Coraggio Consulting
Prince William County School Board Meeting, Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Date: Wednesday, February 1, 2023
Place: Prince William County School Board, Virginia
Length: 2h 38m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f81ybwq_9gg
Official School Board page (PWCS): https://www.pwcs.edu/about/school_board/

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-11-04. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:01] - Yeah, we could, we could do like a rank voting. Rank choice, what do they call that, rank choice? Okay, all right, all right, all right. I would like to call this meeting the Prince William County School Board order.

[00:00:17] Pursuant to school board policy 139, school board member participation in meetings by electronic communication, school board member Diane Ralston will participate in the meeting through electronic means from her home due to a medical condition that prevents her physical attendance, the clerk will so note in the minutes of the meeting. A motion is in order for the approval of the meeting agenda, Ms. Wall.

[00:00:35] - Mr. Chairman, I move that the Prince William County School Board approve the meeting agenda as recommended. - Do we have a second? - Second. - Second by Ms. Williams, any discussion? Please vote. Ms. Raulston, how do you vote?

[00:00:51] - Yes. - Ms. Raulston votes yes. - The vote is eight yes, unanimous, motion passed. - Moving on to the motion to enter closed session of motions in order, Ms. Wall. - Mr. Chairman, I move that pursuant to Virginia code section 2.2-3711 and 2.2-3712.

[00:01:14] The Prince William County School Board enter closed session for the following reasons. One, to discuss with staff the appointment, transfer, release, assignment, and promotion of specific officers, employees under Virginia code sections 2.2-3711A1. Two, to discuss with division counsel and staff actual or probable litigation and specific legal matters involving specific staff and students under Virginia code sections 2.2-3711A, seven and eight.

[00:01:40] Three, to consult with staff and legal counsel regarding the legal requirements and procedures for collective bargaining by school board employees and the redistricting of school boundaries, which requires legal advice and guidance as provided by Virginia code sections 2.2-3711A, eight. And four, to discuss and receive briefings by staff members related to the security of school facilities, the safety of persons using such facilities, and actions taken to respond to such matters, where discussion in an open meeting would jeopardize the security of such facilities pursuant to Virginia code sections 2.2-3711A19.

[00:02:14] - Do I have a second? - Mr. Chairman. - Ms. Zargarford. - I second. - Any discussion? Please vote. Ms. Raulston, how do you vote? - Yes. - Ms. Raulston votes yes.

[00:02:34] - The vote is eight yes, unanimous, motion passed. - The Prince William County School Board will now enter closed session

[00:02:39] and return to open session in approximately one hour.

[00:03:46] The Prince William County School Board will now reconvene in open session And we have now a closed session certification action item. A motion is in order. Vice Chair, Jennifer Wall. - Mr. Chairman, I move that pursuant to Virginia code section 2.2-3712, the closed session of the Prince William County School Board meeting of February 1st, 2023 be certified by adopting the following resolution.

[00:04:19] Now therefore be it resolved that the Prince William County School Board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge, One, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification resolution applies. And two, only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard and discussed or considered by the school board.

[00:04:42] - Do I have a second? - Mr. Chairman. - Ms. Zargarpur. - I second. - Any discussion? Seeing none, please vote. Ms. Raulston, how do you vote? - Yes. - Ms. Raulston votes yes.

[00:05:06] - The vote is eight yes, unanimous. Motion passed. - Moving on to closed session. - Action items, motion order 8.01, Ms. Wall. - Mr. Chairman, I move that the Prince William County School Board approve the appointments and releases of specific employees as presented in closed session. - Do I have a second?

[00:05:22] - Mr. Chairman. - Ms. Zargarpur. - A second. - Any discussion? Please vote. Ms. Raulston, how do you vote? - Yes. - Ms. Raulston votes yes.

[00:05:50] - The vote is eight yes, motion passed. - Okay, at this time we will do the Pledge of Allegiance. Chance, our student rep from Forest Park will lead us in the pledge.

[00:06:23] everyone we will now move on to our thriving futures focus for this evening but before we do so I want to take a moment to recognize a fantastic so you see a number of things this evening but the sculptures that you see along the dais here and some of the desks mr. Argerport comment yeah on some of these these things thank you dr. Lateef the artists of the 3d sculpture classes at Osborne Park High School are proud to present you a variety of 3d sculpture art on display in the Prince William County Schools KLC school boardroom

[00:06:58] throughout this month. The sculptures were made by 35 talented sculpture artists of Miss Raquel Pierre's 3D sculpture classes at Osborne Park High School. The artworks represented were made using a variety of different media and subject matter including wire food sculptures, cardboard shaped sculptures, color paper sculptures, ceramic sculptures with various themes, and mixed media sculptures. The students worked very hard and ranged from grades 10 through 12 and focused heavily on creating sculpture art with diverse forms and unique themes and real quick I just you're not going to see this but

[00:07:33] these are the the students involved if I'm not going to read all the names but I could post about it later so um congratulations these are beautiful they're really amazing okay we are proud to have them on display this month and look forward to sharing artwork from various schools in the district in the coming months moving on to our thriving futures focus this evening we recognize the amazing oratory talents of our students in the Prince William County Alumni Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated, the Martin Luther King Jr. Youth Oratorical Program.

[00:08:12] Students study with a coach, often a teacher, and begin early in the year to prepare and practice their speeches in anticipation of presenting in the tradition of the acclaimed oratorical skills of Dr. King. In the virtual format, students present their speeches to a panel of judges in advance of the program and were announced as finalists this past December.

[00:08:31] Community members then watch online on the Martin Luther King Day holiday and vote for their favorite orator using a text-to-vote feature. Three of the six winners represent the Brentsville Magisterial District. It is my pleasure to introduce Mrs. Adele Jackson of the Brentsville District to recognize our winners.

[00:08:51] Ms. Jackson. - Thank you, Dr. Lateef. It is my absolute pleasure to introduce Siobhan Davis, ninth grader from Patriot High School. Siobhan is the Best Before the Judges High School winner and the Best Before the Audience winner.

[00:09:11] She is here tonight with her principal, Dr. Mike Bishop. Siobhan, would you like to say a few words about this recognition? - Good evening, my name is Siobhani Davis and I was chosen as the Best Before the Judges and Best Before the Audience High School Division winner.

[00:09:33] I'd first like to thank the judges for their votes in my favor and the audience for taking time out of their busy schedules to watch my speech and vote. To my coach, Mrs. Knight, thank you for your assistance in the process of writing my speech. To my family, thank you so much for constantly supporting me throughout this whole competition and for putting up with the long hours of rehearsing the same seven minutes of words.

[00:09:57] Dr. Bishop and the whole team at Patriot High School, thank you for giving me the chance to represent our school on such a prestigious stage. I'd like to thank Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated for allowing me to use their powerful platform share my voice. In my King's Speech, I wanted to send a message to people. I wanted to show the world that despite how broken we are, despite how much pain we've been through, there's always a light at the end of the tunnel. My speech will only be one of many from other talented writers that gets us to that state of unity, and I hope you take it as a reminder that our country can only

[00:10:32] go up. Our country can only build. We've stumbled down the mountain and now it is time to find our mountaintop thank you to the prince william county school board for this special recognition and thank you all for your time a sincere congratulations to shivani i'm going to interrupt here and just might add shivani is the defending champion is that correct did you win last year as well so

[00:11:05] congratulations again rita ego 11th grade student at gainesville high school is the high school judges choice award winner fortunately principal neo beach could not be here this evening rita is here tonight with previous PWCS Teacher of the Year, Dr. Robert Scott. Would you like to say a few words? Thank you. I would first like to thank Dr. McDade, Dr.

[00:11:40] Lateef and the board members for this opportunity and this recognition. It was an honor and a privilege to be given the chance to commemorate the legacy of Dr. King through oratory. Thank you to my parents and my dad especially for listening through several drafts and thank you to Mr. Beach, Dr. Scott and and Gainesville High School for this opportunity as well.

[00:12:01] Thank you. - Thank you. Arhan Ghatam, a sixth grade student at Pennington Traditional School is the featured speaker award winner.

[00:12:16] Arhan is here tonight with Principal Amanda Johnson and Assistant Principal David Anderson. Would you like to speak a few words? - Well, I feel exceedingly joyful and humble to receive this great honor.

[00:12:36] And I would like to thank the school of boards for giving me a chance to finally commemorate Dr. King's legacy and oh my God.

[00:12:55] And also I would like to thank my family for supporting me through all the way through this competition and leading me to where I am now. And thank you, mom. And thank you, mom, for especially hearing a lot of the drafts of my speech.

[00:13:13] So, and also I'd like to thank the teachers at Pennington Traditional School, especially Vice Principal Anderson and Principal Ms. Johnson. So thank you, and that's all.

[00:13:35] - Thank you, Arhan and Mrs. Jackson. As Arhan reminded us, these students wouldn't be here without their parents and their family and their support and their guardians. If the parents of our three winners that we just recognized, please stand if they're in the audience so they can be recognized as well.

[00:13:59] Thank you all very much for allowing your students to participate in this program. I'm gonna go, we're gonna do the introductions for the rest of the winners. It is my pleasure now to introduce Mrs. Jen Wall, the Vice Chairwoman and Gainesville Magisterial District Representative to introduce the next winner.

[00:14:16] Mrs. Wall. - Thank you, Dr. Lateef. It is my pleasure to recognize, first of all, Sakshi Gowda, eighth grade student at Reagan Middle School who was best before the audience winner.

[00:14:34] Sakshi's principal Chris Beamer could not be here tonight, but assistant principal Janita Boatwright and teacher Janine Byers are here to lend their support. Sakshi, would you like to please say a few words?

[00:14:50] - Good evening, everyone. My name is Sakshi Gowda, and I'm from Reagan Middle School. In the past, Reagan has been a part of the MLK Oratorical Competition, and I'm so grateful that the administrative team has brought it back this year, and given me and many other students the opportunity to participate in this competition.

[00:15:09] I'm thankful that Prince William County has opened up so many new clubs and provided various opportunities for students to learn and grow. I was very impressed with the virtual event hosted by Delta Sigma Theta. They also did a phenomenal job with the awards ceremony, as they planned for a drum line and school dancers to come and perform, and there were many great speeches.

[00:15:31] I'd like to thank the school board for having me here and recognizing me, as it truly does mean a lot to me. I'd also like to give a huge thanks to my school oratorical coach, Ms. Byers, for her amazing guidance and advice on how to navigate this competition.

[00:15:46] And finally, I'd like to thank my family for encouraging me to take part in this competition and always being there for me whenever I needed help at any part of the process. I truly am blessed to have been able to participate in such a wonderful event, and I hope to take part in it again next year.

[00:16:04] Thank you. - Congratulations, Sakshi. The next student I want to highlight is Rosalie Bugay. Am I saying that correctly?

[00:16:19] Okay, seventh grade student at Bull Run Middle School. And she is the Middle School Judges Choice Award winner. So Rosalie is here tonight with Principal Matt Fithian. And so Rosalie, congratulations, and please say a few words for us.

[00:16:39] - Thank you everyone. This is an amazing opportunity. I'm so blessed to have been able to go through this. I want to thank my school oratorical coach, Harris Hawkins for guiding me through this speech writing experience, all my teachers at Bull Run, and my family for helping me throughout this experience. I would like to thank the school board for this special record and thank you everyone for everything. Congratulations, Rosalie.

[00:17:16] Thank you, Ms. Wall. Can the families of these two students please stand so we can recognize you as well and last but certainly not least my pleasure to introduce mrs. Lisa Zargarpur of the Coles Magisterial District. Ms. Zargarpur. Thank you Dr.

[00:17:35] Lateef. Our final winner to be recognized this evening attends Benton Middle School. Alyssa Godfrey, eighth grade student, is the Best Before the Judges middle school winner. She is accompanied by Jerry Piacchese, the Benton principal and club sponsors Leah Green and Amy Bain. Alyssa would you please come and say a few words and congratulations. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, it is an honor and a pleasure to have this opportunity to attend tonight's school board meeting. I'm so grateful I was able to represent Benton Middle School in the 33rd Annual Youth Oratorical Competition. I would like to

[00:18:13] give a special thanks to my principal, Ms. P. H. Hazy, for the support, for supporting the others, the other students and I who participated. I would also like to thank my coach, Ms. Bain, who was, who unfortunately could not be here tonight, and my other coach, Ms. Green. Additionally, I'd like to thank Prince William County alumnae chapter Delta Sigma Theta for supporting this program it was really an honor to be able to come back here and participate in something like this to give me it was I really enjoyed it and I was able to use something that is very that I use a lot public speaking that I enjoy a lot to

[00:18:49] come here and do that for my school so thank you very much thank you miss Zargaport I'd like to ask Alyssa's parents to please stand to be recognized I know some of my board members may wanna say a few words.

[00:19:10] Ms. Jessie. - Good evening, I wanna congratulate all of the speakers and I want to tell you that Delta Sigma Theta started this program 33 years ago and the MLK recognition ceremony is also a longstanding program.

