School may be out of session, but Stafford County teachers have been given new rules to follow.
During their June 23 school board meeting, the Stafford County School Board unanimously approved revisions to the school division’s Standard of Professional Conduct for All Employees, which ‘sets forth expectations for employee behavior both in and outside the workplace, as well as with students in-person and remote,’ according to school board documentation.
The new names of Stonewall Jackson Middle and High Senior schools are not yet known. But the Prince William County community has plenty of suggestions.
On June 22 and 25, the Prince William County School Board held community input sessions, allowing residents to suggest new names for both schools, located near Manassas, to the schools’ naming committees.
Residents in Prince William County are being given a second opportunity to speak about a proposed name change for Stonewall Jackson Senior High, and Stonewall Middle schools.
The second meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 25, and the details on this meeting are contained further down in this post.
In his plan to combat racism released on June 5, Prince William County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Steven L. Walts said it is time to rename Stonewall Jackson Senior High and Middle schools.
The schools, both located near Manassas — the site of the first battle of the Civil War in 1861 — are named for Jackson, a native Virginian who fought for the Confederacy, and is widely regarded by historians as one of the greatest military generals serve any nation.
Stafford County has enabled all of its students to have an electronic device for the next school year.
On June 16, the Stafford County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the purchase of 9,000 Chromebooks for students, a motion that has been in the works for months. Funding for the $1.1 million purchase will likely come from the CARES Act.
The Stafford County School Board is looking to pass a new policy on employee conduct, including regulations for electronic communications with students.
Under this policy, employees are allowed to engage in electronic communication with students on school-approved platforms for “legitimate purposes connected to school programs or services,” the policy outlines.
Students in Stafford County middle and high schools may no longer be allowed to use cell phones in class for instructional purposes.
At the county’s June 9 school board meeting, the board discussed exhibits one and two of Regulation 2401, which would “eliminate the use of cell phones in the classroom for instructional purposes,” according to school board documentation.
After hundreds of suggestions and multiple school board meetings, a name has finally been chosen for Prince William County’s 13th high school.
The school, which will be located at 13150 University Boulevard in Gainesville, has been named Gainesville High School. The naming was approved at the Prince William County School Board’s June 10 meeting, where the board also named the school’s library media center in honor of Officer Ashley Marie Guindon and its Student Services Center in honor of Lillian Orlich.
Schools will be opening in the fall, at least in some capacity.
Gov. Ralph Northam announced at his June 9 briefing that the schools will be opening in phases that correlate to the phases of general reopening.
Northern Virginia Community College classes are going to start on time, but for the most part, they will not in-person.
In a statement on June 8 made by the college’s president, Anne M. Kress, it was announced that the college’s classes would begin as scheduled on August 24 and be “offered in [NOVA’s] approved distance-learning formats, with the majority being offered either through NOVA Online or through synchronous delivery via Zoom.”
