Coraggio Consulting
School Board Meeting, Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2025
Place: Prince William County School Board, Virginia
Length: 3h 54m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPo40STdzAg
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 2026-10-29. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] I'd like to call the Prince William County School Board meeting to order. First up, approval of the agenda, 1.02. Mr. Tracy Blake. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that the Prince William County School Board approve the meeting agenda as recommended. - Do I have a second? - Mr. Chairman.

[00:00:16] - Ms. Williams? - Yes. - Ms. Zargarpur. - Second. - Any discussion? Please vote. How about this all, are we gonna do it electronically? Let's do it electronically. All right, all hands up in the air. All in favor? Aye. - Aye. - Okay, any opposition? No, that motion passes unanimously.

[00:00:34] I think Jesse and Williams. - Six yes, two not president vote. Williams, Jesse, motion passed. - Yep, yep. Moving on to motion under closed session. Motion is ordered, Vice Chair Blake. - Thank you. I move that pursuant to sections 2.2-3711 and 2.2-3712 of the Code of Virginia, the Prince William County School Board inter-closed session for the following reasons.

[00:00:57] One, to discuss with staff the assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining, or resignation of specific public officers, appointees, or employees of any public body pursuant to section 2.2-3711A1 of Dakota, Virginia, and two, to discuss and consult with legal counsel regarding requests for religious exemptions pertaining to specific students under sections 2.2-3711A of Dakota, Virginia, and three, to discuss with division counsel and staff, actual or probable litigation, and specific legal matters involving staff,

[00:01:37] students, procurement, and other civil litigation involving the school division under sections 2.2-3711A, 7 and 8 of Dakota, Virginia. 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 the action taken to respond to such matters.

[00:02:00] where discussion in the open meeting would jeopardize the security of such facilities pursuant to sections 2.2-3711A19 of Dakota, Virginia. - Do I have a second? - I second. - Ms. Wall seconds, any discussion?

[00:02:15] Please vote, hands up, move in favor. - Vote is six yes, two not present at vote. Williams, Jessie, motion passed. - At this time, the Prince William County School Board will go into closed session,

[00:02:26] and return in approximately one hour.

[00:03:29] Good evening, at this time, the Prince William County School Board will re-enter open session and it will be time to vote for, I need a motion from Vice Chair Blake on closed session certification, 801.

[00:03:47] - Thank you. I move that pursuant to section 2.2-3712 of Dakota, Virginia, the closed session of the Prince William County School Board meeting of November 18th, 2025, be certified by adopting the following resolution.

[00:04:02] 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.

[00:04:32] - Do I have a second? - Mr. Chairman. - Ms. Zargarpur. - I second. - Okay, any discussion? Please vote.

[00:04:55] - The vote is seven yes, unanimous. Motion passed. - Moving on to closed session. Action items 9.01, approval of appointments and releases. A motion is in order, Vice Chair Blake. - I move that the Prince William County School Board approve the appointment and releases of specific employees as presented in closed session.

[00:05:14] - Do I have a second? - Mr. Chairman. - Ms. Zargarpur. - I second. - Any discussion, please vote.

[00:05:38] - Vote is seven yes, motion passed. - Next, we move on to 9.02. A motion is in order, Vice Chair Blake. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that the Prince William County School Board approves the request for religious exemptions from compulsory school attendance for case numbers RE25-18 and RE25-19.

[00:05:59] - Do I have a second? - Mr. Chairman. - Ms. Zargarpur. - Second. - Any discussion? Please vote.

[00:06:18] - Vote is seven yes, motion passed. - All right, approval for legal counsel's legal recommendation, a motion to order. Vice Chair Blake. - Thank you. I move that the Prince William County School Board authorize the actions recommended by legal counsel as discussed in the closed session.

[00:06:34] - Do I have a second? - Mr. Chairman. - Ms. Zargarpur. - I second. - Any discussion? Please vote.

[00:06:57] - Vote a seven yes, motion passed. - All right, at this time we'd like to begin the Pledge of Allegiance. I'd like to invite our student representative, Karina Grover from Charles Colgan High School to lead us in the pledge. - I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, - Liberty and justice.

[00:07:26] - Thank you. At this time, we're gonna do Thriving Futures Focus and folks, Thriving Futures Focus is our opportunity to highlight the exemplary work being accomplished in our schools that fulfill our vision that every student will graduate on time with the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind necessary to create a thriving future for themselves and their community.

[00:07:47] We dedicate this time during our meetings to recognizing students, staff members, and schools that have earned an honor or an award at the state or national level. Tonight, the board would like to acknowledge Tim Vaughn, Administrative Coordinator for Career and Technical Education for earning the distinction from Project Lead the Way as the 2025 National Project Lead the Way Administrator of the Year.

[00:08:13] Let's give him a round of applause, folks. Project Lead the Way is a hands-on STEM program where students learn by doing, Students practice designing, building, coding, and solving real-world challenges.

[00:08:31] It strengthens problem-solving skills and prepares students for future college and career opportunities in STEM. Mr. Vaughn is in his third year as coordinator and has elevated CTE, Career Technical Education, at Prince William County Schools by setting high standards in cultivating robust industry partnerships.

[00:08:51] I would also like to mention that Dr. Sarah Martin, Director of Career and Technical Education, is also here tonight to support Mr. Vaughan. At this time, I'd like to invite Mr. Vaughan to share a few words about his accomplishment. Mr. Vaughan. - Thank you.

[00:09:08] Short and sweet, just like me. I just wanna thank, this award would be impossible without the support system I have. Whether it's my family, major support, my wife Barbara's here tonight, and my two boys. My fantastic CTE support team that's here. Dr. MacGaid for steering the ship.

[00:09:26] crazy and all as it is and the school board I guess for you what you do I mean some of you know I have an alternative job that involved with the NCAA that has it's also thankless without people like you doing what you do and when it's you're never going to please everybody all of the time and it's it is I can appreciate that so I appreciate your support project lead the way is a fantastic program for our students and I'm super appreciative to be recognized tonight and especially for our me on behalf of our teachers because they're are the ones who are really putting the work to make sure it happens for the students.

[00:10:01] Thank you very much. - Thank you, Mr. Vaughn, and congratulations. It's a terrific program that our schools do, and I know our students who participate in it truly enjoy it. Thank you again.

[00:10:16] I would like to now shift our focus and invite Mr. Justin Wilk of the Great Potomac District to please introduce his honorees for this evening. Mr. Wilk. - Thank you, Chairman Lateef. Sponsored by the American Council of Teachers of Russian, A-C-T-R, the Olympiata of spoken Russian is the oldest A-C-T-R program for secondary schools in the United States dating back to the 1960s.

[00:10:41] Modeled after oral exams in the Russian educational system, the competition challenges students to demonstrate their skills in four areas, reciting poetry, conversational fluency on everyday topics, cultural knowledge, and reading comprehension and summarization.

[00:10:57] The Potomac district is proud to recognize Forest Park High School students who's demonstrated exceptional talent and dedication at the 2025 Olympiata of spoken Russian. Our students earned a remarkable 27 medals in this prestigious statewide language competition.

[00:11:14] Among the student achievements, 17 students received gold medals, seven silver medals, three bronze medals, seven honorable mentions, and a class of 2005 graduate, Monica Ulias, was honored with an outstanding achievement award for non-native speakers.

[00:11:33] Representing Forest Park tonight are principal, Richard Martinez, assistant principal, Dr. Diane Maloney, Russian and German teacher, Ms. Natalia Shamshina, and students from the award-winning team. I wish to invite Ms. Shamshina to introduce the award-winning students here tonight and share a few words on behalf of their achievements.

[00:12:01] - Thank you, and good evening, esteemed school board members, supervisors, and dear parents. Exactly 23 years ago, I was standing in front of school board here preparing a proposal for Russian curriculum program in Prince William County.

[00:12:18] I stand before you today with heart full of gratitude. The recent success of students at the state competition is not just a reflection of their hard work. It is a testament, support and encouragement from all of you. To the school board, thank you for believing in importance of language education.

[00:12:37] Your commitment to fostering uh cultural understanding and academic excellence had opened doors to our students to shine on a larger state to our supervisors your guidance and trust have been invaluable you have created an environment where teachers can innovate and student can thrive the achievement would not be possible without the leadership and encouragement to the parents thank you for standing behind your children every step of the way your dedication whatever late-night practice

[00:13:11] session word of encouragement or simply believing in their potential had made it all different I also would like to share a story truly reflect the spirit of teamwork behind success on the day we competition transportation was real challenge our departure time was very early and the buses were still bringing students to school. It seems probably impossible to get my students to the event but thanks for PWCS always having our back the Trumpets Transportation

[00:13:47] Department stepped in and the bus drivers volunteered to help with the support of the school coordinations we left on time. This effort shows that when community comes together, together nothing can stand in the way of student success. A special thank you I would like to give to Dr. Maloney, who visits competition site, encourages and supports our students. Her presence makes a huge difference to us. And Mr. Geisinger, who rides the bus with us, ensures all health needs are covered, and even listens to student practice, drawing his

[00:14:27] experience with Russian. Thank you for going above and beyond to make journey safe and inspiring. The victory is not only about medals and ranking, it's about confidence, it's growth, power and collaboration. I'm deeply honored to be part of this journey and I'm excited what lies ahead of us. Thank you for your trust, your support, your shared vision of excellence. Let's continue to inspire our students. Thank you. Can you introduce each student or they can each come to the

[00:15:06] They can introduce themselves in Russian. Oh, let's do that. They can do it in Russian. That's great. Let's do it this way. All right, let's do it. Introduce yourselves in Russian with your real name, but in Russian. Okay. Who's going to start? Daria?

[00:15:21] No. Monica. I started. I started. My name is Monica Elias. I'm at Northern Virginia Community College.

[00:15:37] I was a recipient of the award, the outstanding award for non-native speakers. I have to thank that to my teacher Natalia Shemshina. She was the one who made me believe in myself and made it possible for me to achieve that. She really put a lot of patience and effort into all of us to get all the medals, all the honorable mentions.

[00:16:01] And I'm really proud to say that I was her student. And yeah, everyone should be proud of what they achieved. and learning a language is a really nice thing.

[00:16:17] Everyone should learn a language, and even if they're not perfect at it, it's just practice and a lot of dedication. But in the end, it's just being you and being confident in yourself.

[00:16:32] So congratulations to everyone, congratulations to Ms. Shemshina for being a wonderful teacher, and thank you for the opportunity to be here. - Hello, my name is Kayla Bremer.

[00:16:53] I'm at Forest Park School and I'm learning Russian. Hello, my name is Alyssa Uralova and I'm 16 years old and I'm going to Forest Park High School.

[00:17:14] Hello, my name is Laila Tamish. Hello, my name is Leonora Abtokrov.

[00:17:33] Hello, my name is Mara. I'm learning at Forest Park School and I'm 15 years old. My name is Tomas, I'm 15, I'm at Forest Park School.

[00:17:50] My name is Eva, I'm at Forest Park School. My name is Laura Gibson, I'm at Forest Park School.

[00:18:05] My name is Daria Adler, I'm at Forest Park School. Dr. Lateef, if I may, I'm going to jump in here, not in Russian though.

[00:18:24] Okay. I want to thank Dr. Maloney for the support she's given the program and all the work that that Frau who also teaches German. She has eight preps, teaches German and Russian at the school. - So you'll be winning the German award next year? Is that what we're gonna be hearing? - But I, she also has worked on the Russian camp.

[00:18:42] She's also worked on the Russian camp for the county. And I wanna know that I am working quickly to try to meet a deadline to nominate her for the ACTR Russian Teacher of the Year for this area. So hopefully we are able to recognize her in the near future for her endeavors in this area.

[00:19:00] that she is recognized by many, many people in Northern Virginia for her work in Russian studies. So congratulations to the entire team. - Fantastic, well, excellent.

[00:19:15] Thank you, Mr. Wilk, and congratulations to the Forest Park team. I have to say in the seven years I've been doing this or almost eight years, this is and will be one of the most memorable nights. I truly appreciate you all for the work you've done. You are truly inspiring to all of our students and to this entire community.

[00:19:32] Thank you once again. At this time, I'd like to ask those involved who've won, we're gonna take some, well, no, first, I wanna thank and please stand all of our family members for this gold medal team, stand in recognition of their support.

[00:19:48] All the parents and family and teachers and everyone here who's in support, clearly they wouldn't have been able to do this without you all, so thank you so much. At this time, I'd like to, Dr. McDade will share a few words and then we'll take some pictures.

[00:20:05] - Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I first want to recognize Mr. Vaughn. So I remember visiting Mr. Vaughn's classroom when he was an award-winning CTE teacher right here in Prince William County Schools prior to him becoming an administrator.

[00:20:20] So this is really exciting to recognize him as the 2025 National Project Lead the Way Administrator of the Year. So this is two awards of the year for you, both teacher and administrator. You really reflect the impact of leadership on our students and you've done so much to expand CTE experiences for our students, so I'm just so proud to have you leading the way in Prince William County, and congratulations to you and the work that you continue to do in service of PWCS students.

[00:20:50] And to our Forest Park students and Ms. Shamsheena. Ms. Shamsheena, I don't know if you remember, we had an opportunity to meet at the Forest Park Multicultural Night, and I was so impressed with your students then. I just wanna congratulate each and every one of our students here tonight. What a remarkable accomplishment.

[00:21:07] You each embody what we strive for in every PWCS learner, which is global competence, and you make us incredibly proud. So congratulations to each and every one of you. Congratulations, Mr. Vaughn. I'm grateful for the example that you are setting for your entire school community.

[00:21:24] Job well done. We are PWCS proud. - I'm gonna introduce Jen Wall of the Gainesville District to speak her little Russian to you all. - I just want to say spasiba, spasiba for coming in tonight and harasho.

[00:21:40] - Thank you guys, let's do some pictures.

[00:23:03] - This is perfect.

[00:23:06] - Big smiles.

[00:25:48] - All right, what are we up to next? All right, up next is 12.01, Adoption Consent Agenda. Mr. Vice Chair, Tracy Blake. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that the Prince William County School Board approve the public meeting consent agenda as recommended.

[00:26:07] - Do I have a second? - Mr. Chairman. - Ms. Zargarpur. - I second. - Any discussion? Please vote.

[00:26:24] - The vote is seven yes, motion passed. - Okay, great. Citizen comment time up next. Those citizens who've signed up in advance with the clerk may address the 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.

[00:26:43] Please use proper decorum manners while at the podium or you will 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 do so, the board will recess I'll ask that the room be cleared to restore public order.

[00:26:59] Tonight, we have six citizens signed up to speak. When I call your name, please come to the podium and state your name and address for the record. Per policy 1:34, the time allotted for each speaker will be three minutes. At the three minute mark, I do cut the mic. It is not because I'm rude. It's just because that's what we do for each speaker has three minutes.

[00:27:17] And so I appreciate your understanding on that. I'll call the first, I'll just tell you the order of the six or five that we have, six. And then you can come up to the seats in front if you'd like or come from your seat when it's your turn.

[00:27:33] Manon Davis, Laurina Clark, Jay Coburn, Jessica Schar, Lindsey Ann Leachy Lunsford and Blake Hara. We'll start first with Manon Davis.

[00:28:00] - Good evening to Dr. McDade, Dr. Lateef, members of the school board. My name is Manon Davis and my address is on file. I am here as the PWA VA board representative to express our concern.

[00:28:17] Any attempt to extend the school day from seven hours to 7.5 hours without prior meaningful consultation from the PWA bargaining unit representative is unacceptable.

[00:28:33] This would undermine the partnership we strive to maintain between PWCS and PWA. While you may believe that the change benefits teachers, feedback from educators over the past week make it clear, we do not want or need adjustment in time.

[00:28:55] Many of our certified staff adhere to the contract hours because they hold additional jobs or have family responsibilities. Imposing longer hours without important input, disregards their voice and violates the spirit of a negotiated contract, which is based on a seven hour day.

[00:29:15] If the rationale is that certified staff already work beyond their hours, that is by choice, not mandated. Forcing additional time without compensation is equivalent to requiring unpaid labor.

[00:29:32] If your goal is to support educators, address the real issue. Excessive administrative meetings, redundant testing, and unrealistic instructional mandates that consume planning time. These burdens, not the length of the school days, are what drives us to work late.

[00:29:52] We want our voices heard. We want decisions made with us, not for us. Moving forward without stakeholders' input sends a clear message, our opinion does not matter, and that is not a partnership we are looking forward to.

[00:30:09] In addition, what's gonna happen to our sick time? I urge the board to pause on any actions of extending the school day until we have fully consulted and provided feedback. Engage with us before making a decision that impacts our work and our lives.

[00:30:24] Collaboration must come first. Thank you. - Thank you. Next, Lorena Clark.

[00:30:45] - Good evening, Dr. McDade and board members. My name is Lorena Clark and my contact information is on file. I'm here because our priorities are upside down and our students are paying the price. We're hiring more administrators while classrooms struggle for basic resources. Our mission is simple, to educate students, yet we're drowning in data that lacks context and meaning.

[00:31:06] 10-minute walkthroughs and snapshots of my smart board do not measure learning, they measure compliance. Science cannot be understood in a sound bite, yet these observations drive decisions. Grades don't tell the real story either.

[00:31:22] Students with multiple missing assignments still advance, even when they fail SOL exams. This teaches them one thing, effort doesn't matter. Then they hit high school and crash because they've never learned how to overcome failure. Instead of adding layers of administration, why not send people into the schools to help students read at grade level or master math skills?

[00:31:44] We have instructional coaches who've never taught the subjects that they're coaching. They're not even really coaching, they're gathering more data. We've spent taxpayer dollars on high quality instructional materials that teachers are forced to use, even though experienced educators have created effective materials for years.

[00:32:03] These purchased programs often fail because they're designed by people far removed from the classrooms. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the county, propane and electric buses still sit unused, fuel pumps break down repeatedly, and experienced teachers are leaving because this top-heavy system, Prince William County, is not thriving, it's barely breathing.

[00:32:24] This is not sustainable, and every dollar spent on bureaucracy is a dollar taken from the students. Every mandate that ignores teachers' expertise is a step backwards. If we truly care about student success, we must invest in classrooms, not spreadsheets.

[00:32:40] We must trust the teachers, not micromanage them. I urge you, rethink these priorities, put resources where they belong, into the hands of those who teach and the students who need us the most. Thank you. - Thank you.

[00:32:56] Jane Coburn.

[00:33:12] - Good evening, Superintendent McDade and members of the school board. If I make a mistake, by the way, I'm very tired. It was a long day, so I appreciate your patience. Years ago, I stood here to discuss the extension of contract hours after it had happened.

[00:33:28] The contract hours were extended without any consultation of the staff, and staff felt incredibly disrespected and angry. Teacher morale dropped significantly. The division lost a lot of excellent teachers at that time.

[00:33:44] Then this board, many of you were on it, rescinded that and morale raised as we felt heard. Every week I donate time to this school division, you're welcome by the way, not because I want to, but because honestly the responsibilities of this job far exceed the time that we're given to perform them.

[00:34:03] The success of this school division, it's built on our unpaid labor, it's expected. Now what you wanna do is you want to discuss institutionalizing that donation. So let's kind of think about this. I donate to a food pantry and then I'm told, I now obligated to donate to that food pantry every single day because I chose to do it in the first place.

