Newsletter 2021 Issue 5

Left: Recipients of the 2016 Regional School Board Member of the Year Awards.

Right Top: 2014 Recipient of the Board of Distinction Award, Manassas City School Board

Right Bottom: 2017 Recipient of the Board of Distinction Award, Middlesex County School Board

Elections of VSBA Regional Officers take place at the Fall Regional Meetings which will be held virtually the week prior to the VSBA Annual Convention. In 2015 the VSBA Delegate Assembly voted to change the regional positions from a one-year to a two-year term. For those regions that will be holding an election this year, a nominating committee was formed and announced at your Spring Regional Networking Forum. Those interested in serving as chair or vice-chair of the region should complete the application form and contact the members of the regional nominating committee. The regions below will be looking for nominations for a chair and vice-chair for a two-year term:

Please reach out to your school division clerk to register for this event. For business affiliate members, please reach out to Mikaela Coffey for registration at mikaela@vsba.org. (Registration for VSBA meetings is only open to VSBA members and affiliate members.)

To view the brochure, click here. For questions or more information, contact Mikaela Coffey, Coordinator of Board Development at mikaela@vsba.org or 1-800-446-8722.

On Friday, April 23^rd Petersburg City Public Schools (PCPS) unveiled their newest endeavor called The PCPS Wave bus.

What was once a normal school bus has now been transformed into a mobile resource center for students and their families. PCPS had been working on The Wave bus for about two years before its unveiling. The concept behind the bus is to serve as a mobile library, career center, resource distribution center, information hub, and as an internet cafe. The goal is to meet the community where they are instead of having the community come to them. The reason for this is because PCPS recognized that not everyone has a source of transportation to get themselves and their family to a fixed location resource center. The hope is to eventually position the bus in front of the local Target and Walmart to meet families there because it can't be assumed that parents will know about everything happening in the schools.

The building of the engagement bus was supposed to start at the beginning of the academic year, but it was postponed due to the transition to virtual learning which was caused by the pandemic. Fortunately, in the second semester, the school system restarted the renovation and completed the bus in time for the end-of-year exams and summer festivities. The district spent roughly $75,000 to get the bus fully operational, which included adding a generator, air conditioner, furnishings, electronics, and resource materials.

The Wave bus is a retrofitted school bus that has been transformed into a student and family support resource center. The bus will visit all parts of the city of Petersburg, and it will be a part of events held by churches, non-profit organizations, apartment complexes, neighborhoods, and local government. “The PCPS Wave bus will go where our families are, and it will facilitate a higher level of engagement with students and families we serve,” said Dr. Pitre-Martin, superintendent of Petersburg schools.

Visitors will have the ability to print and fax documents, check out books, register for library cards, and connect to Wi-Fi that extends to anyone within 300 feet of the bus. The bus is outfitted with two laptops, an iPad offering digital versions of national and local print publications, and a variety of library books. The traditional bus seats were removed and were replaced with cushioned seats with storage compartments and tables. The exterior of the school bus, called “The Wave,” is painted white, yellow, and with a red wave for the high school’s Crimson Wave mascot and school colors.

“We are so excited to launch The PCPS Wave bus and the direct service and support it will provide,” said Dr. Maria Pitre-Martin.

The bus is set to travel on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in June and July and will add Mondays in August. After school starts in the fall, it will travel only on request. The bus will be staffed by the support team and volunteer parents, who will park in various areas and be available to teach students and answer questions from parents. Reading and math activities have been developed for the students, including the use of large inflatable dice, logic games, and vocabulary development. The learning activities on the bus are going to be based on what teachers and school administrators notice students need more practice with. The district also wants to support parents by providing help with writing resumes. Templates will be provided as well as lessons on the “do’s and don’ts” of what to have on a résumé.

Each local school board may submit one name/nomination for consideration. The nomination must be approved by the school board, and the nominee must be a current school board member. Nominations are due no later than Friday, July 30, 2021. Nominations will undergo a review by the selection committee which will determine the award winner.

Thank you for your continued interest in advocacy and all you do to support public education! Please contact J.T. Kessler if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions.

