Prince William County Public Schools

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    • September 7, 2022

    Board Briefs
    • September 9, 2022

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    School Board Meeting of September 7, 2022

    View the agenda on the Electronic School Board webpage.

    Watch the School Board meeting on PWCS-TV.

    Launching Thriving Future Focus

    • The School Board recognized the award-winning Brentsville District High School Turfgrass program.

    The School Board Approved

    Citizens addressed the School Board on the following topics

    • Dyslexia Awareness Month
    • Commuting Time for students
    • Citizen Concerns
    • Bell Times
    • Collective Bargaining
    • Summer School Graduation
    • Data Centers near Tyler / Pace West

    Office of the Chief Financial Officer

    • The Board received the proposal to sell Fall 2022 VPSA Stand Alone Bonds.

    Office of the Chief Information Officer

    Student Representative Matters

    • Daania Sharifi presented the Student Representative goals for the 2022-23 school year.

    Superintendent's Time

    • First, I would like to formally welcome three new additions to our leadership team.
    • Dr. Carol Flenard, deputy superintendent. Dr. Flenard joins PWCS from Spotsylvania County Public Schools, where she most recently served as interim superintendent. Prior to that role, she served as deputy superintendent/chief academic officer.
    • Mr. Vernon Bock, chief operating officer. Mr. Bock joins us from Frederick County Public Schools, where he has served as associate superintendent for administration.
    • Dr. Ashley Reyher, associate superintendent for special education. Dr. Reyher joins us from Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools, where she served as coordinator for equity, diversity, and inclusion.
    • Welcome Dr. Flenard, Mr. Bock, and Dr. Reyher to Prince William County Public Schools. We are so excited to have you.
    • I will also take this opportunity to recognize the new Office of Student Services and Post-Secondary Success led by Associate Superintendent, Mrs. Denise Huebner.
    • Student Services and Post-Secondary Success was reorganized to prioritize our efforts to ensure strong post-secondary outcomes for all students and better align for Organizational Coherence. We know that our job does not end with the diploma on graduation day, we must ensure every student is positioned for success after graduation. The office of Student Services and Post-Secondary Success will focus on ensuring that our students have a strong plan for after graduation. The Office now includes:
      • Career and Technical Education,
      • College, Career, and Student Support,
      • Student Health and Wellness, and
      • Student Management and Alternative Programs.
    • PWCS is launching thriving futures by equipping and training our students today, to succeed tomorrow.
    • And, as evident from the glass-shattering actions from Brentsville’s CTE program, we’re making history.
    • CTE is a critical priority in our strategic plan, and I would like to share a few more CTE program highlights from this past year, including:
    • Our designation as the first Virginia Department of Labor and Industry Intermediary by coordinating the Registered Apprenticeship agreement between students and employers.
    • A $125,000 grant award for the VDOE Advancing Computer Science Education.
    • A $133,465 grant award to support the Health and Medical Sciences program with a possible $500,000 grant award over 5 years.
    • The implementation of a comprehensive Work-based Learning Plan by hiring the first CTE Workforce Development Coordinator, Nasir Ayoub, who collaborated with Student Services and the College and Career Counseling Services to expand opportunities for internships and employment within PWCS.
    • This past spring, we celebrated the signing of 81 students to full-time employment or military services on the CTE Signing Day in front of 22 proud business partners.
    • The Class of 2022 Job Fair saw 53% of the 249 participating seniors receive an immediate job offer from at least one of the 44 businesses that attended.
    • Currently, 61 Business Partnerships, with 20 awaiting SPARK approval, led to 81 student internships, 13 youth registered apprenticeships, and 3 registered apprenticeships
    • As you can hear, PWCS’s CTE programs prepare students by creating specialized experiences in work-based learning that provides training in industry skills and grows their confidence in technical discourse, a successful post-secondary plan, and their future gainful employment. We are really excited about what is happening with CTE. Which is why we need to invest.
    • Over the next four years, our goal is for 3,500 summer employment opportunities to be provided for rising high school juniors and seniors. PWCS has already begun to increase and strengthen partnerships with local businesses, local trade unions, and philanthropic communities to attain more apprenticeship and internship opportunities for our students.