[00:34:27] There's a big distinction there. I did email all of you on the board. I'm grateful for those who responded, I appreciate that. If you didn't respond, I'm still hopeful that you did read the email. We do have options. We have multiple options of what we can do. If we really want to help teachers get their work done within the work day, we could stop adding new tasks without removing any because that happens all the time.

[00:34:50] We could get rid of some of the data spreadsheets that suck up all the time. We can end the micromanagement, like writing up objectives for six subjects a day in elementary school that the kids don't even know how to read. We can reserve non-student days for actual work instead of PD that honestly is usually irrelevant for a lot of us because it's not designed for our experience level.

[00:35:11] We can shorten the school day by 10 minutes because that 10 minutes that was added on years ago for Snowmageddon, we have never once used it. and we don't need it. There are options that can respect teachers, that can pull the pressure back, that can show us that we're valued, and that doesn't include making us be here instead of letting us choose to be here.

[00:35:35] Thank you. - Thank you. Jessica Scherr, Scherr.

[00:35:52] Jessica Scherr. - Good evening, school board. I'm here to talk about collective bargaining. Collective bargaining matters in PWCS because it gives teachers a real voice and the decisions that affect their work and their lives.

[00:36:12] Instead of having changes handed out without input, it brings everyone to the table to talk through issues and find solutions together. When people who work directly with students help shape policy, schools run better, morale is stronger, and we're able to keep good educators instead of losing them to burnout or neighboring districts.

[00:36:30] The current collective bargaining resolution does not address the length of teachers' contracts day. That means decisions about how long teachers need to be in the building can be made without formal input from those most affected. I'm asking the board to please gather genuine feedback from teachers before making any changes to the contracted workday.

[00:36:48] Teachers are not just educators. They're parents, they're caregivers, they're community members. They have responsibilities beyond the school bell. Childcare arrangements, caring for aging parents, second jobs, afterschool duties. They have kids that have sports they need to go to.

[00:37:08] In Northern Virginia, even a small change in dismissal or workday times can significantly alter traffic flow and commute times, and that impacts our staff's mental health, family stability, and retention. Extending the workday without teacher input would cause real hardships for many employees.

[00:37:27] Additionally, with the salary cap lifted and teachers now able to transfer all of their years of experience to nearby districts, the risk of losing staff is higher than ever. If PWCS suddenly makes changes that disrupt teachers' lives, we should expect an increase in resignations and transfers that will cost this division.

[00:37:46] So I ask, why vote now on changing the teacher contract day? Why not wait for the next round of collective bargaining? When teachers' voices can be at the table and ensure that any decision reflects collaboration rather than unilateral change. Listening to teachers is not just respectful, it's smart policy.

[00:38:04] It keeps classrooms staffed, protects morale, and ultimately supports our students. I have three kids currently enrolled in PWCS schools, and they absolutely love their teachers. Please show them the respect they deserve so we can keep them in our schools. Thank you.

[00:38:22] - Lindsey Ann Leachey-Lunsford. - Good evening, members of the board. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

[00:38:37] I'm here to express my opposition to extending the teacher workday from seven hours to seven and a half hours without any corresponding adjustments to compensation, sick leave or contractual protections. It is important to note that our district already exceeds state required student seat hours by substantial margin.

[00:38:55] When the school day was extended several years ago, again, without any corresponding increase in teacher compensation, we surpassed the minimum instructional hours requirements by hundreds of hours annually. Teachers have already absorbed that additional time as a professional courtesy and a demonstration of our commitment to students to now propose yet another expansion of the workday without compensation ignores that history and further widens the gap between state expectations and what our district demands of its educators.

[00:39:23] Extending contract hours without fair compensation will only accelerate the decrease of teachers' morale in PWCS. Educators are already expressing frustration and fatigue and proposals like this send a clear message that their time is undervalued.

[00:39:42] This has real consequences and we are seeing more teachers consider and follow through with leaving Prince William County to neighboring districts like FCPS, where more experienced educators earn higher pay for the same seven and a half hour contract day. If PWCS continues to increase expectations without increasing compensation, we risk losing exactly the experienced, high qualified teachers our students deserve.

[00:40:06] Adding 30 minutes to the teacher workday without additional pay is in effect a pay cut. It increases workload while keeping compensation stagnant, and it sets a concerning precedent for how we value educators' time and expertise. Similarly, extending the required workday without adjusting sick leave or other benefits, further arose the fairness and balance of our current contract provides.

[00:40:26] This proposal will create significant logistical problems for our high school programs. High school sports practices traditionally begin between 10:10 or 2:10 and, sorry, 2:15. Extending the teacher workday to 2:30 will directly conflict with those schedules.

[00:40:42] Students will be left unsupervised between 2:10 and 2:30 an unacceptable gap in safety especially since coaches are expected to remain at school until 2 30 and still begin practice immediately after they would then be double dipping being paid both teachers thank you and coaches miss lunswick thanks blake harrah good evening board members

[00:41:17] chair dr midday my name is blake harrah and my address is on file i'm here to speak on behalf of all the parents of prince william county when is this award going to put students and parents ahead of their political opinions last night i attended the woodbridge and potomac shores number Number two, redistricting. Right now, I can guarantee you are too late.

[00:41:33] The same critical mistakes are gonna be made just as they were in 2017. The redistricting team is relying on poor acquired information. The lines they drove for the two most overcrowded schools, Patty Mills and Covington Harbor, are the worst drawn lines. What's ridiculous is you guys are gonna vote on this in January, that's less than a month.

[00:41:53] Since 2018, this board has reduced the timeline for our zoning down to two to three months and clearly gotten it wrong as Covington Harbor is a clear example. The necessary time to zone for one school is approximately 12 to 18 months and you guys have 13 schools that will be affected.

[00:42:09] Fairfax, Stafford and Alexandria managed to take the necessary time, why can't you? Ms. Williams, following September 3rd meeting, you asked me what we should do to address zoning concerns. I have the three recommendations on how you should approach this matter. First, don't base your zoning decisions on Title I eligibility to secure additional federal funding.

[00:42:28] Instead, based on proper geographical populations. Second, take the necessary time to do inaccurate zoning. Third, show up to the town hall. This board is less than 12 months from Woodbridge Elementary opening, yet the process just began.

[00:42:45] In 18 months, students are expected to enter Potomac Shores number two and formal discussions haven't even begun. You will have two schools just 1.9 miles apart from each other in the same community. A proper zoning study typically costs between $185,000 and $250,000.

[00:43:02] When do you plan on starting this conversation? - Dr. Medade, last year you made $387,994 with a 6% annual raise. I'm willing to bet you make more than $400,000 a year, more than the president of the United States. Given your failures, I ask, should the public petition to have the cost of your zoning study deducted from your salary to get our point across?

[00:43:24] Even with $200,000 removed from your compensation, that's still pretty comfortable living in Prince William County. The ongoing scapegoating of one administration by another is no longer a valid excuse and must end immediately. I urge you not to conduct your vote in January, delay it and take the necessary time to Zoom.

[00:43:39] I'm willing to meet with any one of you at any time. - Thank you. All right, that concludes citizen comment time. Up next is 1401, our annual school calendar presentation. Dr. McDade. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At this time, I would like to invite our associate superintendent for teaching and learning, Dr. Stephanie Sullivan, and she will present an update on the school calendar.

[00:44:04] - Thank you, Dr. Lateef, Dr. McDade, members of the board. I'm waiting for the magician to come out the back room. Thank you. - Got it, I got it, there you go. - There's nothing I can do.

[00:44:20] I think I'm good now. And so once again, thank you for having me here today. I am pleased to share with you the results of the work that is being done to provide the board with a proposal for next year's school calendar.

[00:44:38] Before I get started, I do wanna recognize one of my directors, Dr. Tiffany Hardy. She is a passionate leader who really values stakeholder engagement and has done much of this work. So I do wanna make sure she's acknowledged for that.

[00:44:57] And so as an annual reminder, we look at several policies, regulations, and codes to govern how we make recommendations for the school calendar. The calendar committee very specifically is aware that they cannot deviate from those standards set by the board and of course the Commonwealth as well.

[00:45:18] And here you'll see references to the main ones that impact our recommendations. And so I've summarized a couple of the key issues for the board and our community, of course, on the things that we look at when we recommend a calendar.

[00:45:34] As you all are aware, we do 180 student days that is in regulation and alignment with Virginia code. We try to schedule those days to be approximately 45 days in each quarter. Sometimes based on when the holidays fall, they deviate a little bit.

[00:45:54] Important to note that Virginia code does say that school can start no earlier than 14 days prior to Labor Day. So of course we honor that code as well. In establishing a calendar, it's really important to identify how we schedule teacher work days.

[00:46:11] So our students come to school for 180 days. Our teachers, our certified staff, in general are 195 days employees. There are some exceptions to that, but the vast majority of our workforce has 195 days.

[00:46:29] So that's 15 additional professional development/work days above when students report. Five of those days are teacher prep days before the school year starts. Teachers have huge responsibilities and to prepare for the school year.

[00:46:45] And so we generally bring teachers back a week before students report. There are four of those teacher workdays designated for workdays for the end of each grading period. And of course, this is really important for our teachers in wrapping up school grades, communicating with families as appropriate.

[00:47:03] So at the end of each quarter, there is a full teacher workday. There's one PD day that's a designated school year Division-wide PD Day, and that annually falls on Columbus Day/Indigenous People Day. And then there are two days that are split between professional learning and parent conferences.

[00:47:27] And those are in November and January. We also provide our teachers with the opportunity to do two of those work days as flex days. So two of those days, our teachers have the ability to potentially attend a conference in the summer, come in and set up their classroom, basically independently choose how they're going to spend that time so it doesn't come off the school calendar.

[00:47:53] This year we added some additional flexibility to the options that our teachers have in fulfilling that requirement. And so you'll see bolded there one teacher workday to be placed within the calendar. So after all the regulations and policies, there's an extra teacher workday that's not part of those requisite areas.

[00:48:16] And so also wanna note for the board that we do have policy that governs our holidays and those holidays also come off the calendar. And so we make sure that our employee groups and our student groups are off on those days when they fall on school days and then sometimes it also impacts a Monday or Friday on a weekend.

[00:48:38] So that of course expands the total length of the school year. Our stakeholders have been really consistent in their feedback over the last two years.

[00:48:53] Winter break being at two weeks is really risen to the level of high priority for both our workforce and our families. There's discussion on that, remember that one extra teacher workday I just mentioned?

[00:49:10] Some advocacy for that in August, others for a different date, which I'll share in a beginning. The three days for Thanksgiving break that now have become customary, the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, because again, our holidays call for Thursday and Friday, we allocate an additional day off for our students and teachers of that Wednesday, again, spreads the calendar.

[00:49:33] Avoid having the last day for students on a Monday. That's pretty common sense, but it was called out to us that we wanted to make sure we honored that. We have to pay close attention in our division for that June election day. So we do work with the Board of Elections to make sure that if there's any issues with June election dates and a full day for spring break is also a priority for our school community.

[00:49:59] And so we also provided for the board this year some comparisons across some local divisions because of course we know that in an area like Northern Virginia, it's not uncommon for people to work in one division, live in another. So we do review those schedules.

[00:50:15] You'll see the number of student days is fairly consistent across Northern Virginia with the exception of Stafford. The teacher workdays, again, you'll see the difference there, the workday length, and basically the calendar on when students report.

[00:50:34] We also go into all of the different holidays. You may have noticed with your early review that our calendar is very closely aligned to Fairfax. And that is because of course, many of our employees also live in Fairfax or back and forth have work for us and have children in Fairfax.

[00:50:53] So we do look closely at their schedule as well as Loudoun in particular. And then here you'll see the other holiday comparisons, really similar across all of the divisions. And again, that's intentional. We wanna make sure that we're not putting our families a difficult situation.

[00:51:14] And then here you can see an overview of the four options presented to the board for consideration. I will talk in detail about each of those options. But this is a nice quick graphic overview for you to see when the days would start and when they would end.

[00:51:33] And so let's look at calendar option A. And I know it's a little hard for our viewers in the audience on the screen, so I will do my best to narrate. So the best starting point in looking at the calendar is August, so you will see when our students start and that week of pre-service that I spoke to you about earlier, you can see the week identified and that day that students start.

[00:51:58] It looks and feels a little late this year and it is. Labor Day is late on the calendar this school year, which is actually extending the summer a little bit and nobody has complained about that. And so you will see a slightly later start to the school year.

[00:52:15] It's really important as you go through the calendar, these are the things that I'm gonna point out for you to emphasize. Let's go to December. In this version of the calendar, there is the two full weeks of no school for teachers and for students.

[00:52:33] So essentially 10 days off during that time period. When you go into March, you can also see that blue box in March. That's that extra teacher workday that I mentioned to you earlier. In plan A, that extra teacher workday is the Monday after spring bake, which coincides with the Monday after Easter.

[00:52:56] That was in our calendar this year, was very popular and very well liked. That's that one extra day where we have flexibility. And then if you go to the end of the school year, You can see where the school year ends in June. We do have a holiday for Juneteenth on that Friday, and so it is a bit of an awkward shift with school ending for students on Thursday, holiday for all on that Friday, and then Monday is technically the last day that teachers will report.

[00:53:28] I will say that on this year's calendar, we denoted that as an optional workday for teachers who did not complete their wrap-up responsibilities the week before. And I would encourage that same level of attention.

[00:53:44] And then when you go to calendar B, this is where you can start to see some slight differences. In that first week in pre-service, we have the full week, but then you'll also see that that Monday is blued. That's that extra one teacher workday, 'cause there was an ask for consideration of a teacher workday at the beginning of the year that is an unobligated day, meaning teachers have a full unscheduled day to prepare, what that means is school starts on a Tuesday.

[00:54:12] And so that's something that the committee wanted to present. The rest of the calendar you'll see is mostly in sync with calendar A. You'll see the two weeks in December for winter break. You will not see that Monday in March because in this version it's presented in option A, in this version, it is in the first week of pre-service.

[00:54:37] I realize how confusing that just sounded. And you'll see June ends the same way with that Thursday for students and that Monday, what I would recommend is an optional teacher workday. Calendar C, the beginning of the school year goes back to option A, where we have the five days of pre-service.

[00:54:59] What you're gonna notice right away in December is there are eight recommended days for winter break and not 10, which does shorten the option to have two weeks at winter break. You will see the March option for that Monday off, and then you will see the much earlier dismissal in June.

[00:55:20] That's due to those two days being taken from winter break. We wanted to present this option because that earlier release in June was also an ask that people wanted us to look at. And then finally, option D, you've probably figured out the rhythm now.

[00:55:37] This is where that extra day goes into pre-service again, short eight-day winter break, the Monday after Easter as a teacher workday, and again, that earlier release in June.

[00:55:53] And so some other aspects we wanted to make sure the board recognized is this is a listing of all the holidays and workdays that go into the calendar, that basically block the calendar, if you will, and are set in place before any other options are considered.

[00:56:11] There are times where a holiday is not on a school day and wouldn't impact the school calendar. So for example, you can see for 26/27, Rosh Hashanah is not a school day, would not impact the school calendar, on other years it might. So we wanted to provide all that information clearly for the board.

[00:56:30] Now, what were the survey results? This is, of course, of paramount importance. You can see here that we did have over 12,000 respondents to the survey. That is a large response group. We really appreciate our staff, our parents, and our students who responded to the survey.

[00:56:48] We got a lot of comments in addition to the choices that they made. So we really do recognize the effort that our school community put in providing powerful feedback. So how did they vote? I realize now looking at this large screen, it's pretty hard to see the colors, so I'll narrate.

[00:57:06] Choice A was the number one choice for the respondents as a whole. And just to refresh your memory, Choice A has the five workdays in the beginning of the year, the two full weeks of winter break, excuse me, the Monday after Easter as a teacher workday, and with that ending, that brings in that Monday that I think we can be flexible in.

[00:57:34] When we broke it down to students, parents, and teachers, parents overwhelmingly chose option A. That was the choice that without question, their comments supported that as well. Our staff alternatively chose option C, but their comments made it clear that their concern was that Monday coming back after students got out.

[00:57:58] So that's why I wanna offer the recommendation to make that an optional day, because that was the primary reason our faculty and staff chose option C. And our students, interestingly enough, it was a small group of respondents, they chose option B with the extra teacher workday on that Monday and school starting on Tuesday.

[00:58:19] But when you looked at all the respondents, option A was the preferred choice for the majority of our stakeholders. Some themes within the comments, I've mentioned this before, lots of opposing perspectives. Our community recognizes that with every opportunity for there to be a holiday or a workday comes a lengthening of the school day.

[00:58:45] And so more comments on that this year than in the past, well, at least the past two years. And so there are communities recognizing that tension point of every choice during the year expands it. There was encouragement to align with the other school divisions.

[00:59:02] And as I mentioned, the options are very closely aligned with the other school divisions in the Northern region. Again, lots of comments on the two week winter break. And so that's also why you're seeing those options less popular with the exception of option C for the teachers.

[00:59:20] And that work day after spring break, people really recognize that decision in this year's schedule and would love to see that continue. And I am happy to answer any questions that you may have about the calendar or the calendar process as you prepare for the next board meeting to vote.

[00:59:43] - Ms. Trudenik. - Hi, Dr. Sullivan. When you guys put out the survey, do you know how many questions it was, what the length of the survey was? - I'm sorry, I can't say off the top of my head, but it was not a long survey. It was a very short survey with the options and the explanations and a couple of the information that was on the slides.

[01:00:03] - Okay. - I apologize, I don't know the exact number. - I'm just curious 'cause, you know, option A, did they choose that because it was the first one and that's the only one they really looked at or? - That's a great question. Based on the comments, I would suggest that they did look at them closely. We had thousands and thousands of comments and the comments were pretty specific about what they liked and didn't like in the different options.

[01:00:27] So could there be some perhaps, but I do think the majority of respondents did read because their comments reflected a pretty deep level of understanding. - Okay, and you said between C and D, there's just that one day difference. - Between C and D, let me go back a little just so I can point it out to you really quickly.

[01:00:50] Yes, so in C, we've got the five work days in the beginning with school starting on the Monday, the eight days in December, the holiday on the Monday after spring break, and then the earlier release because of the eight days.

[01:01:06] In D, you'll see that day up front, not the Monday after the holidays. - Thank you. - You're welcome. - I think typically, if you remind us year to year, the one that's always the most popular, and I think a couple of them, or two or three of them have the two weeks break.

[01:01:29] - Yeah, right. - That's usually the number one thing. - Right now, number one was A. - Yeah. - And that does have the two weeks of winter break. It has, honestly, the schedule worked out well. It has the opportunity for that Monday after spring break to be a teacher work day.

[01:01:44] The one negative that we did here was the concern for that Monday after students were released and that holiday on Friday. - Sure, okay, great, thank you. Any other questions? Mr. Wilk. - Yeah, hi, thank you, Dr. Sullivan.

[01:01:59] Was there, for next year, I know it's not on a weekday, but it is over a weekend. Is the calendar going to recognize Lunar New Year on the calendar? - It is, thank you for asking that. Had an opportunity to collaborate with my colleagues in communications.

[01:02:15] And yes, they will make sure that it is denoted on the calendar. And we also put out what holidays are being celebrated during a period of time so that our faculty and staff are aware that students may be celebrating various holidays. - Yeah. - Thank you.

[01:02:34] - Ms. Wall. - I wanted to go back to the comment about students liking the Tuesday start I know this is something we talked about last year as well especially for the little kids where you know Monday to Friday is quite a long grind I see you know the option from option A to option B it looks like the Monday moving the Monday after Easter up to be six days in the beginning is the main change yes ma'am are there any other options that could be considered to start on a Tuesday and yet?