[00:19:33] Initially, it was a program where recognized adults. Ms. Joanne Bonnerese and her husband started this program through Delta Sigma Theta. I was honored to be the person that started the oratorical contest. And to see you in this room tonight means a lot.

[00:19:50] It's very emotional for me to see this contest that was just an idea that I thought would work. It really worked. So I wanna thank Ms. Sheila Mitchell who organized this program. And it's a big, you know, it's a big program when you're working with three school districts.

[00:20:10] So on behalf of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, Joanne Bonner-Reese and myself, I'd like to say to you, thank you for keeping this legacy because I always knew that when you put the words of Dr. King's in the mouths of students instead of adults, that the legacy would remain.

[00:20:30] And I know many of you have been asked of speaking tours. And I also wanted to congratulate Mrs. Sheila Mitchell and Delta for organizing the award ceremony. and I think that was Sunday night, it was before we went to Richmond, and I attended that, and it was uplifting.

[00:20:49] The young man, I think you were the speaker from Pennington, right? You did a great job, thank you. I just wanna thank you for keeping Dr. King's legacy alive in the voices of young people, thank you very much.

[00:21:07] - Okay, well, wonderful. I'd like to again thank these gifted speakers for their dedication, talents, and reverence, and honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. I wanna also thank again the teachers, the librarians, the principals, the assistant principals for encouraging our students to participate in this competition.

[00:21:23] My oldest participated in this competition while he was at Benton. He did not get as far as any of you. I can guarantee you that. And I do wanna thank the teachers and principals for really doing this. And I know in a lot of our schools, it's the librarians who are managing this work too.

[00:21:41] So thank you. I'd be remiss if I didn't embarrass Dr. Bishop up here. He's from a school near where I grew up with had one of the best speech teams in the nation. And I know he worked closely with their speech coach and I'm not surprised that two years in a row, his student has won the Martin Luther King program.

[00:22:00] So anyways, I'm gonna turn it over to Dr. McDade for some comments. - Thank you, Dr. Lateef, congratulations. I wanna echo the sentiments of everyone you've already heard. We're just so incredibly in awe of each of you and inspired by you and today, February 1st, marks the beginning of Black History Month and what better way to kick off the month than to have the voices of our students speaking out for equality, equity and inclusion in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King.

[00:22:33] So thank you so much for sharing your powerful voices with all of us, job well done. Thank you to all of the teachers, the principals, the coaches for your support, parents for all of your work and continuing to push your young people to reach for their dreams and aspirations.

[00:22:50] We thank each and every one of you and I especially wanna thank our leaders and teachers that, educators that are here tonight, standing by and supporting our students because it really means a lot for us to always keep a circle of support around them. So thank you so much for all that you do and all of your hard work.

[00:23:07] Congratulations to each of you. You continue to make us PWCS proud. - I'd like to invite you all, yeah, another round of applause. I'd like to invite you all up to the front here with your principals and the students to take a picture with the school board.

[00:24:10] Okay.

[00:24:27] No, no, no.

[00:24:40] We'll talk in the next, we'll talk soon.

[00:25:29] Sure. We're gonna get her on her way. Thank you so much for your work. Thank you.

[00:26:18] That's on video.

[00:26:35] Excellent. Okay, moving on. Thank you all for indulging us in celebrating our tremendous students who are just really the pride and joy of Prince William County Schools. Let me find my glasses here.

[00:26:51] We will be moving on to the adoption of the consent agenda. At this point, Ms. Wall, I'll ask you to offer the motion to adopt the consent agenda. - Thank you, Dr. Lateef.

[00:27:07] - I move that the Prince William County School Board approve the public meeting consent agenda as recommended. - Do I have a second? - Mr. Chairman. - Ms. Williams. - I second. - Any discussion? - Aye. - Ms. Jessie. - To the clerks.

[00:27:23] - Thank you, thank you, thank you for being you and thank you for putting up with all of us calling you, driving you crazy, I know we drive you crazy, but I really appreciate, yes we do, yes we do, but I appreciate your professionalism and how you keep us on track and make sure we show up at places that we should show up at and not miss places that we shouldn't, and not show up at places that we shouldn't be.

[00:27:47] So thank you so much, you know I love both of you and all three of you really, thank you very much. Please vote. Ms. Raulston, how do you vote?

[00:28:03] - Yes. - And Ms. Jessie was just commenting because it is school board clerk appreciation. Is it week? You only get a week, just one week. One week, one week, one week. - The vote is eight yes, unanimous, motion passed.

[00:28:20] - Okay, moving on to citizen comment times. Those citizens who've signed up in advance with the clerk may address school board this evening when they are called to the podium. The citizen comment period for regular school board meetings is one hour and citizens may speak on agenda items or other topics germane to the operations and policies of Prince William County Schools.

[00:28:35] Please use proper decorum and manners while at the podium or you'll be asked to step aside. We ask that the audience please be respectful of each speaker and refrain from any clapping, cheering or jeering to avoid disruption of the meeting. If you do not, the board will recess and I'll ask the room be clear to restore public order.

[00:28:50] Tonight we have three citizens signed up to speak. When I call your name, please come up to the podium and state your name and address for the record. Okay, we'll first start with Mr. Steven Spiker.

[00:29:10] - Hi, good evening, thank you. Steven Spiker, you said give my address as well. So it's 6551 Quail Hollow Drive in Manassas. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight. I wanna address the National Merit Scholarship Program. I know there's already been a lot of words and a lot of angst over this, but I'm addressing you right now as a parent that we actually have more questions than we do answers.

[00:29:32] And one of the messages I wanna leave you as a board with is that parents are watching to see how you're gonna respond to this. So as a parent with three kids, two of them in county schools, I can tell you that the one thing that is going to be unacceptable is if this is dismissed as not a big deal.

[00:29:48] First, because this is a matter of trust. Parents have told, sorry, schools have told parents and students to trust them to help prepare our kids for the next phase of their life, including college. In many cases, providing resources and helping put together the applications for colleges and scholarships.

[00:30:04] But trust is earned and not given, and overlooking student achievement undermines our students and erodes that trust. Which brings me to my second point, which is that we should be celebrating these parents, or these students. Even if a lot of accommodations were given out on time, it's often just dropped on students' desk or put in the folder to take home.

[00:30:24] These are students who out of 1.5 million test takers in the country tested in the top 3% nationwide. These are our county's top achieving students. What does the school system exist for not to strive for the best from every student, and when the student does achieve something special and worth congratulating, then it's treated as not a big deal.

[00:30:45] And I'm bringing this up because we've already been seeing this happen. Just a few weeks ago, politicians talking about this issue, said that, you know, dismissed parent concerns as not important, called, quote, "fake outrage," said that this isn't worth looking into or investigating, and one of the state delegates even said that the schools likely forgot to inform students of this letter of accommodation because, and I'm quoting here, they don't matter that much.

[00:31:14] When I heard that as a parent, I was frankly disgusted. I can't imagine, you know, I have two young kids, when they get to be in juniors and seniors in high school, you know, what I would do if they tested top 3%. I'm the type of parent who puts their A's and B's in good tests up on the refrigerator.

[00:31:32] And the point is that we need to be doing more to celebrate the hard work of these kids and hold them up as an example who are again the top achieving kids in our county it's a final issue i bring up is why aren't there more of them we're talking about the letters accommodations but the next level up are the finalists and semi-finalists for the national merit scholarship fairfax county had over 100 of these loudoun county had over 60. here in prince william county we had two are you satisfied with that i'm not satisfied with that why don't we have more of these high achieving students and that's the last question that parents are asking themselves.

[00:32:06] Why aren't we doing better here? And when success is achieved, why is it forgotten or overlooked or even dismissed? So as we look to uncover more information, we'll be looking for the answers from you guys. Thank you. - Thank you, Mr. Richard Jesse.

[00:32:27] - Good evening, my name is Richard Jesse. My address is on file. I'd like to give a proposal for consideration. There's gonna be a new high school built here in probably about five, six years.

[00:32:44] And I'd like for us to start considering, a specialty program for that school. The recommendation I'd like you to consider is we have welding programs. We have a HVAC program, I believe, and we have several.

[00:33:01] I would recommend that we consider having an electrical program at this school as one of the programs, working with the union to help sponsor it and staff it. And then also let the kids be able to go through the program and by the time they get out, if they start as a freshman, most of those kids will be able to complete their pre-apprentice programs and get into the union and be making, on average, around $70,000 a year.

[00:33:36] So that's something I think we should consider. The other thing I would like to recommend is that we have kids that if they're working some of these programs, particularly with the union, I would like to see that Prince William County hire some of these kids in the construction areas of our new school if possible so that they can take the skills as a HVAC person or as a welder or as an electrician and work as within the school system. We are always looking to give jobs to students and that would be something I'd like for you

[00:34:14] to consider. And I think you can work out a labor agreement with the unions to do that. They also make sure that we have an equity program for the academic specialty at that.

[00:34:29] In my opinion, when Colgan was built, we lost a lot of the nice specialty programs for the the arts, and they all went over to Colgan, and it's been a difficult thing with Woodbridge not being able to compete.

[00:34:54] And last, I just want to again point out something that my wife said. Not only did she start the program, the MLK original program, but she ran it for 17 years. And finally, my daughters and I finally told her, "Enough is enough."

[00:35:12] and you need to stop, but she's still been involved every year helping get it, and I'd just like to thank her for that, thank you. - Jalen Custis.

[00:35:30] - Hello, good evening, my name is Jalen Custis, I reside in the Woodbridge District. I have two things I would like to point out. Last year I was here for my first board meeting ever, it was about the budget, and I had access to see the whole budget spread out, pie chart and all that.

[00:35:46] I looked at it this year, I didn't see it, so I know you guys are bringing it up, but I would like to, someone can guide me there. I don't know if I was looking wrong or it's not released yet, but I would like to see that because I can understand what's going on. I think you guys are also going to do a public talk about the budget and stuff like that.

[00:36:03] But this leads me to my second point, infrastructure. I talked about infrastructure last time the budget was proposed. I think it was like a 7% going to infrastructure and I said that we need to bring more to infrastructure. I've been in school, I'm a military child, so I've been back and forth.

[00:36:19] I have been in 1st grade, 3rd grade, 7th and 8th inside the Woodbridge District and all those things have in common in the Woodbridge District is the heating and cooling system. I would like to say that after recess in the summer and you come back into a hot room, it's very draining on a child, you're going to go to sleep.

[00:36:36] You're going to put your head down on the desk because you're so exhausted through the heat. And my issue is this, I don't know, I can't do the math, but however long ago I was in 1st grade and 3rd grade, they still face the same problems. Why is nothing being done, or again, correct me if I'm wrong, if something's being done, this will be it, but I just want to bring out the point that these issues have been for a long time, I'm not that old, but it's been there for a pretty long time, and nothing has changed.

[00:37:02] You go back to those same schools, there's still some heating and cooling problems, there's still electrical problems, especially in Woodbridge District. Woodbridge District have very old, older schools, and they need more funding to maintain those schools, so I'm asking the board to look in more into that, and again, I would probably back for to talk about the budget but those are main concerns that I have thank you very much and have a good day thank you moving on to 13.01 student housing and elementary school attendance area recommendations this is on for information dr. McDade thank you mr. chairman I would like to bring forward

[00:37:41] members of my team Matt Cartlidge and our COO Vern Bach as you know we did come before you with some proposals from the committee there was two options a plan one and a plan two since that time we did have a public hearing and although we didn't have in-person participants for the public hearing we did have participants online that did leave comments for us and feedback on the plans and so we attempted to incorporate some of that feedback that shows engagement from both the committee that represents the communities that are part of the boundary discussion as well as the feedback from families within those

[00:38:20] communities that will be impacted. And so tonight we're bringing forward some additional recommendations that does take into consideration what our families have shared as well as considerations with feedback that we've gotten from our board members.

