Supervisor Yesli Vega continued to push back on what she calls an "insidious and divisive agenda" within the halls of Prince William County Government, its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, and a survey demanding to know the sexual orientation of employees.
During a Board of County Supervisors meeting Tuesday, March 14, 2023, Vega read into the record an email from a county employee who voiced concerns about a DEI survey government workers were asked to take.
- If you rely on us for local news and haven’t already, please support us by becoming a member!
- Join our Locals Only Membership Today! In a world filled with everyday heroes and extraordinary tales, Potomac Local is your trusted source for news and stories that matter in our community.
- Our Local Spotlight Membership is perfect for businesses and non-profits to increase sales, donations, and branding awareness in the community.
- Sign in here if you're already a member, and Thank You!
The Prince William County Government restored an online survey asking employees about their gender identity, sexual orientation, and whether or not they feel valued at work after Supervisor Yesli Vega shared the survey with her constituents.
Maria Burgos, head of the county's diversity, equity, and inclusion office, reopened the survey to government employees only and extended the survey time by about a week.
- If you rely on us for local news and haven’t already, please support us by becoming a member!
- Join our Locals Only Membership Today! In a world filled with everyday heroes and extraordinary tales, Potomac Local is your trusted source for news and stories that matter in our community.
- Our Local Spotlight Membership is perfect for businesses and non-profits to increase sales, donations, and branding awareness in the community.
- Sign in here if you're already a member, and Thank You!
The Prince William County Government removed an online survey asking employees about their gender identity, sexual orientation, and whether or not they feel valued at work after Supervisor Yesli Vega shared the survey with her constituents.
The 21-question survey (see it here) cost taxpayers $78,000, or about $3,700 per question, and was conducted by DiversityMBA/Learning Solutions, according to an email from Maria Burgos, the county’s equity and inclusion officer.
Vega represents the Coles District and sent a link to the online survey in her constituent email on Sunday, February 26, 2023:
As this survey is taxpayer-funded, our office wanted to share and ensure that all who work for the county or identify as working for the county are included and have the opportunity to participate and provide feedback.
While some may note that some of the questions are intrusive and some of the answer options aren’t particularly inclusive, a few questions do provide an opportunity to write-in your own answer.
Again, this is a great opportunity to see how your hard-earned tax dollars are used and to catch a glimpse into the current environment of the Prince William County Government.
Burgos said the county government unpublished the online survey after Vega’s constituents received the email. Burgos said she plans to repost the survey soon.
From Burgos’ email obtained by PLN:
[DiversityMBA/Learning Solutions] will identify specific lines of inquiry (including but not limited to: organizational behaviors, practices, and procedures that impede inclusion in the following areas: policies and practices in relation to recruitment/selection, performance management, pay and numeration, talent identification as well as understanding leadership development, employee levels of inclusion, and career structures).
DiversityMBA/Learning Solutions has collected over 100+ documents around these lines of inquiry. They are synthesizing the PWC Employee survey, and the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument results conducted by each department.
They are now completing the last areas of organizational assessments with the inclusion survey and department interviews. Since your office released the survey link to the public, we closed the survey and will reopen it for all employees once we can ensure this instrument of measure has not been compromised.
The Prince William Board of County Supervisors created the county’s office of equity and inclusion in 2021. Burgos worked in the county school division in a similar role before she went to the county government.
While diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices have become commonplace in government and educational institutions across the U.S., some jurisdictions are scrapping them. Earlier this month, The Roanoke Times reported the Roanoke County Public School division eliminated its DEI position.
In Prince William County in 2022, the county school division declined insidenova.com an interview with its DEI officer. The publication sought to learn more about her job duties and its work within the state’s second-largest school division.
Prince William County Public Schools created its DEI office in 2021, giving it a $2 million budget. The project was heralded by Superintendent Dr. LaTayna McDade, who came to the county from Chicago Public Schools in 2021.
Columbus Day is no more in Prince William County.