[01:03:11] - Well, certainly we could move the beginning, the five days of the teacher workdays further out. So for example, right now the teacher work week starts on that Monday, we could shift that, which would then bring those five days into the beginning of the subsequent week.

[01:03:32] There was definitely pros and cons and some pretty strong comments from families. So we certainly recognize the positives of that. We would love the teachers to have that work day. However, there were families concerned with the way daycare arrangements work and they're having that one odd day that made it really difficult.

[01:03:55] So it was more of our families that had concerns about the Tuesday start. So it's pros and cons to both scenarios. - So strong feelings on both sides of that one issue. - I would say much more in favor of the Monday start.

[01:04:11] That wasn't equivalent in comments. There was recognition of the positive attributes of the later start, much more in favor of a Monday start. - Okay. - Yeah. - Thank you. - Mm-hmm. - That clarifies that issue for me. - Yeah. - I appreciate it.

[01:04:26] - Mr. Wolk? Did anyone, no, okay. Dr. Sullivan, hi, quick question again. Looking at the jurisdictions that we have side-by-side and comparisons, especially on slide seven. Do we know if any of the other four have half days in their school systems?

[01:04:45] - If they have half days, it is not denoted on their student calendar for us to, I know we of course have some local knowledge in that space, but they don't denote it that way on their calendar for us to be able, I could certainly follow up with some phone calls before the next board meeting.

[01:05:05] - I would greatly appreciate that. - No problem, we'll put that together and share that with the board as soon as possible so you can add it to your consideration. - Ms. Zargarpur. - Yeah, I can speak to the half days. - I knew you could. - I work in Fairfax where we have them, we get them once a month.

[01:05:22] It's only in elementary and it's to accommodate the extra training that has been required from the VLA and some of our math initiatives that have been coming forward. So I don't know that that's gonna continue next year, but I would love to know if you find something out, please share.

[01:05:42] - Will do. It was not denoted on the calendar they published. But again, we will contact each district and share that information. - Okay, thank you very much. - Thank you, sir. - Thank you, Dr. McDade. Next, we're moving on to agenda item 14.02, members of the school board have requested to receive information on teacher contract day.

[01:06:03] This is an informational presentation and no vote will be taken on this topic today. Dr. McDade. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In response to the board's request for information on the teacher contract day, I would like to invite our chief human resource officer, Dr. Donna Eagle, to provide information to share with the school board.

[01:06:26] - Good evening, Dr. Lateef, members of the board, and Dr. McDade. Tonight, I'll be presenting an overview of our contracts and working day lengths for our certified staff relative to the Commonwealth of Virginia. I'll be covering how Prince William County Public Schools compares to other divisions across the Commonwealth and also in our region.

[01:06:57] This presentation summarizes teacher contracts and work date lengths across the state of Virginia. And our data came from surveys, it came from division websites, board docs, and policy reviews throughout the state. I also wanna remind the board that the Virginia Administrative Code, specifically 8VAC20-441-30 defines the length of a teacher contract.

[01:07:23] It states the local school board shall define the length of the contract period for each employee. A standard 10-month contract for a teacher shall include 200 days, including number one, 180 teaching days or 990 instructional hours and up to 20 days for activities such as teaching, participating in professional development, planning, evaluating, completing records and reports, participating on committees or in conferences or other such activities that may be assigned or approved by the local school board.

[01:07:55] So to give it all some historical context, let's look at the history of the workday links in PWCS. I was not employed by the division during this time period and thus have relied on news articles and historical records, school board records in providing this look back.

[01:08:12] Before 2012, certified staff had a seven hour workday, which is inclusive of a 30 minute lunch. In February 2012, during a period without step increases, teachers participated in a work to the rule campaign that was designed to encourage them to work only contracted hours.

[01:08:34] In March 2012, the board approved a step increase and extended the workday to seven and a half hours. In May 2016, Mr. Wilk introduced a motion which passed by the newly elected school board to reinstate the seven hour workday for teachers.

[01:08:56] Currently, this is a look at our whole workforce, the workday lengths for the various job classifications. Our teachers do work seven hours, which includes a 30 minute lunch. Our substitute teachers work seven and a half hours with a 30 minute unpaid lunch.

[01:09:15] Our teaching assistants work seven hours with a 30-minute unpaid lunch. Just want to note that our teaching assistant schedules will be changing next year with the 26-27 school year, and their workday will increase to 7 1/2 hours in the 26-27 school year with a 30-minute lunch.

[01:09:34] Administrator length of day is 8 1/2 hours, including a 30-minute unpaid lunch. Classified staff, excluding our teaching assistants, work eight hours, including a 30-minute unpaid lunch. And these distinctions reflect the various roles and responsibilities across the division.

[01:09:53] The next slide summarizes our bell schedules. So student arrival and dismissal times and our teacher arrival and dismissal times. So our bell schedules and teacher report times and dismissal times vary by school level and site.

[01:10:09] This table provides a summary of schools and their student and teacher arrival and dismissal times. You may remember that the school day was increased by 10 minutes in May of 2014 from six hours and 30 minutes to six hours and 40 minutes.

[01:10:26] At that time, comparisons with other school divisions showed that the length of PWCS school day was shorter than most in the region. So our staff, our human resource staff conducted, as I said, a variety of survey with all 131 school divisions regarding workday length.

[01:10:51] The majority, 110 divisions in the Commonwealth, have a seven and a half hour workday, including lunch. Only two divisions in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Prince William and Williamsburg James City County, have a seven hour workday.

[01:11:08] Other divisions range from seven hours and 15 minutes to eight and a half hours, but these day lengths are much less common. This highlights that PWCS is unique with our seven day workday for teachers.

[01:11:24] So this slide is a summary of region four, which are the 19 school divisions in region four. Most divisions, 14 of 19, including Loudoun and Fairfax, have a seven and a half hour workday. A few divisions, four, including Manassas Park and Manassas, have eight hour days.

[01:11:43] This regional comparison also emphasizes our uniqueness in the region. Next, we'll take a look at our contract length, how many days are actually in our base teacher contract.

[01:11:58] Regarding contract length, we got responses from 117 divisions. The majority 89 divisions have a 200-day contract. PWCS is among six divisions with 195-day contract. Other divisions range from 190 to 209 days, but these are less common.

[01:12:21] And this next slide shows the comparison of contract length and days to the 19 school divisions in Region 4. In Region 4, most divisions, 13 of the 19, have a 200-day contract. Prince William, Fairfax, and Alexandria have a 195-day contract, and Loudon has a 197-day contract.

[01:12:40] This data provides important context as we consider any changes to our contract length. So in summary, PWCS is unique in both our workday and contract length compared to most divisions in Virginia and our region.

[01:12:56] Thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions. - Ms. Trudini. - Can you go back to the slide that compares the different jurisdictions? You mentioned WJCC, yes.

[01:13:15] Do you know the population there as far as how many students, how many teachers? - Dr. Ryer, do you know? I know you used to work there. I'm sorry, what? There's 16 total schools according to Dr. Ryer in Williamsburg, James City.

[01:13:32] - All together? - Combined. - Thank you. - 12,000 students. - Real quick, on the, so going back historically, I think it's just important to note.

[01:13:50] I know, what slide, sorry. Slide three, in 2016, when they did introduce the motion to reinstate the seven and a half, the seven hour workday, my understanding it was the motion was just for the one year, but then regulation was changed the next year.

[01:14:08] Is that what happened? - I believe so. The regulation actually wasn't introduced on Dr. Lateef until, hang on here, I have it. Regulation was introduced October the 10th, 2018, that defined the workday as seven hours.

[01:14:25] Prior to that, there was no definition in the regulations. - Correct, this regulation didn't exist. - And then Dr. Eagle, when folks come here to work in our school division, what are the things that as folks say, you know, why I chose to come to Prince William County to work, what are some of the top things that they report?

[01:14:50] - Well, certainly competitive pay and benefits. As you're aware, Dr. Lateef, we've made significant strides in ensuring that our pay and benefits are regionally competitive. So I'm really proud of the work that's been done there. They also cite new teacher support, you know, at their schools and, you know, in the interview process, what they feel, how they're gonna be supported when they join PWCS.

[01:15:18] - Dr. Eagle, on the, who's eight and a half hours? - Eight and a half? - One division. - I don't have that information. I mean, I don't have it with me. I have it, I can provide that to the board. - So in our region, I was looking who's is, the eight hours are Alexandria, Monassas City, Monassas Park, and I think Fauquier, is that correct?

[01:15:38] - Correct. - And how do they do their lunch? What do they do in that extra hour? - I'm not well versed on the specific structure of their teacher day, but state code, you know, does call for the unencumbered lunch.

[01:15:55] So I'm sure that they do have a 30 minute lunch built into their teacher day. - Okay, and then, so I'm just looking here at the Manassas Park, Manassas City.

[01:16:13] So Manassas Park and Manassas City have an eight hour workday and they have a 200 contract day. - Yes. - Is that based on the hours or that's, how do they do that? Am I seeing something, I don't know. - Well, I mean, I just, their workday is eight hours in length, inclusive of their lunch.

[01:16:32] - And they have 200 days. - And they have 200 days in their contract, yes. - Okay, Ms. Wall. - First, I have a question. Thank you for the presentation. I know that was the kind of presentation that required a lot of work gathering the data of all of the other divisions.

[01:16:51] I know we know a lot about our division, but we don't always know a lot about everybody else's division, so thank you. This first question is on behalf of Ms. Williams, who is unable to be here tonight, but she wanted to know, could the division come up with sample schedules at elementary school, middle school, and high school, so staff would have an idea of what it may look like have an extra half hour day extra half hour added to the school day whether that would be like 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after I mean I can see from this data that schools have there's some flexibility when teachers can arrive but that was her question is if could we give some idea of what a sample

[01:17:29] schedule might look like at each level sure we can collaborate with the level office and come up with some sample schedules okay thank you very much and and then I had a question I know historically back in 2012 I was parent of Prince William County students and I do remember that hearing in the news about no step increases for the third consecutive year was a tough time coming out of the 2008 2009 recession for school funding and but things are different now and at least have been since I've been on the board could you

[01:18:06] Can you give us a little bit of context for where we are on salaries now relative to where we were, including the raises that we've given over the last five years or so? - Sure, as the board's aware, we had regionally competitive pay as one of our initiatives in strategic plan, launching thriving futures that was begun when Dr. Meade joined the division in 2021.

[01:18:33] And since that time, our teachers, over five budget cycles. So not including the six and a half percent increase that'll be granted for the 26, 27 school year or this plan for that. Not including that, our teacher increases have varied depending on where teachers were on the pay scale because we decompress the pay scale.

[01:18:57] And so our mid-career teachers in this five-year period of time raises have been 42%. in those five years, a cumulative of 42%, and all teachers except those at the very top would have received a minimum of 25%.

[01:19:18] So in the five years, between 25 and 42%, our teachers have realized those raises to bring us as a leader in compensation in the region and in the Commonwealth. - Let me just weigh in on that real quick.

[01:19:34] So I think our even more specific net, - Our first year teachers this summer, coming summer, will be the highest paid first year teachers in the state. - This past summer, they were the highest paid, the entry is the highest in the Commonwealth, yes. - And then our mid-level ranges are, in our upper levels compared to regionally, I think we're ahead of-- - The top of our scale is the highest in the Commonwealth.

[01:19:58] - The top of our scale is the highest in the Commonwealth. - Yeah, the middle of the scale, we're still continuing to work on it, but we've made tremendous slides, And that's why those teachers have experienced the largest raises too, as we decompress the scale and move teacher salaries. - And we're getting closer competitively with everyone in the region on the middle of the well as well.

[01:20:16] - Yes. - Barbara, can we ask what that, what is the starting salary? - 62,000, 62,500, it might be 62,500, 63. - 62,587. - For a bachelor's degree. - For a first year bachelor's teacher. - And a master's is 6,000 more.

[01:20:33] - Okay, and is there any hiring bonus or anything like that on top of that? Okay, thank you. - Sorry, Ms. Wall, I interrupted you. - No, it's good 'cause we were all on the same topic. So I had a question about collective bargaining.

[01:20:54] The teacher contract length of day, is that an acceptable bargaining topic? Remind me, this is probably a Wade question, or is that precluded by the specifics of our collective bargaining agreement? - The employee schedules are a reserved right to the school board as a managerial right.

[01:21:12] And it's not something that can be a topic of bargaining. - That's what I thought, but I wasn't. I wanted clarification on that. And then I guess a follow up in this, I think I know the answer would be, is there anything in the collective bargaining agreement that would preclude the board taking action on this kind of issue should we decide to do that?

[01:21:34] - No, ma'am. - All right, thank you. - Okay, Mr. Blake. - Thank you, Dr. Eagle. I just wanna ask about, I'm just looking at this slide with the current workday links for PWCS.

[01:21:53] And so next year, the TA and explain to me, the TA is there to support the teacher, right? Like what is the job of the TA is what I'm asking. 'Cause why is the TA gonna be there longer than the teacher?

[01:22:16] You know, I don't understand that. I don't understand that and-- - Well, I think the TA's roles do vary by the specific type of TA that they are. We have kindergarten TAs, we have special education TAs, but certainly a teaching assistant assigned to a kindergarten classroom is gonna work really closely with the teacher of record in that class in providing instruction for those students.

[01:22:43] - So they wouldn't need to be there longer than the teacher? - Absent any change in the length of contract day, yes. The teaching assistant contract day next year for the 26-27 school year will be seven and a half hours long and the teacher would be seven, correct?

[01:23:07] - I just, I'm saying, so what would they be supporting for that half hour, the teacher still that's not there? I don't understand. - They'd be working, you know, student arrival, dismissal, there's often custodial care of our students that's occurring that teaching assistants could assist with.

[01:23:26] They could work with students after school, meet with parents. I mean, there are things that they can do. - Can I ask on top of that? - Yeah, Mr. Denning.

[01:23:41] - Did we vote to do that or that's just decided by you all? How did that come to be? - It was based on administrative feedback to lengthen the day as a budget initiative. - Or just specifically for TAs?

[01:23:57] - For teaching assistants, yes. - Okay, and they could possibly be the ones that stayed later if the buses are later, those kind of things. - Okay, how do the administrators feel about the add-on?

[01:24:19] Will it help them, have we polled them, do we not wanna speak for them? - Well certainly, I've worked in two prior school divisions and when I came here I was actually surprised that our teaching day was seven hours.

[01:24:37] So at that time we had collected this data a few years back to take a look because of administrative feedback at that time around, especially the beginning of the school year, bus schedules and so forth, it's a little more challenging at the beginning of the year.

[01:24:53] And so I had asked my staff a couple of years ago to start working on gathering this data. We've since updated it, but we did begin based on administrative feedback a couple of years ago that the teacher workday is challenging in many instances in terms of ensuring that we're caring for our students.

[01:25:16] - Okay, do we feel like this would decrease the teachers arriving at the same time as the students? As a parent, I notice that sometimes that my teachers are walking in alongside my kiddos, would this give them more time on the front end or we don't really have a plan for where we're putting the timeframe?

[01:25:37] - Well, certainly in developing a schedule at the request of Ms. Williams, we would engage with our administrators, but that would be the idea that we would extend the day on both the front and the end, I would presume. And teachers would arrive well before our students and stay after students are dismissed.

[01:25:57] - Okay, and then I'm just gonna ask one more, a little bit tough question, but a lot of what we do here and up here, we send out surveys, we ask a lot of questions, we make sure that people are engaged. Did we send anything to the teachers and ask for their input or opinion on this at all?

[01:26:15] - Let me answer that, Erica. The administration is just presenting information about the contract. We haven't sent out any questions or anything on this. - That's right, I was asking. Just to know, did we put anything out? Did we ask anything?

[01:26:30] Okay, thank you. - Mr. Jess. - Yeah, that's one of my questions there. And my recommendation to the board or division is that we do survey the teachers.

[01:26:46] We have, what, about 10,000 or plus teachers. - About 8,000. - 8,000. And I think we got maybe, we got a number of emails, but it's still a small percent.

[01:27:04] And the speakers today still is a very small percent. So I don't think we have a total feel for everything. Now I do agree with some of the things that they are concerned with, but I think a survey would be useful that we do.

[01:27:22] The other thing I'm seeing, or don't fully, I would like for us as a division to address the concerns that seem to be coming from the people who submit the emails.

[01:27:39] And I think in some respect, we haven't totally addressed that. But also to the people sending emails, I think, well, before I go there, Tell me about the beginning of the day.

[01:27:56] Kids get there at different hours and different timeframes. When can they go into the building? And is that the seven hours, you know, the time? Or do they, what happens if they go into the building or they're outside and who lets them in?

[01:28:16] What happens to the kids if there's no teacher? - So I wanna just interject right here 'cause Dr. Eagle's not prepared to answer what happens at every single campus 'cause the school administration is responsible for receiving students on a daily basis.

[01:28:34] Board members asked for us to present information and so Dr. Eagle is only prepared to present the information that was requested. So we don't have the kinds of information that you're asking for that is specific to each individual school. We're just simply not prepared to do that tonight so we would have to collect additional data if the board would like to share with us additional questions that you have that, then we can go back and work with our administrators to answer those questions so that we're accurate in what we're saying.

[01:29:02] We're happy to do that, but the request for tonight was for us to just put together data around the actual workday and contract hours in a comparison to the region, which is what we actually prepared for tonight. So we did this, Dr. Eagle's only here for informational purposes only, and that was in direct response to the request of the board.

[01:29:25] Okay, I understand that, and I guess from a general standpoint, I would like to have an answer later at some point, perhaps, if the rest of the board would also like it, because, you know, I remember when I was a kid, we went in, or we would stand outside until they let the doors open, but what I'm understanding now is that the students and sometimes the teachers are coming at the exact same time.

[01:29:54] So that's, to me, it seems like to be an issue that we need to address. One of the emails that was sent out, again, this is not something that I know you can answer today, but I think we need to address, was that the nurses felt that they were being different than the teachers.

[01:30:16] They do not have a half-hour lunch period, and that was a concern. So I think, again, something that was brought out in the emails. For our teachers, you know, to me, the other concern I have is that I hear and understand the complaint that you work all these hours and you're already working some of these hours.

[01:30:43] But in reality, not all teachers do that. So there are a number of teachers who are only coming right at the start of the day and leave right at the end of the day. So, you know, in a way, if that's the case and there's a significant amount of those people, perhaps we need to balance out and what do we do with the people who only shows up right at the start and leave right at the end.

[01:31:17] And you are filling in for some of those people because you do the overtime. those again I would like to just as we study this more look at the emails address some of the complaints in email for us because we don't have the answers for for some of these things but I my understanding for example is that we're not losing teachers like the same at the higher rate than the other people we are

[01:31:55] more teachers are coming into Prince William County than are leaving Prince and they are coming from Fairfax and some of the other school districts. So the impression that sometimes we get is that we are losing teachers. I don't think that's an accurate statement, but I would like to have an answer to that also.

