comments with your comments with the with the committee members. >> Okay. Thank you, >> Miss Perkins. >> So, thank you for this, Miss Walsh. I know you always bring a plethora of information when it comes to policies and stuff. Similar to Miss Lawrence's question, um, but it's more so the comm's part. How are these policies um when they are asking for feedback, how is it

087communicated to the community? Because I know like as a parent in the system, I've not received like a robot call or um an email blast or how is this shared with the community? Um because it doesn't sound like a lot of people either are engaged in the activity, which this is very important work. um and or know about it. >> So, if Miss Adeline is still on the on the line, she actually would be the best person to ask that question of. So, I don't know if she's still here, but if she is, she could she could share that information because she's the person that gets it out to everyone. >> Uh >> yes, I am. Thank you. Um so, the we have an announcement that is made at the board meeting to let the

088community know that the policies are now at out for public comments. We also have it shared in all board members newsletters that we are seeking public comments on various policies. We have it posted on the board web page and we also have the division of communications putting out in the news or the e-glass how you call it. >> Okay. So what I hear is that there is effort to communicate with the community but I'm not sure that that information is being disseminated to the community which may be uh the barrier that we're receiving cuz you know these are some very important policies that u Miss Walsh always presents to us um but there's not a lot of responses so there's a there's a barrier in the intent and the execution of what it means to

089actually have our community engaged in the responses. So my my ask is that um the committee go back and just make sure that you're utilizing um the tools to communicate to families down. So I hear it at the top, right? It's at the board, it's at the board, it's in the community, it's at the board of ed. But let me play devil's advocate. If I'm a parent that doesn't go to the board of ed meeting or if I miss that meeting, right? How do I know where to go? because I know if a bus is late, I get a text or an email, right? Even if it's not my bus. So, how can we make sure that this information um is filtered down to all of the families equitably all the time consistently so that

090we get um equitable representation and feedback. And then I do have a second part, Chair Milhouse, if I may. >> Okay. Yeah. C Let me just because I want to let me have Miss Smith. Um >> Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. Um because I I do want to kind of wrap this up a little bit and then Miss Perkins, I'll get back to you so you can ask your question briefly. Miss Smith, >> the only U Thanks Chairman House. The only thing I was just going to follow up behind the comment that Miss Perkins is making about um sharing the information. I think education is important as well. And this might be something um to work on with Dr. Jackson and her group, but sometimes families may not even know how to do public comment. they

091may not even know what to recommend or they may be intimidated by the information. So that may be an additional barrier. >> Thank you, Miss Perkins. >> I had a question in reference to the advocacy day, the legislative update. I don't know if we're on that piece yet, Miss Walsh. >> No, no, no. I I want to make sure. Wait, are we are we done? Okay. Wait, are we finished with any other comments to the policy? Okay. And Miss Schwz, I would just like to um and I'll I'll send my comment in to you about the um parag surrogate and it states that the superintendent should identify that. Um I'm not sure why it changed from the court being in position to do that. um and why now the superintendent is given the authority or

092the superintendent designate to act in the place of a parent or student receiving special education services. So um I I will send that forward. Um >> thank you. >> It's taking it from the courts and given it to the superintendent. That >> I'll have to look at that because that shouldn't be there. Um >> yeah, item number um seven which is scratched out. Yeah, parent surrogate. So, if you can look at that from legal perspective, that doesn't make sense to me. I'm not >> switch. Um, can you just state which what you're looking at? >> It says parent surrogate. I'm looking at the policy. An adult appointed by the superintendent slashdesignate to act in place of a parent of a student receiving special education ser special education services in the educational decisionmaking process. But it

093says before it says um courts, right? So adult appointed by the courts. And so I'm trying to figure out if it was courts before, you know, why did it take it out of that legal wheelhouse and put it in the superintendence? >> Actually, I do I do know I know what they're referencing. It has to do with parent surrogates. When it when in special education, a student needs a parent surrogate. And in in that process, the school system actually does training of the surrogate. There's all these steps that are laid out in the law what you have to do. And then once the parent has, you know, the surrogate has done whatever they have to do to become a surrogate, it is actually the superintendent's responsibility to send and a letter to the parent saying

094that you will now be a surrogate for this particular student. But it's only for a student who would have an IEP and didn't actually have a parent that can be representing them and advocating for them. So it's not like circuit like you think like surrogate. >> Okay. Okay. Um so was it okay any other questions and please read the policy send in comments to it and I will also state it in this way based on what Miss Perkins was asking. Um there's a lot of communication that comes out from PGCPS. If a parent is not understanding their role or impact in um shaping these policies, then they will overlook any information that is being sent to them, no matter how you get it to them. So that lends us to being in a position of

095um making sure and Dr. Jackson, thank you for allowing PACA to be a part of doing training with parents on the importance of policies um board policies and PGCPS procedures as well as um as Miss Smith and I have done before um in doing training on the importance of how do you advocate in being in a position to do public speaking? And I know that Miss Lundy um had been scheduled to do that training and so she's available, right? She's ready. she's still ready to do it. Um, and so I'll close on that. So, is there a part two to your presentation, Miss Well? >> Yes. So, I want to first thank everyone for your comments. They're very helpful. And I will be taking them back to the committee so that they can make their

096final decisions about the policy. The any other thing I did want to share with you is that next Tuesday is advocacy day and we are sending um a group of students, there probably be about 50 students from several of the high schools that will go up. um they're going to it's really an opportunity that for them to have sort of hands-on civic learning at Maryland State House. They'll speak with different delegates and different senators um and but they will also they'll have information from our legislative platform so they can do some advocacy on their part. So I just wanted to give you an update about that. >> Okay, that's awesome. Okay, we have a lot of hands up. Um Miss Lundy, I haven't heard from you. >> Somebody got killed. >> Yes. Um Let me

097turn this now. I have a question. Yes. Um, I've been wanting to get involved as a civic and community person because I've been on this board with respect to the advocacy day and it's kind of challenging. So, I wanted to know how can ecat like I'm in the Bladensburg um um area and I would love to travel on that bus and go with the principal perhaps with Bladensburg High School if that's one of the schools. First of all, I don't know which schools have been selected um or Bladensburg Elementary School. I don't know if you're doing the high school students, what grade level you're doing, but I've been trying for years as I've been on this board um to get um on that bus to go with one of my schools um for advocacy day.