[00:38:36] Board members Zargarpur, Wahl as well as Jackson did have some community hosts, some roundtables with community members and they did bring back to us notes from those meetings and shared what constituents had to say and so we incorporated all of that feedback and would like to now share with you a few slight amendments to one of the proposals to bring before the board for consideration thank you dr mcdade good evening chair latif vice chair wall board members and dr mcdade it's my pleasure to have Dr. Matt Cartlidge here and Mr. Scott Halsey to join me in

[00:39:16] presenting some of the modifications to the committee's preferred option plan 2 for the boundary adjustment for the opening of the Rosemount Louis school for school year 22 or 22 sorry 2023-24 but first I want to thank Dr. Cartlidge and his team Scott Halsey and Chris Papp for engaging the community throughout this process again I want to give a big shout out and thank you to the volunteer parents who were committee members who gave up many hours throughout their evenings in working with Matt and his team to develop plan the preferred option

[00:39:54] plan to that we presented to the board on January 4th throughout the process we've appreciated the community engagement I want to thank folks who submitted to us either by email or through feedback at some of our forums or in conversations and feedback to board members we really appreciate that level of engagement in the feedback i do want to reiterate just throughout the the boundary adjustment process we really try to attempt several things we try to accomplish we really try to balance the enrollments within 15

[00:40:30] percent of the overall capacity utilization of the affected schools we consider the demographic balance of any new of any proposed new school boundaries we attempt to minimize the number of times that we impact in a geographic area families within the past several years we attempt to facilitate the transportation efficient transportation of students we really try our best to avoid splitting small neighborhoods and we attempt to improve the geographic progression of communities from elementary to middle to high so I just want to reiterate and affirm what dr. McDade shared we have gathered and

[00:41:09] considered a lot of feedback over the past several weeks we are here to propose to you some modifications to plan to in attempting to address what we've heard from our parents and at this time I'd like to ask dr. cartilage to share with you specifics about what those adjustments are so dr. Cartlidge thank you mr. Bach chairman Lateef members of the school board dr. McDade I'm dr. Cartlidge the supervisor at planning within the facilities department first of all I do want to also echo mr. Bach and dr. McDade's comments about thanking

[00:41:48] the boundary planning committee for helping us work through various iterations that started with the preliminary plan that my staff and I developed presented to them at our first meeting in the first week of November. Throughout the planning process we worked with the committee to develop a Plan 1, a Plan 1A and then Plan 2. This evening what we're going to walk through is kind of a brief overview of what was Plan 2 that was presented to you all for information back on January 4th and then we'll walk through a couple of modifications or tweaks to the committee's Plan 2 and as both Dr.

[00:42:27] McDade and Mr. Box said the committee's Plan 2 was the most preferred plan and it really did address a lot of the concerns that parents had voiced to us throughout the town hall style meetings, the online forum, and then also through our committee members.

[00:42:46] So just to kind of remind you of what was Plan 2, there were seven schools initially considered within the scope of this project. Of those seven schools, three of them are sending parts of their existing attendance area to Rosemont-Lewis to the new school. We have Sinclair, we have Mullen, and we have Ellis. In the committee's Plan 2, it's important to note that Sudley's attendance area is not proposed for any impacts, so no part of Sudley's current attendance area is proposed for reassignment

[00:43:20] to any of the other schools. As Dr. McDade mentioned, we have collected additional feedback through interactions with the principals, communications through our online form, other communications that the board members have apprised us of, of meetings that they've had with constituents and we're excited really to share with you kind of a revision to what we thought was already a plan that upholds the boundary regulation 264-1 and just kind of builds upon that and advances the

[00:43:54] conversation and narrative forward. As a geographer I always like to start with a big map. We'll start with just kind of the overview. You'll notice that there four call-out boxes on this map we're going to address those in kind of pair wise fashion because they impact Westgate in one section and then the others related to Yorkshire and Loch Lomans so we'll start with Westgate so in the preliminary plan the committee wanted to share that with the board as

[00:44:29] well to show you all where we started with the process and how through public input and working with stakeholders and parents how that progressed through to Committee's Plan 2. What we're showing in this suggested revision for the Committee's Plan 2 is actually reverting Westgate's assignments back to what was shown in the preliminary plan. And the reason behind that is one is the proximity of the proposed or partial Iron Gate community. It's more proximate

[00:45:03] to Ellis than is the community called Hallmark Manor being proposed in the committee's plan to reassign that to Ellis. The justification behind why the committee felt that they should offer another consideration and reassign Hallmark Manor was because it was they were considering that Iron Gate, the community within Westgate's attendance area, was being partially reassigned. So they offered an alternative in the form of reassigning Hallmark Manor to Ellis.

[00:45:35] Through the additional kind of research that we've been doing and working with stakeholders we wanted to share this with you as a suggestion to revert back to what was originally shown in the preliminary plan for the fact that the transportation component these students would be the same driving distance between iron gate and ellis as they are to westgate westgate is their closest school simply because they would be walking to westgate so distance wise if we're going to offer overcrowding relief to Westgate, and we have these two options on the table. There's

[00:46:13] justification for focusing on reassigning a portion of Iron Gate to Ellis away from Westgate. In terms of how much overcrowding relief is on the table here, the two communities are very similar. In the third year that the boundaries would be in effect, we would project 89 elementary students residing within Hallmark Manor and 75 students residing within this portion of Iron Gate. So in terms of overcrowding relief, the two neighborhoods are fairly similar. And again,

[00:46:50] we think that transporting a portion of the Iron Gate students via bus supports student safety. It's, and like I mentioned before, the driving distance between this portion of Iron Gate and Ellis and that portion of Iron Gate and Westgate, they're within a tenth of a mile of each other.

[00:47:06] so we're not asking students to take on any much different of a commute than what those two neighborhoods would offer. Speaking of transportation I want to mention that we have worked closely with the transportation department and we've analyzed how many rising fifth graders are going to be impacted for reassignment and as you all remember I think most of the board members here have been through at least one set of boundaries back in 2020. You've also been on some of the committees. Historically, it's been recommended by the Boundary Planning Committee to allow the rising fifth graders to stay at their current school with that

[00:47:45] caveat that transportation would not be provided by PWCS. I'm really elated to say that in working with transportation and critically analyzing how many students we're talking about, it's no longer a recommendation that we don't provide transportation to these rising fifth graders in fact we can for the SY 2023-24 year allow those fifth graders to stay at their currently assigned school and they would continue to receive the same transportation services that they received this year as fourth graders so i think that's a huge win we'll pivot over to the

[00:48:21] yorkshire loch lomond and ellis portion of the proposed suggested revisions in conversations with some of the stakeholders in this area with the building principal we've learned that the bull run mobile home community has deep roots in Yorkshire and when we look at the commutes that we would be asking this community to do by reassigning them to Loch Lomond as opposed to the commute they currently have to Yorkshire it is a greater ask of this community and right now Yorkshire is not over capacity

[00:48:58] but our enrollment projections are supporting continued growth in its attendance area in the out years. Now based on the consideration for the transportation component and also the sentiment that is being shared with the principal at Yorkshire it would be feasible to not affect Yorkshire's attendance area right now and leave the Bull Run mobile home community at Yorkshire. In doing so we like I said we are anticipating continued growth in the

[00:49:33] community but you know we could incorporate portable classrooms as a temporary means of overcrowding abatement we were also as part of the annual CIP process the capital improvements program we evaluate new projections new space every year and our projections right now are suggesting that some of the area schools are going to have decreasing enrollment over the years to come. So we can revisit possible boundary adjustments between Yorkshire and

[00:50:07] another neighboring school. It's also important to note that in the proposed CIP, we do have a new elementary school proposed for 2032 as its opening year. We don't have a site right now, but that is something that we are actively working on. So there are some other options is what I'm trying to say for Yorkshire receiving overcrowding relief in the future that doesn't necessitate asking the Bull Run mobile home community to take on a longer commute now.

[00:50:40] If we make this adjustment and undo the proposed reassignment from Yorkshire to Loch Lomond, not as many neighborhoods that are currently assigned to Loch Lomond would need to be proposed for reassignment to Ellis because we're not sending over the students from Yorkshire.

[00:50:59] As a result there, circled on the screen, you'll see that there is a community called Fairmont, that we were previously recommending for reassignment from Loch Lomond to Ellis and our suggestion now is we should let them remain at Loch Lomond. The nice kind of added benefit of doing this is it also puts less pressure on Ellis Elementary in the out years, decreasing the third year or 2027 excuse me from about 115 percent of projected capacity down to about 108 so that's

[00:51:35] moving in the right direction provided on this slide are the two tables the top table shows the enrollment projections based on the current attendance areas the bottom table shows what the projections would be based on these suggested revisions so you'll see changes from the committee's Plan 2 in Yorkshire, Loch Lomond, Westgate and Ellis. And that concludes my presentation we'll put a plug in there on that third year we only see two schools

[00:52:13] over 100% of capacity so we're doing a lot of good in this area and the 24 portable classrooms that are presently there I know we will be able to reduce that number thank you so much. Thank you Dr. Cartlidge that concludes our of presentation, Mr. Chairman.

[00:52:33] - Thank you, Dr. McDade, Dr. Cartlidge, any questions? Again, this is on for information. School board members will have another couple of weeks to go over this. Public still continues to have time to contact the board on this and this will be up for vote if I'm correct at the February 15th meeting?

[00:52:51] - That's correct. - Thank you, Dr. Cartlidge. Ms. Wall, and then we'll go down this way. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the work that the planning staff has done on this and the responsiveness to the additional comments from the communities and the willingness to look at some of these modifications to plan two.

[00:53:13] I wanted to thank also the committee parents. If any parents who have been on the committee, if you were on the committee and you're listening, thank you so much. I know it is a lot of work to pour over these data charts and maps to learn the tools. I've served on a couple of boundary committees in the past.

[00:53:31] I know how much work it is and it's completely volunteer and you don't get paid, you might get some cookies. So it's a really big deal. And so thank you so much. Thank you so much for your work. And it really helps the board out as we of course have very difficult decisions to make.

[00:53:46] But I, and I appreciate these adjustments and I'll be looking at them and studying them. I had one question. How many, I was, you'll have to remind me 'cause I've looked at through this data, but it's been a little, it's been a few weeks. How many students were, we project, many students are there in the bull run mobile home community how many that's the main community that's now slated to stay at yorkshire correct it's projected to have about 50 students about 50 students okay so and do they they don't have any trailers there currently at yorkshire at yorkshire they do not okay they're about 98 of capacity 98 currently current okay so we're just looking into

[00:54:23] the future like if the demographic or not the demographic the enrollment trends follow what we think then we might have to do that in the future however you're saying that we do have in our policies some leeway for adjusting slight adjust boundary adjustments if necessary that's correct we can rely temporarily on portable classrooms if that need arises and then like i said part of our annual cip process we evaluate the capacities and the new enrollment trends that we're observing so it's potentially possible that in the years to come we can make another adjustment at one of its neighboring schools as a means of overcrowding relief and then also the new school

[00:55:00] that's scheduled to open in 2032 so a variety of avenues that we can be monitoring and pursuing okay sounds good so and i'm aware that the that bull run mobile home community is really really in close proximity to the school they are sure that is a big consideration it is efficient transportation i mean it's so close yes all right thank you no further questions um miss jackson and then miss william all right i just want to say again thank you for the presentation tonight and to the boundary committees the board just wanted additional time to consider

[00:55:38] additional feedback and I just appreciate the time you've taken to present tonight I do looking at the boundary table revise I I see that some of the concerns about capacity numbers at Ellis have been addressed to some degree actually to a large degree and while being mindful of other schools so So I appreciate that.

[00:56:03] I also really appreciate that there was a second presentation. It really does help get the information out there and ensure transparency. Just wanted to take a moment and just thank you. Thank you. Ms. Williams. Thank you.

[00:56:19] I just want to also echo the same sentiments as my other board members. I would like to learn more about the thought process of how we came to this revised. from my standpoint this is miraculous we as a board as a long-serving board member I feel that this has been the goal that we've been slowly kicking the can to get to and I appreciate the fact that this is probably so far the least painful experience and looking at balanced numbers right I think that the

[00:56:58] consideration for not moving students based upon their location geographic location and often the transportation conditions are not weighted as heavy as maybe we should view them when we do boundaries in the future I appreciate your expertise in geography and I think it serves us really well as a school division but I think there's a little different sometimes between the knowledge that you have which is amazing and then our real life experiences of our parents and families and I mean that to say that very carefully because I

[00:57:36] know you're not driving around from each school with a child and all of these different things so that would not be your area of focus but I think the marriage of them is definitely reflected in this new revised table I appreciate whatever work behind the scenes that I'm not aware of that we came up with these totals I am interested to know what you anticipate for possible portable classrooms because they're they're none right on the bottom but also the numbers are balanced but I was just curious because the like for example Westgate current I'm scared excuse me Yorkshire currently was on the top it's like a hundred and two percent right but there are no trailers then you

[00:58:16] have another school it's like a hundred and three percent and they have a trailer so I'd be interested to see or to learn more exactly what the tipping point is for those so that we can look at that as board members too and we consider boundaries in the future because that also makes a difference some people love portable classrooms some people don't some schools utilize them in a very their variety of different ways and I think that that piece of information would also be helpful for us as a board as a factor that to think about when we're looking at these boundaries I'm very excited because because this is probably the most balanced table I've seen sitting up here.

[00:58:53] And I, again, wanna thank you, everyone else on your team, as well as the Boundary Planning Committee, and definitely thank you for listening to all of the stakeholders, because it's definitely reflected here, so thank you. - Thank you. - Ms. Jessie.