[01:32:16] So those are some of my concerns, thank you. - I think you'll hear a report on teacher retention in Dr. McDade's presentation tonight, but we have improved our teacher retention significantly over the past five years. - And I think our teacher retention is better than the Commonwealth average better than the national average yes correct okay um you know I was one of the ones who requested this information I think it's important for for the public to know that so you know I answer to to everyone in the county I answer to the public I answer to the teachers I answer to everyone in the community um you know I'll be frank I I didn't know we didn't do an eight hour

[01:32:54] work day in in looking at our region Alexandria Falk here Manassas Manassas Park all do eight hours you know I have concerns and and have some favor to move and extend the workday I was surprised that we don't do eight I'm you know I'm haven't really paid attention this issue my highest priority has been over the last seven years teacher pay it and it has been historically caught up historic raises compared to the rest of the nation we have done dramatic increases on that

[01:33:31] relative to other regions. And we have a three year collective bargaining agreement, which I should remind everyone because I think there was some concern, maybe in some of the emails that we are letting go of our collecting bargaining agreement. I wanna make it very clear to the public and to the community that the collective bargaining agreement still stands.

[01:33:52] It's a three year agreement. It's one of the best collective bargaining agreements voted on in the Commonwealth and voted on in the country for a school division. I'm very proud of that work we did. We spent a lot of time on that. I am asked, you know, I've asked for this information because I frankly was looking at, you know, how does this one division get away with eight and a half hours and I'm looking at eight hours, but that is a concern of mine and that's why I was one of the ones who requested this information.

[01:34:20] So I appreciate the amount of work that went into this. I think it's important for our folks in the region to look and see what do the other schools in our region who we're competing with for any number of things, whether it's employees or academic performance, what are they doing?

[01:34:37] And some of them even have 200 work days, which I wasn't aware of. I thought, frankly, we all had the same number of days. So we're at 195, and a number of divisions near us are at 200, and so thank you. I appreciate that information.

[01:34:55] I'll turn it over to Wall, and then we're wrapping up. That's it on this topic. - No. - Oh, sorry. - Mr. Wilk. Okay, we'll go to Mr. Wilk. - Thank you, thank you. I just wanna, we've been talking about raw numbers and I wanna put things into perspective.

[01:35:12] If we take 180 days and add 0.5, that's simple math, 90 extra hours of work. If you take that and divide it by seven, that's about 13 extra days of work. And although I recognize the historic raises that we have done in this division and surpassing all of our neighbors, Just some basics.

[01:35:33] I mean, if you think about where someone mentioned 2012, when this first was increased at like 11 o'clock at night with the budget that they passed since 2012, the consumer price index says we've had a 40% increase of cost of living in Nova.

[01:35:49] And according to the median home value in 2014, it cost $327,670 to buy a home. Today it is $569,000. So just wanted to put those numbers in perspective as we talk about this, thank you.

[01:36:09] - Ms. Wall. - As I reflect on the challenge of meeting the needs of students, which above all should be and is our primary goal, how can we effectively meet the needs of students?

[01:36:26] In context of what has been shared about, well first, our salaries are competitive, our raises are historic, teacher voice has been amplified through collective bargaining, some would say. We've invested heavily in compensation over the years, especially the last recent years.

[01:36:46] But when we put up these slides, the slide, region four comparisons, it's clear that we are an anomaly. Definitely, we're the only ones in region, in our region four, at a 7.0 workday.

[01:37:03] And in the world of fractions, 110 over 131, it's a pretty big fraction. 110 divisions are at 7.5 work hours. That's the norm, the norm is a 7.5 day in Virginia. I don't know about other states and we're an anomaly.

[01:37:22] And if you look at the contract length as well, 195 days is where we're at, 89 are at 200. So again, we are at an anomaly, not only is our day shorter, but for our teachers, but not for teachers assistants and subs and administrators and even our classified staff work beyond a 7.0 day.

[01:37:48] 89 are at 200. The norm, if we're doing a nice big bell curve, it's gonna be a really steep bell curve in both of those instances. And in both of those cases, we are outliers. So that causes me to pause and think, balancing our investments in compensation, our competitive salaries, our raises being historic, and yet are we meeting the needs of our students?

[01:38:14] That's the question in my mind. Because at the end of the day, that's why we're here. That's why we have our taxes. That's why we all do what we do. Every single one of us, from Dr. McDade down on through the entire division, is are we meeting the needs of our students?

[01:38:30] And in my mind is this question, how can we utilize 0.5 hours, which is the norm, to help our students achieve just a little bit better for everybody? And I really do, it does cause me to pause.

[01:38:46] So I really appreciate this information, time it took to gather it. We have a lot to think about. And I will, based on what we've heard tonight, I will consider bringing a motion forward at our next meeting to evaluate and make a change if necessary and if possible.

[01:39:04] Thank you. - Just, and I'll wrap up by saying, Mr. Wilk, you know, on the school divisions that have a 200 contract day and an eight hour work day, that's 1600 hours, just in the math, if we're looking at it. And if we look at the anomalies, we are the anomaly as Ms. Wald says, if you're on looking at the average of 7.5 is the average for the Commonwealth and 200 is the Commonwealth average, that's 1500.

[01:39:30] We're still well below that even if we made any changes. So anyways, just wanna bring that up. So a lot more to talk about. We're happy to hear from everyone in the community on this topic over the next few weeks. And you know, we may have something to talk about at the next meeting as well.

[01:39:46] Thank you. This time we're moving on to student representative time. Yes, we have Karina Grover from the Charles J. Colgan High School, Miss Grover, you may have the floor. - Hi everyone, good evening.

[01:40:02] Good evening to members of school board, Dr. McDade, everyone on this wonderful Tuesday evening, a little bit of a change today. But in honor of this Thanksgiving season, I kind of want to focus my remarks on giving thanks to the community.

[01:40:17] I'd first like to give thanks to our student voice committees countywide. Just some schools to highlight. Freedom High School is hosting a student and parent public forum to strengthen communication within their community, which I think is very important and valuable.

[01:40:34] Garfield High School is partnering with NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, to support student well-being. And at Gainesville, as a newer school, they are focusing on building traditions that shape a positive school climate. Additionally, our Student Senate is planning leadership workshops for middle school students.

[01:40:54] This marks the second year of this initiative, and I am very excited to work with all of them. These workshops give younger students a chance to build foundational leadership skills early on. The Senate is also exploring opportunities to work with elementary school students through workshops and interactive activities, helping grow the next generation of leaders in PWCS.

[01:41:17] Next, I would like to give a big, big, big, big thank you to Dr. McDade who joined Colgan Students Voice Committee in a Q&A session. This was a really important opportunity for our students as we were able to receive direct answers on key issues such as flex, cell phone policies and the ASL interpreter conflict.

[01:41:37] I want to encourage all students across PWCS to stay engaged, reach out to your teachers and administrators, ask questions and seek clarification when you need it. Student voice is strongest when we communicate, participate and advocate for ourselves.

[01:41:54] We are so lucky to have a superintendent like Dr. McDade who is willing to support us. She is a force and honestly a big role model for me. So thank you Dr. McDade for caring about PWCS students. I would also like to give thanks to a couple of students who have reported that there have been many concerns with overcrowding and inappropriate behavior, specifically in bathrooms.

[01:42:16] Because of these issues, administrators implemented a new bathroom rule that limits when bathrooms are open. While students very much appreciate the efforts to improve the safety, there are concerns that this policy may actually be increasing the problem and solving it. For example, the student noted that bathrooms are now more crowded and students are spending significant time waiting in line, which is time that should be spent learning.

[01:42:41] Bigger schools like Woodbridge and OP are hurt by this the most as it limits the learning experiences for all. I thank students for reaching out to me about issues in their school, and I urge you to all have conversations with administrators in your school to advocate for change.

[01:42:56] In addition, I would like to thank my school's principal's advisory council for an amazing meeting, which gave me the opportunity to hear directly from leaders in our building. At this meeting, I had the chance to listen to parents, teachers, and administrators share their perspectives on important school issues.

[01:43:13] I also had the opportunity to hear our principal's budget report, which was incredibly valuable actually in understanding how Colgan's funds are distributed and how those decisions impact students. I've never been a numbers girl, but this was interesting to me. I want to emphasize that every school has these councils and I strongly urge every student, parent, member in the community to attend a meeting and use their voice.

[01:43:37] These councils provide a meaningful opportunity to speak directly with school administrators and get some questions answered. Now, as we look at the 2025 strategic plan, are several highlights worth celebrating and appreciating. First, those annoying attendance letters that my parents actually did receive. They work. Our division saw a 6.7 decrease in absenteeism. Yes, 6.7. Exceeding the 5% goal. 6.7.

[01:44:13] Yes. Oh, great. Okay. It's not going to stop. Okay. It's still going. Okay. Since the implementation of Evolve, even though it may feel inconvenient at times, it has contributed to zero firearms and tasers entering our schools, which is a very significant safety achievement, especially in PWCS.

[01:44:34] We also saw major academic progress. Participation in advanced classes rose from 8,034 students in 2023 to 11,298 students, which passed, like additionally, it passed the advanced exams, which increased from 5,999 to 9,867, again, okay.

[01:44:59] These successes show the impact of strategic planning and the importance of continuing to invest in student safety, attendance, and academic opportunities. To end my remarks, I would like to share little bit of a personal story. At the beginning of October my grandfather suddenly passed away and I struggled to attend school and had many additional family responsibilities. During the October school board meeting I spoke on the dais despite feeling the immense pain of grief. Nonetheless PWCS makes it a priority to ensure that every student has a trusted adult in their school,

[01:45:36] someone who makes them feel safe, heard, and cared for. Ms. Riddle, an administrator at Colgan, noticed me during lunch and took the time to speak to me. Although we had only spoken briefly in the past about SCA related matters, she treated me with kindness and care. She let me share my feelings and assured me that she would always be there to support me. I share the story not for sympathy but to remind students that sometimes events can happen that are beyond your control and you may feel weak, overwhelmed, and you know you can't you can't control

[01:46:11] everything you may even feel alone which is similar to what I felt but PWCS is here to support you and just as they supported me I can go to school and I feel the need I don't feel the need to stay at home anymore or be alone because I know PWCS can support me at school so enough with the sad talk remember students your voice matters it makes a difference and I promise I'll never stop advocating for it let's continue to ignite change together and I thank you all for allowing me to speak and giving me the chance to represent students

[01:46:45] countywide have a great and happy Thanksgiving thank you Karina Grover appreciate it up to superintendent's time dr. McDade all right so at the beginning of this school year I committed to providing a comprehensive update on the final outcomes of our vision 2025 strategic plan and miss Karina here stole a little bit of my thunder but I'm so excited that as a As a student, she is documenting and paying attention to the success that we've accomplished together.

[01:47:20] This strategic plan culminates at the end of the calendar year, December 2025. And so tonight, during my superintendent's time, I really wanna share all of the updates and progress, celebrate successes, and identify continued areas of opportunity for growth as we set our sights on vision 2030.

[01:47:38] So this will be our closeout of vision 2025, and it will sunset in December and we will be launching a new four year strategic plan, Vision 2030. So at this time, I will utilize my superintendent's time for a formal presentation on the culminating events, successes and outcomes of Vision 2025.

[01:48:15] All right, so this is really an exciting time for me because I've had the opportunity to sit and reflect with our team. And even with so many of our parents, we've held about 17 total, I believe, community parent round tables and community forums to get feedback on Vision 2030.

[01:48:37] And during that time, I had an opportunity to kind of walk down memory lane with some of our parents on Vision 2025, recalling the excitement around the launch of that vision and everything that we focused on. And so tonight will be an opportunity to take a look back at 2021 to 2025, really focusing, not just on statistics, but on strategies and priorities and everything that we've accomplished collectively as a school division.

[01:49:05] So this presentation will be long, spoiler alert. And it should be because we are covering a four year period of tremendous amount of work that has gone into realizing vision 2025. And together we've built some incredible momentum and there's a lot to celebrate as we plan ahead for Vision 2030.

[01:49:26] Of course, I wanna start with our vision for Prince William County School to ensure that every student graduates on time with the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind necessary to create a thriving future for themselves and their community. And those are not just words on the page.

[01:49:42] What it means is that if students matriculate through our system, when they leave, our job does not end when we hand the diploma on the stage. If we have prepared our children well, they should be able to go on and acquire rewarding careers through multiple pathways of their choosing, experience economic mobility, and live a purpose-driven and fulfilling life.

[01:50:03] And that's what this vision represents for Prince William County. A few fast facts on Prince William County. We are the second largest school division in the Commonwealth of Virginia. We're the 34th largest in the nation.

[01:50:19] And we are the most diverse county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. and the 10th most diverse in the nation. Our students represent 159 countries with over 170 languages spoken. Our enrollment back in 2023 peaked at just over 91,700.

[01:50:38] Now we're just over 90,000, reflecting the changing landscape of Northern Virginia and the decline in birth rates across the country. In PWCS, we do believe that our superpower is our diversity and you'll see projected here the diversity of our population that I just described.

[01:50:55] Our minority students have increased from 72% at the launch of Vision 2025 in 2022 to 75% now in 2025. Our fastest, one of our fastest growing populations in the school division is our English learners and you'll see that there's been an increase from 27% to 29%.

[01:51:15] We've also had an increase in our students with disabilities from 13% to 16% and around 36,000, that's about 40% of our students actually qualify as what is identified as economically disadvantaged. This diversity really brings unique needs and requires targeted support within our school system.

[01:51:34] PWCS is the largest employer in Prince William County, growing from when we started the strategic plan, we were at 12,138 full-time employees, which would include 6,541 actual certified teachers, that was in 2022, to now we're over 13,000 full-time staff including 7,970 teachers today and a total workforce of nearly 20,000 when we include our subs and temps.

[01:52:03] So together these facts really underscore not just the diversity but the strength of our school community and our county. We have six core values in Prince William County which include equity, inclusivity, innovation, integrity, resiliency, and well-being.

[01:52:20] And these are the principles that define our division and undergird our ongoing success. As a part of the development of the strategic plan, we also developed the profile of a graduate. And the profile of a graduate really guides us in preparing students for life after Prince William County.

[01:52:37] And it describes in our vision, when we talk about habits of mind, that represents our profile of a graduate. It describes the habits of mind we seek for our graduates and those habits of mind include being critical thinkers, responsible digital citizens, innovators, visionaries, resilient individuals, and global collaborators.

[01:52:57] And we are confident that students who embody these traits will not only realize the vision of Prince William County Schools, but go on to achieve success in life after PWCS. We have four key commitments in the strategic plan and these key commitments will continue to ground us in Vision 2030 as well.

[01:53:16] And so the presentation will be broken into four components to represent each of the four key commitments and what we've accomplished to date across those four commitments. Those commitments include learning and achievement for all, positive climate and culture, family and community engagement, and organizational coherence.

[01:53:35] We also have pretty lofty goals in the 2025 strategic plan. They're called our WIGs, our wildly important goals. And our singular most important goal is 95% on-time graduation rate, so you'll see that's the number one goal as highlighted in the four disciplines of execution.

[01:53:53] Every organization should have wildly important goals. You will see some other sub-goals throughout the evening, but these are our wildly important ones, and these unify our priorities, it guides our decisions and actions for students across every grade level.

[01:54:08] In order to achieve a 95% graduation rate, and you'll see that any school system in the nation will have strong targets for on-time graduation. After all, the goal is as students matriculate through our system, we should be graduating them on time prepared for success post-secondary.

[01:54:25] The essential drivers of this number one goal is reducing our chronic absenteeism by 5%. We know that students who are in school on time every day will be on time for graduation. We also wanted to address the fact that our English learner dropout rate was significantly higher than every other student population group in our county.

[01:54:48] So we set this as a wildly important goal to decrease English learner dropout rate by 10% over the course of the four year strategic plan. And we also established a goal for 85% proficiency on SOL across core content areas.

[01:55:04] Again, these were some pretty lofty goals, especially considering that the 2025 strategic plan launched during the pandemic. we were just coming back to in-person learning and we had a lot of learning loss there, but yet we wanted to make sure that we set our expectations high for our students.

[01:55:21] So I'll go through some of where the data shows we currently are as it relates to our wildly important goals. Looking first at chronic absenteeism. If we define chronic absenteeism, it represents the number of days that a student misses in comparison to the number of days of required attendance.

[01:55:41] So to address chronic absenteeism, missing 10% of school days would be considered chronically absent. And so we aim to reduce this by 5%. At the launch of the strategic plan, our chronic absenteeism was a staggering 23.1% for the 21-22 school year.

[01:56:00] By the end of the four-year strategic plan, chronic absenteeism dropped to 16.4%. That's a 6.7 percentage point reduction. And so this essential driver goal has not only been met, but also exceeded. Moving into dropout rate, as for the dropout rate, we did more than move the needle.

[01:56:18] We really redefined what was possible, particularly for our students who are English learners. Our essential goal was a 10% decrease in overall dropout rates for our English learners. If you see here on the screen, in 2022, our overall dropout rate for all student populations was 6%, with English learners experiencing a dropout rate of 24.4% and our Hispanic students dropout rate at that time was 12.2%.

[01:56:46] At the end of July of this current of last school year, July 2025, our overall dropout rate for all students has reduced 2.2 points. English learners decreased 10 points to 14.9%.

[01:57:02] So we achieved that goal in reducing our English learner dropout rate by 10%. And then you'll also see that our Hispanic student dropout rate also decreased by four points to 8.1%. This achievement was reached through targeted student support, strategic investments, and a commitment across all schools from our educators, our administrative staff, and support from our external partners to ensure that every student is graduating on time.

[01:57:31] Moving into SOL pass rates. So our last essential or wildly important goal is improving our SOL pass rates. And we set a goal for 85%. In 2022, PWCS SOLs are rated as following.

[01:57:49] In reading, we were at 75%, writing 69%, history 69%, math 67%, and science 63%. And during the life of the strategic plan, we saw some of the most significant improvements in our student performance.

[01:58:05] So you'll see here where the most growth occurred were in writing, math, and science, which reached their highest performance over the course of the last four years. Our writing scores rose by 6.5 points, reflecting our literacy efforts.

[01:58:21] Math pass rates increased by seven points, marking a strong recovery post-pandemic, and science improved by 6.4 points, which is noteworthy progress. I do want to address the fact that reading did remain stagnant.

[01:58:38] You'll see we're at 75 and we're at 75.5%. So we didn't meet our goal of 85%, which we knew was a stretch goal. But what I will acknowledge in the hard work of our educators across all schools, what you'll see is that Prince William County Schools for the growth that we have over the last four years, we have improved or our students are growing at a faster rate than our regional peers.

[01:59:06] So if you look across school divisions across the region, you'll see growth over the last three years to the tune of about two to 3%, whereas we have doubled and in some case tripled that in Prince William County as you look at our writing, our math, and our science scores. In terms of literacy, it's important to note that just two years ago we launched, we implemented the Virginia Literacy Act, and I will say that we're seeing some promising data that's coming from our early literacy results where we're seeing stronger readers and writers in the early years that will be matriculating through our system.

[01:59:39] So we are confident that as we move it, we were expanding now VLA to middle schools this year, and so we are confident that we'll be seeing leaps and bounds in reading as we see the return on investment from the VLA.

[01:59:55] Moving into graduation rate, And just another finer point I wanna put on SOL, because we didn't reach the 85%, that is a goal that you should expect to see continue in Vision 2030. Closing out our wildly important goals is graduation rate.

[02:00:12] So the goal for graduation rate was 95%, and unfortunately, rounding to the nearest whole number doesn't count here. We met 94.8%, which is the all-time high for Prince William County Schools, were just shy of the 95%.