A federal holiday since 1937, the Board of County Supervisors nixed the holiday during its October 10, 2022 meeting, which celebrates the Italian explorer, the first European to land in North America.
The holiday is now known as Indigenous People’s Day to recognize Doeg and Manhoac tribes who occupied the land known today as Prince William County.
Maria Burgos, the county’s equity and inclusion officer, said many schools could identify the tribes while others may not.
“Prince William County recognizes that the county is built upon the lands that were once the home of thousands of indigenous peoples whom many of us may have forgotten,” the resolution states.
Brentsville District Supervisor Jeanine Lawson objected to the change, citing various school assignments and field trips offered by the county’s government school division teaching Native Americans and area galleries, like the Manassas Museum, where children may learn about indigenous tribes.
Lawson asked Burgos if she would consider adding Columbus’ name to the resolution, and she refused.
“People who want to demonize western civilization,” said Lawson. “That’s what the intent of this resolution is, and I object.”
Potomac District Supervisor Andrea Bailey motioned to approve the change. Lawson was the lone dissenting vote, while Coles District Supervisor Yelsli Vega abstained.
Upon his arrival to North America, Columbus showed brutal treatment toward the natives. Meanwhile, the Europeans who followed introduced new diseases to the continent, which sickened and killed many natives.
Dr. Lucretia Brown was the first high-profile hire by Dr. LaTanya McDade, who took over as Prince William schools superintendent after Dr. Stephen Walts retired a year ago. Before coming to our area, Brown was the Deputy Superintendent of Equity, Accountability, and School Improvement for Allentown School District in Pennsylvania.
Now at Virginia’s second-largest school district, she’s made few public appearances and has yet to address the county School Board. In light of the recent focus on critically responsive teaching, a statewide gubernatorial election that put Critical Race Theory under a microscope, and a string of School Board meetings with parents demanding a more significant role in their children’s public-school education, it’s fair to say many of us are curious about her, and what she plans to do in her new role.
This year, McDade established the school division’s Equity Office and will staff it with 10 employees working under Brown, with a $1.8 million budget. Over the next year, Brown is charged with delivering an Equity Audit, completing a Resource Equity Diagnostic, and coming up with an Equity Action Plan to be implemented for nearly 90,000 students and nearly 12,000 employees.
Each of these concepts is relatively new, and the general public has little knowledge of them. To borrow a line from 1999’s Office Space, “Well, what would you say… you do here?”
This week, Insidenova reported on a recent Superintendent’s Advisory Committee of Equity meeting held by McDade, to whom Brown reports. The news reporter and Brown gave us this insight:
Without providing too many specifics about [her daily] activities, Brown described her position to the equity council… as a cross-disciplinary job that reaches into other departments. Ultimately, though, Brown is responsible for the division’s informal diversity, equity, and inclusion (or DEI) work.
“It’s not this marginalized position that sits out here and has to wait, if you will, for an opportunity to engage with other officers or work. It’s a bonafide discipline and office that’s rooted in the research that I’m sharing with you,” Brown told the committee at its meeting in late March. “A big concept that our superintendent has introduced in our division is the notion of interdependencies, and when you think of it, it is counter to that idea of bureaucratic silos, so making sure that as I fit into the environment and the [concepts] that were already here before I got here.”
Brown isn’t the chief DEI trainer, she said. Instead, she said her role is one that consults laterally with other division heads, advises McDade, and serves as a “change management specialist” who will interrogate practices and policies that exist within the division’s many departments today and advise on what’s good, what needs tweaking and what should go.
OK, everybody got that? According to the quote, Brown assures us her job is rooted in academia, and then she compliments her boss for her apparent forethought to create her position. Then there’s something about interdependencies and bureaucratic silos.
If you read all of that and are confused, you’re not alone. To make matters worse, according to the news report, McDade won’t allow anyone to interview her star hire so that the public can get some clarification or insight into the meaning of those big words.
