Candidates Answer Questions About Schools Underperforming

Improving our schools is near and dear to my heart and will be a key priority if I am honored to be your next mayor. Our schools are underperforming, and this creates a ripple effect that impacts everything — public safety, economic development, property values and overall quality of life. Osbourn and Metz have now failed to gain accreditation for the third year in a row. If our water supply were contaminated, we’d all act quickly to fix it. Our schools need the same urgency — they’re at a critical point, and it’s time to stop placing blame and start working together to find solutions. Every day, voters tell me we need to fix our schools. I won’t rest until this decline is reversed. Despite having one of the highest tax rates in Northern Virginia, we’re not seeing results. During the 2022-2023 school year, we invested between $15,000 and $16,000 per student. We need to make sure this money is being spent effectively, ensuring students have the necessary tools and resources to succeed. As your next mayor, I will unite students, parents, teachers, the School Board, Council and the community to address these challenges and aim for excellence. We need to identify the resources our students need to reach their full potential. No more excuses. Let’s focus on discipline, respect and responsibility, and give our kids the opportunity to achieve their dreams. It’s time for us to come together and take action.

Manassas City stands at a pivotal moment in our journey. Our community is calling for our publics schools to fulfill their mission of providing a quality education for every student. With lagging SOL scores and provisional accreditation for Osbourn High and Metz Middle, we must embrace a proactive and collaborative approach to set us on a path to success because right now, we are falling short. The city’s current plan to replace aging schools every ten years was an important first step, but true transformation requires a stronger partnership between the City Council and the School Board. In our compact 10-square-mile city, sharing resources, such as land and building, is essential. Together, we can tackle challenges and create a sustainable vision for our current students and future generations. Effective communication is key. We need a comprehensive strategy that addresses our current student population while anticipating future growth. Although projections suggest enrollment won’t exceed our existing capacity, we must remain innovative to ensure every school is equipped for excellence. The lessons learned from the new Jennie Dean project highlight the importance of collaboration. We cannot afford to repeat past missteps; both the City Council and School Board must engage actively in long-term strategic planning. Embracing the spirit of #OneManassas means working together as a unified community. While I do not support tying funding directly to performance benchmarks, I believe in establishing measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) to track educational outcomes. These KPIs serve as tools for accountability and transparency, demonstrating our commitment to continuous improvement without directly affecting funding decisions. Just as city departments are held accountable for measurable results, our schools can benefit from this culture of growth and evaluation. Public officials have a crucial responsibility to meet community expectations by providing the high-quality services residents deserve and pay for. Investing in our educators and their resources is essential. We can achieve better results by combining accountability with robust support for our schools. Cutting support for struggling schools is not the solution; instead, we must empower them to ensure every child receives the quality education they deserve. Additionally, we must be open to evolving our strategies, recognizing when something isn’t working and embracing innovative approaches. This commitment to adaptation will help us create a stronger educational system for everyone. By fostering collaboration, prioritizing equitable resources, and ensuring accountability, we can significantly enhance the educational experience for every student in Manassas. Education is the cornerstone of our community and deserves our unwavering investment and attention. We are fortunate to have dedicated teachers, exceptional students and supportive families. Let’s acknowledge our challenges while celebrating our successes. Together, we can build a future where every student has the opportunity to reach their fullest potential. Let’s unite in this vision and illuminate the path to success for all.

The situation with low academic performance from Manassas City Public Schools is a crisis for this city. Poorly rated schools are one of the first things a prospective homebuyer will see when they research and consider moving to Manassas. As a commuter town with an amazing VRE commuter rail system for Washington, D.C. area professionals, we should be a top destination for families taking jobs in this area and looking for a place to settle outside the city. But we aren’t, and education quality is why. Underperforming schools are deterring would-be taxpayers who could come here and add to the local economy, and it’s driving away longtime residents who can see there are better rated schools just twenty minutes west in the county. Poor school ratings are greatly suppressing home values and local investments. If I haven’t been clear enough, this is an emergency for Manassas. First, it is absolutely the case that our educators and teachers are working overtime against a rising tide of stressors on their job, and I commend any teacher for their work in our schools. Second, city officials are not doing everything that can be done to set up teachers and students for success.