[02:00:29] So I cannot say that this goal was outright met, but I'm really proud of the work that has happened in the school system and the efforts that we've made. So I wanna look at when we started the strategic plan, the graduation rate for all students was 92.8%.

[02:00:44] Our students with disabilities graduated at a rate of 90.9% and our English learners were at 75.1% and Hispanic students at 84.8%. That was during the '21-'22 school year when the strategic plan launched. Today, you'll see significant improvements.

[02:01:02] I noted the 94.8% graduation rate, which is a rise of two percentage points, the highest graduation rate in recent history of the school division. And additionally, you know, I always kind of go back to that old saying that a rising tide lifts all boats, and you'll see that to be true here.

[02:01:19] In 2025, every student demographic rose in graduation rates. Our students with disabilities, I'm so incredibly proud of this, our students with disabilities were the only student population that hit the 95% outright. As a matter of fact, they exceeded that.

[02:01:35] Remember, they were at about 90% in 2022, and now they are at 95.2%. So that is something for us to celebrate. And our English learners earn an 83% graduation rate, which is also up from about 75% in '22, and Hispanic students earned a 90.1% graduation rate.

[02:01:55] So in every single demographic group, our students have improved graduation rates in leaps and bounds. So now what I would like to do is go commitment by commitment and take a look at starting with commitment one.

[02:02:11] The lion's share, so there's a lot of information that I'll share here. The lion's share of the strategic plan really is in learning and achievement for all, which is where it should be because after all, our core business is education. And so you'll see a lot of the promises that we made towards academic excellence so that every single student has a fair shot to succeed.

[02:02:32] I'm going to start with, and we certainly established ambitious goals for 2025. I wanna start with early college and career. So our first objective was for 60% of graduates to earn at least one early college or career credential.

[02:02:51] In 2022, the first year of the strategic plan, only 39% of graduates achieve this mainly through AP, IB, Cambridge, and some dual enrollment courses. So just focusing first on college credentials, 'cause we have two things here. We've got college where you can earn early college credits through advanced courses, and then we also have career credentials through CTE.

[02:03:13] So you'll see that that number, if we look at early college credits, That number rose from 39% to 45.7%. Where you're going to see our biggest earners in this goal is with our CTE graduates who have exceeded the goal of 60%.

[02:03:31] They are currently at 65% earning one or more college or career credentials. This reflects a 6.7 percentage point rise in graduation achievement for our CTE earners, which is due to so many of the efforts towards inclusion and expansion of CTE courses, which I wanna thank the board for being supporters of CTE.

[02:03:53] Each and every one of you have supported the expansion of CTE, while at the same time understanding that we have to do both. We have to prepare students for both college and career. So I'm proud to share that more students are pursuing post-secondary options due to a focus on equity and access.

[02:04:12] In 2022, moving into SAT, going back to this idea that we have to do both, both college and career. One of the things that I've always said, there's been a debate in education of what should pre-K-12 education be focused solely on college or should it be career?

[02:04:30] And I say it should be both. If we say that we want students to have multiple pathways towards a rewarding career, then that means that they have a choice. Having a choice means that they have to also see them themselves as capable of being able to access college so that they're not choosing another choice because they don't see themselves as a college going student.

[02:04:51] So we should be preparing students for every single avenue that is possible and afforded to them. And because of that, we have taken a stance of making sure that we remove barriers for students to access opportunities that would allow them to see themselves as a college going student, starting with SAT participation.

[02:05:10] In 2022, only 2,756 juniors, which is about 49% of the actual junior cohort, took the SAT, which required an out of pocket fee. And I just shared with you a few slides earlier, the percentage of our students that qualify for free and reduced lunch.

[02:05:29] So this ostensibly was a barrier for students, considering that 40% of our students are classified as economically disadvantaged. Since that time, what we've done in PWCS 'cause we've made the SAT available to all students and that free of charge where we cover the fee for students to actually take the exam through SAT day during the day so parents don't have to worry about taking them somewhere else to take the assessment.

[02:05:54] They can come to school and take it during the school day and participation increased 102% going from 2,756 students participating to 5,577 students participating. In 2022, the College Board reported that 50% of our juniors met the SAT, both in reading, evidence-based reading and writing, as well as math, but keeping in mind that that was the lowest participation that we had, and so that 50% really only equated to about 1,378 juniors that were actually taking the SAT.

[02:06:28] When all juniors were given the opportunity, 5,577 took the SAT, with 41.1% meeting the benchmark standards in both evidence-based reading and writing. So with removing that barrier, it may appear that the performance went down, but considering that more students actually had access to the exam, it really means that 914 additional students actually reached the benchmark.

[02:06:56] Moving into advanced course participation. So we set a goal to increase participation in advanced coursework by 10%, and this really was an equity-driven initiative to make sure that underrepresented groups of students were accessing advanced coursework when they qualified to be in those courses.

[02:07:15] And so we set a goal to increase participation in advanced coursework by 10% with a specific focus on underrepresented groups that reflect the diversity of our student population. In 2022, 47.9% of eligible students took part, 46.4% black students, 12.9% English learners, 32.2% of that population were Hispanic and only 11.2% of the students who were taking advanced coursework at that time at the beginning of the strategic plan were students with disabilities.

[02:07:46] And I'm really happy to report that by 2025, 55.7% of eligible students participated, marking a 16% overall increase in access to advanced coursework, which surpasses the goal that was set.

[02:08:02] Participation rose notably amongst the subgroups that I identified, especially taking a hard look at our English learners who were up 9.7 points and our Hispanic students were up in participation 10 points as well as our students with disabilities at five points.

[02:08:18] And I want to note that it's not just participation that increased, we're also increasing in our outcomes. So the notion that we didn't change any of the coursework, we didn't water down any of the curriculum, we made sure that eligible students not only access those courses, but they also had trusted adults within their school where they can work with teachers who checked in on them to make sure that they had the support to be successful in the courses.

[02:08:45] So what you'll see is in 2022, and Karina talked a little bit about this, I should have made her come up here and be my partner in this presentation. In 2022, 5,244 of our students took 9,350 AP exams, keeping in mind that a single student can take more than one exam.

[02:09:06] So that's why you see more exams than you see students. And at that time, we had a 56% pass rate. Ensuring that there's equitable access to advanced coursework and rigor does not reduce outcomes in any stretch of the imagination.

[02:09:22] I am of the mindset that students rise and fall on expectation. We shouldn't be concerned about setting the bar too high and students not meeting it. what we should be concerned with is setting the bar too low and they actually meet that bar and have a false sense of achievement.

[02:09:37] What we see here is when we set expectations high and we have support for our students, they can rise to the occasion and that is exactly what they did. After four years, what we now have is 7,644 students in 2025 who took 14,500 AP exams and the pass rate also increased from 56% to 68%.

[02:10:03] So performance did not go down, our students actually performed even higher, and we're really proud of that work, and we're proud of the work that our teachers have done to support students to be able to realize and achieve these goals. As far as CTE credentials, there's been impressive, I mean beyond what we could have imagined or hoped for, impressive gains toward PWCS graduates earning at least one early career credential.

[02:10:28] If you look at the left side of the slide, it really shows where we were in 21-22, which was the beginning of the strategic plan. And you'll see a couple of categories here that I will call out. The first category reported is state licensures, where we had 18 students who graduated from Prince William County, and upon graduation, they walked out the door with a state licensure.

[02:10:51] You'll also see Workplace Readiness Skills Assessments passed was a little over 2,000. We had about 3,300 industry certifications achieved and about 4,751 students who earned one or more credentials for a total across all categories, 5,489 total credentials that were achieved.

[02:11:11] Now when you look at that in comparison, you'll see some big improvements where in 2024, our state licensors went, 24-25 school year, Our state licensures over the course of the four-year strategic plan have grown from 18 to 150.

[02:11:30] Workplace readiness improvements from 2,000 to 5,600. Industry certifications went from 3,360 to 21,265. Also keeping in mind that students can earn multiple credentials.

[02:11:45] And students earning one or more credential was at 4,751. Today it is at 23,568 with a total of 27,049, which is why you can see that our CTE students have just blown the goal of 60% out of the water.

[02:12:04] I do want to highlight our eight CTE program areas, which includes agricultural education. And I wanna call out specifically under agricultural education, our award-winning and thriving turf field program at Virensville High School, According to VDOE, turf field falls under agricultural education, but it is a true turf field management program and one of the CTE programs that are big earners that we're proud of.

[02:12:31] Business and information technology, family and consumer sciences, health and medical sciences, marketing education, military science, technology and engineering education, and trade and industrial education. So those are our core CTE areas.

[02:12:46] And each of those fields has a variety of pathways for students to explore and master, which means our students receive the depth and breadth of their chosen content specialty while working towards that credential in Prince William County Schools. So you'll see that we have both met and exceeded nearly every target for CTE.

[02:13:05] I really want to call out the work of our CTE teachers. They are absolutely phenomenal. I've had an opportunity to visit many of their classrooms. You saw an award-winning CTE teacher being presented here tonight as an administrator. And I also wanna acknowledge that the reason you see a lot of the improvements here, the significant improvements, is when we launched the strategic plan, we did a call to action to our business community and our community leaders, and they really stepped up and answered the call, and they have been a game changer in ensuring, working with our CTE teachers and programs and ensuring that our students were able to earn the credentials that they have.

[02:13:43] really changes the trajectory and course of their lives as they leave Prince William County schools. I also want to highlight a special bright spot in Prince William County and move to look at Project Search and Employ which is a program specifically tailored for our students with disabilities and you'll see I called out that that was the one student population that hit the 95% graduation rate and you'll be able to see easily why we have so many thriving partnerships that are geared towards supporting our students with special needs and so a quick thank you to the employee team and project search for their work preparing students with disabilities for post-secondary careers

[02:14:20] I'm so proud of this work we set out to create a division-wide employee framework our employee teachers and leaders are amazing and our partner businesses have been so good to our PWCS students I want to call out TOTOS neighborhood market, Westminster at Lake Ridge, and UVA Health for helping us to achieve our goals. You'll see the numbers on the screen here. In two years in a row back-to-back, 24 and 25, the Chamber of Commerce awarded Prince William County the Partnership of the Year Award for our work with Explorer Totos, as well as our work with Project SEARCH Westminster. And then you'll see

[02:14:58] for our Project SEARCH students through UVA Health Employment Outcomes, 74% of of our graduates have received a competitive employment offer upon completion of that program. And for Explore total, 67% of graduates have received a competitive employment offer upon graduation.

[02:15:17] And right now, the number of students participating increased from 10 in '23 to 60 projected for 2026. Another fan favorite of the strategic plan is the Virginia Seal of Biliteracy.

[02:15:33] the strategic plan introduced a credit by exam option for bilingual and multilingual. And I tell you, I didn't set this up to have our students, Russian-speaking students, being here tonight, but that was a nice ad for this evening as I present the Virginia Seal of Biliteracy.

[02:15:50] They really represent what this seal means to us. It's approved by the VDOE, enabling our multilingual and bilingual students to earn up to three high school credits and qualify for the Virginia Seal of Biliteracy. And our goal was to increase the number of seals awarded by 5% and we met that goal.

[02:16:11] To date, 1,019 students have earned the seal and nearly 1,248 total world language credits have been granted through assessment testing. So you see the numbers there. Most impressive, you'll see in '22 to '23 when we were tracking this, we were only at 230 students earning the seal, and today we are at 1,248, which I am just over the moon about and excited to see that programming continue to grow and thrive in Prince William County.

[02:16:42] We've also, in the strategic plan, adopted curriculum, and so over the course of the last three years, I talked a little bit about the Virginia Literacy Act. We did adopt language arts curriculum. We also recently this year, following the literacy adoption, We adopted a new math curriculum to the tune of a $13 million investment with over 98 training sessions and put some intentionality also behind science participation.

[02:17:10] That showed up as a bright spot in the strategic plan. As you'll recall, we really had a goal to make sure that we increased participation in science fair. What you'll see here is that we have nearly doubled in student representation, high school participation, and projects submitted.

[02:17:26] Our expectation is to have 100% of our high schools participating, especially with the school board's new FEWS initiative, which offers grants for students to be able to participate. So we're really excited to see the growth in regional science fair participation.

[02:17:42] And we're expecting, we have right now 11 high schools that participated up from only six in 2021-22. And this year we're expecting all 13 high schools to have projects in the regional science fair.

[02:17:59] We've set some lofty goals for work-based learning experiences and summer employment. So despite many of the challenges that we've had with curriculum and creating opportunities outside the classroom, CTE really remains strong in terms of drawing our businesses to PWCS for support.

[02:18:21] And I talked a lot about our business community, but the numbers here really tells you why I'm so proud of the work that our business community is doing to step up for kids. You'll see in 21-22 when we made the call to action to our business and community leaders to support our students by making sure that we increase the number of actual work-based learning business partners that we had.

[02:18:45] We started at 48, we set a goal at 350, we surpassed that goal for 24-25, we now have 373 formal CTE partnerships And so the data that I'm going to talk about next, whether it be summer employment or internships, could only be possible because our business community has stepped up to invest in our students.

[02:19:08] So what you'll see here is that we set an ambitious goal over the four years of the strategic plan to ensure that by 2025, we would have a cumulative 3,500 rising juniors and seniors who would have achieved summer employment opportunities.

[02:19:25] And we didn't just meet that goal, we exceeded that goal with a total of 4,405 summer jobs for juniors and seniors over the course of the four-year strategic plan. And you'll see the number of summer employment offers to our students year over year for a total of 4,405.

[02:19:44] And then we also set goals around not just work-based learning experiences, but also summer employment, but also to include internships and apprenticeships. And so we set a goal that we would have by 2025, a total of 500 graduating seniors walking out the door with an internship in their back pocket.

[02:20:05] We started in '21-'22 with only 91 internships and you will see that we nearly doubled the goal of 500 with 900 plus total internship experiences earned over the course of a four year period with the highest amount awarded just last year in the 24-25 school year.

[02:20:29] You know, at the start of this presentation, I defined the school system success by not just our graduation rates, but making sure that our students can achieve success post-secondary. And so we were committed to making sure that our students have a plan for what happens after graduation.

[02:20:47] Every graduation that I attend, I sit on the stage, and for every single student that walks across that stage, I'm always wondering what is next for them because I want them to have a thriving future when they leave Prince William County, which is why we set a goal to make sure that number one, we invest in high school, college and career counselors.

[02:21:07] And I wanna thank the board 'cause in the very first year of the strategic plan, the board invested in ensuring that every single high school had a college and career counselor. That was a goal in the strategic plan. That goal has been met. We also set a goal to make sure that every graduating senior had a concrete post-secondary plan.

[02:21:24] What that means is that every senior has an opportunity to have a conversation with a trusted adult, a knowledgeable adult that can help guide what their future goals and plans are because we know that a student that has a plan has a higher probability and likelihood of being successful in post-secondary and realizing their dreams and goals.

[02:21:43] And speaking about college, we know that one of the number one barriers to students accessing post-secondary education is a financial challenge, a financial barrier. So we set a goal to increase the number of scholarship dollars earned in Prince William County, and we set that goal to the tune of 260 million.

[02:22:05] What you'll see here is that over four years, our students have reported over 492 million in scholarships, and you'll see the year-over-year amount for that cumulative total. So we started the strategic plan with students reporting $91 million in scholarships.

[02:22:22] That number has grown every single year of the strategic plan with the final year of the strategic plan being the absolute highest of the four with over $159 million in scholarships awarded in a single year. And what's especially powerful is that this growth has come even as our graduating cohorts have actually gotten smaller due to enrollment losses, meaning more scholarship dollars per student and more doors open for our graduates and their families.

[02:22:53] Commitment One definitely was our most robust commitment that directly affects the instructional core and the relationship between our students, our teachers, and the curriculum. It contains the majority of our strategic plan goals. So to close out Commitment One, I would like to take a look at several notable highlights over the course of the four years of work that we've done together.

[02:23:16] This, what you see here, is what I presented to you back in April of 2024 when we did a check-in on the strategic plan. And you'll see where some of the goals were green. We also had some that were approaching and red. Green basically means we have either met or exceeded the goal.

[02:23:34] Yellow suggests that we were in an implementation phase, made significant progress, but the actual goal has not yet been met. Red means that we were completely off track or the goal was not met at all. So you'll see where we were in April 2024 in our progress on key strategies for learning and achievement for all.

[02:23:56] And now as we close strategic plan 2025, here's where we are. We have turned some reds and yellows to green, starting with our 260 million in scholarship. We hadn't gotten there when I presented to you back in 2024.

[02:24:12] I'm so proud, especially because now Karina is a sitting board representative who was one of the students that presented the student bill of rights. So now that is green because we have completed the bill of rights and we presented that to the full school board.

[02:24:28] And our students have that to be proud of to represent their voice. We also did, we now have made good on the addition of dual language immersion programs. And I know at least one of our board members can speak to that 'cause they have a student in dual language immersion.

[02:24:45] and we now have data that shows that we met our goal for dropout rate for English learners. Where we didn't, we weren't meeting the goal, but have made significant progress is in three areas. The STEM career development.

[02:25:02] What I wanna say about the STEM career development is, originally in the strategic plan, we were thinking of a singular STEM center, and we made a pivot about midway through the strategic plan and we already had existing school-based creation centers like the River Oaks Elementary Schools, Amazon Web Services, Think Big Space, and we also have in the West, the Cedar Point, the Tech Lab inspired by Qualcomm's Think A Bit Lab.

[02:25:31] So we had those two and they were open for field trips. So when we realized that the STEM Center wasn't something that could be accomplished or that it wouldn't reach as many students as we would have hoped for, we decided to build two additional STEM centers, one at Innovation Elementary School and another thriving STEM center at Neabsco Elementary School, both of which are open and serving as field trip sites for other schools to come and visit.

[02:26:00] So that's why we marked that as yellow because although we did commit to a standalone STEM center, We did not accomplish that, but we have made progress in creating more accessible opportunities for STEM in the school division. So we marked that as approaching.

[02:26:17] And then of course, I talked about SOL. That's yellow because we did not hit the 85%. It doesn't matter how lofty the goal was. We set the goal at 85 and we missed the mark on that. But I marked that as approaching because we have made significant progress, growth, and strides that we should be proud of.

[02:26:34] our teachers have done, it's been a Herculean effort, especially coming out of the pandemic, to see the kinds of gains that we've gotten in writing, in math, and in science, which I have already stated, has outperformed our regional peers. So we have marked that as yellow, and you should expect to see that 85% continue into the 2030 strategic plan.

[02:26:55] And then universal design for learning, we marked that as approaching as opposed to off track, because we did offer the training, That was another pivot in the strategic plan where we offered that training throughout the school division, but implementation, we did not have fidelity of implementation with that, so we could not mark that as a goal that was met.

[02:27:17] So that concludes progress updates for learning and achievement for all. Lots to celebrate, some misses that we've had in the strategic plan, but also a lot of growth that we are proud to acknowledge. So moving into our second key commitment, which is positive climate and culture, which is our promise to provide a welcoming, supportive and safe environment for teaching and learning.

[02:27:42] And again, we've established several ambitious targets to support positive climate and culture. I'm going to start with some data that was brought up a little bit earlier. I think Mr. Jesse and Dr. Lateef talked about retention and Donna touched on this a little bit, where we're gonna give the progress because that was actually a goal in the strategic plan.

[02:28:04] So we established a goal to retain 90% of our certified staff. In 2022, the division was at 89, at the end of the '21-'22 school year, which was the first year of the strategic plan, we were at 89.9% for retention rate.