098Is it too late to sign up and which schools are going in particularly in my area? >> So, district size. >> I'll just tell you the names of the schools. There's because it's only about 50 students. S Seratsville High School, Dval House High School, Fairmont High School, Largo International, um Billy High School, and possibly we're still waiting to hear from Wise High School, and Sutland High School. >> So, how are the schools selected? Is our is it a lottery? >> They're looking at CTE classroom classes that have the um it's um law enforcement, judicial, whatever it is, courses that that um pathway, I guess. And then also they also choose um student government students that are in student government um they have an opportunity also to attend. As far as the actual specifics though that

099it's like any field trip I I really don't know the details of it because they you know they set it up just like a regular field trip. So I'm not sure how that all that internal process works because that's more under school support. >> Well followup. So thank you so much. You always so knowledgeable. So will we go through Dr. Jackson, if we need to go somewhere, meet somewhere to be able to attend these advocacy days or what have you. I mean, how would we get involved in that as a Peacock member? >> So, I Miss Lundy, I would say that we that would be on us to do that individually if they are doing that from a school as a um field trip because you would have to complete um the volunteer uh >>

100once we know what school it is, right? >> No. Well, you you would have had to complete the volunteer um uh certification and requirements for PGCPS to even you know be a part of the field trip itself. And then the schools probably already identified chaperones. Um, and so it it would really be more so, you know, I would reach out to to see if um any groups in your area might be attending, but I know that we won't be attending with the students. I mean, we just heard about it today, but um we wouldn't be attending, you know. Sorry. Sorry. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. Maybe the next PCA people, they can be more involved in it. All right. Thank you so much. Maybe they can. I'll be gone in 2.5 months. Maybe

101they can. >> Me, too. >> M Miss Smith. >> Thanks, Chair Mailhouse. Um, Miss Welsh. So, House Bill 901 is recognition of external diagnosis of autism until school completes an initial evaluation. It was very interesting to see this bill. Um, and I hope that you guys reviewed it because they have already done public comment. But under IDA, there is already a legal obligation to identify, locate, and evaluate all children who may have a disability and a need for special education services via child fine. Um, to my understanding, the reason why this bill um was presented to the floor floor was because of concerns with PGCPS. Um, and so I've done my own research and in reviewing data, I think it's concerning to see that PGCPS consistently identifies a lower percentage of children for special ed

102as compared as compared to our peer districts that is of similar size and demographics. So my question is, where did I put my question? Oh my god. Um my question is or maybe it's more so a concern. I think as a district we need to examine how we are addressing the child fine process because apparently there's a gap there um especially if it's going to be driving state level legislation. So I just wanted to put that out um for us to consider. >> Okay. Thank you Miss Perkins. Thank you, Chair Milhouse. Um, I just had a a question. I'm not sure, Miss Welsh, if this is your question or interim superintendent Joseph's. Um, so is PGCPS advocacy day next Tuesday? Um, the reason why I asked is because Child Advocacy Day was last week um

103in Annapolis and I wanted to know is is there a way that we can align what we're doing with national initiatives so that when we go to things it's not a oneoff and that people are um expecting us to show up and in these numbers and the schools are represent presented adequately across the county. Um, so I'm not sure who that question is for, but that is my question in reference to the date selection because it's after child advocacy day. So the purpose of the day the day it started out actually last year we haven't had before but and it was it was really an opportunity for um it was like a regular field trip to give you know kids and they were they they were all involved in um one of the CTE classes

104last year that had to do with um you know the I guess the legal piece of it and they and they went and then it was just PGCPS's legal day. We set up all these meetings with Prince George's County Public Schools delegates and senators and this this they it was very quite personal like this. He the delegates and senators spoke with the students about a lot of different things and really did a lot of to educate the students as well as the students asked lots and lots of questions about the delegates and senators. So, it was sort of like a learning process and since our Prince George's County delegates and senators are very important for the school system, we it was actually a good experience all around because um they both groups had the opportunity

105to learn from each other and that's sort of how it got set up. And so that's why they did something very similar this this past this this year because it had been so successful last year. So >> yeah, I was there last year and one of the feedbacks that the kids provided is that they wanted more um active engagement. So the schedule was set and the s senators and delegates did come in um but their voices as a student population wasn't really interactive. So it was more so like they were talked they were talked to in these forums but they didn't allow enough time for the scholars to truly engage. Right. So if we're if we're pulling these certain schools from all parts of the district which I see the representation there. My challenge is

106to prepare them to walk into these forums so that they know what to ask and have the delegates like if it was a panel or something that they could actually engage with them. That was an element that was missed. There was a lot of walking around. It was a lot of speaking to but they didn't have that interaction until that lunchtime period where the delegates kind of popped in and then they had a a Q&A with them. >> Okay. No, that's that's important information. I appreciate that. >> Thank you. And so, um, what what I want to do is I want to go ahead and close out on this and, um, Miss Welsh, I will give you the floor if you have any other last comments because we we want to keep this meeting moving.