[00:59:08] - First, I wanna thank Mr. Cartlidge. You know, I've worked with you before, and I think you really are a genius when it comes to this work. And the young man, I don't know your name, remember you from previous Scott Halsey Vernon you really lucked out you've got two guys who really know what they're doing and not only that because you listen to people and the fact that you guys listened to these committees and came back and revised and that's what you've always done and I

[00:59:44] want you to know that I really appreciate it I have a question I I know that you revised based on moving people from so people the transportation area the west gate going to alice is there any situation where in the past where we've had a person who was in walking distance of their school that's now being transported in this plan because i don't know the western hand that well we do have

[01:00:18] some of those occurrences in mullen most of mullins attendance area is a walker attendance area for that school but more students live in Mullen than it's a it's Walker boundary then the school can accommodate so in order to prioritize bringing these children possibly from portable classrooms into a permanent classroom and to a new school there are some transportation inefficiencies introduced when you reassign a Walker community from one school and bus them to a new

[01:00:52] school or any other school. We have worked very extensively to try to minimize that as best as possible and really there are only just a few places where such occurrence happens. Westgate is another example but again there's 125 percent of capacity of the building's capacity if we took all the walkers within the walker boundary for Westgate the school will be running at 125 percent of capacity so there's a decision to be made there either have introduced a transportation and efficiency by busing some neighborhood to Ellis or some other

[01:01:28] school in lieu of having a school running at 125% and correct me if I'm wrong but I think you were a school principal at one time yeah and I think I was for 20 years I think you were I think you dealt with a few trailers in your time and you know they are great temporary solutions there's nothing wrong with them for a temporary matter but if we have a choice here an opportunity to leverage a brand-new beautiful school we're going to have to accept a few transportation inefficiencies along the way I was very impressed and maybe I'm reading these numbers wrong but in 2930 your percentage of capacity in the first

[01:02:08] plan was 162.8 and in the new revision is 100 am I correct about that yeah so the the top of the table shows the current school boundaries if we didn't make any changes. So I think you're keying in on Ellis. So if we didn't make any reassignments to Ellis, we would anticipate that school to be at 160% of capacity in 2029. Through the committee's hard work and through these revisions, we believe we can reduce that by over 40%. So 118% is still, you know, that puts it on our radar for finding a solution, you know, way out in the future,

[01:02:46] but we're making good decisions now by reducing that from 160 to 118. - And am I correct that most of these schools that you're moving to the new school were Title I schools before? - Yes. - So this new school will be another Title I school.

[01:03:02] So in terms of movement, you really didn't have a lot of choices. - Each of the schools in this area will, by an absolute number count, have fewer economically disadvantaged or poverty, students living in poverty than they do right now and that's simply because we're sending students to a new school you're introducing a new school to the area so as they begin attending Rosemont Lewis those children are no longer contributing to those numbers at the existing schools well I just want to thank you guys for your professionalism thank you very much thank you Miss Jessie mr. Agapal thank

[01:03:40] you dr. Lateef I just want to echo what my other board members have said thanking the parents and the the families who I spent time with listening to their concerns and then being able to take them to you guys and working some magic here so I appreciate that and the people who were sitting on the committees and the time that they spent doing this was considerable as well I'm looking at these numbers and and it does seem like that you know we're going to be looking at a potential new school so that'll shift some of those things later

[01:04:16] on in the future but I'm just grateful that we were able to take the time on this that I feel like that was a really important piece that we were we were able to add to this I know there's a lot of people looking forward to you know they got to get their staff hired they got to figure out where you know what we're doing so I'm just appreciative for the extra time because it was really important to make sure we got everyone's voice in on this so thank you so much I I think I'll take just a quick moment to thank Dr. McDade and Dr. Brown for helping us bring so many voices to the table.

[01:04:51] You know, in almost 10 years I've been doing this for Prince William County Schools, I can say that the amount of engagement with the communities, the principals, different lenses through which we haven't customarily looked as hard through, all of that has come together into what we think is a pretty amazing plan that we can share with you all tonight.

[01:05:10] - Okay, I concur, Dr. Cartlidge, thank you very much. Dr. McDade, thank you for all the work. Oh, Mr. Wilk, Justin Wilk, Potomac Magisterial District. - Everyone has said, I mean, whatever's left over here, but thank you again, you know, I know prior to this, you know, again, like you said, over the last couple of years, there's definitely been some major changes, especially with the community buy-in piece.

[01:05:35] I know when we did our last boundaries with Potomac Shores Middle, we were in the height of the pandemic. So a lot of that was virtual. So this is actually our first real, I guess we'll say case study, of back to pulling in person and everything like that, where you're able to bring people together, not necessarily over Zoom, and get that community buy-in.

[01:05:52] So I appreciate it. It was a very engaged group, and although it's not my school, I'm happy for those who are affected or impacted by this, because I think it was a very collaborative process. So thank you.

[01:06:08] - Thank you, Mr. Wilk. Okay, all right, folks, thank you. Let's move on to student representative time. Tonight we have, again, Chance Williams from a senior at Forest Park High School to offer remarks from our student member. Mr. Williams.

[01:06:24] - Thank you, Dr. Lateef. Good evening. Over the past two weeks, I've had the opportunity to see five board members away from the dais. I saw Ms. Williams, Mr. Wilk, Ms. Wall, and Ms. Zargarpur all at Lake Ridge Middle School for a robotics competition.

[01:06:40] I most recently saw Mr. Jackson at Marsteller Middle School for the same thing. I'm astounded by the attention of my favorite activities is getting and also extremely grateful i would like to give a huge shout out to miss denise carroll the robotics and stem coordinator for pwcs her hard work and her dedication to her kids put on two back-to-back weekend competitions i would also like to acknowledge the volunteers from osborne park high school along with forest park high school who helped miss carroll set up and manage such large events lastly a huge shout out to all the mentors coaches and students that make this program what it is we have teams from nearly every part of the

[01:07:16] the county qualify for the state championship. STEM is a growing part of the future and this program is a part of it. Continuing on, happy Black History Month. It is amazing to see black history being acknowledged by many, but it is hard to truly acknowledge black history when many do not know it. Black history is interwoven with American history, yet the two are constantly separated. The PDOSES curriculum does an amazing job at connecting the two, yet it's still unfortunate that students still only learn about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Growing up young and black my favorite book was the autobiography of

[01:07:51] Malcolm X yet many still don't know who he was. A great way to truly truly honor Black History Month would be greater inclusion of black history in our courses. With the second semester of school beginning I would like to jump back to a recent issue affecting many families. Last Friday when the marking period ended elementary students were given a half day whilst the older kids had a full day of school. This situation is problematic as parents now struggle with either finding a place for their child to go or calling out of work.

[01:08:21] Teachers with young kids are forced to leave early to go home to their children. While I understand the thought behind this process, in practice it could present more problems and solutions. Recently in meetings with various officials from the KLC, it has been said that they wish they had more, they wish they had better access to the students.

[01:08:40] The student representatives in the student senate exists to provide the PWCS school board with the student point of view, to provide ground level information from the student perspective. If there is questions or concerns regarding the student body, reach out. The student representatives in the student senate exist to provide information.

[01:08:58] Our goal is to provide feedback that betters the student body. At my high school and many others across the county, the activities director is one of the busiest people at the school, with keeping track of sports, clubs and groups, school sponsored and non-school sponsored, whilst also watching their budgets.

[01:09:15] I have worked closely with my activities director, Mr. James Berger. While he is extremely helpful, he is also difficult to meet with due to the volume of clubs and activities under his radar, not to mention the involvement in nearly everything happening at the school. To aid both him and our student body, the school could greatly benefit from an assistant activities director.

[01:09:34] This position would allow our current activities director to be more active in clubs and sports, while dividing the work and time equitably among the students. As the county explores implementation of metal detectors, it is important that we explore all problems as well as the actual process of their installment.

[01:09:51] The saying goes, strict parents raise sneaky kids. There's more security protocols the county implements without communicating with the student body, the more back routes students will find. The county must take quick baby steps rather than sudden leaps. If we can implement policies and regulations regarding security slowly, with full acknowledgement of the students, then we can do more for their safety.

[01:10:14] We must consult and inform the student body of these changes. Communication is key to safety. To close out my remarks, I would like to say thank you to the board and Dr. McDade for their presence in our schools and at community events. It means a lot to the students and to the community.

[01:10:31] Many students, specifically at Forest Park, wonder how many times Mr. Wilk gets gas to be able to go to all these events. That ends my remarks. Thank you. - It's a big truck too. It's not coming out of B's budget, is it?

[01:10:48] - No. - Okay, good, okay, okay, excellent. Okay, outstanding, okay. All right, Mr. Williams, thank you very much. Always appreciate your comments, always timely and appropriate. We'll move on next to Dr. McDade, superintendent's time.

[01:11:05] Dr. McDade. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good evening all. As mentioned earlier, during Thriving Launching Futures, February is Black History Month. Black History Month dates to 1926, when Carter G. Woodson founded a special week to focus on black contributions to civilization.

[01:11:24] Dr. Woodson was a graduate of Harvard University, a historian and president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Dr. Woodson chose February to honor the birth months of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln.

[01:11:42] By the late 1960s, the week had evolved into Black History Month. President Gerald R. Ford officially recognized Black History Month during the country's 1976 bicentennial. Be sure to look for features from the division and our schools throughout February as our school staff members and students recognize this annual celebration of achievements and heritage of African-Americans.

[01:12:09] Next week, February 6th through 10th, is National School Counseling Week. Thank you to all of our school counselors whose compassionate and hard work ensure the wellness needs of our students are always being met. February is also Career and Technical Education Month, also called CTE.

[01:12:27] CTE programs are critical in preparing our students for employment in fast growing fields, such as computer programming, engineering, health science, and skilled trades. Our learning and achievement for all strategic commitment includes the goal of having at least 1,000 CTE students graduate high school with a minimum of six CTE dual enrollment credits by 2025.

[01:12:53] We are also proud to highlight our CTE programs, teachers, and students, including these recent examples that I'm excited to share. CTE has reached 106 registered work-based learning partnerships. 15 students are engaging in a paid registered youth apprenticeship with MySecureKids.

[01:13:14] 40 students will be engaged in a paid internship with PWCS funded by the Advancing Computer Science Education Grant. 90 students will be attending George Mason University for gaming classes. And GMU is hiring 12 student interns to support the gaming classes.

[01:13:35] These are just a few examples of the community and business partnerships we are engaged with and exceptional teaching and learning that happens across PWCS every day in our continuous commitment to expand and improve CTE offering.

[01:13:50] Over the past few weeks, I have shared the practices used by our schools to ensure the safety of our students and staff. Additionally, I have communicated about recent advances security screening technology that allows for non-invasive detection and accommodation of a high volume of staff and students. PWCS is considering the addition of advanced security screening technology in our schools as early as the 2023-24 school year. This new preventative measure is used in sports stadiums, national museums, and other school divisions. We are

[01:14:24] inviting families and community members to share questions, comments, and concerns with us about this new preventative technology at one of the following community informational sessions and i'll share those dates and times with you this evening the first session will be held on february 22nd at gainesville high school the second session will be on february 27th at freedom high school and the third session will be on february 28th at woodbridge high school and the start time for all three in-person community sessions is 7 p.m. The division will also host a webinar on March 2nd

[01:15:03] and that will also be at 7 p.m. and our teams will also be engaging our student senate to capture student voice in this involvement as well. I encourage all patrons interested in the use of this new screening technology to attend one of these informational sessions. The school division will use a variety of platforms to send reminders about the session so that we can reach everyone in in the county. So please be on the lookout for emails, text messages, our website, and social media for more information. In conclusion, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge

[01:15:39] School Board Appreciation Month. Looking around this room, you can see the immense appreciation the PWCS students, staff, and community have for our school board, which they have a tremendous job. On behalf of all PWCS community members and PWCS staff, I want to thank the full Board for their tireless dedication to fulfilling our vision to ensure that every student in Prince William County Public Schools graduates on time with the knowledge skills and habits of mind necessary to create a thriving future for themselves and their community. Mr. Chairman that concludes the

[01:16:18] superintendent's report. Thank you Dr. McDade. So at this point we're going to be moving on to the 15.02 the fiscal year 2024 proposed budget and capital improvement plan, and they normally tell me to read this afterwards, but I'll read this sort of before and afterwards just to remind everyone.

[01:16:38] Board members, as a quick reminder, while tonight is not the time to ask questions or make comments on the proposed 23-24 budget, you will have the opportunity to do so. You certainly can't ask clarifying questions this evening, but provide questions that you may have directly to John Wallingford, chief financial officer, who will coordinate responses over the next few weeks.

[01:16:55] The public meeting on the proposed fiscal year 24 budget will be held on Monday, February 6th at 6:00 p.m. here at the KLC in the school board meeting room. A public hearing on the proposed 24 budget will be conducted on Wednesday, February 15th at seven here at the KLC.

[01:17:10] Citizens who wish to address the board at February 6th meeting may do so by submitting the public meeting citizen comment time form found on the school division's webpage or by contacting the clerk at 703-7919-709 prior to noon on Monday, February 6th. Speakers will be limited to three minutes each and comments must be confined to matters related to the proposed fiscal year 24 budget.

[01:17:35] I have one more thing. Likewise, citizens who wish to address the board on February 15th meeting may do so by submitting the public hearing citizen comment time form found on the school division's website. We do this the same every year. Tonight is the night where the superintendent will offer the proposed school board budget and it will be out for the public to take a look at.

[01:17:55] We will have the public hearings as noted on the dates I gave, school board members will take a look at the budget and offer questions, remarks, we'll be meeting for budget markup and work sessions accordingly and address concerns there.