My primary concern with this as a candidate for Council is that our current leadership rejects responsibility for public education outcomes when it is convenient for them. If you point out the failing schools in Manassas, they point the finger at School Board. If you point out that almost 50 cents of every dollar Manassas spends is on public education and ask why our investment is not producing an above 60% pass rates in writing, they point to the School Board and say this is none of Council’s business. It is very much Council’s business. You can see that in how current council members seeking reelection change their tune very quickly if anything is working well in the schools, such as the CTE program within Osbourn High School.

The root issues are not a mystery. InsideNova reported accurately in 2023 that Manassas has the highest percentage of English language learners in the state of Virginia. This is a challenge, and those kids need our help. The pass rates for that cohort is 41% in reading, 38% in math and 28% in science.

We have a School Board that sets voluntarily low standards in the classroom such as 50% grade floor. Kids can’t make a 0 on their work. The low standards on behavior and academics diminish the authority teachers in the classroom, both to set expectations on assignments and also to enforce codes of conduct. City Council has a role to play in communicating these views to School Board and using whatever influence available to compel them to do the right thing for the city.

City Council, instead of having a worthwhile debate with the School Board about academic standards in the schools they help fund, chooses to fight with them over land and the use of buildings such as the old Jennie Dean Elementary School. Manassas City Public Schools owns that property and should make a determination about the future of that asset themselves.

I do not support benchmarks for the School Board’s funding requests. That’s an inappropriate carrot-stick approach to funding public education. You can always look for areas of wasteful spending and suggest changes be made. After all, the School Board did sign a four year contract with Evolv for a weapons detection system in Osbourn that costs $104,000 annually, and the company is now under federal investigation by the SEC and FTC for fraud and misleading buyers about the tech’s capabilities. But you don’t do funding cuts to attack low academic performance.

I like the idea of having new educational facilities for our steadily growing net population. I’m enthusiastic about the idea of using the now city owned land at Marsteller on Sudley for a trade school focused on providing high school students in Manassas a whole facility dedicated to skills training in high-demand trade jobs. We could also work with the School Board to use the Jennie Dean property for such a facility and vastly expand the CTE program for Osbourn to include more trades such as cooking and hospitality.

Manassas has a growing need for this, not a community center on Sudley. We also have to consider the need for an alternative school in Manassas to provide a different track for kids who decline to stay at school during the day. Truant teenagers skipping class are everywhere in Manassas, and our police department needs help in order to manage that problem. That will require investments in a facility those kids can go to until parents pick them up, and staff to manage it. This will free up teachers and students in Metz and Osborn who want to focus on education, to do so.

We have a lot of work to do, and that starts with Council being honest about the existence of the problem. Mayor Michelle Davis-Younger was asked in the Prince William County Chamber of Commerce debate last week for the grade she would give the school system based on performance. She declined and said it couldn’t possibly be graded and that “children want to hear about how good they’re doing.” Well, we are not children, we are adults, and our role is to be truthful and put together a plan for progress based on the best data. I will be part of that change if elected to Manassas City Council.

In 2016, when I first ran for the School Board, both of my children were about to enter. Metz Middle School, which was not accredited at the time. Many families, including my neighbors, faced difficult decisions: should they keep their children in MCPS, move out of the city or invest in private schooling or homeschooling? For me, it was essential that my sons attend their local schools because schools are the heart of any strong community. That’s why I chose to run for the school board — to work towards making our schools better for everyone.

After I was elected, I’m proud to say that all of our schools achieved full accreditation! Unfortunately, Metz and Osbourn High School are no longer fully accredited. Metz faces academic challenges in subjects like math and science, while Osbourn struggles with both academics and chronic absenteeism. If elected to the City Council, I intend to improve coordination between the School Board and City Council to address these needs. It’s crucial that discussions about funding also include large capital improvement projects as student populations grow and instructional needs evolve. My experience as part of a compensation task force, which involved collaboration between selected School Board and City Council members, demonstrated that this type of partnership can be highly effective. School funding needs to focus on flexible, needs-based support. Setting benchmarks for school funding is counterproductive.

I also plan to increase transparency by involving all stakeholders in discussions about City Council’s school funding decisions. Open forums for feedback will ensure that community concerns are addressed and that resources are allocated to where they are most needed. By working together and maintaining open communication, we can strengthen our schools and provide every student in Manassas with the quality education they deserve. The future of our community depends on it.