[02:28:19] We probably set that goal a little bit too low. It was at 90% and we were already at 89.9. But I am happy to report that our retention rate is currently at the conclusion of the strategic plan, increased to 94.5%, surpassing the original objective.

[02:28:40] Also, you'll see here that our objective was to boost the diversity of our teaching staff by 5%. So the goal was to increase by 5%. In 2022, the workforce diversity was at 25.3%. But by 2025, we've reached 33.3%, surpassing our target of 5% with a total increase of eight percentage points there.

[02:29:04] I also wanna highlight one of the ways that we significantly increased our diversity. I spoke a little bit earlier about the fact that we are the most diverse county in the Commonwealth of Virginia and our students represent over 159 countries. And so we committed in the strategic plan to hire a minimum of 350 international teachers.

[02:29:25] We started the Street Strategic Plan with 110 international teachers, and today we now employ 396 international teachers representing the countries that our students are from, and so we've exceeded the goal of 350.

[02:29:42] We also set a goal to retain 95% of our school administrators. We were at 92% retention at the start of the Strategic Plan, and today we are at 94.5% in 2025.

[02:29:57] One of the things that I wanna highlight that shows up is some of the key strategies that we employed in the strategic plan and how we got here to these numbers really was an aggressive marketing campaign that was done around retention and diversity, and it has been tied to our hiring campaigns.

[02:30:15] For one, you'll see in the strategic plan, You Belong Here was a key initiative. And You Belong Here really fulfilled our goal of creating inclusive school cultures to attract and retain top talent in making PWCS a top choice for employment. Also to address the national teacher shortage, human resources and communications ran an aggressive marketing campaign earning over 20 million impressions and nearly 39,000 application site clicks.

[02:30:43] This led to a record high of more than 2,400 new applicants just in March of 2025, where April of '25 nearly matching that number, showing ongoing success in meeting staffing needs. We also knew that more had to be done as we addressed the teaching shortage.

[02:30:59] So a couple of big initiatives in the strategic plan that we've delivered on that has brought more teachers to our schools. One of our strategies was Teachers for Tomorrow. That's what we call the Grow Our Own Teachers program. In 2021, we had six of our 13 high schools active in the Ed Rising program with approximately 100 members.

[02:31:19] and we committed to growing that program across all high schools, that goal has been met. In 2025, all 13 PWCS high schools offer teachers for tomorrow courses with an estimated 279 members. That's a full pipeline from PWCS classrooms to college to careers built right here in Prince William County.

[02:31:40] To date, I'm so proud that we've hired 79 graduates from this program and we have 57 more that are currently enrolled in college and programs pursuing teaching credentials, it is such a beautiful thing to see our students go through this program, earn their degrees and come back and give back to the same communities that gave so much to them.

[02:32:01] Another initiative that was a big one for Prince William County was the VCU Teacher Residency and Apprenticeship Program. We are the first large district in the Commonwealth of Virginia to implement the VCU Teacher Residency and Apprenticeship Program and I'm happy to report that we're a trailblazer in this space.

[02:32:20] Through our partnership with VCU, we've accepted 20 new candidates for this school year. We've engaged 42 active cohort members. And since 2023, we've hired 13 teachers who've earned their graduate degrees and have committed to staying in Prince William County for at least a minimum of three years.

[02:32:40] We also, in Positive Climate and Culture, I wanna turn our attention to sustainability. And you just had a sustainability presentation in the last board meeting. and there's a lot of successes in sustainability, but this one particular goal we did not meet, unfortunately, although we do have some big wins in sustainability, we sought to reduce 10% of division-wide building greenhouse gas emissions year over year, and we've achieved by 2025 a 1.5% emissions reduction through the reporting period ending June 30, 2025.

[02:33:11] I do wanna note that part of that includes an addition, which was a pivot in the strategic plan in incorporating transportation into that. So we do believe that we'll see some bigger gains moving into the future. We also recently completed several energy efficiency projects that are noteworthy.

[02:33:31] So we're optimistic that these will significantly improve our progress towards the 10%. This is something that will continue to work towards Envision 2030 to reduce our overall emissions. Some of the projects that are going towards the FY26 is solar, include solar at six sites, geothermal at Bel Air Elementary School, LED lighting at multiple sites, and retro-commissioning of automation controls and mechanical systems at several of our sites.

[02:34:01] And then finally, for just this area of sustainability, we did identify in the strategic plan that we would have a K-12 environmental literacy curriculum at 100% of our schools, and that goal has been accomplished. Moving into safety, and this is more about physical safety.

[02:34:19] Over four years, PWCS has invested heavily in safety and security, and that has been a top priority for the school division and for this board. We implemented Evolve in all middle and high schools back in 2023. In 2025, at the conclusion of the vision 2025, we experienced a 63% decrease in the number of disciplinary code incidents, a 70% decrease in possession of a knife, and 100% decrease in both possession of a taser and a firearm, that means zero firearms reported in Prince William County Schools since we implemented Evolve.

[02:34:58] We also erected the first of its kind in Prince William County Schools Security Operations Center. This is our centralized hub for responding to safety concerns and managing incidents in real time. The Security Operations Center team has handled, to date, nearly 3,000 calls, coordinated over 1,000 events, and delivered more than 1,900 incident communications, all with a 99% response rate.

[02:35:26] So if we take a look at the progress that we've made on some of the key strategies in Positive Climate and Culture, which is Commitment 2, what you see here is where we were when we did the check-in back in, and you'll see this will be the theme for the next two commitments as well. I'll always go back to where we were when I did the check-in with you, and then where we are at the conclusion of the four-year strategic plan.

[02:35:50] So this is where we were in April of '24. We had not yet fully realized the succession planning, I'm sorry, launching the talent management development plan. We were also red and green ribbon schools, 'cause we set a goal to have five green ribbon schools, so that was red, and then we had set a goal for a 90% satisfaction rate for middle school students.

[02:36:14] And the reason we set that is because the satisfaction rate for middle school students is the lowest in the school division. And so here's where we are today. So what you'll see is that we made good on completing the launch of a talent management development department, which is really driven towards both succession planning, leadership development, and ensuring that our employees understand a path towards promotion and as they continue to lead with us in Prince William County.

[02:36:45] So a lot of work is being done in that department and you'll also see what turned green is our green ribbon designation. Now let me talk a little bit about the green ribbon designation 'cause it's tricky. So I'm counting this as green because although technically we had four, this year we had number five with Belmont Elementary School but the federal US Department of Education eliminated the program this year.

[02:37:13] However, Virginia did recognize Belmont Elementary School as an honoree, so that means we've got five. That's a green check mark for our green ribbon schools. While our middle school student satisfaction rating is still down, we will be targeting that for the next four year strategic plan.

[02:37:33] We're not letting go of that goal. We're gonna continue to work towards making sure that our middle schools are reporting satisfaction in their schools. So, as we strengthen climate and culture inside our schools, I also wanna turn our attention to the fact that we cannot do that without deepening our partnership with everyone around them, which is our families and our communities and our business leaders.

[02:37:57] And so that moves us into family and community engagement, which is commitment three. One of the goals we had in family community engagement was to have 100% of our schools have a business partner invested in their school community to help advance their school improvement goals, and we've delivered on that promise.

[02:38:15] You'll see here that now 100% of our students have a business partner, some of them have multiple business partners to advance their continuous improvement goals. We also set a goal to have a parent liaison in every single school, and we met that goal in the first year of the strategic plan when the board approved an investment to ensure that every school had a full-time FTE parent liaison to bridge the gap between home and school.

[02:38:42] We've also exceeded participation in our family engagement series events for targeted populations. We also set a goal that by 2025, we would have 85% of our schools with a high-functioning school advisory council. And based on division-wide quality indicators, approximately 97% of our schools now do meet the criteria for having an established council.

[02:39:07] The one thing that I'll call out here is that you'll see a little bit later that we're marking that as yellow because now they have the councils, the next thing is for us to focus on the quality of what makes that council actually high functioning. So I wanna take a look at our family and community engagement series that continues to grow.

[02:39:27] Our family and community engagement series now has reached over 19,500 views to date. That's a remarkable increase over the four year period. It surpassed our goal of 10% increase for participation for targeted populations. And then nearly 99% of our participants reported feeling better equipped to support their students after attending one of our engagement series, showing that our focus on centralized accessible family support is having an impact.

[02:39:55] I also want to call out a key part of our strategic plan was strengthening philanthropic support for our school system through our Spark Foundation. We set a target for Prince William County to raise $10 million through a fundraising goal by 2025, but honestly, we have more than doubled that.

[02:40:17] We've already raised $22.1 million from cash and in-kind donations, scholarships, grants, and investments through our partnerships with our business communities. All of our schools now have at least one formal business and community partnership and some of those investments are represented in this 22 million.

[02:40:36] We also focused on communication and family and community engagement. We wanted to make sure that we consider the fact that our students speak over 170 languages and we wanted to remove the barrier of communication.

[02:40:51] And so we brought to the school division two-way messaging through school status. And since we launched school status in 2022, Over 30 million translated messages have been sent. Families increasingly engage via email and social media, generating 33.1 million impressions and 1.8 million interactions on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Spanish language sites.

[02:41:18] And so we're building stronger connections between home and school. So here's the progress on key initiatives and strategies in family and community engagement. Again, taking a look at what occurred and what the check-in was in 2024.

[02:41:36] So you'll see that we had not expanded our family support through the Global Welcome Center. We also, you'll see here, what was yellow was implementing a systematic approach to create consistency and communication between families and schools, which included tools that we were using.

[02:41:57] and then what was red was expanding the role in each school for high-functioning advisory councils. The other strategies were green. So this is a look at where we are today. So you'll see that we have expanded the Global Welcome Center.

[02:42:13] We actually even have renovations that are happening with the Global Welcome Center, so that is now green. And school status is also green. What is yellow is the school advisory councils, and I explained that a little bit. We have established the councils in all schools, but we now are focusing our sites on the functionality of those councils to make sure that they are high functioning.

[02:42:37] So that closes out our work in commitment three. And rounding out our presentation tonight is commitment four, organizational coherence, which ensures that we're operating as one cohesive and unified school system working towards the same collective vision.

[02:42:53] This commitment has to do with how we align our financial investments, our resources, our people, and our time. So here are a few key goals for organizational coherence that you see here, and I want to start with. One of the key priorities for organizational coherence has been ensuring regionally competitive compensation.

[02:43:14] And this commitment really demonstrates consistently our commitment to our students, our staff, and our faculty. You'll also see here that we set a goal for ensuring that we're equitably funding our schools for adequacy and when we say that, we mean that no matter what the size of your school is, if we set a standard of excellence, every school should be able to meet that, their budget should be able to support that.

[02:43:40] We also set a goal in organizational coherence to ensure up-to-date digital learning tools and one-to-one technology for all teachers and students. So I'll talk a little bit about where we are there. And then we also set a goal to make sure that every school and office, actually departments also, have continuous improvement plans so that we're continuing to get better as an organization.

[02:44:02] And you'll see that all of those goals are met with the exception of the funding for adequacy. That goal has been met, but it won't be realized until the FY27 budget. So we just finalized the methodology and the rules and changes around funding formulas.

[02:44:21] And so it will be ready for implementation for the FY27 budget that I will be bringing before you. So I wanna start first with average salary increases, which is the first bar that you saw there. This commitment has been demonstrated consistently with every PWCS employee receiving annual salary increases from 2022.

[02:44:40] Looking ahead to next year, staff members will see an average salary increase between 6.8% and 7.4%, along with a 5% increase in benefits. These adjustments result in a cumulative compensation growth of 31.5% to 33.4% over the course of the four year period.

[02:45:00] Four years ago, PWCS ranked third in entry level pay for individuals with bachelor's degrees, and we ranked fourth for those with master's degrees. And currently, PWCS offers the highest entry level teacher salary in Northern Virginia.

[02:45:16] So that goal in the strategic plan has been met. Moving into digital equity, we've invested $93 million in digital equity to ensure every student has personal technology and that our schools have advanced educational tools. And I wanna make an important note here.

[02:45:32] We centralized this, so no longer do schools have to take that out of their budgets. What we found that there was an inequity where some schools had the funding to be able to upgrade technology, other schools did not have the funding. That created an inequity. And now that it is centralized in our IT department, we are responsible for those refreshes.

[02:45:50] So we are providing the devices. We're also responsible for the refresh and that does not come out of the school budget, but it's centrally funded. Also want to call out our focus on customer service. We instituted Zendesk and our Zendesk system has been used by over 500 plus users handling 470,000 tickets over the course of the strategic plan since its inception with an average 19 hour closure rate and achieving a 97.4% satisfaction rate surpassing our 90% target.

[02:46:23] That is all curated through the Zendesk platform. It tells us how long it's taking for us to close the ticket and it counts how many tickets are actually coming through. I also wanna take a look at capital improvement, which is a part of organizational coherence.

[02:46:38] Now, we have gone well above and beyond in capital improvement. We set two goals where it relates to capital improvement in the strategic plan. One, we wanted to renovate a minimum of eight schools and construct our first net zero school replacement. But what you'll see on this screen is since school year 2022, PWCS has funded renovations for 13 schools, not just eight.

[02:47:01] Eight elementary schools, four middle schools, and one high school, plus our global welcome center. In this timeframe, we've also funded the building of four elementary schools, including our first net zero replacement school, one middle and one high school.

[02:47:16] Guided by our strategic plan, we've completed other important projects, making investments in both security infrastructure and sustainable construction practices. And some of these projects that you see will not be completed by the end of 2025, but the financial commitment and funds have already been allocated to realize those projects and those projects are already underway.

[02:47:39] One additional, a couple of additional things I wanna call out in organizational coherence is our standards of excellence. In addition to infrastructure work, We also established that we would make shifts in site-based management to norm practices across the school division.

[02:47:56] One of the biggest levels of feedback that I received when I did my 100-day tour in Prince William County, when I was first appointed from board members, from really from parents, as well as from teachers, is how with site-based management, there were no norm practices for things that should be normed across the school division.

[02:48:17] While we recognize that every school has their unique traditions and cultures within their school community, that should remain unique to their school and flexibility should be there. But there are certain things that should be a standard of excellence where there's norm practices across the school division so that there's more support and convenience for students, for teachers, and for families.

[02:48:40] And so what we've done in response to that is we erected the PWCS standards of excellence. And this is an iterative process. But right now, we have standards of excellence across academics, education, operations, to make sure that we have norm practices across Prince William County for not only how we operate, but what our expectations for excellence in education should be.

[02:49:01] So no matter where a parent goes in our school system, they should have minimum expectations for access to excellence in any school that they go in and any school that they attend. And the PWCS standards of excellence sets the bar for that.

[02:49:16] It also defines what's managed centrally, as well as what is left to be flexible at the local school site. So, here is our progress for, commitment for organizational coherence.

[02:49:32] Again, this is where we were at the little over the mid-year check-in. This is where we were, and you'll see what was yellow and what was red. And so, I want to now take a look at where we are today. So the conclusion of the strategic plan, you'll see that our work with Six Sigma to identify inefficiencies in business processes and guide improvements, that is yellow, it was red.

[02:50:01] That is underway. Many of the board members, we presented to you that we are adopting a new system, CLIC, for data governance. So it's a lot of processes that we have in place to build greater business efficiencies. So that is not green because we're just starting that this year so in December 2025 that will not be completed but we are well on our way for full implementation in the next year we also marked that you'll see the site-based standards and operational requirements is green because we have launched the standards of excellence which before that was read and then

[02:50:38] you'll also see what's yellow is succession planning through the talent management office now that we marked as yellow because we did launch the talent management department, and they are currently working on succession planning and talent development in Prince William County Schools.

[02:50:55] So that is the status for organizational coherence. As I close out, I know this was a lot of information, but this is our collective work. In 2021, I stated the following quote from Strategy in Action. School systems that focus on the core with a coherent strategy, executed and refined over time, are making progress in fulfilling their vision of supporting all children to learn at high levels, to contribute to their communities, and to be ready for college and career.

[02:51:24] Our collective progress and growth year over year as a unified school system working towards a singular North Star, that is our vision for PWCS, to ensure every student realizes or creates a thriving future for themselves and their community really demonstrates that we are living proof of strategy and action.

[02:51:42] I do wanna show here and highlight a few school division recognitions and achievements. Certainly I'm not going to read this long list, but I wanted to give you a visual and visibility into the work that's been happening in just four years. Everything that you see on the screen in terms of acknowledgements is not a culmination of a decade of work or 10 years.

[02:52:04] It's just the four, we only included acknowledgements both local and nationally and statewide acknowledgements for Prince William County Schools over the life of the four-year strategic plan. There is so much to be proud of in Prince William County Public Schools.

[02:52:19] No, we are not perfect. Yes, we did not hit the mark in some of our goals and our strategies, but I think that these recognitions and achievements along with the data that I presented today shows that there is still so much to be proud of the work that we've done together.

[02:52:36] And as you know, we are closing out the formation of our next four-year strategic plan, Elevate 2030 launching Thriving Futures. And our vision will remain the same, as will our mission, our core values. Those tenants that bring stability to the strategic plan will remain consistent along with our four key commitments that were presented here tonight.

[02:52:58] But Elevate 2030 will be all about developing global competency, personalized and adaptive learning, understanding the age of AI and teacher empowerment. Our mission is to create an educational environment for students to become explorers.

[02:53:15] Curious, engaged, and invested in lifelong learning. The work that you see here today is not the work of any one person alone. It is the collective effort, dedication, passion for our students of countless educators, staff members, parents, community leaders, business partners, our board, our executive leaders, and administrators in our schools and our students.

[02:53:43] It took the entire school system working together under the belief that every student in Prince William County really can create a thriving future for themselves and their community. And so as we look to the future, I do wanna take a quick look back at what we've accomplished in a video as we prepare to elevate 2030, which is the next chapter.

[02:54:08] And I also want to extend my gratitude to this board. We launched Vision 2025 together and you have stayed true to that. You have invested in Vision 2025. Every single year, every investment that came forward was tied to the strategic plan and we never veered away from that.

[02:54:29] And that was the only way that we could achieve this because without the resources, this was just a plan on paper. But for the board investing in this, fully investing in this plan year over year, that is how we realized so much of the success that is accredited to our students, our teachers, our families, our leaders, and the entire community that is Prince William County Schools.

[02:54:53] So let us elevate to 2030, which is our next chapter, because we are just getting started. Let's take a look back at Vision 2025, Launching Thriving Futures. - The Prince William County Schools introduced our new plan to target pandemic learning laws and improve test scores called Vision 2025.

[02:55:19] - Today is about launching. - Nice job. - Thank you, Michael. - Thriving. - What they learn in school is applicable in real life. - Futures. - Every student has a story.

[02:55:35] - What is our goal? To feel like we made an impact. - Every story deserves to be heard, valued, elevated. We're going to do phonics. What we have seen this year in terms of improvement and in terms of student achievement in some grade levels has been nothing short of a miracle. At Prince William County Public Schools, Vision 2025 was more than just a strategic plan. It was a commitment, a promise, a purpose. I feel like we're thriving. I think that the strategic plan is challenging. However, anything worth having is a challenge. The thing is you

[02:56:12] can't be afraid of the hard work we anchored ourselves in excellence leading with equity and always walking with integrity we're making a sensory kind of music board so if we press the button it'll start singing and hopefully she'll sing along every child deserves an adult who is wildly unapologetically crazy words are not enough she's my one and only and to see her with all her achievements. I can't express enough how proud I am. Across classrooms and

[02:56:48] communities. The more we can educate kids early on, the better these kids will grow up. We saw the impact. It raised hands, test scores, 94% graduation rate, and confident voices that say, "I belong here." I passed my AWS SEND certification.