107>> And I want transportation and our climate and culture um, teams to not leave us. >> Yes, I went over my two minutes, so I apologize. >> It's okay. you get always get enough time but you can close out. >> Okay, I'm I'm I'm finished for the evening. Thank you all. >> Well, thank you. And so, um I thank you all for such a robust conversation and as always um it it's always a pleasure, Miss Welsh and Dr. Jackson, you always you two always get us excited about what's happening in PGCPS and beyond. So, we are going to move into presentations. Um, we're gonna start with transportation. Director Baldwin, Dr. Coleman, you all have the floor. >> Thank you so much, committee chair Milhouse. And good evening, everyone. Uh, my name is Sheraska Coleman. I

108have the privilege of serving as the chief operating officer and also here is transportation director, Mr. Kea Baldwin. Uh, as we are likely aware, transportation has been implementing a multi-year improvement plan since a third-party audit was conducted in fall 2023. Since that since that time, while not perfect, there has been steady improvement in multiple areas to include routing efficiency resulting in improved ontime arrival and increased bus utilization, diversification of transportation modes that now include nonCDL drivers, the use of internal PGCPS staff as part-time drivers, and limited contractor support. We have transitioned from the transfinder routing system and the stopfinder app to a more effective bus planner routing platform and parent app called Chipmunk. M we have made significant improvements in hiring drivers where we have fewer than 70 vacant driver positions where we once had

109over 200 vacancies. We've improved transportation communication by more consistently sending messages to families regarding the status of buses. And we've created a data dashboard where data is captured in real time and used to support the improvement process. This evening, Director Baldwin will focus on tools that are currently available for families so they can effectively access the Chipmunk school bus tracking parent app for realtime updates. as we continue working to improve communication with families. Director Baldwin. Thank you, Dr. Coleman. Good evening. Good evening. U Thank you so much for the invitation. Um I'm excited to be able to share information to you. Um I do not have a full-fledged presentation for you tonight. I figured tonight we would actually do some of the real work that parents are doing in order to find out more information

110about what Chipmunk um is able to do and where you can get resources that will tell you more about the access and capabilities of the Chipmunk app. And so you should um should be sharing your screen which um has our district web page. Is everybody able to see that? Thumbs up. Thank you so much. >> Great. So, I want to just walk you through uh how to access or how to get to information resources related to the Chipmunk app. And so, it begins at um our district web page at www.pgcps.org. From here, there are several ways you can get um to the Chipmunk portal. The first simplest way I've been sharing with families is to find the important information banner and you can rotate to find what had what's been the most up-to-date information that

111the district has been sharing. And here you can see the chipmunk banner. A second way is just going to offices and clicking uh on our support services link and it takes you to Dr. Coleman's area uh and you see transportation and obviously you can click here as well and see that same banner. So a couple different ways to access. So, we're just going to click on this banner uh and it takes us to this portal um that discusses all things Chipmunk. So, one of the things that we want to make sure that we press upon our families is that uh this app improves parents transportation experience. It increases the visibility into the daily operations. time and we're working to reduce the uncertainty around bus arrival and delays. Our purpose uh and our value in this

112is to work to provide real time school bus updates, improve transparency and parent trust, and support operational efficiency through proactive communications for our families. We definitely want to be able to give you a greater peace of mind. We want to have fewer surprises during the daily commutes and provide a clear consistent transportation information. And so key features that we share within this app, one is a live map view. It shows the bus real time location. We also are promoting the current route and stop location and which you can currently see now within uh prescribed geoence. The ETA summary uh it is meant to display our bus early and late on time options but right now we're not hanging our hats on it because this is part of the chipmunk system that's still in development. There

113are a couple factors that um need to be considered that we are still working on and so right now that may not always be consistent in you receiving accurate ETA summaries. We're going to get there though. And then finally, custom alerts, getting information about delays, cancellation, and transportation messages. I know right now we send an email if there's a temporary change, there's a push notification if there changes made and and changes within the route, the bus and stop times. And so we want to be able to share more information about what that looks like now versus what it looked like with Stopfinder. I know we have received a number of emails, a number of phone calls about parents saying, "Hey, my bus route changed and and really it is because the bus route did change.

114We're substituting and we're putting it on on another route temporarily." And so we want to get that message out. We're we're not doing things to disrupt, but we want to definitely explain what the new notifications are and and and the importance of it from you for for our parents. So, we did this. We are right now six months in to operating bus planner and also um into chipmunk. We did a phased roll out at the beginning of the year in September where we rolled out only uh our routes dealing with our most vulnerable students first. It was a smaller subset of our total transportation um system and it allowed us to really see uh how the implementation was incurring. Were we getting the information out? Um was it linked to our systems, our SIS system

115which is parent view to our routing system was information flowing uh adequately so that there would be a good transition and we did that by bus lot and we have 12 bus lots in the county. So uh that proved to be very beneficial. Um, I will say that, you know, for us to be rolling this out at the beginning of the school year is something um, in many situations that's not done. That's not an advantageous deal. But we did it and I think we have been successful um, because we've had to experience the integration um, and implementation all at the same time. And it's going to be a process as Dr. Coleman mentioned before that uh we are showing progress that's leading to perfection. So I want to be able to share with you the

116resources on this page. Most importantly, what is it that parents need to know from beginning to end related to the Chipmunk app? So the first thing is really about how to sign up. right now. Uh the way to sign up is through your parent view account. That's paramount. We you can't access Chipmunk with your student information without setting up your parent view account. And the two what connects the parent view account with the Chipmunk account is the email that you use to set up your parent view account. That's the same email that you use to access Chipmunk when downloaded. When you do those things, the information, the student transportation information um appears once you have logged on successfully through the app. So to do that, uh we have created a video here. This is about

117a twominut video that shares information uh from beginning to end. We have it in both English and in Spanish. And Madam Chair, if I wanted to play this, but for the sake of time, I'm not going to play the video, but it is very advantageous for all. Um, it is very detailed. It's very succinct and and parents can play this in both English and and Spanish and have a visual display of how to go through the app processes to download the Chipmunk app. >> Okay. Uh we also have here listed how to download and sign up. So we we put in the information about how to download your parent view account if you don't have that. Um the support guides that are mentioned to create your parent view account um contacting your school. The whole

118steps for creating your parent view account is listed here. The second piece here are the chipmunk app download links and guides. So definitely uh how to access how to download the link the app through the app store or the Google play store. We have a user guide for parents. You know I'm I'm a kinesthetic type learner. So I need to see it, hear it and do it. And so that's the um attitude that we've tried to take to provide different types of of of artifact supports for our family. So you got the video, we have a a guide. The guide here is written in English um and in Spanish. I want to say we also have we have a brochure that talks to uh that has links in the brochure. This is in Spanish, French

