Dr. C. Bruce McDade; Superintendent

SEAC Meetings

The Superintendent's Employee Advisory Committee held its first meeting of the school year on November 6, 2018. The official meeting minutes can be found here.

If you have an issue that you would like to be addressed at the next SEAC meeting, please see your building representative.

Scenes from PD Academy

McDade's Download

Welcome to Volume 1, Issue 1 of my new quarterly newsletter. I look forward to highlighting many of the positive activities at MPCS for you here.

For this first edition, I’m happy to report that Manassas Park City Schools has now extended its digital 1-to-1 rollout to all four schools.

We know that students entering our division have already been touched by digital media as an early form of learning and play. As educators, we want to harness that power as a tool to engage students in the classroom and beyond.

MPCS Connects! is now in its fourth year and is available in all of our classrooms. More than 3,000 students have access to their own device for the school year, and technology is fully integrated into the pre-K curriculum as well.

The goal of the digital conversion was never to give every teacher and student a device and have them teach and learn on their own. The four-year rollout followed a careful plan of implementation, and teachers continue to have specific training in the use of their devices, as well as a planned program that is concurrent with the Standards of Learning (SOL) that the Virginia Department of Education requires.

This year, continuing this path, the entire district participated in a day-long professional development program. The PD Academy brought a conference directly to the teachers that further illustrated how to connect and innovate in a digitally ubiquitous world.

Keynote speakers included Matt Miller, author of Ditch that Textbook, and Jeff Zoul, author of numerous books about education including What Connected Educators Do Differently, Start. Right. Now – Teach and Lead for Excellence, and the Teach. Learn. Lead. Repeat. blog. Teachers also had the opportunity to attend breakout sessions where they learned how to immediately incorporate digital tools inside the classroom.

The overall response to the PD Academy was positive. Our educators came away with tools they could execute in the classroom and reported that the face-to-face contact with other professionals was invaluable.

Rachel Sager, a teacher new to Manassas Park Middle School, said that bringing renowned educators to the division was a plus. “I really enjoyed getting to learn from published educators – people who we, as teachers, are using their materials and resource books.

“It was really productive when we got hands-on tutorials based on what we were learning about in our different break-out sessions,” Sager added.

Veteran MPCS teacher Lisa Hill also thought that the ability to personalize her PD Academy experience was beneficial. “I think what I loved the most was getting to pick the sessions I went to,” she said.

The positive results of MPCS’ technology implementation plan are measurable. MPCS remains fully accredited while 50% of our population are considered economically disadvantaged and more than 40% are English language learners. For the 2017-18 school year, MPCS students met or exceeded state pass rates in 21 of 35 categories. That number goes up to 30 if you include categories that are within 3 points.

Our cycle of continuous improvement is ongoing, but our ability to implement digital learning so well positively impacts our entire community!

First Quarter Highlights

Most Valuable Cougar, Matilah Pamie-George

Homecoming Celebrations

I joined Twitter!

Celebrating Canada during Multicultural Night at Cougar

January 2019

January at MPCS started off at full speed as we hosted the 5^th Annual MPCS VEX IQ Robotics Tournament.

A total of 37 teams from around the area spent the first Saturday of the year at the elementary school showcasing their hard work in robot design and construction. Through a game-based engineering challenge, teams worked to score as many points as possible by completing specific tasks with their robots.

One of our five MPCS teams – Team 10762A – participated in the finals and tied for Second Place in the Teamwork Challenge!

The 37 teams consisted of about 150 students. Along with families and spectators, they filled MPE with tremendous energy. Another 40 volunteers made the day possible. Their dedication to the MPCS community coupled with the talent, teamwork, and comradery on display throughout the tournament was outstanding!