It sounds like Brown and her staff have some work ahead of them. McDade is clearly throwing a lot of money at the job. We’d like to know, in plain English, what’s being done, for whom, and how.
Potomac Local News occasionally writes editorials and accepts opinion-based letters to the editor on local issues. Readers may email letters.
On Tuesday, February 8, county leaders criticized a final report from the Prince William County Racial and Social Justice Commission, calling it incomplete.
Multiple commission members said they needed more time to find answers about why disparities exist between white, black, and Hispanic students in the county schools after a massive reduction in testing scores following the school division's shift to online learning during the pandemic.
- If you rely on us for local news and haven’t already, please support us by becoming a member!
- Join our Locals Only Membership Today! In a world filled with everyday heroes and extraordinary tales, Potomac Local is your trusted source for news and stories that matter in our community.
- Our Local Spotlight Membership is perfect for businesses and non-profits to increase sales, donations, and branding awareness in the community.
- Sign in here if you're already a member, and Thank You!
Residents hoping to ask questions about Critical Race Theory and its possible application in the classroom left disappointed Monday night.
More than 100 people attended a town hall meeting about Culturally Responsive Instruction on Monday night at the Prince William County Public Schools headquarters. They were not permitted to ask about CRT -- a decades-old framework that views all facets of society through race.
Woodbridge District School Board Member Loree Williams organized the town hall. She wouldn't entertain questions about CRT, a hot topic during the November 2 Virginia Gubernatorial Campaign that swept Republicans into statewide office, including Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin, after two years of Democratic control.
- If you rely on us for local news and haven’t already, please support us by becoming a member!
- Join our Locals Only Membership Today! In a world filled with everyday heroes and extraordinary tales, Potomac Local is your trusted source for news and stories that matter in our community.
- Our Local Spotlight Membership is perfect for businesses and non-profits to increase sales, donations, and branding awareness in the community.
- Sign in here if you're already a member, and Thank You!
School Board Chairman Babur Lateef publicly says Prince William County Schools are not teaching Critical Race Theory.
But, in private texts that were made public only through a Freedom of Information Act request, Lateef says “Well I have always said that and I have maintained CRT is what we are doing here.”
School Board Member Loree Williams says Critical Race Theory is not being taught in the schools in Prince William County, and anybody who claims otherwise is wrong.
Williams conveniently ignores that former Prince William County Schools Supervisor of Global Learning and Culturally Responsive Instruction, Maria Burgos, conducted a teacher training webinar based on Critical Race Theory ideology telling teachers to implement those principles in their classrooms.
Worse, state law now assesses all teachers for new and renewed licenses based on their “cultural competency” in the classroom. That’s the unabashed code word for Critical Race Theory.
But these politicians don’t want to admit that Critical Race Theory is being taught because it is an inconvenient truth they know will hurt their favored candidates in this election cycle. After all, if parents knew the truth, they would demand the accountability of those politicians.
Public opinion surveys show that most parents of every color oppose Critical Race Theory being taught in the schools because it divides their children based on the color of their skin, not their learning abilities.
Here in Prince William County, the Racial and Social Justice Commission, which is supposed to be examining any issue that adversely impacts the quality of education for children of color, has slapped a gag order on any discussion on Critical Race Theory. I serve on that Commission and have been publicly reprimanded by the Commission Chairman for participating in a Town Hall Meeting where citizens dared to discuss this banned topic.
It is the offensive suppression of free speech about an issue that is negatively impacting the quality of education in our classrooms. And the advocates for “cultural inclusion in the classroom” don’t want parents meddling in what they are teaching their children.
While inconvenient for the advocates of Critical Race Theory, the truth is they just call it by another name and then embed that ideology in every subject in every classroom in Prince William County.
They call it Culturally Responsible Teaching, but it’s actually Critical Race Theory.
That’s the truth, however inconvenient it may be politically.
Mac Haddow
Coles District Appointee to the Prince William County Racial and Social Justice Commission
