Willie Deutsch will run to reclaim the Coles District seat on the Prince William County School Board.
Deutsch, 33, posted a video to Facebook to announce his campaign. In it, the Republican cited a widening achievement gap in the state’s second-largest school division, which has been growing since the lockdowns of the 2020 pandemic.
“A third of our elementary school students are below grade level when it comes to reading, which is essential for their future success. Over a third of high school students are failing one or more classes, and we have a crisis of holding on to our current teachers due to the overwork and burnout that they are facing. And all of this is a direct result of the failure of the school board to lead and put academic success first,” said Deutsch.
Deutsch held the seat from 2015 until 2019 when he lost a re-election bid to sitting Coles School Board member Lisa Zargapur by six points. Zargapur won the backing of the county’s Democratic Committee, whose candidates performed well in 2019, beating all but one of the Republican Party-endorsed School Board candidates and flipping the Board of County Supervisors, which sits across town.
Since then, Deutsch has been a fixture at county school board meetings, joining conservatives in their calls to reopen school buildings in the wake of the pandemic-era closures and to relax and remove social distancing facemask requirements in place when children returned to the classroom in December 2021.
The county school board meeting chambers have been the site of multiple demonstrations where protestors critical of the school division’s COVID-era policies were ejected from the building. Following the protests, the school board broke its regular public comment time into two portions, one at the beginning of the meeting and then one at the end, limited the number of speakers who could address the elected officials and mandated they only speak about school business.
Additionally, school division security set back the public more than 50 feet from the school board members, creating a barrier in the room between residents and public officials that remains to this day.
“They told [residents] we are not here to listen to you. And at school board meeting, after school board meetings, they made their decisions in secret and in private as they ignored the public. This is unacceptable. It is time for the school board to return to holding public town halls listening sessions with the public and to seriously consider and engage with the public as they make key decisions,” said Deutsch.
Deutsch works at Freddie Mac as a communications specialist. He’s recently remarried.
Another conservative, Stephen Spiker, announced he will also run for the Coles District seat in 2023. A nominating contest for the seat will likely come in Spring 2023, though one has yet to be announced.
Jennifer Wall, the sitting Gainesville District School Board member who received GOP backing, will seek re-election for her seat in 2023. School Board candidates campaign as independents, however, receive the support of the Democrat and Republican political parties.
The most recent Virginia Standards of Learning test scores released in August show improvement for Prince William County Public Schools, the state’s second-largest public schools division.
The overall writing score dropped by nine points over the past year, with 70% of students showing mastery of the skill. Reading scores improved by two points, history, and social sciences increased by 11 points, and math was up 12 points to 67%.
Economically disadvantaged students showed improvement across the board in all subjects. Those students posted the highest achievement in reading, with 64% of the population showing mastery of the skill.
The scores continue to trail 2019 numbers that showed more than 80% of students in the school division were proficient in science and math, and 79% did well in reading.
The school division has about 90,000 children.