[02:57:07] I have a job lined up and I'm gonna start two weeks after graduation. We We aligned our mission, we lived our values, we delivered results, and now we elevate. Elevate now for every learner, for every dreamer, for every future.

[02:57:24] When we talk about thriving futures, you thrive by working. You thrive by believing we're in this together. This is PWCS.

[02:57:33] This is the vision fulfilled, and the next chapter we are just getting started.

[02:58:12] Before I have any comments, I have to turn it over to the representative of our core business and that's karina grover our student representative thank you the most important rip right 100 anyways so i know i already highlighted some of the things in my remarks but you know i saw i can see it right you showed me the statistics and everything but just i wanted to highlight some things i saw throughout the years um so first of all with this whole strategic planning 2030, the amount of work you've put into this new strategic plan, I'm like fascinated how

[02:58:50] much time you have in a day. You have more hours than I think any of us do because you came to our senate meeting. I know you went to the superintendent's advisory committee to do those feedback sessions and you probably went to many more and I think that just shows your commitment to getting as many perspectives as you can, and that really means a lot to us students, especially.

[02:59:15] When you came to that Senate meeting, we still talk about it. We had our voices heard personally. The admin that was at our table was taking notes. They were actually actively listening to us, and it really makes a difference, and I hope to see that reflected in 2030.

[02:59:35] Also, the school status communication thing, 30.6 million messages oh my goodness but I you know you know it definitely does seem you know 30.6 million per student maybe but I yeah I think it's a lot but it is just a game changer to you know be able to communicate with parents and especially the language accessibility is something that's really important to a lot of students parents you know I think that your implementation of this is just amazing and the fact that we can all kind of be on the same page with it

[03:00:11] with this communication is it's really meaningful also I don't like to say the word or the three letters SAT but you know thank you in a way I guess in all seriousness increased by 102 percent that is just amazing and I you know as much as I don't like the SAT and I know a lot of seniors can agree with it.

[03:00:38] The fact that you gave it to juniors and they didn't have to pay for it, they didn't have to worry about transportation, that just highlights the power of PWCS and the opportunities it can give students and I think that is just so important and it is your message, preparing students for the future.

[03:00:56] So I wanted to highlight that. The last thing I want to highlight is the Bill of Rights, of course. I may be biased but I want to emphasize your work with the Student Senate, Student Voices, committees I mean as students we've all seen it you know you're in schools you're at these SVC meetings you're at the Senate meetings and I think it's just so amazing to see we've had you know student representatives student representatives you know in the past you know before everything but I think your work in building that out with the Senate with the student voice committees

[03:01:31] and now they're in all middle schools like that's amazing so I think all of the work you're doing is really showing and I can say as students, we really appreciate it. Like I said, you're a role model for a lot of us and we appreciate having a superintendent as amazing as you.

[03:01:50] - Oh, thank you, Karina. Thank you so much, I appreciate that. Now, I wanna say, like, I'm here presenting this, but this is the collective work of the entire school system. You know, this is the work of our educators, even with the student voice committees, like, they would not be able to move forward if our teachers didn't step up and be sponsors for those committees for our students.

[03:02:12] So this is work that we all should be incredibly proud of. - Dr. McDade, 100%. Just to remind the community and the board, I consider this a victory lap for you, for our school division, for the work that this board has done, the work that the board prior who hired you, if we remember Lily Jessie, Diane Raulston, Adele Jackson, were members of that board, we hired you in the midst of a global pandemic.

[03:02:40] You came in with a hundred day listening tour, a re-entry program that then launched vision 2025. And these are the results of that hard work, which has been a complete sprint with no break for any of us.

[03:02:55] And I truly appreciate the work you, your staff, the entire school division, every teacher, every custodian, every single person, you know, we are here, our core business is children, but we happen to be also the largest employer in the county because of our children, and you pointed that out.

[03:03:11] We happen to be the largest HR program in the county, the largest bus service in the county. We are the largest use of energy in the county, and because of all of that, we have a responsibility to our employees, and the work that you've done has not just been only for the one major constituent, which is our students, It's for all the constituents.

[03:03:37] And I think this summary, and I hope everyone in the county, in the community, in the press takes some time to read this and spend some time on this. This has been critical work that we have all focused on. You know, if you look at research on successful corporations, successful public sector entities, they always have one real thing in common, and that's a group that has decided they're gonna have a strategic plan, and then they're gonna stick to that plan with fidelity, with transparency, with constant effort, and you have done that.

[03:04:11] I'll shut up and allow some of these other members to make their remarks, but I'm not in a hurry tonight because this is the kind of night where this is the work we do. I think it's also important to point out each one of these goals wasn't selected because we thought we could achieve them.

[03:04:27] These goals were selected because research indicates improving these goals dramatically improve student performance, student success in achieving our mission and vision. They weren't just thought of in the air in something that we thought, okay, we can hit this one.

[03:04:43] Let's do this one. These are real research-based practices. Dr. McDade brought with her when she came here and told us these are the things we have to do. If we don't do these things, we will not be a strong school division. So I truly appreciate that. - And Dr. Lateef, you'll see cited in the strategic plan, both in 2025 and in 2030, all of the research efforts of the working groups.

[03:05:05] So we have working groups that are comprised of a diverse body of stakeholders throughout Prince William County. And you'll see all of the research that has went into 2025 and it is cited in Vision 2030 where this is work that is well documented as evidence-based practices that show up in the body of literature and education as best in class practices and tools that you'll see represented in Vision 2030.

[03:05:30] And as you pointed out, we did take notes from our community when we created this plan and they validated it. They supported us and it is because of that support and effort that we stand here on the work that you all have done on the backs of their great efforts as well to see a lot of green check marks.

[03:05:50] So we're really excited. Who wants to go there? Ms. Zargarpur. - Yeah, I thank you so much for that presentation. I'm not sure if everyone's aware today or this week is National Public Education Week.

[03:06:06] And this is just a beautiful culmination of the work that's going on here in Prince William County. And the idea that we have a leader who came in and said, these are gonna be, we're gonna work together to find the best practices and the evidence-based practices and connect with our community and our parents and our families and our students and our teachers.

[03:06:32] And we're moving forward in the next iteration of that. This is just like, thank you. This is a great week. I love this. But my one thing I'm curious about, UDL is, so I'm doing a personal deep dive on it this year in my own educational practice.

[03:06:49] And I see this as a very good thing for us to really dive into here, especially because it is meant to remove barriers to any child or group of children to help facilitate their learning. And I just want to, I hope that when we're trying to cultivate the curiosity and whatnot in our learners, that we also do it in our employees.

[03:07:22] Because what I'm finding this year in my own educational practice is that my imagination and interest is lit up to. And that is such a satisfying thing for your job. So anyway, so I'm excited to hear if there's gonna be more UDL. - Yeah, so UDL, we stand by that research.

[03:07:40] A lot of, we studied a lot of the research, which is why we put UDL in the strategic plan. But I think while ambitious as we was in rolling out, you know, I'm always, I try to be as transparent and brutally honest as possible.

[03:07:55] I don't think that we did a perfect job or close to perfect job in terms of the rollout of the training, it was a lot to be desired in that. And so we do stand by UDL, but we do wanna improve on the training efforts around that. Also, we also had to recognize that at the time in which we launched that, we were right in the throes of the pandemic.

[03:08:17] There were so many demands on our educators, so much that was coming both from the state as well as locally as we adopted new curriculum. And so we had to take a step back. So not that we're abandoning that research, we definitely support it, but the timing required us to make a pivot because there were just so many competing priorities and that was a heavy lift.

[03:08:41] So we did offer the training. I think that we could have done a better job with the training. I also acknowledge that there were so many competing priorities that the timing for that wasn't right and so we did pivot. We focused a little bit more heavily on some of the other evidence-based practices like seven steps in our classrooms that we implemented division-wide, as well as training for high-quality instructional materials, but we are still committed to that research, and you should see some of that undergirded in training that we'll be doing around teacher empowerment in the new strategic plan.

[03:09:17] - I think that seven steps thing works with UDL. It works beautifully. - It definitely does, but we had to make sure that, especially with the growing English learner population, We wanted to make sure that, you know, we did more training with seven steps.

[03:09:35] And so that was a big focus in that first year, the strategic plan too. So it was just, it was quite a bit that we were loading in that first four years. And so we did have to make a pivot on UDL. But again, you'll see a lot of teacher empowerment in the new strategic plan. So you'll see that training and that learning come back to life.

[03:09:54] - That's awesome. It's thriving futures for everyone. Thank you. Just real quick, while I named our former board members who helped create the strategic plan, our newer board members, Vice Chair Tracy Blake, Erica Trudenik, and Mr. Richard Jesse, we're here also as well in making sure we, you know, we stayed on track and on focus, and I think that was really important.

[03:10:19] Who's, Mr. Jesse. - Thank you for our wonderful presentation. I have just a couple of questions, really difficult questions. - I'm assuming we can share this with the public at this point.

[03:10:37] - It depends on what you're about to say. I don't know, we gotta ask the question first. - The presentation is posted publicly right now. - Okay, so that's, and is it published in different languages or anything like that, or your video, does that come out in different languages or anything?

[03:10:54] - I can't answer that question right now, but I will definitely go back and talk with our communications team to see, I know that we do do translation services for a presentation, so I'll be able to come back and let you know what the translation will be.

[03:11:09] - Okay, well, thank you. And it's very impressive and realistic, thank you.

[03:11:29] - Should I cold call? - Everybody's telling me to go. - Okay, I will acquiesce. Back in 2021, when it was the dark days of the pandemic, when you first met with the board, I remember thinking, wow, this is gonna be great.

[03:11:47] We need to hire this person. and you have delivered and then some. And my thought in listening to this presentation is we have done this together. And your leadership, however, has been essential. We could not have done it without you.

[03:12:04] And what you have brought to the table, you are the change agent, and you are providing that dynamic leadership that we all appreciate. And nobody's working harder than you, so we're all just running to try to keep up with you. And it's very obvious.

[03:12:20] But that's great because effort makes a difference and grit is a really important quality and you've got both of those things. And looking at this presentation, it was very comprehensive, it was valuable, there was a great attention to detail, there was accountability and transparency and honesty.

[03:12:41] And that is so refreshing and I really appreciate it. It's just really great to be a part of this as a board and superintendent governing team. And when I look through books about how to be a good school board member, this is what they talk about is having a strategic plan and then being committed and united and carrying out the goals and the purposes, the vision and the mission, all the way down to all of the employees, you know, who are doing the day in day out at the school level, getting everybody on board.

[03:13:15] So I think I'm very excited for 2023 or 2030, because it's been a great ride so far through 2025. And I just want to express my appreciation for all that you do, which I am sure you probably don't hear enough.

[03:13:34] And there are many times you think, why am I doing this? But I know you know, and I know we know why we're doing this because kids are the answer. Kids are why we're doing this. We do really believe in that goal of giving them a thriving future, the opportunities that they need to realize their dreams.

[03:13:52] So thank you very much. And this has been extremely informative and I'm going to try to memorize this presentation. Thank you very much. - Mr. Wilk. - Thank you for that presentation.

[03:14:07] A couple notable items that I took away and just kind of had some more reflections on with the slides and areas that I see further growth in what we're doing and from personal interactions. I think a lot of people know I like to visit my schools during the school days to see kind of all this in action, the practitioners, the different types of strategies, the work, the resources, the computer, technology, all that stuff.

[03:14:35] And I was looking at slide 10 with like literacy and I was in Ashland, I think last week, and those HQIM, those high quality resources, the phonemic awareness, the literacy, the comprehension. I heard a couple teachers talking about how much they liked the ones that they happened to have at that point.

[03:14:52] So it was just kind of cool to see that moving in action. and I know the state's moving towards mathematics or if they already haven't with the HQIM as we're kind of going over all the subject areas. Slide 14, one thing I was thinking, we, my understanding I think from these years is we've always paid for the SAT, but that growth that you've had and you've seen, obviously the payment wasn't just the fact that it grew exponentially.

[03:15:20] I think to ask you a little bit more about that, it's a culmination of various things, the career advisors, the college career advisors, all that stuff. Anything else that you would kind of attribute to that? - Well, we always had the option for families that qualify for a waiver to request one, but what we found is that we weren't getting, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Dr. Sullivan, we weren't getting a lot of requests for those waivers.

[03:15:47] That's number one. And number two, I think I mentioned earlier that we saw the increase really because we instituted SAT day where parents didn't have to take their students to a site.

[03:16:05] Yes, they didn't have to worry about the fee, but they also didn't have to worry about transporting their students to a site, certain test days that may conflict with work schedules, et cetera, and awareness, right? So some families not really aware of what the SAT offers in terms of informing them on whether or not their child is meeting college readiness benchmarks.

[03:16:27] And when we say meeting college readiness benchmarks, it basically means that a student who meets the benchmark according to College Board, it has the ability to successfully complete and pass earning a minimum of a C in a college level credit bearing course, right?

[03:16:47] And so some of it is knowledge and awareness of the fact that SAT gives us important data on student performance that goes beyond whether or not they want to use it for college entry or admission. Some students don't even, if it's a school that is test optional, may decide not to even use that.

[03:17:05] But it tells parents a lot about where their students are and how they're performing and whether or not they really are ready to go and step into a college classroom. It also tells us how we're doing in preparing students for future education.

[03:17:20] So I would answer your question to say a couple of things. Number one, yes, covering the cost of the fee, but that alone, you are absolutely right, that alone wouldn't increase the numbers. Offering SAT Day, where it's a part of the actual school day, was seamless, where parents didn't have to worry about any additional logistics or coordination.

[03:17:42] And students who probably wouldn't have even been aware or attempted to take the assessment, now was able to take the assessment with their peers and learn a lot about themselves and their full capabilities. So I would attribute it to that, in addition to the work that we have been doing around creating a college and career readiness culture in Prince William County Schools, as you talked about with counseling and college and career counseling and looking at the full suite of options that we have to support our students in making strong decisions about their future after Prince William County.

[03:18:15] So it's a lot of things involved, as you mentioned, but I would say the big driver of that increase that you're seeing really was around removing barriers by instituting SAT day during the actual school day, which was a game changer, as well as covering the cost of the fee.

[03:18:31] - Perfect, thank you. - And we also, I didn't mention, we also offered support in preparation for SAT, and I wanna do a shameless plug for Khan Academy right now and just say to all of our parents that Khan Academy is an excellent resource to help students as they prepare academically, not just for the SAT, but to meet college readiness, benchmarks, and skills that they're going to need today and when they leave Prince William County Schools.

[03:19:00] - Thank you. I just know there's so much more work, and I mean, there's so many things, like the profile of a graduate and those reports. - It kind of all comes together. - All the work that goes into that. I mean, I know we'd be here forever to highlight all those different components and intricacies. The last one I'll do, so I'm not here all night, is I'm happy to stay all night I am standing you are welcome to stay sir get comfortable the other one that really stood out to me I know we spent an exorbitant amount of money for the evolved detectors and there was a lot of controversy at the time about you know is this going to be effective is it worth

[03:19:37] the cost and then people you know had to you know found news stories and things like that that they you know brought up you know valid concerns but I think I think seeing just the sheer fact 100% of no firearms being entered into our schools shows that it's worth the cost and the value.

[03:19:53] And I know it took it, it wasn't seamless at first. I remember those days with the kids lining up and everyone was so concerned that those lines would take hours for the kids to come in, but now they've gone through the process as everyone, we predicted they would. And so I'm happy to see that.

[03:20:10] When it said a 63% drop in disciplinary code incidents, I'm assuming that's broadly or not just things associated. - It's more related to, right, it's more related to, you know, the things that we normally would capture that now evolve on deters.

[03:20:27] - Perfect, okay, I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you so much, great presentation. - Ms. Erica Trudinic. - Thank you for that presentation and thank you for standing there for that long. - It's okay, I'm excited about this.

[03:20:43] I was looking forward to this, so I'm happy to stand here and talk about this work, the work that our staff, our educators, and the entire county is doing. - Yes, and thank you so much for letting us be a part of the strategic plan and really talking to us about what's important in our districts, what's important to us personally as board members, and then what we really care about as far as students go.

[03:21:09] And it's been no secret that my favorite thing in this entire presentation is the CTE and the way that you've highlighted that. It's interesting, I was talking to a couple of students and I said it's rare for people to know and to find something they love in high school that they wanna do for the rest of their lives.

[03:21:30] And I was talking to them about how lucky and privileged they are to be able to find that and then to also have these teachers that instill in them a love for these careers. You know, specifically the one that I really love and that we're getting ready to build or we're in the process of building the Toro Turf Ground Academy is just amazing.

[03:21:50] And I personally have a child that, you know, fell in love with turf grass and is now doing that as a career and getting placed in internships at the next level and things like that. I just love what we're doing for those kids. You know, I was talking to one of the kids doing the electrical work the other day and he was talking to me about how great it is that his teacher was helping him find a summer job that was then hopefully gonna lead to a career.

[03:22:13] just the impact that we're making in these kids' lives and that these teachers and these men and women that run these programs are having such an impact. So thank you for that, I love that. And I love the partnerships that we're forming with businesses as well in our community and getting these kids placed in jobs and careers because it's tough out there for these graduates, these 18 year olds trying to figure it out.

[03:22:37] So I appreciate you for doing that. I also really loved the focus on the teachers for tomorrow and the increase that we've seen in that. You know, if we can't cultivate a love for teaching in our classrooms currently, you know, where else are we gonna do it? And I just think it's great to see that increase in our own students too and their love for teaching and wanting to come back and teach in Prince Wayne County Schools.

[03:22:59] So thank you for all you've done. Thank you for your entire team and your staff all the way down through all the programs that you've talked about. I just think it's amazing and I appreciate it. - Thank you. - Mr. Blake. - I just wanted to say thank you, Dr. McDade for the wonderful presentation.

[03:23:17] And just, you know, and thank your whole team for, you know, this, like Dr. Lateef said, this victory lap, 'cause it really is amazing, the transformation that's happened since the pandemic.

[03:23:36] But I'll just point out a few things, like 94.8% graduation rate, all-time high. That's a big deal, good job. four hundred and ninety two million dollars in scholarships I mean that's real dollars following real kids to school that's amazing and then I'll say you mentioned the science lab so or the stem lab I actually got to visit the one in the app school to think about stem lab so now we have a stem lab in in the

[03:24:15] district and I got to visit when another school so Ashland came there so We had Ashton Elementary come, and today one of my friends went on the field trip. He was like, oh, this morning, oh, I'm about to go on a field trip to, he said, to some Neabsco or some SNIP lab, right?

[03:24:34] But then he came from Covington-Harper, so they were there today. So I see your vision is, you know, is playing out, and it's helping bring equity and access to the side of the county with that lab.

[03:24:50] But it was amazing. and they were in there coding and I don't know. I couldn't keep up. It was good. It was good. And then I would also, the standards of excellence. Thank you for bringing that to Prince William County because it was just uneven.

[03:25:12] That's all I can say is it was some things was happening here and some things were happening there. Man, it would be a good, it would be a great practice here, but they wouldn't be doing the same thing here But now I'm glad that you have brought a standard of excellence while still letting the schools each have their, you know, still have some of their unique school community.