    • In the 2020-21 school year, more than 800 CTE students enrolled in over 20 available CTE dual enrollment courses. By 2025, we will increase our CTE courses, with the goal of enrolling more than 1,500 students. At least 1,000 CTE students will graduate high school in 2025 with a minimum of six CTE dual enrollment credits.
    • We want our students prepared to meet the requirements for industry credentials with opportunities to engage in work-based learning activities.
    • By investing in our CTE programs, we are strengthening our commitment to ensure our students’ really do have an opportunity to have a thriving future for themselves and their community.
    • Throughout the school year, I will include updates on strategic initiatives, like CTE expansion, that are underway in the school division.
    • Shifting our focus to the first day of school.
    • On August 22, PWCS successfully opened the doors of our nearly 100 schools to a brand-new year, welcoming almost 91,000 students back to school for both in-person and virtual instruction.
    • I’m excited to report that our preliminary total enrollment of 90,870 students has exceeded our projections of 89,837 students by 1,033 students overall. We expect this number may fluctuate over the coming weeks – it’s something we will monitor closely– and we will be providing regular enrollment updates upon stabilization.
    • I believe that purposeful engagement is vital for success, and during the first week of school, I had the privilege of visiting 26 schools. The atmosphere in our schools was electric as students expressed excitement about their return to learning. I would like to thank our staff members, students and their families for a relatively smooth start to the 2022-23 school year. I look forward to visiting the remainder of our schools during the next several months and talking to our staff members and leaders about how they are implementing continuous improvement efforts in support of achieving the goals and strategies identified in our Launching Thriving Futures Strategic Plan.
    • I recognize that school safety is top of mind for our students and their families, as well as our staff members.
    • Last spring, we hired an external consultant specializing in safety and security to complete an audit of our school division. The audit has been completed and we are currently reviewing and implementing suggestions toward safe and secure school buildings.
    • Among these improvements, in addition to the school resource officers the police department provides for our schools, this school year, PWCS is finalizing the hiring of additional security assistants for each middle and high school. Twenty-five of the 32 new assistants have been hired, with five additional security assistants finishing the hiring process. We have also hired an additional community safety officer, bringing our total to seven, and have a new daytime security patrol officer. We are also adding a full-time additional security assistant at every elementary school as well as Pennington and Porter Traditional Schools, and The Nokesville School.
    • Although the school year has just begun, we will soon begin the process of planning for the Fiscal Year 24 budget.
    • The PWCS FY23 budget included additional investments made to schools in support of division-wide adequacy. PWCS made a commitment to organizational coherence, and we set a goal to ensure all PWCS schools and offices are equitably and adequately funded. PWCS identified some schools needing additional funding where our per-pupil funding model wasn’t adequate.
    • As identified in our strategic plan, we will establish a budget taskforce this year that will engage the community, instructional leaders, employee groups, and student stakeholders to provide recommendations in the budget process. The Budget task force is scheduled to launch this month. This group of 25 stakeholders represents parents, students, teachers, principals, and central office staff. It will be co-led by Mr. John Wallingford, Chief Financial Officer, and Dr. Lucretia Brown, Chief Equity Officer.
    • This task force will convene to review emerging practices in fiscal adequacy for K-12 school systems. They will be tasked with the identification of policy development and revisions to bring forward for recommendations, the development of recommendations to inform the future of budgeting in PWCS, and authentic engagement on behalf of the students and staff of PWCS. I look forward to witnessing the positive impact this task force will have on our students. It is important to make sure the public is aware of all of the updates within our Strategic Plan. We will continue to bring those updates throughout the school year.
    • I would now like to invite our associate superintendent for teaching and learning, Ms. Rita Goss and our associate superintendent for student services and post-secondary success, Mrs. Denise Huebner, to present a summary of outcomes from our summer school program.
    • Update on Summer School (PDF) – Mr. Chairman, that concludes my report.