119as well as in English. And so uh we were trying to cater to all of our students needs. What's new in this is the ETA bus status report. So right now I will tell you for example I get a lot of emails that say the app doesn't work and when we end up talking to the parents about the messages that you are receiving in the app the app is actually doing its job. It's actually telling you what's going on. So if there's something wrong with the app, it's going to tell you just like it's going to tell you where the bus is. And so what we've had to do is just create this guide here to kind of describe the messages that you will receive and what those mean. >> Come on. >> This is

120an important document. So we want to make sure that we are able to share this resource with our families. So what you see here as an example, the GPS message. So this is one of the ones that a parent may get. The bus is not reporting. It's going to be in red and not in in blue. So from here it tells us what it means that possible reasons that the vehicle may not be mapped to the route the device may be offline and what that means the bus may be turned off or there may be a connectivity issue. So you know this is important for us because if you're getting this you know we definitely don't want you to see this message but if you do get it here's the reasons why and if you

121want to share that with us please share. And so this these are components that internally we need to do these. If you get this message, there's nothing that you can do with this, but just let us know. But let us know and then we can investigate so we can minimize the risk that you um that the occurrence of this showing. So this is a very important document and we've been trying to get out to our PTA meetings to the community events and share this information with our families more and more because for the parents that have subscribed to the Chipmunk app. This is this is great information to have. director, how do parents let transportation know if they receive some type of message or if they have other questions um that they need answered regarding

122the app? Great, great, great, great question. So, two ways you can make this happen. There is information within the app. Within the app, there's a little icon, question mark. You can click on that question mark and there's a piece that says send feedback. and you can put information within the app in which it will go to bus planner and back to us. The second way is to use the TRS system. We have some gentlemen that check the TRS system for Chipmunk. Um they used to check it for Stopfinder, but now they're checking it for Chipmunk and can address those very appropriately. All right. So again, this is um the ETA and bus status message report. The second advantage that we like is the Chipmunk helpbot. This is our AI generated helpbot. And so you can

123come here uh pg pgcpselmunk.com will take you to the help box and ask any question that you may have. When can I start using it? Why is my child where is why is my child information missing? It will provide you the best response. It's this is an intuitive system. It's learning day by day. We coordinate or we work with the vendor um to try to give questions that we receive from parents. We try to give those questions back to bus planner so they can integrate this into the chat box with proper answers. And so this is something that we see very beneficial. Um but right now it's really getting it out to parents for use. So, am I only able to access this, meaning not me, but the parent or whoever is only able to

124access if I'm on the website. It's not associated with my um my app. >> No, it's not involved with your app just yet. Um, I've asked that question, Miss Milhouse, from the vendor because they just recently uh shared with us the hot the help bot and and this was doing the phased roll out and so we put it out there as a resource and now it's a resource we can uh be better at at focusing questions and and I did ask that question to include it within the app. >> Um, and that's something they're working on as a developer. Yeah, they they that would be so much easier for me to just I'm in the app already. If I need help, I'm already in the app. And the other question that Dr. Coleman mentioned in

125getting um you know sending a help ticket in I know we can do a ticket well send an issue or whatever with in the app right itself. >> Yes. >> Right. the message, but what is the actual turnaround time for um a response for that? So that may take up to about a week to get um because that information is is sent to us on a cadence >> and and my team has a backlog right now to tell you the truth of addressing the questions because they're also looking at the TRS information as well. Mhm. That >> we still try to give a notification that it's been received within a 48 hour time frame. >> Mhm. >> But it may take a little longer to give you a solution because each one has to be

126investigated case by case. >> Okay. And so whatever I submit in the app is then cross reference also what's happening in the TRS system. TRS what is it TRS? >> No ma'am. No ma'am. They are two separate systems. >> Right. They're two separate systems, but whatever I because I can put I can go into the app and say, "Hey, you know, I need help. Here's I can send feedback because I'm in the app, right? I can send feedback, but are you taking that feedback and that's going to the vendor and are they somehow reporting it back to you in a way that you can true up to how you are receiving information in the TRS system?" So that way you can easily do a crosswalk between what feedback is that we're getting in the app

127itself and then how it is flowing through to you all. So you can do gap analysis without having to go in so much detail and research to figure out what you're looking at between the two. Is that >> Yes. Yes. You have that ability to do that. >> Okay. >> Right. So good question. Good question. And just so piggybacking just finishing up, we do have a FAQ that parents have access to u they can get to. Um right now I would like to share uh this is some information. So right now this is um our numbers. We have 14,910 subscribers currently to the Chipmunk app. And so this is my ask of this group is to be able to help promote Chipmunk because we need more users. We are transporting roughly um over 85,000 students.

128But right now this 14,910 folks are the only ones that are realistically getting chipmunk information every day. If you're not part of this group, then we are still using school messenger to send you just late notices, but um there's no GPS information being sent. Uh >> and just for the and just for the the uh the body to hear that really is one of the next levels of work for us as a team. Director Baldwin and the transportation department has been working with Dr. Jackson's group, the parent engagement assistants, the community resource coordinators. We recently presented to all of our principles around uh uh and also around connecting families with these resources and driving up usership of the app because the more we do that, the more it will create a transparent uh transportation experience

129for families. And so we're going to continue to work to introduce everyone to these features and to really encourage them to take advantage uh so that we can all become comfortable with this platform. This will include communications, our director of communications working through pushing out additional information. So, we want to leverage every avenue uh to really drive up the number of users um uh of the system. And again, we're going to continue to improve it as we go through that process. >> Okay. Um I'm not sure who had was up first, but I am I am going to limit how much time that you all can provide um a question or comment. Um Miss Smith and then Miss Perkins. I'm giving you all 30 seconds. >> 30 seconds is just fine. So, um the comment

