Prince William County Public Schools Wins Digital Equity Award

Prince William County Public Schools (PWCS) has been honored with the prestigious 2024 Community Leadership Award for Digital Equity by the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). This award recognizes PWCS’s unwavering commitment to addressing digital equity, narrowing the homework gap, and ensuring that all students have the opportunity to achieve their full potential.

PWCS has taken a proactive approach to bridging the digital divide and empowering students as digital citizens. The school district has distributed more than 91,000 instructional devices to students, ranging from iPads for PreK-2 students to HP laptops for grades 3-12. Additionally, PWCS has supplied hotspots to students lacking internet connectivity at home, ensuring equitable access to online resources.

To further support their digital equity initiatives, PWCS has leveraged innovative parent-teacher communication tools like SchoolStatus Connect. Heather Huff, Instructional Technology Coach at Sinclair Elementary notes that by enabling two-way translated communication between teachers and families–allowing teachers to text parents in their native language and receive replies in the same language, which are then automatically translated back to English–SchoolStatus has closed a significant communication gap for PWCS.

The benefits of this translation feature are evident in the testimonial of a Spanish-speaking mom whose child attends a PWCS school. She explains that receiving texts in Spanish and being able to reply in Spanish allows her to communicate quickly with her child’s teacher, even as a working parent who may not have time to log into an app. This is a game changer for English Language Learner families, who often struggle to feel connected to school.

In addition to SchoolStatus Connect, PWCS has adopted other effective techniques to foster community engagement and drive positive change within education. The school district has implemented SchoolStatus Attend to combat chronic absenteeism through positive universal and tiered interventions. SchoolStatus Attend’s data-driven approach has positively impacted PWCS’s attendance, student support, and graduation rates.

Matt Guilfoyle, PWCS’s chief information officer, expressed gratitude for the recognition, stating, “PWCS’ commitment to bridging the digital divide is unwavering, and receiving the Community Leadership Award for Digital Equity recognizes the collaborative efforts of our division and schools.”

SchoolStatus commends PWCS on this well-deserved achievement and thanks them for their partnership in leveraging our communication tools to support equitable access to education for all students.

To learn more about PWCS’s success with SchoolStatus solutions, read our case study or watch the full video from the award ceremony .