Friday, May 17, 2013
Fairfax County School Board will hold listening sessions next week to help develop a strategic plan for digital learning.
Teachers, students and parents in Fairfax County didn't have the smoothest experience with digital learning in 2012-2013. As Fairfax County Public Schools rolled out a new online math program in Fall 2012, students and teachers complained they had difficulty navigating the books, saying there were publisher errors and inconsistencies, technology roadblocks and student difficulty in accessing the information, among other complaints, like a lack of teacher buy-in to the program. They said the program, instead of advancing learning and achievement, was pushing it back, calling the $10.4 million initiative "a big disaster" with no clear solution. The short-term solution was to re-negotiate contracts to get some hard copy books back in the …
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Warhawks face off against McLean at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
At this time last year, Madison High School's girls soccer team saw the end of its Liberty District run with a heart-breaking loss to Fairfax High in the semifinals. But staring down the 2013 Liberty District semifinals Wednesday night, the team is hoping to reverse history and post a win against McLean — a victory that would move them on to the Liberty District Finals later this week. The team (10-4, 5-2 Liberty) is riding momentum from a number of important wins over the past week. On Monday, the Warhawks came out on top of a 2-1 overtime thriller against cross-town rival Madison High School, with Kaitlyn Dorka scoring and Michelle Paredes getting the winning goal. Last Thursday, the team finished out its regular season with a 3-1 win, …
Teacher pay and foreign language cutbacks are also concerns as Fairfax County School Board looks for another $30 million in reductions for next year's budget.
If push came to shove, Jane Lipp would give her right kidney to keep an instructional coach at her school. The principal of South County High School, which has a 49 percent minority population, said that's the kind of sacrifice she'd make, drama aside, to keep a position that's been 'instrumental" in helping her teachers push the school's diverse student body to succeed. More than a dozen of the 40 speakers who addressed the school board Tuesday night in a public hearing about Fairfax County Public Schools' budget spoke about the role coaches play in the day to day lives of teachers and students, including their help toward narrowing student achievement gaps. The public hearing comes as the school board prepares to adopt a $2.5 billion …
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Fairfax County Fire Department investigates Tuesday morning incident.
Thoreau Middle School students have returned to class Tuesday morning after a brief evacuation for a suspicious odor. An email from the school's administration Tuesday morning said students, faculty and staff evacuated the building around 9:30 a.m. Tuesday "as the result of a suspicious odor in the cafeteria area." Students waited outside for about 15 minutes as the Fairfax County Fire Department arrived and investigated, administrators said. FCFD determined the odor was not a gas leak or a safety hazard. "Our students did a phenomenal job of evacuating the building and following safety protocols," administrators wrote in the email. The source of the odor is not immediately clear. Patch will update this story as more information becomes …
Monday, May 13, 2013
Some school board members say "disconnect," mistrust still exists between principals, parents.
As the Fairfax County School Board prepares to vote on another round of changes in a years-long push for reform of its discipline policies, board members are struggling to find common ground on when parents should be notified if their child could be suspended or expelled. Fairfax County Public Schools staff returned to the school board Monday with a number of proposed changes to the Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, some of them based on a list of 52 recommendations to overhaul discipline practices systemwide a community committee put forth earlier this spring. See all proposed changes here. But parental notification — an issue on which there has been little agreement since the push for reform began following the suicide of two…
Officials say no funding for consultant as school board members say there is a "facilities crisis and a capacity crisis."
The Fairfax County School Board decided Monday to postpone re-evaluating how to determine the order in which county schools are renovated. Heeding the recommendation of the county’s Facilities Planning Advisory Council, Board members agreed they needed more time to discuss the matter to implement any real changes. The board develops its Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) every five years, which includes new schools, renovations, capacity enhancements, additions and infrastructure management. Schools currently receive improvements in the order in which they're ranked on the system's renovation queue, driven by a list of weighted criteria ranging from how the buildings serve "Fundamental Educational Requirements (FER)," to their age and physical…
Superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools had surgery for an aortic aneurysm May 7.
Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Jack Dale was released from the hospital Sunday after emergency heart surgery May 7. FCPS spokesman John Torre told Patch in an email Monday that Dale had been released from the hospital to recover from surgery at home. Dale was taken to INOVA Fairfax Hospital on May 7 after telling coworkers he hadn’t been feeling well that day. He had surgery after suffering an aortic aneurysm that night. Torre said Dale was expected to return to work sometime in early June. “He is making progress and is not expected to return to work until early June on a part time basis,” he wrote in his email. Dale is planning to retire this summer. Deputy Superintendent Richard Moniuszko is managing superintendent duties …
Friday, May 10, 2013
In fifth year of the Vienna competition, students take more than 5,500 trips to school by foot or bike.
For the second consecutive year, Vienna Elementary School won the Biking Cup in the Fifth Annual Bike/Walk Challenge — but Wolftrap Elementary came from behind to claim the Challenge Cup. Read: Vienna Bike/Walk Challenge: Day 5 Results The Biking Cup is given to the school with the highest percentage of bike riders relative to the total number of participants. Of the 805 total participants Vienna Elementary had this week, 258 — 32.04 percent — came in on bikes. At Wolftrap and Westbriar Elementary schools, 28.91 and 23.68 percent of all participants, respectively, used bikes to get to school. The Challenge Cup is awarded to the school with the largest percentage increase in participants over last year's challenge. Wolftrap Elementary …
Democratic gubernatorial candidate laid out platform at George Mason's Arlington campus.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe said Thursday he would push to reform the state's Standards of Learning, or SOL, tests if he is elected in November. "The current, once-a-year, high-stakes, multiple-choice testing isn't working for students, parents or teachers," he told a crowd of more than 300 people at George Mason University's Arlington campus, to rousing applause. Under the current system, a fifth-grade teacher who raises a child from a first-grade reading level to a fourth-grade reading level is considered a failure, he said. Teachers who want to break up the test into smaller portions, or test at different levels based on student achievement should be encouraged, he said. McAuliffe also said he would establish a "…
More than 1,320 students in Vienna walked or biked to class on the last day of the week-long competition.
On the final day of Vienna's Fifth Annual Bike/Walk Challenge,1,324 students across six elementary schools walked or biked to class — the second highest turnout in the challenge's history. The competition, which encourages students to make the activity part of their school routine,drew a record number of bikers on its final day: 301 kids used two wheels to commute to school Friday. Wolftrap Elementary School and Vienna Elementary School both had more than 100 kids take bikes to class, with 106 and 113 bikes, respectively. Friday is the last day of the challenge. Patch will post the winners of the competition later today. Patch will update this article later today. Friday Counts: Overall Walkers/Bikers: Percentage of School Population …
Sandra
3:44 pm on Friday, May 17, 2013
The online programs they support should be tailored to what teachers and students can use. The online math books were nothing more than regular texts that were scanned and put online. They were hard to use (especially if you needed to page back and forth to find topics), and they were not downloadable and pages could not be printed. That meant that students could only access their texts in … more ›