130that I wanted to make and and I don't know if this is a barrier for other parents cuz I've been, you know, involved in this process. I think I was waiting on my schools to inform me that I could now use this app. I did not know that it was a available currently. I was still stuck on this phased in approach. So, I do appreciate this presentation tonight. Um, so I just wanted to make that comment just in case that's the the gap for other parents. >> Yeah. And I I if I if I could, Director Baldwin, first off, thank you so much to you um Vice Chair Smith and to Chair Milhouse because you all have been instrumental in providing feedback from this summer when before we rolled out up to today. Uh your

131feedback has been very helpful. So thank you for that. And your your your comment is is duly noted, right? Because it was hard for families to keep track of which bus slot, which trips, which routes were a part of the phased roll out. But now we're at a point where everyone has access to the app and and the added complication right now has been we still have some families who are in stopfinder >> and so soon and director Ballin, I'm going to ask you just to speak 30 seconds on that. We'll be transitioning everyone out of Stopfinder and so we'll have one clean platform that we can really push all families to engage with and that'll be Chipmunk. So, director, did you want to say just a bit more about that final transition? >> Yes.

132Yes. So, we've had to push back the sunsetting of the Stopfinder app. And so, right now, we're going to look at March 27th, that Friday leading into our spring break, we will sunset the Stopfinder app. And so we have between now and this time to push parents and let parents know uh that it's okay. Come on into the parent uh to the Chipmunk app and download it. So uh Vice Sher Smith, thank you for that. Um that's definitely some information that we can take back and utilize. And again, March 27th is our target date to sunset the Stopfinder app. >> Okay, that's great. That's just three days before my birthday. So let's make sure that happens. Okay, >> Miss Perkins, >> I'll be quick. So in reference to the sunset, director Baldwin, so have the

133communication, you have the data set of those that are still in Southfinder. Have you all communicated to those families that date and they are aware that they need to do take a action um before that date? And then my second question is obviously if I'm a parent that didn't do it, I'm still going to be able to find my child. How Right. Right. Great questions. So, one, we have been communicating in Stopfinder weekly to encourage parents to download the app. Uh, we had an original date that we sunset, but Snowmageddon hit and we have changed it. So, we are going to push out the new date with uh weekly messages to those stopfinder subscribers to push them to come on over to Chipmunk. Um, secondly, the if you're not in Chipmunk, you still have parent

134view. We still push transportation information to Synergy, but the only you're only going to get the transportation assignment, right? You get you get your route number and you get a pickup time or a drop off time, but that may change. And and what Chipmunk has allowed us to do is make changes on the fly. and parents that have the Chipmunk app get that push notification no matter what. And and and what's great about what the Chipmunk app does, um if you're uh if you're non-English and you have your phone settings in Spanish or French, Chipmunk will provide the language in Spanish or French. Whatever the translation settings are on your phone, Chipmunk will give you those same translations. >> Excellent. And um do we have any other questions? Thank you, Miss Perkins. Thank you, um

135Vice Chair Smith. I I just want to add um Director Baldwin and um um Dr. Coleman, if if you all can provide us with a breakdown of that that 14,000, like how many of that is elementary, middle school? You don't have to do it right now. you can send it to us and then tell me what your goal is over the next 30 to 90 days so we can then strategically help you with some approaches to get closer to that 85,000. Um it's just a number to me right now and I can't strategically I have thoughts for you but if you tell me what that number looks like um you know because that 85,000 for the high school students uh you know it it may be the students that need to be a a part

136of um the chipmunk versus the parents because I don't know how many parents in high school just like oh figure it out right but if you can give me that breakdown um that would really help me to get my brain moving to help you. >> Yeah. And and I will tell you initially when we we what we have was the version where only the parents we have recently set up the system to where students can now download the app and use their parent view this uh parent view account to access their transportation information. So we'll be rolling that out formally um definitely for our high school students. >> Okay. >> And if I could also add uh committee chair that thinking is exactly aligned with the direction we are going right >> because you know

137Dr. Joseph talked earlier about the agent of change being schools and that parents connect more with their schools than central office. And so part of our next level of work in transportation is to break down by school what the percentages are for users of the or people who have signed up for Chipmunk so that they then can track by their own school population where they are and then they can start to really push out messaging to families from the school perspective. Hey, we only have 30% usership. we here are the reasons why you need to sign up, right? And so we're going to leverage our school partners and our area offices to really connect with families around this effort. So the support that we can receive from PAC and all the other stakeholders will be

138helpful, but certainly that's one of the strategies that we're going to employ. >> Yeah. And I I'm we we are here to help. Um I I'm a numbers person know so I I in order for me to you know know what your I don't know what your goal is. I mean 85,000 can't be your goal in the next 30 days right and so in the next 30 90 days what does that look like but I you know middle school elementary and high school engagement is going to be very different to get you to where you're trying to go. Um and I I know >> if I could just add one thing I don't have a 3090 goal yet. I don't have that. Um, but we're we're continuing to work on sharing the information and then

139we're going to start setting targets as we've gotten the information out. But I'm sorry to cut you off. >> No, that's okay cuz if you give me what this number looks like, I can make up my own goal to say, "Hey, here's some strategies and then, you know, I like trying to do projections. Let's see if I hit the target and help you with that." But I know with Dr. Jackson having this quarterly leadership um a friendly you know engagement strategy some competition amongst the parent leaders you know what school will get to x amount of numbers within the next 30 days so when we come back from spring break you know who's getting that you know certificate of recognition on the website you don't need to spend any money but you know everybody likes

140to compete right and so um let's see let the best school win. Okay, so off to the races with the chipmarks. >> Any other questions, comments? That was a great presentation. Anything else? But I would just like to add um that if you all can do a quick little video of what you just showed, you know, have some kids, have some parents at a bus stop. Um, nothing that you have to pay for, you know, get some communication department at one of the schools to throw a video together for a project. See, I just saved you all money. >> Listen, that's what the video is, that two-minute video. >> That's how to get on Chipmunk. But what you just took me through and all that other stuff that that was some really helpful information as

