Tracy Conroy is the newest candidate for Prince William County School Board Chairperson At-large.Those who follow the happenings of Prince William County Schools may know the Our Schools Facebook site. They may be surprised to learn that lead site administrator, Tracy Conroy, has declared her run for School Board Chairperson At-large.
Aspiring to School Board Chairperson is a bit of a role reversal for Conroy. Rather than investigating and holding PWCS administrators accountable, as School Board Chairman, she would also shoulder much of the responsibility for the decisions the School Board and school administration makes day in and day out.
However, in another way, the role is similar. She will still be closely monitoring PWCS, talking with concerned citizens and leading discussions on what went wrong, and what should be done differently in the future.
Adapting to her new role, Conroy has decided to bow out gracefully of the administering the 1,000 follower Facebook site she has fostered, leaving it, as she explains, in very capable hands. Conroy said she needed to separate herself from Our Schools primarily because the site administrators made the commitment that they would not endorse a candidate.
However, it is because of her work at Our Schools that Conroy believes she is a qualified candidate for the position of School Board Chairperson. Not only has she been closely reporting on school board meeting, statistic and decisions for the past three and half years, but she has also gained valuable experience and insight working with the community. Engaging with parents, teachers, even school board members, she feels she has a high-level of insight into the workings of the school division. She also knows of the kind of changes the majority of parents are looking to see enacted.
Conroy takes in what people tell her, often anonymously, and hosts a conversation with the wider community.
Conroy said she did not anticipate running for chairperson. However, she hoped to support a candidate whose passion rivaled her own.
"I very much hoped there would be a chairperson candidate that I could privately support. Tim Singstock and Ryan Sawyer would be amazing. However, I haven’t seen their passion. I’ve been doing this for so long. The passion is ingrained in me at this point.”
She also realizes it is a big leap to run for chairperson, but she felt it is where her service was most needed.
“It would have been easier for me to run possibly for Brentsville District, but Gil Trenum is doing a great job,” she said.
What she hopes to bring to the position and the board in general is a more focused approach to achieving the school division's goals.
“Education is not a line item on the agenda; it is the agenda. We get distracted easily,” she said, citing the pool at the 12th high school as one example.
“We spoke about a pool for nine months....We lost nine months of talking about education. Today we’re talking about expanding Porter. It is not on our strategic plan to expand Porter. It is taking away from the primary goal, which is education.”
She also made clear that she would work cooperatively with the administration.
“My agenda is not to oppose the administration. The superintendent needs our support.”
Rather, she hopes to steer the ship on course with the strategic plan. All the while, she will keep one priority in mind: making every Prince William School great.
Prince William has a great many Schools of Excellence. “We need 94 schools of excellence," she said. In other words, all of them.
To do this, she would try to foster a community environment in every school. It is not that she wants to eliminate specialty programs. She believes it would be best if all children who attended a specialty program did so for the program, rather than because they felt their neighborhood school was somehow lacking.
She also wants to pay very close attention to the school budget. Right now, she said it is so obtuse that even high-level administrators have told her that one person cannot possibly understand all aspects of it. She thinks it needs to be made clear, at least to the School Board, which is responsible for its oversight.
There is another way in which Conroy differs from the usual School Board candidate. She is not a member of either political party. She knows this could be a disadvantage in some circles, but believes if she can mobilize the larger community; it can also be an advantage.
She often lines up with members of both parties. She is a strong fiscal conservative, but she has also fought for the rights of limited English Proficiency (LEP), low-income and minority students. She has always felt passionate for providing a voice in the community for those who could not speak for themselves.
She said her first peek at the PWCS was advocating for her son who had a language delay. She felt confident that she could navigate the system, but also witnessed those who felt powerless to ask for what their children required, even when legally required of the school system. She wanted to see every opportunity afforded to every student, regardless of whether their parents were knowledgeable and outspoken or not.
Then about six years ago, she became involved in a Brentsville school boundary issue. Again, she learned more about school politics.
Four years ago, after closely following the last School Board election, she worked with other interested parents to launch Our Schools. She admitted her naivety at the time, saying she expected the site would hold discussions for a few months then disband. However, the more entrenched they became in school politics; the more the administrators learned that they had an active role to play, and things were not going to change miraculously in a fairly short period.
Now, she knows better, realizing bettering PWCS will be a continuous process. She knows she cannot possibly fix everything, but she wants to offer her service.
However, she feels Our Schools did inspire one kind of change. It spurred citizen involvement and along with a changing social media landscape, involved more citizens in a conversation about the schools, shedding light across the county on issues that may have otherwise remained hidden within desperate communities.
Conroy said she does not think that her candidacy is so much of a game changer for the county but that the game has already changed. She envisions a very different School Board, headed in a new direction. Our Schools started nearly four years ago, helping citizens become more knowledge and involved in PWCS. She’s like to see that involvement to double or triple over the next four years.
Tracy Conroy lives with her husband and two sons in Bristow, Virginia. Her children attend Prince William County Public Schools. Besides being an Our Schools administrator, she is a registered nurse and has served an budget committees for School Board members and Board of County Supervisors. She and her husband are also owners of a small business that operates in Prince William County.
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