King George schools present strategic-plan progress, cite staffing, literacy and attendance challenges
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Summary
Superintendent and division leaders reported progress across four strategic goals — employee investment, instructional quality, communication and safety — highlighting pay steps, a new K–12 math curriculum, expanded student supports and rising chronic absenteeism.
King George County Schools leaders updated the school board Monday on progress toward the division’s four-part strategic plan, reporting a mix of personnel gains, curriculum rollouts and student-support programs while flagging attendance and capacity challenges.
The update covered investments in employees, instructional initiatives, communications work and safety and wellness programs across the division. Division staff emphasized last year’s salary adjustments, new curriculum material and technology purchases, expanded counseling and intervention services, and ongoing facilities and staffing pressures.
Superintendent Daniel Boyd introduced the strategic-plan presentation and turned the floor to division leads. Amanda Yuzirsky, director of human resources, said the division provided a 1% cost-of-living adjustment plus step increases last year that in most cases amounted to roughly a 3% raise for employees, and that leaders addressed long-standing salary compression at the step-10 level. Yuzirsky said the board-approved update to regulation GCB-R now gives more credit for military experience (one year credit for every two years of service), and the division broadened access to an employee assistance program for all staff.
"We addressed the compression in the salary scale at step 10," Yuzirsky said. "We continue our partnership with Mark3 for advisement on health insurance options and to offer competitive supplemental benefits." She added the HR office is migrating onboarding and employee forms to a digital portal and is evaluating a new HRIS because the current system holds employee records back to 2004 and is at risk of failure.
Instructional leaders described curriculum and assessment work. Angie Harris and Erin Capel said the division is aligning pacing guides to updated state standards, adopting a new K–12 math curriculum and adding interactive instructional panels to secondary math classrooms. The division reported that King George High School administered 476 Advanced Placement exams last spring and that 77% of those scored 3 or higher.
Harris warned that the new math curriculum is rigorous and that early, targeted intervention is critical. "We have implemented targeted academic support and intervention strategies," Harris said, noting K–8 daily intervention in math and reading and after-school tutoring cycles in fall and spring.
Communications director Kelsey Higgins said the division launched PowerHub (a teacher–parent communications platform integrated with PowerSchool), will roll out a redesigned division website Dec. 1 with web-accessibility compliance, and recorded an increase in social-media impressions of about 147% compared with the same period the prior year. She reported FOIA request volume averaged about three per month (about 30 requests last year) and 10 since July 1.
On safety and student wellbeing, Dr. Wright reported extension of character-education work (CharacterStrong) to year three, continued office-on-youth alternatives to suspension programs, a new school safety officer at the middle school funded by a grant and a weapons-detection program. Wright said disciplinary incidents flagged as bullying dropped by more than 50% from the previous year, but chronic absenteeism rose from about 18% to 21% divisionwide.
Board members pressed staff on chronic absenteeism and program details. Wright and Boyd said staff are pursuing both "carrot" approaches — making school more engaging — and "stick" approaches such as truancy efforts and home visits; Boyd noted many absenteeism drivers are outside schools’ direct control and that the Virginia School Boards Association is proposing changes to how chronic absenteeism is used in accountability calculations.
Leaders also described several capacity and budget items that may affect next year’s budget cycle: transitioning fingerprinting to a new Tech 5 platform, funding a replacement HRIS, potential stipend changes for advanced degrees, and possible conversion of 10-month positions to 12-month positions for continuity in nursing and related services.
Board members generally praised the presentations and asked for follow-up reports. Members requested more granular data on bullying reports that were mitigated before becoming formal disciplinary incidents and an update on attendance strategies at the November meeting.
The presentation built on work described in the board’s strategic-plan document and did not include new formal policy votes. Division leaders said several initiatives will come back to the board as budget items or specific policy recommendations in coming months.