141well. So, once I add the app, >> then I need to kind of know how to navigate it. >> Yes. And that that's the piece that's tricky because I was on the trial run and I have the app and I'm still calling like what is this? So, um this is great as always and I thank you and um I would be remiss to say you all can come back anytime you want to. It's always great information. Um but is there anyone else any other comments? Thank you. Climate and culture survey. We are moving to the end of this 7.2. We're saving the best for last. Um, and I want to say thank you to this group. You all are amazing. You have reached out several times. Um, you know, we're volunteers. We're doing the best

142that we can. Thank you for your patience. You have the floor. >> I I'll begin. Hello. Good evening, everyone. Um, my name is Cheryl Hughes and I'm the supervisor of strategic planning and change management. I took over for Rashidita Tyler and I'm sure most of you if not all of you are very familiar with her. So I just want to thank you for sharing your space with us and for your level of engagement and commitment. I was really really excited to sit in this evening and just begin putting faces to names. U but personally I wanted to thank you for your time, your spirit of collaboration and just the great work that you've been doing. it it is really well known. So this evening uh we have a short time together few more minutes I'm

143sure to just share results from the climate and culture survey. Uh chair Milhouse shared about how collaborative work with this committee led to a more robust and meaningful and aligned survey. So the success in terms of increased engagement in the survey is collectively ours and I thank you for that. This is what true partnership looks like. So in this session, our goal is to provide an overview and highlight some key themes from the data. And although it's not f although tonight is really focused on providing information, your voices and your insights are invaluable to the work and to the road ahead. So following the presentation, we're going to invite you to just share some ideas about how we might continue to partner together to build on our strengths and address areas of growth and continue

144supporting our students, your children in meaningful ways. So with that, I will turn it over to my colleague Marjgerice to share the results of the survey. Just thank you all so much. Thank you so much Sharon Milhouse for inviting us. It's always a pleasure for us to partner with with the Pika team. We really you have been really helpful in getting the words out for the climate and culture survey for the last few years. So thank you for that and I don't want to detain on the objective since my supervisor he already provide and I know that we are the one who are preventing you to go to your families or go to bed or have a dinner. So before we begin talking about the survey we just want to highlight the winners from last

145year's survey. So we host our pizza party at Kingsford Elementary School and the gift card winner. It was a social study teacher at Crossland High School. It was her first time completing the survey. She's a brand new at Crossland High School and she was the lucky winner. And now why we focusing on climate and culture? Because climate and culture data serve as a one of our most current leading indicators. They reflect the daily experiences that shape learning. The daily experiences that your kids has in the school that we as a staff and also you as a parents and all the families member. Thank you. We hear from over 53,866 students from 4 to 12 staff and families. So, thank you everybody who complete the survey. And now this is kind of the breakdown about the

146numbers how our respondent have grown over the last four years. As you can see, parents are completing the survey. They are taking the survey. We know there is more to do but the number have been increasing. This is some of the outreach strategies that we did. How we connect we engage with school leader teachers with the parent government with the students government associations with you with Pikat. We also partnership with Dr. Jon Tins. We join some different school events including the superintendent community halls the special program fair. We create a mini social study lessons to prepare a student to complete the survey. We also developed a communication toolkit that includes social media campaign, message, graphic and everything was in English, Spanish and French. We also send individualized survey links so parent could skip the login

147and choose their preferent language in English, French and Spanish. We had two videos, one in English and another one in Spanish. It just invited people to complete the survey. And we also highlight two schools which achieved the highest student ratings for welcomeness in 2024 25 international algo high school and international lang high school. I heard this presentation and also in case that you missed those video the link are click are link in there on the on the picture so you can see those video. Now we want to just to talk about what what is the experience that you have been saying when you complete the climate and culture survey like what is some data 67% of the student and staff and family they think they feel welcome in the district school they agree when we

148talk about excellence in equity 58% of the student staff and families feel safe at the schools or the workplace when we talk about mental health questions. 70% of the students and families agree their school provide information where and how to access support for a student mental health and wellness. When we ask these more questions and we compare data between staff, family and student, we still notice some discrepancy between what staff say, what family say and how the students feel. To the question about if they feel connected to the school, we see that family say 74% they agree they feel connected to the school. Similar to the questions if they like the school and similar to the questions to feel welcome at school. 81% of the family they agree they feel welcome at the school. And

149we see the respond completely different for a students. So a student experience they say 41% they feel connected to the school like the school only 40% agree and feel welcome at the school only 61% agree this time we receive over 37,000 openending comments and if you complete the climate and culture survey you notice that we have a new questions there that it was about just dream the future for PGCPS and we are talking about this question more later. So because when we heard about that you were talking about parent engagement. So we pull out a little just quickly some data so you can see. So when we ask to parents how will they prefer to receive communication from PGCPS. 83% of the parents who complete the survey they say they prefers email. Following to test

150message 70% say they prefer test message. So when we see how email and text message are the top one, the latest are newsletter, phone calls, PGCPS website. So social social media is the least one. When we asked them about the parent engagement about how they feel about the if the school provide translation services to family who need them, 83% say they agree. And when we talk about how effectively a school are communicating with parents, 72% say they agree. Another data that I that we just pull out is about how often parents participate in activities or attend events at the child's school and 76% say they go they participate regularly in these activities. So we just wanted just to share this data since one of the concern it was about parent engagement and how PGCPS can

151ensure engage with families and in different ways. So we just had this data and that way we can use this as a background and as a historical and you know the data can help us to inform better and also make decision take make decisions better as I mentioned about the new questions. So the new opportunity and the new strategic plan. So some of this the these results also going to inform our next strategic plan which will guide PGCPS district priorities and actions for the next three years. So right now we are working in our new strategic plans and all of those feedback that you already shared we are trying to make sure to include in the new strategic plan and of course we are continue our conversation and an ongoing collaboration. So we feel like