[01:18:10] I think at this point, Mr. Wallingford, you're gonna be coming up to present. So as you walk up, I just wanna take this moment to remind the public that this is the fourth budget the school board will be voting on. I think it's important to remember over the course of these last three years now moving into the fourth year the highlights of the budget you'll see this evening but they they they are built on the foundation of the last three budgets where you know we have the school board has created a situation where the entry pay for teachers with bachelor degrees ranks in the top three in the entire state entry pay for teachers with master's degrees ranks in the top four

[01:18:48] in the entire state teacher pay scale is extremely competitive and at the top step is the highest in the state currently over the past four years teacher raises across the board have totaled 19.6 percent and over half our teachers received 24 percent increases during this time through continued investments in regionally competitive pay adjustments and programs this board has voted on in prior budgets teachers transferring to pwcs will be credited up to 21 years of experience as compared to neighboring distance that experience that have experienced caps of 15 years So these are some of the highlights of the work

[01:19:28] that this board has done to really address some of the major issues on teacher pay. We've also poured more money into the classrooms than has ever been poured into school history. So I think it's important as you, as folks listen to tonight's budget presentation, which will be slightly tighter than prior budgets, less flexibility than prior budgets.

[01:19:51] And with, you know, things that have happened in Richmond over the last 48 hours, even less, but we're working on all those things. And so I will now give it to Dr. McDade. Thank you, Dr. McDade. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before Mr. Wallingford begins, I do just wanna share a couple of points related to the budget.

[01:20:10] Like the current school year budget, the superintendent's proposed fiscal year 2024 budget does prioritize investments aligned with the four commitments of the Prince William County strategic plan, launching thriving futures. And those commitments are learning and achievement for all, positive climate and culture, family and community engagement, and organizational coherence.

[01:20:31] So you will see in the budget, as we walk through it, that all of our investments are aligned to our strategic priorities. It's also important to note that the American Rescue Plan Act, or what is known as ARPA, federal funding that's available to PWCS in response to the pandemic is coming to an end.

[01:20:50] However, the needs of our students continue to grow. and that can be seen in current changes in our data. We currently have a 40% increase in our English learner students, a 7.2% increase in students with special needs, and a 55% increase in economically disadvantaged.

[01:21:09] These increases have all occurred over the course of the past five years, which makes funding critical to the success of the school division. So as we lose these federal funding dollars, we have to make some serious considerations how we prioritize funding and source additional revenue to support high needs in our school division. Therefore this proposed budget also includes a continued investment in some of the programs and personnel that were provided through federal funds that are still critically needed, although we will no longer have those federal funds. And so we are incorporating that into this

[01:21:49] year, some of that into this year's budget with the removal of federal funds. we will have to absorb some of those costs in our operational budget in order to continue to provide much needed services and before mr wallingford begins i really do want to extend my heartfelt appreciation to our chief financial officer john wallingford our director of budget kathleen addison our supervisor of budget natasha valencia and their entire team i don't think that everyone really deeply understands the amount of time and energy that goes into

[01:22:26] this process they are working around the clock especially when we have last minute changes in the budget and fluctuations in revenue and so I'm able to see up close and personal all of their tireless efforts and I really want to make sure that I acknowledge them and show appreciation for all of their hard work carrying us through this fiscal 24 season so mr wallingford if you would begin the presentation and i will join you in presenting the proposed budget to the board very good dr mcdade thank you

[01:22:59] and thank you for your remarks dr latif members of the board and dr mcdade i'd like to take a point of privilege here as well and thank kathleen addison natasha valencia kathleen who's here in the audience and Shaquille Youssef our new finance director the senior staff the cabinet here all of whom have contributed mightily to this effort and this was a hard year and we got some news just a couple of days ago that created a real challenge so I really want to thank everybody and their

[01:23:37] support of getting all of this work done thank you again Dr. McDade so let's get started if we could move on to the first slide so fiscal 24 budget highlights dr mcdade's remarks were very elegant about about vision 2025 launching thriving futures so i'll move on to give you some of our budget highlights first our overall operating and debt service fund budget this year are just in

[01:24:15] excess of 1.6 billion dollars. All funds budget is 2.4 billion dollars this year. We are growing. This is an increase, the operating and debt service fund budgets are an increase of 6.9% over fiscal 23, the current fiscal year, and our projected enrollment for the coming fiscal year is 91,631 students. This budget aligns revenues both from the county our county revenues and with

[01:24:51] state revenues and we'll have some more to talk about on state revenues as we proceed through this presentation our our investment in our staffs this year dr. Lateef was touching on a bit earlier is this year thirty two point five million dollars that's a five percent average across the board raise that That includes STEP plus a COLA and is net of $48.8 million, net of 16.

[01:25:28] You've heard the term slippage. So we're looking at a cost of about $32.5 million. Finally, we are putting forward a health insurance increase for premiums of 3%.

[01:25:46] And so, Dr. McDade, now back to you. stated earlier as in the prior year's budget we do have the budget organized by our strategic commitments in this in the plan and so I want to start first with learning and achievement for all which is our commitment to ensuring that all students have access to a high quality education and I will highlight some of the investments in learning and achievement for all as well as the overall total investment in our first commitment around excellence in

[01:26:21] education this year's investments include about 13.2 million that are in learning and achievement for all and the highlights include 2.8 million additional funding to support our teachers assistance can we have the presentation show for the public as well additional investments in the classroom to highlight the need for teachers assistance in our special education classrooms in the amount of $2.8 million.

[01:26:54] Last year, we did fund for 100 teaching assistants in our special education classrooms. And then there's a phased approach so that by 2025, we would have additional teaching assistants to support our level two classrooms.

[01:27:11] And so this year, we're at 75. We're introducing for the year as a phased approach. Last year, we also hired 14 instructional coaches to provide direct instructional support and coaching in the classroom. However, those instructional coaches were funded through ARPA funding.

[01:27:28] So this is where we now have to absorb that cost in our operational budget because this is a much needed resource in the classroom supporting our teachers with planning, with coaching across content areas. And although this is a small number, they serve multiple schools across the school division, particularly those schools with the highest needs and these are staffed positions already.

[01:27:53] So it's important for us to capture that in our operational budget. Now that we will be losing that funding, we don't want to lose that resource in the classroom. We're also responding to a need to expand early childhood education. So you'll see as one of the highlights of the $13.2 million, $1.6 million investment in adding three additional pre-K classrooms where there is the highest demand in the school division.

[01:28:21] Moving on to positive climate and culture, the overall investment in positive climate and culture is about 16.4 million. And just some of the highlights of that 16.4 million include our school safety and security program.

[01:28:38] You'll see 4.8 million here. It's important to note that that does also include the 65 elementary school security assistance that were already added, but keep in mind that was added off-budget cycle, and so that has to be captured in our 24 budget.

[01:28:55] And then you'll also see an additional eight FTE in school safety to address the support of those personnel training as well as crisis management. The other two highlights you see here really goes a long way in addressing our goals for diversifying our teaching workforce as well as addressing the national teacher shortage.

[01:29:16] So we do have a goal within our strategic plan of adding 350 international faculty to our staff. Right now, funding for our international faculty for this fiscal year is four point, for the 24 year that we're proposing is 4.5 million.

[01:29:31] That gets us closer to that goal. We have experienced tremendous success with the participate program, having our international faculty and they add great diversity to our school division. We're very proud of that program and we're continuing to invest in it. The other highlight here you'll see is really exciting.

[01:29:48] It's the first of its kind teacher residency program in Prince William County Public Schools that will cost approximately $3.3 million. This is a new registered apprenticeship that we have in collaboration with the VDOE and will now allow PWCS and VCU to offer multi-tiered undergraduate options as well as allowing participants who do not yet have a bachelor's degree to complete an approved undergraduate teacher ed apprentice program and earn their bachelor's degree within a two to three year period.

[01:30:23] The new apprentice option is in the planning stages with VDOE, VCU, and PWCS. But it is anticipated fall start date for 2023. All program completers will receive free tuition, testing assistance, and mentoring and coaching support for the years of their residency and for their first two years of classroom teaching.

[01:30:48] The teacher residents will also have to commit to teaching within the school division for an additional three years upon completion of the program. So this is a really exciting opportunity, the first of its kind in Prince William County Public Schools and while it also addresses the teacher shortage, it helps us as well with increasing diversity within our staffing makeup.

[01:31:09] The next commitment in the strategic plan is family and community engagement this is our commitment to building and fostering trusting partnerships with our families and community as partners in education and here you'll see new investments at about 4.5 million dollars and i want to highlight some of the big investments that are included in that 4.5 million the first one being our parent liaisons we again have experienced tremendous success with our parent liaisons they are of added value to the school community and it's important to

[01:31:45] note here here's another investment that we must absorb in our 24 budget because we're losing funding ARPA funding so we already have parent liaison staffed and working in our schools to date that are funded through ARPA funds and that's coming to an end so about half of the 62 FTE that you see here are being picked up from the ARPA funding that's ending and the additional FTEUC are going to support our middle schools and high schools to make them whole as we focused on elementary schools first in the first tranche of funding that went to parent liaisons in the 23 budget you'll also

[01:32:21] see $300,000 towards translation support and an additional $250,000 for robotics program funding this is a real big highlight in our school division many students participate in robotics and compete you know nationally as well as internationally and we just want to celebrate and continue to support our robotics program and we've gotten a lot of feedback not just from board members but from our also our student rep on the board has been very vocal about some robotics programs just not having the funds to support travel for competition

[01:32:59] as well as equipment and materials for students to really participate at a high level so we'll be doing asset mapping across the school division to look at all of our robotics programs to determine where additional funding is needing needed for some programs that do not have the equipment that they need so we can right size the school division as well as look at expansion for schools that may want to offer robotics where we can offer more programming throughout the school division as this is definitely a very popular and successful program in Prince William County Public Schools and then finally we have organizational coherence and primarily in organizational coherence you'll see

[01:33:39] investments in transportation and staffing and so the first thing you see here it's about five point two million dollars in new investments under this particular commitment in the strategic plan the highlights includes 1.5 million to replace our 800 megahertz radios on our school buses that's the primary way that we communicate with our drivers and our buses and it is time for us to replace those radios some of them are antiquated we do have six hundred thousand dollars for a budget adequacy study and I want to talk a little bit about that in our strategic plan we did launch a budget task force and it's

[01:34:17] really important to note that with the budget task force we acknowledge that in Prince William County Public Schools we do have an equitable formula for budgeting that looks at weighted formulas based on student needs and populations, but what we don't have right now is a way to determine adequacy, and what adequacy does is a way of us getting to the goal of ensuring that the division is funding for a standard of excellence in education.

[01:34:46] So even if you have small schools with lower student enrollment, making sure that all schools can meet the standard of excellence in the programming that they offer, the staffing that needs to be offered as you'll note we did put a kind of a band-aid play in place and we offered a small schools grant which we're going to continue that but that's not sustainable long term and so we do have there are organizations that have done this study several states are moving this work for towards adequate adequacy a few dimension would be New Hampshire Massachusetts Pennsylvania just to name a few we're at the state level they're looking at

[01:35:24] funding for adequacy and not just equity and so we're trying to advance that those research-based best practices in Prince William County and be able to get both you know some kind of a study on how we're doing or not doing with that as well as help us build models for how we fund for adequacy so that every school can meet the standard of excellence that is defined within our strategic plan and then you'll see $325,000 for transportation liaisons you'll remember that last year we did add about two liaisons of course you know

[01:36:02] that wasn't enough to cover the entire county on what we find found is that the transportation liaisons have been extremely helpful with customer service and being able to respond directly to schools and families when situations arise or there are questions about transportation and so we want to make sure we're right sizing the county to provide enough FTE to increase customer service to our families and our schools as it relates to transportation concerns and issues. There's also a $300,000 investment in a comprehensive staffing study and that staffing study will be conducted to understand whether the school division has the appropriate staffing levels for the organization and

[01:36:41] and it will also support the development of a staffing plan for any growth that school division may experience. And then the final two items you hear see here is a bonus that does require us to provide matching funds. So many of you may remember the governor did announce and introduced in the budget a state share of a one percent bonus but that does require for the division to provide some matching funds and for us it would be to the tune of about 2.3 million dollars and then there's also a small increase and that's a total of fifty thousand dollars across

[01:37:19] all board members as all employees are receiving an increase board members are included in that and the total cost of that increase would be about fifty thousand dollars and so now i will turn the presentation back over to mr wallingford and he'll go through some of the more technical aspects of the budget as well as some of the trend data as it relates to funding so thank you again dr mcdade the next slide you see here are donuts that represent where our revenues come from and

[01:37:54] where our expenditures go to excuse me that the donut on the left is identifies revenues and effectively 50 of our money comes from the state of virginia and 50 of it a little less comes from the county we have a a couple of percent that we receive in federal revenues and then some other local revenues and then the last item you see on that on that chart on that donut is what we use from beginning balance and this this coming year excuse me for 24 we expect that number to increase

[01:38:32] a little bit to around 33 million dollars where it goes to or where it goes on the right most Most importantly here is the blue slice of the donut, and that blue slice is instruction.

