Three months into his new job, Prince George’s County Public School’s interim superintendent Shawn Joseph is working quickly to improve community engagement, academic growth and staff retention.
Joseph, school board president Branndon Jackson and Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy announced the interim superintendent’s 100 Day Entry Plan aimed at improving the school system in June.
The plan lists six priority areas to better within the county’s school system, including implementing a more organized school leadership, attracting and maintaining staff, academics, the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, community engagement and facility maintenance. PGCPS’s website also features an online progress tracker for community members to follow the status of these goals’ implementation.
“The purpose of the 100 Day Entry Plan was for me to listen deeply to understand the state of Prince George’s County Public Schools,” Joseph told The Diamondback. “And to work with stakeholders to decide how we move forward.”
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Braveboy selected Joseph for the position on June 13 after former superintendent Millard House II agreed to step down in a closed Board of Education meeting. House’s departure came after members of the Prince George’s County Educators Association issued a vote of no confidence in his leadership just about 10 days before.
Prince George’s County Board of Education vice chair Jonathan Briggs told The Diamondback that the 100-day plan sets clear goals for improvements within the school system.
“I think the superintendent seems clear-eyed about how he wants to approach it,” Briggs said. “There definitely is a strong focus on goal orientation and ensuring that we’re measuring what outcomes look like in relation to growth from the start of the year, into the end of the year.”
Donna Christy, the educators’ association’s president, told The Diamondback she hopes to see the new leadership address issues more directly.
“It was our frustration with the previous administration that seemed like every single meeting we were having the same conversations, talking about the same problems and nothing was getting solved,” Christy said. “So, hoping to see a lot more progress and solutions to all the problems we’ve been bringing to the table for a while.”
Joseph’s 100-day plan also aims to address staffing shortages and improve teachers’ workload. The plan says PGCPS will improve communication with unions and other stakeholders to better address vacancies and prioritize schools that have higher vacancy rates.
Christy said the new leadership has made a greater effort to listen to the needs of educators, and that the union has been included in more discussions on how to address issues than in the past.
“It’s very positive at this point, everybody’s working together really well,” Christy said. “Everyone’s communicating really well.”
The superintendent’s plan also seeks to improve students’ literacy and math skills by analyzing student achievement data and reviewing the school system’s grading policies.
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Prince George’s County students had the third–lowest proficiency rate in English language arts and math across all Maryland counties, according to Maryland Department of Education 2024-25 testing data.
Only 38.3 percent of Prince George’s County students who took the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program, a statewide test that measures academic readiness, were considered proficient in English language arts, according to last school year’s testing data. Comparatively, 50.8 percent of Maryland students were considered proficient last school year.
Prince George’s County students had a 13.1 proficiency rate in math, compared to the 26.5 percent of students who were considered proficient in the state last school year.
While Joseph worked on the plan independently, Briggs said he sees it as a continuation of goals previously set and examined by the school board.
Joseph said his past experience working for PGCPS as the deputy superintendent for teaching and learning from 2014 to 2016 helped him identify what challenges he wanted to prioritize once he assumed his new position.
His job as an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at Howard University has also prepared him to understand the needs of the county, Joseph said. He is also the co-director of the AASA/Howard University Urban Superintendents Academy.
“I’ve been working with superintendents across the country in helping them to plan and prepare to lead school districts,” Joseph said. “So just now, the advice I’ve been giving people, I took for myself.”