152as a Dr. Joseph once this new strategy plan it could be something that embrace the voices of everybody not only just one group. This is some of the recommendations from our partner Hanova research. So the first one they want us to deepen efforts to improve middle and high school student sense of safety and belonging through targeted student informant actions. And the other recommendation they suggest is to continue educating students on the importance of a school cleanliness by highlighting a student facing concerns and partnering with the student leaders to implement change. This is where where you can find the service results. You can go to our website. There is different way. I hope everybody can see it. So, it's loading. Okay. So, you can go to our website. If you want to see more details on

153the on in the climate and culture survey dashboard, you can go click here for say PGCPS data dashboard. You go to CSI dashboard. Then you scroll down or you can go here and see climate and culture. Here you can see the dashboard. You can see by years. You can also see by percentage the student staff and also you can see by race. This is one way. Another way if you say you know I don't have time to look all of this detail. I just want an executive summary something simple that I can read through and I just can have some anata. You can go to this one banner that I say climate and culture survey and we have reports here for you. So we create a new report this time. This contain three year progress

154and key trends. You can click here and you will can see the trends between the three different years 2023, 2024 and 2025. And you can see it's also organized by the outcome goals. And we also have some infographic which are translated in English and Spanish and French that you also can see here and share with your community. See that's the way that you can access to the survey data. And now something that we have been doing with everybody that we share this presentation even with the student government associations and the staff we wanted just to invite everybody to just to think about and reflect because the climate and culture is something that affect everybody. So this is not only PGCPA this is also a her responsibility. So yes, so we as a office we are

155thinking about strategies. We also are inviting other department to think about strategies that we can serve better our students but we also as a staff or as a student or as a family we also think that we have a responsibility to ensure that everybody get a better experience. So we are just asking like a these two simple questions. When you're looking at this data, how do these findings align with the stories and experiences you hear from families in your school communities? And the other one is how can we encourage our students to take ownership and pride in their school environment like keeping hallways and bathrooms clean. I asked that in part that particular question to the student government association assembly and all the answers were great. They were just saying like okay just make sure

156to to clip after themsel and also to the question about bullying like just to give a compliment to each other talk in positive way. So this is just two question that we wanted just to hear and just to see like how we can collaborate each other and work together. And I don't know if we have too much time or I can finish and then we can have a discussion. I follow your lead. >> You you go ahead and close it up. Close it out. We got you. >> Okay. Perfect. >> Okay. Thank you. And this is just some kind of necessity that we have identified. Like first we as always we need support just sharing the survey results portal and the infographic with the school communities. Also we want to just to invite you to

157be to ensure that family perspectives are included in the new strategic plan. We are also trying to identify some strategies for family. Dr. Jasson she's part of the committee. he also can afford that better and also just open like what what is some of the thing that you think that you can support us and also that we can support you better so we can serve families and with that being said we have a qu more questions and in case that we are not able to address all the questions right now we create a padlet where you can include all your questions and comments as well all Right. >> Okay. Um we have Miss um I'm not sure who hand was up first or Miss Perkins. I'll let you go first. >> Miss Smith was first

158but it's fine. >> Yes. >> Rock your paper. So my question Thank you so much for this presentation. Um my I have two questions. um based on the feedback that the um third party gave you all, what steps have you taken to implement those recommendations? And then my second question is what if any elements are going to be eliminated with the new strategic plan? Because how are parents supposed to actually trust that you're going to value their feedback if we're always continuously elevating and moving forward with different strategic plans and visions? I can um jump in here and I'm really glad um Miss Perkins that you asked that question because one of the thing that um things that our team has really been discussing and pushing is that if people take time to lend their

159voice, we must circle back and say how we cared for what they said. And part of today is doing that too. Coming back and saying you lent your voice to this. these were the changes made in the survey because of you and here are the results. Right? So we want to continue that loop throughout the planning and the execution of the strategic plan. So what you should hope to see, I won't say just hope to see but expect to see are your voices showing up in this new strategic plan. We have a a tagline of writing the next chapter together. So you will hear from us again. You will also see opportunities on the website as we go through the various phases and um please please encourage individuals to give feedback as we continue down

160this road. I loved um earlier hearing you all saying we're here, we're here, we're organized already. And that made me extremely excited because it makes our job even easier that we can pop back in here. So, expect to see us again just so that we can ensure that you're seeing your voices show up in that plan. So, thank you for that question. Thank you. >> And and also just to add oh okay just to add every time when we see this data and we see concerns we communicate these datas and the concerns and the results to the department who is responsible. So just to give you two specific example this time we have a new questions about the climate and change. This question it was only for students and staff and school staff. So all

161the results from that questions we share with the department of climate and change and they also start taking some measures. So something that they noticed is that a student wanted to get involved more in taking actions for the climate and chain and they start providing training and even they have one person at the government association just talking about how a student can get involved. what are some of the initiatives that they can take just to support all the school and how they can participate in green club and other actions that are related that's one specific stample another questions about the bullying questions that is one of the big issues we brought out that questions to the equate division and they also start doing co training session to the staff and how to prevent and how

162to work in case of bullying happen at the school. I know there is more to do but every time when we see this area and we see these concerns, we try to take to the department responsible so there is some actions that we can take in place. >> Thank you Miss Smith. >> We cannot hear you. >> Miss Smith, you're mute. Vice Chair Smith, you're on mute. Uh, Vice Chair Smith. Oh, miss. We still can't hear you, Vice Chair Smith. >> Miss Harris, go ahead and >> Okay. Uh, thanks. Um, can you guys hear me now? >> Oh, we can hear you. >> Oh my god. I did all of that talking. Okay, let me make this quick. First, I want to say um thank you so much for publishing that consolidated report. So, for

163some of us that are data analysts, it's good to see how the data has been trending over time. So, I think that that was a really good thing. And the highlight document, I did take a chance to just skim over it. I think it would be helpful to know what were the expected benchmarks like if if the district had established any for specific questions. Just some verbiage around that. And how do we plan to provide um additional context for any item that may be trending? Trending is not the word, but that may be scoring below the benchmark. Um, let's say I don't know if 50% is is a benchmark for the district or not, but anything that may be scoring low, whatever the threshold is, it'd be good if we had some contacts in that