[01:38:49] You can see that roughly 80% of our dollars go directly to instruction. The other smaller slices are transportation, central support, and facilities management to the tune of about 20% between all three of those.

[01:39:14] Next slide, some demographics and enrollment trends and demographics. The line chart to the left shows a, to the leftmost side of the line, shows a big decline in enrollment you recall from fiscal 20, the pandemic, and then increasing enrollments.

[01:39:37] And if you go past 2023 into four, five, and six, the dotted line, you'll see that our expectations or growth in the range of 500 students roughly 500 students per year. Dr. McDade mentioned some of these numbers on the on the bar chart to the left and that is enrollment growth at the top the general student population has grown over the past five years by about 1.6 percent if that seems like a low number it is and that's because of the declining growth we experienced in the pandemic

[01:40:15] year. The next population you see are special ed students, and that population over the past five years has grown by about seven percent. Next, you see English language learners. Over the past five years, we've grown by about 40 percent. You're beginning to see a trend here. And for what is labeled here as direct cert, direct cert is a new measure that we're using for what we used to call economically disadvantaged these direct certain numbers come from the state of

[01:40:53] Virginia it's a very standard very consistent measure that will replace our free and reduced numbers that were at least partially developed through applications so these numbers going into the future are going to be far more stable and consistent the next slide and you've seen this over the years is the change in per pupil expenditures over the 15-year period, 2029 to 2024.

[01:41:30] And you can see that those numbers have grown from about $10,700 per pupil to about $16,600 per pupil. Those numbers are unadjusted for inflation. The line that you see on the bottom there is the dollars adjusted for inflation using consumer price index and what you'll notice is that we've gone over that same 15-year period from about ten thousand seven hundred dollars to a little bit under eleven thousand seven hundred dollars that's a one that's a one

[01:42:08] thousand dollar adjusted increase over that 15-year period and what I'd like to refocus you on is the change in the demographics of our populations you can see that economically disadvantaged students el students and special ed students those populations that are far more expensive to educate are growing while the dollars adjusted for inflation have grown some but very moderately so this is a point that i'd really i'd really like to emphasize

[01:42:46] Next slide, this is just a different view of cost per pupil over the period 2020 through 2023, and you can see that when we compare ourselves to the other Northern Virginia localities, we rank near the bottom, not quite, Manassas Park is below us, but our cost per pupil is in fiscal 23, the current fiscal year, is about $15,400.

[01:43:22] That number is going up by almost $1,000 this year. There's a big increase, but we still will rank near the bottom on per-pupil spend because all of the other Northern Virginia localities are experiencing the same kind of revenue increases that we are.

[01:43:45] The next slide you see here, before I move into the numbers one at a time, what I want to mention here is that these numbers do not reflect, let me say that again, they do not reflect a $10.7 million revenue reduction that we just learned about late, late last week, Friday at about four o'clock, we got these numbers.

[01:44:08] And we informed you of these numbers early this week. And so that's not reflected in this table. What you can see is the increases across the board in almost every one of these revenue streams.

[01:44:25] You can see that the county revenue is going up by about $57 million, or 8%. That's a solid increase. State revenue, and again, this is overstated by $10.7 million, is increasing by about $30 million, or a $4.1 million increase.

[01:44:49] Federal, local, and other revenues are increasing at the margins. And then you can see that the money that we're using from our balance sheet is increasing by about ten million dollars this year last point i'd like to make on this on this slide is that our debt service fund and we've talked about this our debt service is increasing um by nothing this year 2003 to 2000 and 2023 to 2024 because of the additional

[01:45:25] cash to capital that we've put into those projects over the last two years, to the extent of about $30 million in each year.

[01:45:45] So what I'm going to discuss now is the changes in revenue, in state revenue, that we received just this past Friday.

[01:46:00] So what I'd like to try to do is explain to you first what that change was a result of, And then I'll walk you quickly through the math and explain to you why we're experiencing that change.

[01:46:15] So, this is a function of the grocery tax repeal that the governor wanted to put in place this past year and did. In addition to putting that grocery tax repeal in place, the General Assembly also provided for a hold harmless to local school divisions.

[01:46:38] For Prince William County, that hold harmless amount was about $6 million in the current year, fiscal '23, and about $17 million in fiscal '24. So the purpose of the hold harmless is to reduce the impact to the school division on that reduction in sales tax revenue.

[01:46:59] And that worked. Here's the problem. The problem is sales tax revenues for local school divisions in Virginia actually are calculated, and then run through something called the Local Composite Index. When VDOE shared those numbers with us originally, what they did not do is they did not run those numbers through the Local Composite Index, effectively overstating those revenues, both the $6 million in fiscal '23, and then the $17 million that we used

[01:47:34] to build our fiscal '24 budget. So here on this next slide, I'm sharing with you timeline of what we learned, when we learned it, and what the impact is. Now what you can see here is that on Wednesday, January 25th, we got an email from the state superintendent of schools, or excuse me, from Scott Braebrand of VAS, informing us of the issue, but not giving us any specifics on dollar amounts. On the 27th, on the following Friday, we got an email from the state

[01:48:10] superintendent that actually shared with us what those dollar amounts were and why that was the case, what had happened. Folks across the state were a bit confused by what VDOE communicated. There were lots of conversations back and forth between us, between VDOE and all the other localities in the state trying to understand exactly what happened. And so we learned what I just shared with you a moment ago, and that is the fact that effectively they overstated state revenues to us both in 23 and 24. The next couple of lines you see on this slide are simply

[01:48:50] the math problem that they shared with us and how we calculated what our reductions are. And so it's simply the inverse of the composite index times that hold harmless amount that they provided to us. So for fiscal 24, that first line, the amount provided to the Prince William County Schools in what video delivered to us was about 17 million dollars to hold us harmless again that wasn't run through the composite index and that's basically what this math problem does and you can see that

[01:49:25] it results in a reduction of about 10 million seven hundred thousand dollars the second line is the calculation the same calculation for fiscal 23 the current fiscal year so we're going to experience a revenue reduction from what we believed when we built the 23 budget of about 4.3 million dollars and the budget that we are currently discussing fiscal 24 we are going to experience a 10.7 million dollar revenue reduction from what we expected based on what video he shared

[01:50:00] with us that was a function of the governor's introduced budget so last slide mr wallingford Just before you go back, because it's a little bit of a math issue. And since the governor's office can't get the math right, we want to make sure everyone here gets the math right.

[01:50:18] I understand. It's not a one-time $10,700,000, correct? Dr. Lateef, that's a very good point. The revenue reduction we're going to experience is a baseline reduction of revenue to the extent of about $10.7 million moving forward, basically in perpetuity.

[01:50:43] in the next 10 years based on my math that's around 108 million dollars that's correct that we will lose yes okay so every year we're losing this 11 million dollars it's right yes it's a substantial impact to the division over time thank you mr wong absolutely so the last slide is um there are one or two more slides but this this timeline is what we can expect for the budget process as we move through the next couple of months and you can see uh tonight february 1st we're making

[01:51:17] presentation to the school board on the 6th and 15th there will be a public hearing and a public meeting where citizens can make in provide input to the school board in what decisions you'll be making as we move towards markup and approval in march march 8th you see a budget work session for the school board and that's also markup on the 15th we are set to approve the budget on on march 15th. As we move into April, we have historically provided a presentation to

[01:51:55] the Board of County Supervisors. The current date for that is April 4th. We will be making that presentation. On the 11th of April, we hope to see tax rates set by the county and they will go through a process called recap, which basically is a recap of their revenues. That's something they haven't done in several years so this is a return to an older process for them on the 18th you can see markup for the Board of County Supervisors and then finally on the

[01:52:28] 25th that is the date that the BOCS will approve both their budgets and our budgets mr. Wallenford one thing I want to go back to because I feel like I didn't cover that thoroughly enough and I comes to what comes to mind there was some confusion around the amount that was dedicated to the bonus so where we have there the 2.3 million dollar matching can you just clarify what that really means in terms of the 1% who gets the 1% and what that 2.3 matching

[01:53:05] dollar amount would actually cover and not cover absolutely that's a good question so in our state revenues that video he provided to us this year there is about a three point, I believe it was $3.9 million to provide a 1% bonus to SOQ-covered positions in Prince William County. The legislation will require that Prince William County Schools matches that to the extent of about $2.3 million. That's the amount you mentioned, Dr. McDade.

[01:53:41] What that does not allow for is it does not allow for a 1% bonus for all employees. It allows for a 1% bonus for all SOQ-covered positions, and there is a list of positions defined by VDOE.

[01:53:56] When we made our most recent bonus, we actually provided a 1% bonus for all covered employees, excuse me, all employees, not all SOQ-covered employees, all employees. That cost to us is about a $10 million cost for us to cover all employees, would cost us an additional about, I think the number's about $4 million to get to a 1% bonus for all employees, not just SOQ-covered employees.

[01:54:27] The 2.3 just covers SOQ. That is correct. Okay. Can we clarify that, too? How would an employee know if they're going to be covered by that bonus?

[01:54:44] I mean, I feel like that might be up in the air for a lot of people. So is there a way to explain it a little bit more succinctly? We would have to. I mean, this is the proposed budget. so we have a lot more conversation to have around this. So I think we'll be premature to do that tonight.

[01:55:01] However, the plan would be to very clearly communicate ahead of time from whatever's decided with this budget, we would communicate to all employees what this means for them, who's impacted by this, so that it's clear once the budget is decided upon.

[01:55:19] - Thank you, because I know that can be very convoluted. At times, I work for a different school division And I see, like, little things turn into big things very quickly. So as soon as we can be clear on things, that would be perfect. Very good. So the last couple of slides, I'm going to end this presentation with some better news.

[01:55:40] And what I'm going to talk about right now is inflationary costs associated to construction. So in our CIP presentation in early January, Mr. Bach provided some information to you with regard to what we expect with regard to cost increases for construction.

[01:56:05] Here's the good news. The good news is that the Woodbridge Elementary School that the outside vendor was projecting an $85 million cost that our staff was projecting at a $61 million cost actually came in at about $51 or $52 million.

[01:56:28] Okay, so that's a savings. That's actually a savings from our most current projection of about $10 million, only -- it's only a cost overrun from the fiscal '23 budget amount of about $10 million.

[01:56:45] So that's really good news. The next slide here shows those adjustments made by Mr. Bach's team on those construction items that we have in our current CIP.

[01:57:01] And I'm not going to go through and read every one of these, but what I will share with you is that it runs the range from a $10 million reduction on our expected costs to as much as a $25 million reduction in our expected costs for a total savings over the CIP on new construction of just a little bit over $103 million.

[01:57:27] So I can't tell you how good the news is on this one. When those numbers came in, there were a lot of us who were paying really close attention. And so what's not built into this budget today, because we didn't have the opportunity to make it happen, is our debt service costs will also be going down, because the actual sale of debt will be going down about $20 million for the coming debt sale.

[01:57:52] So really good news, and that's all I have. If there are any questions, I'd be happy. Mr. Williams? No, I would not be happy to answer those. Ms. Williams. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm gonna start where we are right now and then back up to another question.

[01:58:11] I'm very excited by this recent news with construction costs. - Just for clarification, Ms. Williams, remember we're not doing a whole lot of questions tonight. - Right. - But I think these are, well, I mean, I'm asking-- - Just straight up clarify. - They're important. So I'm gonna ask them anyway, because it's important.

[01:58:29] So, you know, when you talk about cost savings and them being a fantastic and amazing thing. I just want the public to be assured that these cost savings do not come at the expense of quality building or use materials or any of that stuff.

[01:58:48] I fully trust that that is not the case. However, I am not in that department. And I think it's important and imperative that our public hear from our facilities as well, because it's often mentioned about Woodbridge District Schools being old and things of that nature so i would like some reassurance please yeah miss williams i'm happy to clarify that and no there's not going to be a reduction in quality we did not put make any changes to the design or the you know what we would be looking for in these products so it just

[01:59:22] it the numbers came in much much better than we anticipated so no changes in designs thank you i really appreciate that because it matters to our public most people aren't familiar with the the intricacies of construction or procurement.

[01:59:37] So when you see a bid go out and then you see something lowered, I think if I wasn't as knowledgeable, I'd be like, what did they change? What are they sacrificing? So I appreciate you confirming that that was not the case. And the other thing that I wanted to address or have you comment on is when we talk about the reduction in funding from the state because of the miscalculation, one of the things that I've heard a lot of chatter about is, you know, we have our reserves at the end of the year, which we start at the beginning.

