Steven Keen: School Board Candidate Says Experience Matters

Prince William County School Board elections are Nov. 5 and incumbent Steven Keen and candidate Loree Williams are vying for the Woodbridge District seat. Keen was sworn in on Jan. 2 to fill the vacancy left by Denita Ramirez's November resignation. Williams, an involved PWCS parent, is Keen's only challenger to the seat. 

In addition to his time as an interim school board member this year, Keen also previously served in the Woodbridge seat from 1996 through 2003.

"While it's a challenging job, I always found the work interesting," Keen said. "I felt as though the school division could use some of that leadership ability."

Keen has been a Woodbridge resident for 27 years. All three of his daughters went to Woodbridge area public schools: Featherstone Elementary, Rippon Middle, and Potomac High School. In addition, four of his eight grandchildren currently attend schools in the county. 

Teacher compensation and class sizes

Keen thinks the two biggest challenges facing Woodbridge District schools are teacher compensation and class sizes. 

"There's no sense in talking about anything except those two," he said. "Any problem you can identify comes down to those things. Discipline -- that comes down to overcrowded classrooms."

Teacher experience should be valued and rewarded, he said.

"People need to see that their work is valued and that as they become more experienced and more knowledgeable, that we value the work they do," he said. 
"Experienced teachers are more competent. New teachers bring a lot of energy, but the longer you have experience, that better you're going to be. If you're constantly losing your best teachers to surrounding regions, it shows up in your test scores. I'm not slavish to test scores, but I think you have to look at that."

But hiring more teachers won't help if there aren't enough classrooms, he added. 

"It's not just hiring more teachers, it's having the classrooms in which to put them," Keen said. "There are limits to when you can use additions. We need more brick and mortar buildings. You can't just keep adding additions on schools. You still only have one cafeteria. You still only have one library." 

Working with the school budget

Since being back on the board in an interim capacity, Keen has looked through budgets from the past seven years. 

"During the last seven years, the Board of Supervisors, because of the economy -- I'm not blaming them -- they had been incrementally and unilaterally changing the revenue sharing agreement as part of the five year budget plan," he said. "That has resulted in all the changes: classroom size, teacher compensation." 

Classroom size is up because there isn't enough money, he added. 

"In the first two weeks, I had a conversation with one of our people in the finance department who said, 'We've gotten to calling it the one-year budget plan,' and I said, 'Those words should never escape our lips,'" Keen said. "Without a five-year budget plan, there's no stability. That's what's been going on the last several years: the lack of stability. Stability is key. We need to get that ship righted first. No one is unique. There's no one who can't be replaced on any board. But I believe that I am particularly suited to right that ship."

Keen said that voters should vote for him because experience matters. 

"I hope that everyone looks carefully at our records and platforms and that people turn out and vote," he said.

What do you think of Keen as a school board candidate?