164regard. And then I was very surprised to see I think you said 67,000 comments from an open-ended question. So, so my question is, have you guys already mind that data? And if so, are you seeing any trends where where families are saying the same thing? And then if there are trends, are you guys planning to establish a question in the future around that so that you can have standardized data in that regard? Thank I say 37,000 open-ended comments. That's what I say and everything is great question. So I don't think I think I can take this about the benchmark. We haven't think about that. I'm not sure. I'm not familiar with that. But that's something that I can discuss internally and maybe I can give you an answer later. If you expect or if this

165is a good suggestion, we can take that in consideration. The other good part about is because we are working on the new strategic plan. So we are trying to figure out how we can transition this information to the next new strategic plan because right now the climate and culture survey is divide by outcome goals and those outcome goals are part of the T26 and with the new strategic plan we may be not talking more about outcome goals. We are talk we may talk about priorities and instead of four outcome goals we might have five priorities. So that also going to change the way that people are going to see the climate and culture survey. And to the last question that you say about like the trends about all of the comments. Yes. So we try

166to reduce comment as much as possible we can. We are a small team but we also rely on a school. So we share all the comments with all the school. So they can also review their own comments and they can also take actions. However, when we review the comments, we are just trying to see any flag any comments that is sensitive, any comment that required immediate actions. So we can help that the school or the department to take any actions related that. And the other part we try also to be mindful about if there is any information that is that is disclosed there and we because the service is anonymous. So we don't want to have any information there to be identified even when we share the to the school. Dr. Hugh, do you want

167to add something? >> No, actually you addressed what I was going to say. So thank you. >> Thank you, Miss um Harris. >> I'm going to try and be quick. So when you you asked a question about how can we help or how can ideas as it relates to um the first thing that popped in my head was PBIS. it just popped up like it will definitely help as it relates to assisting with cleanliness, assist with bullying, assist with because that's what we've been using at Thomas to assist in um addressing cleanliness as well as assisting with performance as well as with just basically behavior wise. So they're rewarded what we call tiger bucks for good behavior. Tiger bucks now get them entries to different parties that we have at schools as well as to

168purchase tokens or items that they would love to have. Um I was a bit confused when I was doing the climate survey because when it does ask about events and activities at school I was trying to differentiate events that are planned by you know some schools are very active as it relates to PTO. So most of the events might be related to PTO events and not actual events that are held by Prince George County. So I was like, which one am I really answering to? So that was a little confusion for me because yes, I know the PT some of the PTO events are highly attended. However, when the school does plan other events, they're not as attended as others. So that was for me was a little confusion and that's my comment. >> Um,

169thank you Miss Harris. I'm jotting down notes as you all are speaking feverishly because we're hearing such really helpful things here. But that is really a good a great comment just for us to be able to define that the types of events because that does matter. I um know that the same a similar type of input that you all had previously allowed us to split up some questions in the current survey and we found the feedback to be very helpful as a result. So this is one that we'll keep in mind for the future survey. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. And last question that I have about the strategic plan. Um is there a workg group that is working with you all to kind of identify the next fiveyear priorities? How how is

170that being developed? >> Yes. So uh there was a a light bulb that was shared earlier and I just want to kind of give you a little trajectory of what has happened. So of course everything that we do has to align with state expectations and the blueprint, right? So that's one of the things that we looked at to cross-ch checkck everything we do to make sure we are meeting those expectations. The other piece you all may have seen the um communication going out for focus groups and so on. We have had um focus groups coming to this meeting was even one of those to start to to launch like it's coming. So, we need your eyes and ears um looking out and just spreading the word. But information that we receive from the climate culture

171survey from parents, from students, all of that has really played a key role. We've also used the focus groups. We are also um we went to town halls. We've been at the board meetings listening to parents and so on. and all of that. We look for common emerging themes and through those themes even tonight they keep falling into these categories of student success, the par staff and teachers, right, to make sure they're equipped and we have the best quality people in front of your children. We have the parent partnerships we're hearing coming up tonight and the operations like the buses and those type of things. So they keep falling into those same buckets and we're listening to see are there any other buckets that we're hearing and it still continues to fall into those buckets.

172So right now where we are is then um going to the focus groups and starting to think about possible strategies that we can implement in house that are more broader and all-encompassing. So it's not one department or one group owning anything. And then that next piece is going to be now we need to get out to the community. And this is where we will need your help as we start to you should see something coming out to really launch it officially in the next few weeks and that's when we're going to be asking for additional input and so on. So we'll we'll definitely be in touch and let you know to be on the lookout for that and what the next steps are. Thank you so much. Any others, comments? >> And and Dr. Hughes,

173I I do apologize that I called you Miss Hughes, Dr. Hughes. >> Oh, that's no worries at all. >> Welcome and thank you so much. Um, any other questions, comments, or current concerns? Last chance. Closing it out. Hearing none. We appreciate you all coming through and always providing a wealth of information as well as you all probably are the primary group that has actually engaged with us from an advisory perspective and has asked questions um taken some of our recommendations to heart and we see how that partnership and the numbers you can see the difference between um when you start it and then after you start meeting with PACA there was a huge difference in response. So kudos to the parent and community advisory council for the work and support and that is proof in

174the pudding that when you partner with such a group like this you will get results. So um we we thank you for that and this will close out section seven item seven for presentations. Um, we thank you for um, all of the presentations that were shared, Dr. Coleman. I see you hanging on in there. Um, but we're going to go ahead and let you go as well. We're going to move into the last part of this meeting, which is the adjournment. So, yes, Dr. Hughes, are you just waving at me? >> I was saying good night as you are. You all have a blessed night and um we look forward to the partnership. Have a good night. >> Thank you so much. And so it is 8 9:36. >> Let us adjourn. Can I get

175a motion from the floor? >> So move Lundy. >> Thank you Miss Lundy. >> Second. >> Who second? >> Teresa Smith. >> Thank you Miss Smith. And the meeting is now adjourned. you all have the rest of your night back. Have a great one. >> Good night everyone. God bless y'all. >> Have a great night.