[02:00:07] So I've heard chatter already in the public as, why is this important? What does it matter? Because we already start the year with a certain amount of money in reserves. And we don't really speak to that. I mean, I usually ask a question when we get into markup and things of that nature. But I think because right now that is the main topic of a lot of conversation, if you could provide some clarity on what that really means to us in a layman's perspective, that's easily digestible and I think would be very helpful to our public because it's hard to understand when you see we start with 33 million we're losing 10 what's the big deal why don't we just pull it out at 33 million or

[02:00:44] whatever our reserve number is so mrs. Williams thank you for that question one of the things that an organization the size of ours has to do is it really has to maintain and I refer to it as our balance sheet we have to maintain a balance sheet we have to maintain some flexibility so we don't budget 100% of every dollar we have access to every year we we maintain some reserves in place and those reserves fluctuate depending on transactions or activities that take place in the year for example if we have a thousand students more show

[02:01:20] up then we expected if we didn't have something that we refer to as beginning balance or the ability to fund that we would have a real substantial problem this year is a perfect example we have a 15 million dollar problem that we got from the state not our fault we weren't aware of it couldn't prepare for it most school divisions actually operate like a department of their locality of their our city or county and they have no reserves if that were the case here we would be going back to Prince William County today to the Board of County

[02:01:55] Supervisors and saying something like we got a call from the state they took away 15 million dollars. Now we need to provide 15 million dollars BOCS. Please provide it to us." And so the the relationship that the two boards and the staffs have on this matter are really very very good for the operation, particularly of an organization our size. We absolutely couldn't operate without some money in reserves that are not part of the budget.

[02:02:29] Is it true, John, though, that you know that's not what we couldn't depend to the point that Dr. Lateef made earlier, this reduction is in perpetuity. And so what you're speaking of right now, using emergency funds, we wouldn't be able to rely on that year over year over year over year.

[02:02:48] So that's not a fix for this reduction that we're experiencing right now, if there's no resolution to this. You're absolutely right, Dr. McDade. What we have on our balance sheet, the money that we have in reserves can't cover this forever you can only cover it for a couple of years frankly and that would that would be I don't know if catastrophic is the word but it would be a very very bad outcome if we had to cover this in perpetuity we could do it thank you I appreciate that because I don't think most people really delve into it I can say in full honesty when I first sat here as a board member budget seizing was not the most exciting a lot

[02:03:28] of it took a great deal of conversation and learning to understand why it was important because that was one of the things that I thought well we have millions of dollars we start at the beginning of the year why don't we just pull from that and it is imperative that people understand or our public understands that that money is there as it serves in a general ways an emergency fund it helps to build our budget for the following year and also the one thing that has not been mentioned this evening clearly is that we have no taxing authority so we are very much dependent on this the funding that we receive from our various funding sources and the BOCS which are local funds

[02:04:04] state funds and federal funds but our main bread and butter funds often come from our local authority which is the Board of County Supervisors and they in turn have to raise money to fund us and the rest of the county so when there is a shortfall like this it impacts all of us up the chain and I think that's important too that we have a holistic view on it and it's not just that it impacts the school division because it rolls up up the chain into our county and the last thing I just wanted you to provide a little bit more clarity and then I'll stop is if you could just describe a little bit I think it's confusing sometimes when people see our per people spending and then we talk

[02:04:41] about the different categories of students our special education students or English as a language learner students or I'm sorry I don't remember the new term for our economically disadvantaged the direct cert thank you the direct start what that really means because if you look on the chart it looks like our people per pupil spending has gone up a little bit right but then when you look at the but the bar graph that breaks our students down into different categories it would have seemed from someone who wouldn't maybe understand how they all fold together that our per pupil spending would be higher or the impact would be greater I'm not sure how you could sort of re

[02:05:21] frame that but I think it's really important for people to understand depending on what category you are in as a student it really increases the amount of dollars that go to that particular student in order for them to have the correct services needed for them sure so there's two things to note here the first is the impact of inflation over that 15-year period so the change in the student population over that 15-year period is is reasonably well represented by that five-year chart so we have students that are far more and growing far

[02:05:56] more expensive to educate than we did 15 or 20 years ago the the demographic is changing we're getting more of those more expensive kids while the number of dollars following them isn't increasing adjusted for inflation very much okay so that what that does is it puts pressure on on schools to actually provide the funding necessary to to fund we have some students who are as expensive as 22 23 24 000 a year and so that average dollar amount doesn't get it done for those students

[02:06:35] so what we really need to do is we would need to see adjusted for inflation we would need to see those dollars keeping up and they're not right now thank you mr wallingford i just want to thank our finance department and all who have their hands in preparing this proposed budget for us Thank you. I was just in Richmond and the number of bills that were I started writing them down and then it became so extensive that I stopped because I looked at all these new bills and they

[02:07:09] all impact us financially and work-wise so I'm very concerned about that but you said one thing that I just want you to see if you can answer this and give us a good answer to this you said if there's no resolution what are the possible resolutions and what can we do to impact those resolutions you're referring to the to the the the 10.7 really 15 total when you look at 23 and you look at 24 that means we have to sharpen our pencils and we have to come back to the table

[02:07:47] and look at the investments that we plan to make to make good on our commitments and we're going to have to make some tough decisions about what we can and will not be able to do for teaching and learning so this amount is cast in stone sharpen knives for cuts just I had one quick question dr. McDade I know when you mentioned special ed number of students I I know when I looked at the strategic plan I the one thing you didn't mention tonight you maybe you may have or I missed it

[02:08:24] our goal for special ed teacher assistance over the strategic plan was was it 300 350. it was 350. that's correct i think it was 342. yeah we did 100 last year we did 100 last year um we did 75 this year okay and that was i mean we wanted to do 100 this year but the budget was much tighter than last year so we did 75 but doing 75 would still get us to our goal um by 2025 or 350 however that's one of the largest investments that we have in the budget and so you know this loss of revenue could significantly impact our ability

[02:09:02] to meet that goal even moving further yes if that 10 million sticks that's correct okay all right folks so I'm gonna you know just let everyone know again the public meeting on the proposed fiscal year 24 budget will be held on Monday February 6th that's this coming Monday at 6:00 p.m. here at the right here in this room and the Kelly leadership building school board meeting Public hearing on the proposed fiscal 2024 budget will be conducted on Wednesday, February 15th at 7:00 PM here at the KLC.

[02:09:30] Citizens who wish to address the board at either of these meetings may do so by submitting to the public meeting citizen comment time form found on the school division's webpage or by contacting the clerk at 703-7919709 prior to noon on Monday, February 6th.

[02:09:46] Speakers will be limited three minutes. Each in comments will be confined to matters related to the proposed fiscal 2024 budget. Similarly for the February 15th meeting and we'll make those announcements on next Monday. Moving on to committee updates.

[02:10:01] Tonight we have one committee update from Ms. Lily Jessie of the Occoquan District. She serves on the Head Start Committee, Ms. Jessie. - Thank you. First of all, as an auditor server on that committee, I've been on that committee for 10 years and I came in under Kathy Channel who had done a tremendous job and Dr. Amanda Walter has made a smooth transition.

[02:10:23] The Prince William County Head Start program is typically evaluated twice during each grant cycle by the U.S. Department of Education, meaning the U.S. Office of Head Start, in order to monitor the use of federal funds as required by law. The latest review includes a week-long visit in December 2022, consistent of multiple interviews, I was interviewed for about an hour, documents and school file inspection and classroom visits.

[02:10:49] The final report was uploaded and shared with Prince William County on January 24, 2023. And I think there's an additional report coming to you, Dr. McTate, okay. There are six areas that were reviewed with, received, the six areas that were reviewed received positive reports with specific examples of what needed to be done and well in each category.

[02:11:11] Of those six areas, the most important thing to note that we did, that all of the areas, we received excellent remarks. For example, there were three, the rubric that they used, they were looking at areas of concern, areas of non-compliance or deficiencies.

[02:11:29] Of those three areas, we did not have any areas of concerns, any areas of non-compliance or deficiencies. The six areas included program management, AKA to us, all children, all students will learn at the high levels, data drive, classroom coaching and professional development, which has improved the program services.

[02:11:51] That was their note on that. Under educational services, also known as us, under our strategic plan is family engagement and a positive culture. The program created, our program created videos in multiple language to help prepare students to transition into preschool program classrooms by viewing a virtual bus ride and classroom tours.

[02:12:14] Health services, AKA to us as family engagement. Prince William County developed community partnerships to offer family services, vouchers for their children's vision and dental screenings, co-pays, eyeglasses, and follow-up dental care.

[02:12:31] family engagement Prince William County supported families efforts to towards self-sufficiency by offering parent scholarships for taking general education development and English classes and distributing information on school district job fairs and partnering partnering partnering with an employment agency to assist in filling out their application under infrastructure also known to us as our coherence policy under our

[02:13:09] strategic plan. In that area they interviewed me for governance and I reported to them that I meet with them once a month. They provide me with detail reports but their reports said Prince William County ensures that Head Start fund supported program needs including a classified salary study and wage adjustment to attract higher and retain qualified staff they were very pleased with what we've done as a as a school board with our budget I'd like to add another story to this because it's not a part of the actual board report but

[02:13:44] before equity was in vogue when I came on this board Ken Bassett who knew instruction and knew that I had a background in title one walked up to me one day and said what do you think the Head Start director program coordinator what do you think her title is I said supervisor because I've been supervisor of title one I knew the money was there and this lady has a responsibility of interviewing employees she buys all the materials in the classroom she buys the

[02:14:20] furniture for the classroom and she does everything that a principal would do in terms of running the program but she was classified as a coordinator and had been classified as a coordinator for decades I guess in this program and we were able to move that position to a supervisory position so I'm very pleased with what we were able to do there under eligibility recruitment selection enrollment and attendance they said at Prince William County Schools designs its own enrollment practices to honor diversity of all of our students and of course that would fall under climate for us and organizational coherence so I

[02:14:58] So I want to commend Dr. Amanda Wilder and her staff, they've done a tremendous job. When you go to those meetings, an interpreter is there, everyone's given an opportunity to talk about what's happening in their families and how much they love that program.

[02:15:16] And the one thing that really hit me was that when we talk about income, there are many families in Head Start that have zero income, no income at all. talk about low-income families some of these parents have no income and so again I want to commend the head start staff all the members of her staff and the policy council for an outstanding job thank you thank you miss Jessie okay at this point we will move to oh I'm gonna bring dr. mr. Wallingford back up I think there were a couple comments he cut him short my apologies we're going back to

[02:15:54] the budget dr. Lateef thank you I just wanted to mention one or two items on documents. Tonight, you can see a box over here, we have our executive summary, a copy of the presentation, and long sheets, and we'll be passing those out as we finish up the meeting. And the budget materials will be posted on our websites either late this evening or tomorrow morning, so they'll be available for the public. They can see those documents and prepare any remarks they might have before the 6th and 15th

[02:16:31] meetings so I just wanted to let you know about that thank you Dr. Lateef I'm sorry Mr. Walz I thought you were bringing us more money well I'm gonna do the best I can thank you very good Mr. Wallingford thank you okay last time I started with Mr. Wilk this time we'll start with Miss Jessie for board matters Miss Jessie for what matters first of all I've been on this gratitude tour I

[02:16:58] I started with the donuts with Mr. Kenny Bode and we gave five dozen donuts at every elementary school in my district 10th to middle and 15th to high and my gratitude cups tour has ended finally and I have been able to give out personally to each school to each of my schools and to teachers in those schools at least 80 cups and my last cups were given to Marshall and I'll have pictures of those later and I would like to say to all the teachers and all the staff members nothing but gratitude from me. The MLK

[02:17:36] award ceremony tonight we talked we had this those orators in the in the board room and I'm very pleased to see them in the board room but on Sunday night there was award ceremonies sponsored by Prince William County alumni chapter of Delta Sigma Theta under the leadership of Sheila Mitchell and her committee and Congressman Spanberger came and she placed these students name in the congressional records they recognize the speakers and the coordinators the choir members and they also had an art contest and there were five winners I

[02:18:11] think and I don't have those names but that I don't you know I think that I know the principals were here but that I you know I know we're not Prince William County with Prince William County Illumina chapter of Delta Sigma Theta has done a tremendous job that's a lot of work trying to coordinate all those schools and the coordinator choir and coordinating everything that happens so I want to give a shout out to Delta Sigma Theta sorority and I'm a member by the way and today I went to reading around the

[02:18:44] world at Occoquan and I had a great time there the VSBA conference the only thing I can say there I said it earlier there are just too many bills and I think that I think some of us talk about the need to coordinate with us before they put a bill in because some of those bills I thought, who's going to do that?

[02:19:08] How much is it going to cost? What's going to be the impact? So I think we need to have a better way of communicating with our delegates to say, stop putting bills in without input from us, at least pretend to listen to us. How about that? Thank you.

[02:19:23] I'm done. Thank you, Ms. Jessie. Ms. Williams? Thank you. Ms. Jessie and I, I think, have shared that sentiment the entire time that we have been on the board we have our annual legislative meeting but we're always a little surprised by the time the bill session starts so I'll leave it at that but anyway I'm moving on I'd like to also recognize CTE month it is something that's very near and dear to my heart I celebrate all things CTE I appreciate all the hard work from the diverse body of staff and students that participate

[02:20:03] in CTE programming and I hope that in the future we will be able to have a CTE related program similar to our college fair where we allow professionals in the industry to come in showcase their skills the type of jobs that students can have and students can interact with them right live just like they would a college that they'd interview for the future so I hope one day that we can and incorporate that as an add-on and an equity focus for our CTE students.

