Woman questions Prince William schools' procedures on math book

The fifth-grade primer “Investigations in Number, Data, and Space” is not on the state’s approved list of textbooks and has its detractors.

Kim Simons, one such detractor of the text that teaches Math Investigations, said the Prince William County school system did not follow required procedure in adopting the elementary school textbooks in 2006.

Virginia Department of Education regulations state that assessments of textbook criteria must have the approval of the local school board.

Simon said she asked Prince William school officials, under the Freedom of Information Act, for a copy of the school board’s official approval of the book.

Simons said school officials told her that the school board didn’t do that, so they didn’t have a copy.

“As far as Prince William County was concerned, they were done. It wasn’t their job to approve the criteria,” Simons said.

Ken Blackstone, Prince William schools spokesman, said he was sure the school system followed all of the rules and that Simons’ allegations were baseless.

Blackstone said the school board delegated the approval of the criteria to a curriculum supervisor who went through all of the required steps for textbook approval.

“This and several other allegations have been brought forward time and time again. Basically, in a nutshell, it’s unfounded,” Blackstone said. “Everything was done according to the proper regulations and state laws.We adopt textbooks all the time ... so it’s not like it’s something we don’t know how to do.”

Simons wasn’t buying it.

She said the regulations didn’t allow the curriculum supervisor to approve the criteria. According to her reading of the regulations, it is the board’s responsibility to approve the criteria.

“The school board as our elected representatives in theory is supposed to debate those criteria,” Simons said.

School Board Chairman Milton C. Johns agreed with Blackstone.

“I do believe that there’s no procedural issue. I believe that the school system and the school board did everything that was required,” Johns said.

Last week, Simons sent an e-mail to Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, telling him that she thought procedures hadn’t been followed and that officials at the Virginia Department of Education were unresponsive to her complaint about the Prince William school system.

“Employees with the Va. DOE [Department of Education] even stated that local school districts should follow their local procedures rather than state procedures, and that failure to follow state procedures was no big deal,” Simons wrote in the e-mail to Marshall.

Marshall said everyone should be following all of the rules.

“Frankly, the state education employees have no discretion to ignore that,” Marshall said of the Virginia regulations governing the use of non-aligned textbooks. “The laws are passed for the common good and they ought to be obeyed.”

Marshall forwarded Simon’s e-mail to Nicole Cheuk, a staff attorney with the Virginia Division of Legislative Affairs, who agreed that if Simons’ allegations were true, the regulations had been ignored.

On Tuesday, school board attorney Mary McGowan sent a letter to Marshall stating that procedure for approving the textbook had been followed.

McGowan wrote that Simons and a group of parents who opposed the textbook led an “after-the-fact” attack to remove the book from the schools and that the parents didn’t participate on the evaluation committee when the textbook was approved.

Marshall said McGowan’s letter hadn’t persuaded him to withdraw his request asking the state attorney general look into the matter.

Manassas Bureau Chief Keith Walker can be reached at 703-369-6751.