Prince William Schools Chairman ‘confident’ in fall school opening

It was a conversation between the leaders of Prince William County’s biggest governing bodies.

On April 21. Prince William County School Board Chairman At-large Babur Lateef said he was ‘confident’ schools would reopen on time in the fall. He made the comments during a conversation with Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chair At-large Ann Wheeler, which was broadcast on Facebook.

“I am hopeful we will be out of the crisis enough to I think start school on time, so I’m confident we can do that, not entirely 100%, but I am confident,” said  Lateef.  

If schools are not able to open on time due to the new coronavirus, Lateef said that the school board will create a set of protocols and procedures that will allow students and families to have the resources they need to conduct learning from home. 

“We will be better prepared than we were this time around, so I think you can count on us to, regardless of computers or not computers, to be much better prepared for if this happens again,” said Chairman Lateef.

The Prince William County School Board recently spent $6.4 million to order 15,500 laptops to distribute to some 27,000 county high school students, a part of a larger plan to give every student in the school division a digital device. Lateef said that the school board has made an investment to buy even more computers and that their IT department has looked at how students can use their own home devices to do online learning in this emerging situation. 

“As we try to find the resources to get ready for the fall, we would love to have a computer in the hands of every senior,” said Chairman Lateef. 

The school division purchased the HP ProBooks laptops from Daly Computer in Clarksburg, Md., according to information obtained by Potomac Local News in a Freedom of Information Act order. Each machine will have an 11-inch touch screen, a 64-bit processor, and 4 gigabytes of RAM.

The School Board held a straw poll and decided to purchase the computers, Lateef told Potomac Local News. The School Board, however, did not take a vote on the purchase.

School officials said the division used an existing contract with Daly Computers, awarded in 2015, originally slated for the purchase of “new desktops, laptops, servers, peripherals, and other accessories” as the contract to purchase the HP ProBook computers.

Also discussed during the call, current high school seniors — all of whom have been stripped of the regular high school milestones such as prom and graduation, may be able to attend a commencement ceremony after all. The School Board is open to the idea of virtual or rescheduled ceremonies and they are very interested in finding something for the seniors, said Lateef. 

“This is really heartbreaking, I graduated high school thirty years ago, those were memorable times, so I want to find a way to honor our students,” said he added.