[02:20:33] I'd also like to give a big shout out to our clerks. Clerk Appreciation Week is the 13th through the 17th. We could not do any of this without all three of you and I am very grateful, I'm sure the rest of my board, this board is also extremely grateful for all the things that you do.

[02:20:49] I am overjoyed by the return of our artwork as an art person. I know that that's one small thing, but I don't think our public really understands amount of work that our clerks do to this board to initial so this board can run so I appreciate you all greatly moving on it is the first day of black history month happy black history month black history is American history period it should be incorporated in all things that we do especially in the state of Virginia which has an amazing intertwined roller coaster history with black Americans and if you don't know I would encourage you to go out and

[02:21:28] research this wonderful state's history with and all of the things that black Americans have done to contribute to our amazing state the foundation of this culture and country and all of the interesting nuances that the state of Virginia has played in its development role to today if you're interested in learning more it's black history month you can find a program everywhere and I recommend you find one at age-appropriate levels for your student at home if you choose to share I also went to VSBA with my other board members again share the same sentiment when it comes to introducing bills this is a short session session will end on the 25th I highly encourage members of our

[02:22:08] public to review what may be becoming legislation whether it's funding whether it's unfunded mandates positions any of those sorts of things reach out to your or legislator for more details for what's going on at the General Assembly.

[02:22:23] I'm running out of time, so just to make it short, I did attend a few things. I wanted to give a special shout out to Elizabeth Vaughn for their night for signing up with specialty programs, which are due today, the application. And last but not least, there'll be a Governor's School meeting on the 16th, it's Governor's School Board meeting, Racial and Social Justice Commission meeting on the 16th.

[02:22:44] And I look forward to learning all about how we will celebrate Digital Learning Day. Thank you. - Thank you, Ms. Williams. Ms. Jackson. - Thank you. Last week was Principal Appreciation Week. I'm beyond grateful for all school administrators.

[02:23:00] They forged partnerships between the community, families, students, and staff. They set the climate and expectation in a building. Studies reference their importance in student outcome to staff morale. They helped guide us during an ever-changing pandemic and now in recovery and re-engagement.

[02:23:17] It's a job we don't offer thanks often enough. Good leaders foster staff empowerment, exhibit humility, and are committed. Vital and important traits that we often forget to recognize and appreciate. Thank you to all PWCS principals, especially to those in the Brentsville District.

[02:23:35] I appreciate the presentation tonight, but I know it is before any discussion, so I look forward to all discussion and providing further input. I've received numerous emails regarding the Devlin Technology Park proposals. While I've said before, land usage is not within the purview of the school board, understand that many community members are concerned including the unknown impact in the climate of schools next to construction sites and data centers. I encourage community members to educate themselves and reach out directly to the Board of County Supervisors. I'm going to try to attend a town hall tomorrow hosted by Supervisor Lawson. I spent the last few days also in Richmond and there

[02:24:12] are a number of bills that impact schools. I believe the Virginia Department of Education released a tracker. I encourage all families constituents to research the bills and consider the impact on schools lastly I was fortunate to attend multiple events in the month of January including Western Middle School's robotics competition in the high school robotic on I got to see chance from afar on Sunday and on Saturday you were a referee right what I appreciated about the robotics competition was the conversations with staff supporters and mentors I left the two meets with a renewed appreciation

[02:24:51] and I would say pride of the PWCS Robotics and the lifelong skills it fosters. Thank you always to those who come and attend and spoke tonight. Thank you. - Thank you, Ms. Jackson. Ms. Zargarpur.

[02:25:07] - Thank you, Ms. Wall. So I held office hours this weekend and got to talk to a couple of parents about issues that were important to them. Next time I hold office hours, I encourage you to reach out. Let me know if you can stop by. I'd love to hear from you. I got to go to the middle school robotics competition where Parkside won overall, and they will be going to the state competition.

[02:25:28] And over the week, I got to see the Colgan Pyramid Strings Concert. I believe it was Benton, Ashlyn, Marshall Coles, and Rosa Parks, I believe, were all involved in that. It was amazing. Those things, next to graduations, kind of give me that teary little feeling, because it's watching the whole progression of beginning, middle, and end in our school system of this particular thing.

[02:25:52] So it was a really great, great concert to watch. Wanna talk just briefly about some community, a community group in Hope Hill Crossing. Some parents got together. I'm really grateful for when this happens. Parents got together with a concern.

[02:26:08] They listed everything that they possibly could think of as solutions, brought it to the school division. We were able to elevate it and get a problem solved. So I encourage you, if there's concerns in your community, We can all work together to solve these problems.

[02:26:25] With this being CTE month, I do wanna make sure people know about at least Hilton High School. Make sure you get your applications in for the auto technology. We've seen some of the students come in here with their award-winning skills. They have a cabinet-making program, the Center for International Studies and Languages, that's the SISL program, and TV production.

[02:26:45] So if you had any applications for those they need to be in tonight. And at VSBA, I wanna bring up a couple things that I heard about while we were there. I wanna echo everything that everyone else has said about watching what legislation comes up. It's not just legislation.

[02:27:01] Sometimes the Virginia Department of Education also has things that are coming down the pike that will affect teaching and learning, and we need to be asking questions and paying attention. For example, there's some testing that's new this year, and the scores are not informing necessarily enough information.

[02:27:17] parents I know you're asking I believe video is supposed to be giving us this information but it seems to be taking a little bit of time one bit of good news that passed unanimously Brianna Sewell posted about HB 2375 this is a bill that was meant to cut some red tape for teachers who were people who have a three-year provisional license the video estimates that there's about 40,000 qualified teachers in this cohort.

[02:27:45] And we are gonna have some legislation that's gonna make it a little bit easier for them to kind of re-engage in that process. So some good stuff is happening in Richmond. There's a lot of other bills we need to be taking a look at. I wish you all safe driving.

[02:28:01] We didn't have snow, I'm so sorry, but maybe we'll get some in the future. - We're not sorry. - Mr. Wilk. - Thank you, Dr. Lateef. Thank you everyone for being here tonight. Just a recap, since the last board meeting on 1:20, I attended once again the varsity basketball game for both the Potomac boys and girls.

[02:28:23] Both were successful. It's already been mentioned, but on 1:21, Chance, Miss Williams, I didn't see, oh, I did see Miss Wall at the very end before I traded out, and then Miss Zagampur came later, but the robotics tournaments were phenomenal.

[02:28:39] I was able to get a photo with all three of my teams, Potomac Shores, Grand Park, and Potomac Middle. It was a great event. Loved being there, brought my son. He was into it for about an hour, and the other two hours I pawned him off on some other parents.

[02:28:55] So 124, Forest Park High School had a rising freshman curriculum night. It was a great night. And I was able to talk with a lot of parents in the cafeteria and have great conversations. On 126, I attended senior night for the Forest Park High School wrestling team.

[02:29:17] On 1:27, senior night at Potomac High School basketball cheer. Boys and girls, they were victorious that night. On 1:28, oh, very cool. So my wife had one-act district competitions that morning.

[02:29:33] I wasn't able to go to that 'cause I was with both my sons watching them. But as soon as she got home, we traded off and I did get to go to the Cardinal District swim event and both Forest Park Boys and Girls teams are district champs.

[02:29:48] That was very excited and numerous other individual awards. After that, I did get over to Forest Park High School where the color guard was performing at the indoor classic hosted there. Monday this week, my son and I, he stayed with me, attended the JV basketball game at Forest Park High School against Garfield.

[02:30:11] Last night, I was in a great discussions with teachers and parents of Ashland Elementary at the DEI committee events. Just wrapping up, I do want to encourage our employees classified and certified that there's one more week left to vote for collective bargaining.

[02:30:34] So just please vote and that would be great. I did last week go and visit in state and the parameters of the process of in the teacher's lounge in the morning at Triangle Elementary and encourage people to vote, Patty Elementary and Potomac Shores Elementary.

[02:30:55] Just need people to get out and vote in the process because it will impact everyone. So thank you very much and I appreciate the time. See everyone in two weeks. - Ms. Raulston, can you unmute Ms. Raulston?

[02:31:32] Okay, you're still muted Ms. Raulston, but. - Thank you. - Okay, great. I can hear you now.

[02:31:49] All right, Ms. Raulson, thank you. We'll move on next to Ms. Vice Chair, Ms. Wall, Jen Wall. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm gonna start out by thanking board clerks, Bea, Ana and Liliana, the office of the school board clerk.

[02:32:07] You are awesome and tremendous and we could not function without you, so thank you. I know it's not yet board clerk week, But I'm gonna thank you ahead of time and thank you then. So I just wanted to say that. Also to all the students who decorated this boardroom, wow, this was quite the explosion of color and gratitude.

[02:32:32] So I wanted to say thank you for the incredible creativity and appreciation. I don't always feel like I deserve it or we deserve it, but it is very much appreciated and it's very colorful in here. So thank you so much. for events that I've attended in the last two weeks, Sinclair Elementary held a multicultural night on the 20th and it was incredible.

[02:32:58] It was so well planned. They had a huge turnout, the most delicious food from all around the world that was brought by the community members. They had performances and a fashion show and it was just awesome. So I just wanted to highlight that. The Eastern Middle School VEX Robotics Competition on the 21st, of course, this was amazing.

[02:33:15] all we've talked about this already but I was able to meet the new coaches of the Bull Run middle school team my son was on that team when he was younger the roses and I that's their name and I wanted to see the robots in action and my favorite part was talking to the students and asking them about their robots and asking them to explain what they had designed and how it worked or not as the case may be and the kids were just fantastic principals appreciation week was the last week of January, and I wanted to take a minute to thank all of our principals for all that they do for students, teachers, and staff.

[02:33:50] I know it takes a tremendous amount of work to be the leaders of a busy, thriving school, and so I'm very thankful for your service. I know that much of what you do is not seen or appreciated nearly enough, so please know that I'm proud of our principals and all of the work that you're doing.

[02:34:05] We had a great meeting on the 25th with the Board of County Supervisors. We discussed some important security and safety updates, so I look forward to those community meetings that were announced tonight and i encourage the public to attend it will be very important for the public to be engaged in this process i'm on the 27th i attended the cedar run swim and dive event and very much enjoyed cheering for so many of our schools that was really awesome i was able to be there with ms zagapur and ms jackson on the 28th i attended all county orchestra which was amazing and awesome i love orchestra i love the arts i love band and choir i just love

[02:34:40] what we do with music education um let's see while the issue has been set aside for now i continue to be interested in studying start times um especially to provide relief for high school students i know it's kind of on the back burner but um and it's still an issue that i'm very interested in we're in budget season i'm interested in your thoughts please reach out to me on that um and lastly as we start a new semester no matter how hard the past is you can always begin again that's a quote thanks from whom as well um from jack cornfield okay good all right well i'll start with one since

[02:35:18] chance talked to us about one of his books and that he thought we should all learn a little bit more about and that's malcolm x or elhaj malik shabazz education is the passport to the future for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for today so thank you chance for reminding us that there are a lot of folks we need to learn about as we continue on with our studies um thank you dr Dr. McDade, John Wallingford, Shaquille Youssef, the whole finance team for the work that they've put into the superintendent's proposed budget.

[02:35:51] The budget is a discipline document dedicated to the goals in our strategic plan. This is the second year the budget is aligned directly to the strategic plan. The strategic, and why is it important to say this?

[02:36:10] It's important because the strategic plan came about by many, many meetings with input of thousands of folks over what we should put in the strategic plan. Stakeholders from students, staff, teachers, community members, board of county supervisors, politicians, police, fire, everybody who was involved with this, parents engaged at the highest levels on this document.

[02:36:39] We all agreed with the document. The document was passed by the school board And the intention is to continue to fund the document, the plan, the vision, mission of the plan to make sure that all our students graduate with the skills, knowledge, and habits of mind to succeed and launch their thriving future.

[02:36:58] So it's very important to understand that. So as you look at the budget documents, you should look at it through the lens of the strategic plan. And that's the way Dr. McDade presented it this evening along our cornerstones of the plan. So very important to take a look at it that way.

[02:37:16] I wanna thank Bea Simpson, Anna, Lily, Ileana, and from the clerk's office for all the great work they do. I wanna thank our IT staff, Jim Lepp and his whole team for how much work they do to run these meetings to make sure that it's broadcast to the entire community.

[02:37:35] It's a lot of work that goes into setting these things up, so I can't thank you all enough. I wanna thank the security staff for always being here and being patient with us as we run these meetings many times longer than they would like or some of us would like. So I wanna thank all of them.

[02:37:52] I think, you know, I'll just leave it with, as I think I heard Ms. Argarpur point out, tonight's the last night to apply for specialty programs. You know, for all of our students, this is the first week of the second semester.

[02:38:07] It's a great time to restart, you know, work on those habits and skills that you need to be successful and what a better time to start than the first week of the second semester. So with that, as I see no objection, this board meeting is adjourned.

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