Provided by Prince William County Schools (PWCS)
Dear PWCS Families, Employees, and Community:
The success of our students is directly tied to the critical partnership between our schools and our parents and guardians. Recently, parents at West Gate Elementary School shared their visions of student success in this inspiring video. Every family has hopes and dreams for their child. As a School Division, we share in the promise of delivering quality educational experiences for every child to launch thriving futures.
I recognize that parent and guardian involvement takes many forms, and like each of our students, our parents and guardians are unique. As an example, more than 40,000 PWCS students and families speak Spanish as their home language, along with our families whose home languages include Arabic, Korean, Farsi, Pashto, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Chinese among many others.
As a School Division, we are committed to meeting these diverse needs, so each family can feel connected to their school. One of the four commitments in the PWCS Vision 2025, Launching Thriving Futures Strategic Plan is Family and Community Engagement, and the Fiscal Year 2023 Superintendent’s Budget provides funding for key programs and resources to support our families.
For example, our budget proposal funds 35 parent liaisons, with the goal of one parent liaison in every school within the next four years. Additionally, we will be upgrading our communication messaging tools next school year to enable teachers to reach out to families in their home language and for families to be able to respond, with automatic two-way translation.
The budget also includes more resources for translation support to overcome language barriers with our families by translating critical information into a variety of languages. I am hopeful that parent liaisons, as well as other investments allocated in the budget, will help provide improved resources for our families and encourage increased involvement in our schools.
As I shared previously, our budget makes key investments in all areas of our strategic plan. This includes more than an $80 million increase in teacher and employee pay, more than 110 additional special education related positions, as well as additional career counselors, gifted education teachers, and an additional 88 kindergarten teaching assistants. These are just a few of the major investments we can realize thanks to strong revenue support from the county and the state.
The School Board will consider the approval of the proposed budget and Capital Improvements Program on March 16. We will present this budget to the County Board of Supervisors on April 5, who will consider approval of the budget prior to April 30.
We are looking forward to the new opportunities that our proposed budget and our four-year strategic plan will bring to our students, families, teachers, employees, and community. PWCS is committed to ensuring every student receives the high-quality education they deserve. Thank you for your continued partnership.
Have a safe, restful, and enjoyable weekend.
Sincerely,
LaTanya D. McDade, Ed.D. Superintendent Prince William County Public Schools