Since early spring, the Governance Teams in Franklin City and Fredericksburg City have been working toward completing the VSBA Master Board Program. The full School Board, as well as their Superintendent, met to take a deep dive into team and trust-building, communications, managing change, ethics, and working together as a team to benefit every child.

"The commitment from both of these teams was inspiring," said Gina Patterson, VSBA executive director. "They truly recognize that a successful school division begins with a School Board and Superintendent that are themselves committed to excellence and growth." There is now a total of four school boards across Virginia with the designation of VSBA Master Board with another three currently working through the program.

“When am I going to use this?”

High school mathematics teachers are frequently confronted with this challenge from students. From bisecting an angle with a compass and straight edge, to the strange “±” sign in the quadratic formula, students often do not see the connection between the mathematics they are learning and the life they are living. The connections are there, but are well hidden from students behind the abstractions of our approach to teaching mathematics.

“I wish I learned this in high school.”

Since I work in finance, friends often ask me financial questions, such as, “Should I buy bitcoin?” or “Are interest rates going up or down?” Seldom do people ask me about the questions that I think are important: “How much do I need to save for retirement?” “How much insurance do I need?” When I discuss the principles involved in evaluating financial decisions, they often wonder why they didn’t learn those concepts in school.

The mathematics course we have developed at the Financial Life Cycle Education Corp, called FiCycle for short, addresses both issues. It addresses high school mathematics standards (related to Algebra II, Probability, Statistics, and Modeling) while providing students with an understanding of the principles of personal finance and the mathematical tools needed to apply those principles to real decisions throughout their life.

The course is organized around understanding the ideas of wealth and consumption. Drawing on the “Life Cycle Hypothesis” of Nobel Prize winner Franco Modigliani, we focus on how people can transfer wealth across time: borrowing to transfer wealth from the future to the present to fund consumption now, and investing to transfer wealth to the future for retirement and other needs we may have later in life. We also show how the transfer of wealth across time creates risk and describe how to measure and manage that risk.

All of this takes mathematics: starting with basic numeracy and understanding percentages, fractions, and decimals, and extending to exponents and logarithms, probability, and regression. When students see this math in the context of finance, they never ask “when will I use this?” In fact, students find that they even enjoy mathematics.

Here's an example. In math class, we are taught the distributive rule, but you probably don’t remember it. However, we can teach the same rule using finance. For example, if you have $1000 and you earn 8% interest, how much money do you have at the end of one year? There are two ways to solve this:

Two different ways to get the same answer. Shown this problem and the connection between the two solutions, a student exclaimed: “I like this math!” Who wouldn’t? While this is the same distributive rule, it has a purpose and that purpose drives engagement and understanding.

Why do we have high school students asking, “When will I use this?” and graduates saying, “I wish I had learned this”? We can address both the students and the graduates, and at the same time improve mathematics education.

Every student deserves access to high quality personal finance and mathematics education. While many schools have adopted personal finance courses, research shows that personal finance without mathematics may not be achieving the intended goals. Personal finance courses increase student confidence in making financial decisions but do not necessarily increase skill in financial decision-making.

Financial literacy education leads to more financial actions, but not always better financial outcomes. Adding mathematics improves the quality of the decisions as well as the amount of financial engagement. This should be clear; imagine learning the physics of launching a rocket without mathematics. Talking about force, mass and acceleration is not the same as learning Newton’s Laws. Similarly, financial decisions have a mathematical component. For example, evaluation of the risk of an investment is improved with an understanding of probability and standard deviations.

The FiCycle Math course is intended to be a third-year or fourth-year high school math class either as an alternative Algebra II class or as a math elective. The digital course materials are available for free for the first year of that the course is adopted. Nominal charges in future years support our development efforts.

Let’s combine math and personal finance for all of our students.

Andy Davidson is the Founder of Financial Life Cycle Education Corp (FiCycle), a not-for-profit that works with educators and organizations to equip all students with the mathematical and financial skills and understanding necessary to navigate their financial life cycle and meet and exceed state requirements in mathematics. Learn about FiCycle’s curriculum, lessons, research, and resources at https://ficycle.org

Thank you for your support of the VSBA and Virginia's public education system.

Visit https://www.vsba.org/resources/affiliates/affiliate_member_program/ for a complete list of VSBA's Affiliate Members.