STAFFORD, Va. — The Chamber Ensemble singers of Brooke Point High School in Stafford are going to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington on March 16. Their performance will be apart of a larger show of student choirs from across the U.S., according to Brooke Point Choral Director Stephen Shelburne.
Here’s Shelburne’s letter to Stafford County Public School administrators telling them of the students’ upcoming trip and how the public can attend the concert in Washington, D.C.:
Prince William County Schools Superintendent Steven Walts proposed adding three days to the end of the 2013-14 school year to make up for the 12 missed days of schools and the five 2-hour delays due to weather.
Officials took issue with how the Prince William County Public School System budgets its money.
The County’s Board of Supervisors, the taxing authority, on Tuesday set the advertised property tax rate at $1.158 per $100 of assessed value for the FY2015 budget. While the final tax rate won’t be adopted until April, tax revenues collected under the tax rate of $862.3 million will go to fund the operation of county government, and 57.23% of it automatically will go to fund schools.
Chairman Corey Stewart says and says money to lower class sizes and increase teacher pay has to come from somewhere.
He and the Prince William County Board of Supervisors is now wrangling over a proposed $975 million budget that doesn’t leave much room for the hiring of new police officers and fire and rescue personnel, or bringing on new employees into government that saw positions go unfilled or slashed since the start of the recession in 2008.
There was a surprise for a little girl in the fifth grade at Antietam Elementary School in Lake Ridge on Thursday.
Lt. Commander Brian Harper returned home from Afghanistan to greet his 10-year-old daughters Isabella and 4-year old Grace during a school assembly. With her classmates watching, Isabella and her mother Shannon, welcomed the sailor with loving arms following his tour in the foreign country.
With the possibility of fewer local and state school funding next year, public school students made an impassionate plea to Prince William County officials Tuesday night. They said their overcrowded classrooms have led to disruptions, fighting among students, and have negatively impacted the academic process.
The students, as well as members of the Prince William Federation of Teachers, urged the Board of Supervisors to fully fund the county’s public school system during the upcoming budget season. Students also said there too much focus has been placed on Virginia’s Standards of Learning exams.
Stafford County canceled classes for Friday as well as mid-term exams.
More in a statement from Stafford schools:
PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, Va. — The recent cold weather brought by the polar vortex that engulfed our region over the last two days brought problems for Prince William schools.
This morning as children headed into the cold, with temperatures below 10 degrees in some places, and back to class after school was canceled Tuesday due to cold weather, a total of 60 county school buses failed to start. That meant children were late getting across the county, and school officials said the nature of the isolated mechanical problems and its timing made it difficult to send out alerts.
Prince William County Public Schools are closed today due to last night’s snow and this morning’s icy road conditions.
Here’s the statement from the school division:
Updated
Stafford County Public Schools are closed tomorrow. Officials say Code 1 is in effect for employees.
