Babur Lateef this year was appointed to the Prince William County School Board as its Interim At-large Chairman.
The appointment came after former chairman Ryan Sawyers stepped down in March after months of wrangling with fellow Board members and county school staff over lawsuits regarding emails, as well as social issues like LGBT bathroom rights. He served two years in the job.
Under Lateef, an ophthalmologist by day, the School Board has refocused on students, and he’d like to keep the job.
Potomac Local sent a Project: Election survey to Lateef. These are his responses:
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PL: What are the top three major issues facing the district you wish to represent?
Lateef:
PL: What concrete solutions do you propose to address these issues?
Lateef: Student Success Close the Achievement Gap.
Implement the changes recommended by our Special Education Audit.
Ensure that a student’s economic background or ethnicity does not dictate their success.
Increase Test Scores Improve our SOL and SAT scores to compete with the rest of Northern Virginia.
Provide Opportunities For All Students Improve the communication of our academic and professional development opportunities through traditional, digital, and social media.
Prepare Students For college and life Increase the funding of our CTE (Career & Technical Education) programs, where students can learn valuable vocational skills such as cybersecurity, culinary arts, and practical nursing.
Space to Learn: Reduce the number of trailers
develop a concrete plan to tackle the decades-long problem of overcrowding. Prioritize remodeling of our aging schools.
Find solutions to decrease student-to-teacher ratios in our classrooms. Update and repair our internet infrastructure, including increasing bandwidth, creating new servers, and updating our websites.
Work on changing how specialty school assignments work so that the Board can determine how best to use our resources.
Safety and security: Secure school campuses
Work with student resource officers, teachers, counselors, and other staff to develop comprehensive, county-wide protocols to secure our campuses.
Increase funding for mental health specialists and counselors, and bring down the student to counselor ratio, so that all students have access to receive whatever help they may need.
Participate in school safety pilot programs: explore opportunities for innovative school safety solutions.
Provide students with the appropriate college advising and personal counseling they need.
Continue to support cultural sensitivity training programs so that our campuses are inclusive and sensitive to the different backgrounds of every student.
Salaries recruit and retain the best teachers
Offer competitive salaries so that Prince William County can recruit and retain the best educators in Virginia.
Increase per-pupil spending to ensure all students receive the best education possible.
PL: From your perspective, what is the job description of the office you’re seeking?
Lateef: Build consensus on our priorities as a school division. Put the student’s first every day, in every feasible way. Be a good steward of the budget, ensure our tax dollars are used efficiently to keep our promise of a world-class education. Make Prince William County a regional leader in education.
PL: Do you feel that the average citizen is well-informed and understands the workings of local government?
Lateef: I believe the average citizen is well informed on what their personal values are and the values they seek in an elected official. We can always do better at sharing information about local government.
That’s one of the reasons we need to reach people where they are by increasing our social media presence and email campaigns. With more aggressive digital marketing on our programs for students and parents, we can achieve one of our main goals, more parental and student involvement.
PL: What expertise will you bring to the office?
Lateef: The University of Virginia, Board of Visitors Member – Term 7/16 – 7/20
Chair, Audit, Compliance, Risk Committee
Vice Chair, Health System Board Student Life, Commonwealth Engagement, Research Committees Finance, Advancement Committees
Past Member UVA NOVA Task Force
Member SPARK Foundation – Board of Directors (Supporting Partnerships and Resources for Kids)
The Education Foundation for Prince William County Schools Board of Directors 7/16 – 7/19
Marshall Elementary School 2010 – Present PTO Member
Louise Benton Middle School 2014 – Present PTO Member
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology 2017 – Present Thomas
Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Partnership Fund – Supporter
PL: Have you ever made any mistakes in your public life? How have they affected you?
Lateef: No.
The most recent meeting I did just that. At a previous meeting, our fire chief detailed the implementation of over fifty recommendations from his volunteer and paid fire and rescue personnel. I failed to give him the praise he deserved for achieving that in such a short time as chief. This past meeting I publicly admitted my error and corrected it.
It is important for people, especially the young, to see that owning up to mistakes is the right thing to do.
PL: Our readers want leaders in local government. Why should they vote for you?
Lateef: I have been an active leader in the community for many years. I believe in leading by example which is why I spend my time volunteering at clinics, my children’s PTOs, and in different educational institutions.
I have been a student, teacher, and parent in Public Schools. Public education worked for me, kindergarten through medical school, I want every student in Prince William County to have the same opportunities that I did.