[03:25:38] And then I want to just mention those. I noticed on that list of awards, we had the Realtor.com Most Popular School District for Relocation in 2025. And then the Forbes American Best in State Employer in 2025.

[03:25:55] So, yeah, congratulations. I just want to say, yeah, just thank you for that transparent and very honest presentation. It's a great, I'm proud to, I'm just proud to represent this school district and be a part of it, so thank you.

[03:26:18] - Boy, I can still stay here all night, but I guess what I, I just want to, Dr. McTier, if you can just go back and pull up slides 15 and 16, go to 15. I just really enjoyed listening to you on 15 and 16, 'Cause I think for many of us, in those of us who care deeply about education and who care deeply about our competitiveness, whether it's in the region, in the Commonwealth, in the world, it is about pushing our students and demanding more of them and raising the bar high.

[03:26:56] And I think slides 15 to 16, if there's anything, grad rate is fantastic, I'm just very proud, and everyone knows how much I talk about scholarship dollars, but 15 to 16 really outline the number of students has increased dramatically who've taken advanced courses. The number of students who've done well in those advanced courses has also increased dramatically. And I think it's really important if anyone was to take away anything from this evening, I hope they take away the fact that Prince William County is

[03:27:31] in the business of increasing rigor and achieving at those higher levels of rigor than we ever had before and I and I think slides 15 and 16 really really outline that I don't know if you have anything to add on what you know I'm really proud of that work and that data that you're talking about like that all comes directly from the College Board like they they provided us data around you know this this is real data real students that represents the hard work in Prince William County I wish I could like literally stand here and name every single employee in this

[03:28:07] organization as I said earlier while I'm presenting these these results in the words of Simon Sinek you know we we don't lead the outcomes we lead the people that lead the outcomes and so we have some incredibly committed educators for support personnel from our custodians to bus drivers to teachers to leaders you name it there is a strong groundswell of belief in Prince William County students and so and this really just shows that if we believe in our children and we invest in them they absolutely can and will achieve at high

[03:28:44] levels and and I agree with you and looking at the advanced coursework that's really a testament to that I remember when we started there this work we heard some you know comments around well not certain students shouldn't be in these kinds of courses or we're you're putting kids in these courses do do they qualify?

[03:29:03] These were students who qualified to be in these courses that were not represented in advanced coursework. And it makes a huge difference. There's a ton of research right now that shows, even out of the University of Chicago Consortium on School of Research did a whole study on AP and IB that shows that just exposure to this level of rigor that students experience in an advanced course increases their outcomes towards persisting to and through college towards a post-secondary degree, just taking the class, even if they don't sit for the exam, right?

[03:29:40] So that's documented research in the body of literature and education. And so we knew that students can do it. They just need adults who believe in them. And so I'm just, that is, I will say, that is an area I'm really proud of, the work that happened in our schools.

[03:29:56] Our teachers were raising their hands to be trusted adults for students and supporting them in this journey. And really what the numbers shows is that high expectations matter and that our children can and will achieve if we meet them with high expectations.

[03:30:15] And that's what that shows. And it was across all of the different populations of students that we increased not just participation, but also achievement. And I think that is a testament to every student, every single child can learn and they can learn at high levels.

[03:30:33] - Well, I think I can speak for the entire board on this. And as you pointed out, first of all, we wanna thank you, but we wanna thank every, and let's reiterate this once again, every teacher, every custodian, every teaching assistant, every cafeteria worker, every bus driver, every administrator, every counselor, every single one of our folks who spend any minutes in our days taking care of our babies, our children, our students, our kids.

[03:31:02] We are incredibly grateful. This obviously could not have done without all of them. It is a team effort, a team sport, and my gosh, we've come a long way and we really appreciate all of them. We all know on this board how important that teacher in the room is, the principal in the building, how everything has to work together for us to get there.

[03:31:22] And not only, you know, and we've talked a lot just on the student achievement, which is our core business, but on energy sustainability, organizational coherence, on being named one of the top places to work for in the entire Commonwealth, not just among schools, but even among everybody else, right?

[03:31:39] So we have done that work and you don't get this kind of student achievement unless you take care of your employees and you spend a lot of time working with them as much as you can. And so we are grateful for you. We're grateful for the work that your entire team has done, this entire school division.

[03:31:55] I think I speak on behalf of the entire school board. Congratulations, job well done. - Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much to the entire school board. I also just wanna close out by saying that just like with vision 2025, you know in vision 2025, we had over 8,000 stakeholders directly provide support to the development of the strategic plan.

[03:32:18] You'll see that we also did the same thing with vision 2030. So just a couple of things for the public to know that I will be presenting Vision 2030 to the board in January. So that'll be coming before the board in January with a February vote on both the strategic plan and on the FY27 budget.

[03:32:39] So I encourage our families and communities and staff to tune in to be able to see that presentation on Vision 2025. That'll be up for public comment. So there'll be 30 days for people to comment on the vision 2030. And I also wanna publicly thank all of the parents and community leaders and business partners and board members, staff members who have either participated in our actual working groups that represent the four key commitments or attended a round table or an advisory council.

[03:33:12] And they spent a lot of time and energy really giving thoughtful feedback. And I sat in on just about every one to have a direct interaction with our families. And I told them that I was gonna be presenting tonight. I hope they tuned in, like I asked them to, because I wanted them to see the culmination of 2025.

[03:33:31] And I also wanted them to hear the timeline for presenting Vision 2030, which is elevate the next chapter because we are just getting started. So thank you so much. - Thank you, Dr. McDade. Thank you very much. Okay, wow.

[03:33:49] It's hard to do anything after that, but we'll have a quick few things to do here. 1701, tonight's meeting is taking place on Tuesday in order for board members to attend the Virginia School Board Association's annual convention, which is attended by school boards across the entire Commonwealth.

[03:34:04] This time each year, we award board members who've, and that conference, by the way, starts tomorrow morning, and our student, Karina, will also be going as well. This time each year, we award board members who've taken courses offered by VSBA to extend their knowledge and stay current with best practices.

[03:34:20] On behalf of the Virginia School Boards Association, I'm pleased to announce awards earned by six school board members to the VSBA Academy for their commitment to effective school board governance. For completing 84 credits in two years, the award of distinction goes to Vice Chair, Tracy Blake of the Neabsco District and Ms. Jennifer Wall of the Gainesville District.

[03:34:41] Congratulations. For completing 66 credits in two years, the award of honor goes to Ms. Lisa Zargarpur of the Coles District and Ms. Lori Williams of the Woodbridge District. For completing 48 credits in two years, the award of excellence goes to Chairman Lateef.

[03:34:58] For completing 15 credits in one year, the award of recognition goes to Mr. Richard Jesse of the Occoquan District and Dr. LaTanya McDade, Superintendent of Prince William County Schools. Congratulations to all. All right, we go to board matters. Last week we started with Wilk, this week Zargapur, make it quick.

[03:35:15] - Yes, thank you, Dr. Lateef. Oh, now we make it quick, thank you. So, with this being American Education Week-- I'm just joking. Well, it is American Education Week. This is an NEA initiative going back to, I believe, 1921. Anyway, public education is more than just a collection of buildings and classrooms and books and pencils and whatnot.

[03:35:36] It's a driver of opportunity for the cornerstone of our democracy. It's not just education. It's raising citizens of this country. And every day across this nation, our public schools open their doors and guarantee that every single child, regardless of their family's wealth or background or their zip code deserves access to a quality education.

[03:35:59] And it ensures that the promise of America is available to everyone. Our public schools provide the essential toolkit for a successful life. They equip our children with the foundational skills like reading, writing, math, and critical thinking, collaboration, how to understand and respect diverse perspectives.

[03:36:21] This is where the future scientists are dedicated community leaders, our skilled trades people, and brilliant artists get their start. By bringing children from all walks of life together, public education fosters the sense of shared citizenship and collective responsibility that binds us together as a community.

[03:36:43] So in recognizing the incredible work being done by dedicated teachers, administrators, staff, who bring this promise to life every day, they are the nation builders. They are investing in our public education, our public schools, and we're not merely just spending money, we are investing in our students and in their futures.

[03:37:05] Thank you. - Ms. Wall. - All right, I want to start out with a shout out. Congratulations to the Battlefield Bobcat cheer team. making it to the state finals um they placed second in class 6a and are the state runners up i know that's a hard position to be it's like winning silver at the olympics but it does take i wanted to reflect on the level of effort and commitment to excellence that it takes to qualify to compete at such a high level in you know the state finals and i'm really proud of the

[03:37:44] team and their accomplishments they placed fourth last year and the year before that they ended their season at regionals so that is significant achievement for the team and way to go um events since events i've attended since we since we last met on november 5th i went to the food show at hilton i tried almost everything on the menu um i would like the strawberry i was so full i was just i was it was pathetic um strawberry bread was amazing and i really liked the pizza sample the pizza recipes that were submitted by the kids so i hope to see that on the menu um and i know from from past experience as long as we keep having chocolate milk we're gonna be

[03:38:20] okay November 6 engage locally was a really cool event they had invited leaders across Prince William to come participate and it was it was cool to talk with the kids and hear them explain their projects I was happy to be involved in that as a as a school board member I went to Mountain View and gravely for two veterans day events and they were both fantastic very different but really fantastic fantastic one of the things I loved about gravely's is they had each group age group of children

[03:38:57] interns seeing they had them all sitting in their gymnasium and they had them each stand up and seeing the first verse of a different branch of the armed forces and yes there is a song for the Space Force and it was really cool to hear that and it was touching and they had the guests of honor line up and parade in and then parade back out and while the kids cheered and waved flags so I know it meant a lot to the honorees and it was a really great lesson in civics and gratitude for the children. Governor's school had a joint board meeting on the 13th and I will provide updates for that

[03:39:32] later at a later meeting. I also internal audit had a meeting since we met last and I will also provide updates for that at a later meeting. Last night I went to gravely's gravely elementary's pto and heard updates about their fundraising efforts and it also raised a question in my mind about field trips and to what extent the division does or could assist in facilitating or covering some of the cost of field trips because i know there's a wide disparity in that i don't know if that's going to be one of those things that schools are responsible for or if the division is going to budget for that for excellence um and equity i i don't know but that was a topic came up i also spoke to the weeblows of cub scout pack 107 and

[03:40:11] and they asked me some hilarious questions. I want to leave with this thought. A well-known sentiment expressed by faith leader, Dieter Uchtdorf is, in family relationships, love is really spelled T-I-M-E, time.

[03:40:28] And I think that's true for schools as well. It's really spelled time. And I appreciate all of the time that everybody spends every day to help kids achieve. Thank you. - Mr. Richard Jesse, Occoquan District.

[03:40:45] - Yeah, we spent some time talking about everything we do here in the schools and how successful we have been. But we also need to remember that the border supervisors, we get our money from them.

[03:41:03] If they have not given the money, they haven't given extra money and so forth, a lot of things that we wanted to do, we would not have done. So let's also keep in mind and give a shout out the border county supervisor who has helped provide all these things that we want to do i've attended a few things this time so i went to lake ridge middle school to their world festival it was this crowded as all get out but they had the first hour they had dancing groups from

[03:41:40] different countries perform different things and it was really beautiful i also the week i think before I met Mr. Blake and and at the Woodbridge Garfield High School football game and as you can tell by his expression Woodbridge won but but then after the Lake Ridge Middle School I went back over to Woodbridge because it's right across the street to watch a little bit of the their last game here

[03:42:14] last Friday and when I left it was at halftime was tied but then I see Woodbridge and I can't remember who I want to say Patriots maybe whoever they were playing they they won that game also so those are two events and hopefully I am going down to Williamsburg tomorrow so these are some events I'm getting back into thank you Mr. Denick um I enjoyed uh-oh my time didn't restart oh no I really enjoyed attending Cedar Point's Veterans Day Assembly.

[03:42:54] I have gone for the last couple of years, and they just do a wonderful job inviting all the veterans and allowing the kiddos to talk about them. It was so great to see that all over again, and very touching. I also thoroughly enjoyed attending the first-ever Prince William County School Flag Football Championships, Watching the last couple of rounds alongside Mr. Lateef and Ms. McDade.

[03:43:21] I do think that Ms. Wall was there too, but she was sitting on the wrong side, which was okay. But a huge, huge, huge congrats to the Brentsville High School girls on their perfect 11-0 season, outscoring opponents 333 to 55.

[03:43:42] Competing as a class three school against class six programs. This is a historic run and why I will continue to advocate for the VHSL to make girls flag football an official sport. A big personal congrats to Natalie Marvin, that quarterback that truly led that team.

[03:44:00] She did phenomenal. Speaking of other phenomenal athletes brunsville district i'd like to shout out trent daniels who has been in this boardroom more times than i can count but he needed to make sure that he could also compete in cross country by getting that state championship in cross country as well so congrats to him on that um and then also there's only three prince william county schools left in the football playoffs right now and one happens to to be from the Brentsville district.

[03:44:36] No secret that I'm a huge fan of those Brentsville Tigers. I'm hoping that we can get it done in the second round of the playoffs this Friday. So good luck, Tigers. And specifically, let's go number four.

[03:44:51] Also, I want to just remind everybody that we always, always, always have something that we can be thankful for. And in this month of thanks and giving, try to consider giving back to others and being thankful and grateful to those around you.

[03:45:09] Saying that personally, I did see some videos on Instagram and I was hoping I would see some from Prince William County Schools where they put the microphone in the middle and they filmed the students at their school asking them what they were thankful for. And to hear these kiddos talk about what they're thankful for and grateful for is a really impactful thing.

[03:45:26] So I hope that everybody continues in that. - Mr. Wilson, your excitement is palpable. For anyone who's still awake, let's see, it's been a busy two weeks going from Triangle Movie Night, final football game at Potomac Senior High School, Ashland Veterans Parade, Science and Math Night at Grand Park, Mary Williams Multiculture Night, Covington Harper had a Turkey Bowl, Forest Park had a chess tournament.

[03:45:56] I got to go speak at the request of students at the leadership class at Forest Park. That was fun, had no filter and it was a great conversation. and then there was a boundary planning meeting last night, more to come about that. And so, yeah, next week is going into the short week for Thanksgiving.

[03:46:17] A lot of us on the board have full-time jobs, so it's not as easy to be able to go to events during the school day. But my office is off all next week, so I'll be spending Monday and Tuesday challenging myself to go to 12 different schools and two food pantries, starting at 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning and ending at 3:30 PM Tuesday in Mary Williams Elementary.

[03:46:39] So it should be a blast and a real adrenaline thing and spending some time at those schools. And so yeah, I'm wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Go Paco, see ya. Mr. Blake.

[03:46:55] - Yeah, so over the past couple of weeks, I've had a chance to be in schools and community spaces that really showed who we are as a division. I wanna start with at Hilton High School, we had the ribbon cutting for the new food pantry, the ball pantry.

[03:47:13] And you know that pantry isn't just shelves and cans, it's dignity, stability and support for families who need it. And later that evening, I also went to the Prince William County Nutrition Food Show and with Ruby and Tracy and we had a, we tried everything to, except like the back page, I didn't really care for it too much, like the veggies, I don't know.

[03:47:40] but everything else was very good. But it was hands-on, it was practical, and the kids really enjoyed it. And then I also got to spend some time at the McCord Building engaging with Prince William 4-H and talking with the young people.

[03:47:58] And these young people are learning leadership and service in real ways. And it reminded me how many different pathways is this for kids to grow if you make space for them. And then I went to, I was at Neapstor Elementary for, the families came out for a family pickleball day.

[03:48:18] The weather was good, and it was a simple idea, but a huge turnout. Now I see why people are so competitive with pickleball. But it was pretty fun. And then I went over to Dell City, who was hosting a Title I math literacy night with a camping theme.

[03:48:40] and I talked to a lot of parents and kids, and it was just great to see what their partnership looked like at that school. I also stopped by King Elementary for their bingo night, and it was a packed room. Like always, it was just a lot of community, a lot of pizza, and a lot of bingos.

[03:49:05] And then I also wanted to just congratulate the Garfield football team for a good season. I know it didn't end the way they would like it to, But this is Coach Edmund's second year, and his second year is making it to the playoffs. So, you know, they're building a culture over there, and it eventually will turn the corner.

[03:49:25] So I just know they're building something special. So just keep up that good work if you're listening. And then this past week, I was able to go to Osborne Park for the first Lego League with about 30 elementary schools competing each day. On Sunday, Supervisor Angry actually joined me for the opening ceremonies, and we just got to see how powerful robotics is, teamwork, and the presentation skills that the kids had would all come together, and it just showed how Prince William County is leading the way in robotics across the Commonwealth, and those students are proving it.

[03:50:05] And earlier today, I had an opportunity to speak to an IB business management class at Garfield and I just talked about my journey, hard work, sports, academics, you know, using every skill you have as a vehicle to open doors. I told him the truth, nothing is going to be handed to you but everything is possible with discipline and support. So it was a really good conversations.

[03:50:29] In all these moments, big and small, they point to one thing. Like Ms. Wall said, when we invest our time our resources and our attention directly in students they rise when we invest in families they engage and when we spend our energy on building opportunities instead of managing adult center debates our entire division moves forward and at the end of the day it's our responsibility to our responsibility is simple keep the needs of the students at the center of

[03:51:03] every decision we make they only get one shot at this k-12 experience and it's on us to make sure it counts and i just want to wish everybody a happy thanksgiving a relaxing holiday and have a good night amen mr blake hot off the presses hot off the presses 38 minutes ago in an electric atmosphere on a rainy tuesday evening the hosts pulled out a five-set thriller in a state semifinal matchup over visiting Madison the victory put Colgan high school girls volleyball back 28 and four back in the state championship game for the first time since losing to alexander city

[03:51:43] in 2022 so congratulations to Colgan high school congratulations to all our fall sports athletes and our athletes who are getting started for the winter sports um as they um they go on but you know especially congratulations to all our folks who are still competing right now in the fall that means you're still moving forward and thank you to Ms. Erika Trudenik for inviting me to watch the final championship game of the inaugural first season of girls flag football in Prince William County. I truly appreciate it, it was a great time and we had a lot of fun and

[03:52:20] congratulations the Brentsville District High School girls championship flag football team. we will be, I think recognizing them come in one of our next few meetings because we think it's important to recognize our new inaugural season.

[03:52:37] So thank you. Everyone, thank you, Mr. Jesse for pointing out that let's get that presentation up on the website. Let's get it in languages. Let's get the video out. I will make sure the school board office sends it up with our next newsletter, the links to that, or even a special one just on the strategic plan results.

[03:52:57] I think that's critical for everyone to take a look at. I will just double down on what Dr. McDade said, and I would take her up on the offer to get engaged on this new plan. If there's something you don't like in our schools, if there's something you wanna see us improve, if there's something that you desire that needs to be brought to our attention, please bring it to our attention.

[03:53:18] And if we get it into the strategic plan and the board decides we're gonna vote this in to the plan, then there will be strict following, fidelity and a commitment to resources added to that work over the next four years of our new vision, elevate whatever we're calling it, elevate 2030.

[03:53:44] Elevate 2030, I gotta get used to it. I've already started talking like Dr. McDade, job well done, things like that. I don't say that, but she makes me say that now. I say it because I've been around her so long. So anyways, thank you, Dr. McDade, again. Thank you to the entire staff. Congratulations, Prince William County on an amazing first four years here in this last plan.

[03:54:05] Thank you. And with that, have a great night, everyone.

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