Friday, April 5, 2013
Fairfax County school board to talk with next round of candidates in coming weeks as Superintendent Jack Dale prepares to retire.
The Fairfax County School Board will continue to narrow its field of superintendent candidates in the next two weeks as it prepares to name a new system leader by May. At its meeting Thursday night, the school board approved a motion to discuss, consider and interview candidates for the division's superintendent "at one or more undisclosed locations" between April 5 and 19. Outgoing Superintendent Jack Dale announced in 2011 his plans to retire June 30 of this year. Last fall, the board selected Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates — the same consulting firm that found Dale in 2004 — to lead the current search process. While the board has focused more on community engagement in this search than in the one it used to hire Dale, it decided to…
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Eyes turn to the Fairfax County School Board as it weighs how to move forward in an overhaul of its disciplinary process.
More than two years after parent advocates rallied for widespread reform to Fairfax County Public Schools' disciplinary procedures, a community committee has made more than 50 recommendations to overhaul the system's practices. Among them: creating a "second chance program" for first-time drug and alcohol offenders, requiring schools in most instances to notify parents before students are questioned and establishing a standing committee to oversee reform. Committee members told the school board Wednesday the Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook should also include a separate section for students with disabilities — who make up about 14 percent of the system's population but comprise about 40 percent of suspension and expulsion …
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Tuesday's community dialogue asks residents, community groups for their budget priorities.
Have something to say about the Fairfax County Public Schools budget for Fiscal Year 2014? Tuesday is the first chance of several over the next two months to share your perspective. The community dialogue, which begins at 6 p.m. in the Gatehouse Administration Center Cafe in Falls Church, is an effort revamped this year to be more inclusive of all residents — not just specific county groups. School board member Ryan McElveen (At-large) said last year, the school board invited community groups to a similar dialogue, setting them at a roundtable for a budget presentation and then breaking them into two groups tasked with forming a list of budget priorities. This year, the board is inviting specific community groups as well as the community …
Monday, March 11, 2013
Replacement for Superintendent Jack Dale should be in place by May, school board members said Monday as they explored the kind of relationship they wanted with the system's new leader.
Fairfax County School Board members are on track to have a new superintendent chosen by the end of April. After a work session Monday afternoon, School Board Chairman Ilryong Moon (At Large) said the Board was keeping to the schedule outlined in November 2012, hoping to publicly announce the new leader of one of the country's largest school systems in May. “We are having our first round of interviews this week,” Moon said, adding that he and his colleagues hoped to hold interviews Wednesday and narrow the pool down to approximately three finalists by Sunday. Those chosen will be interviewed a second time, and the Board will then choose its preferred candidate, Moon said. During the work session, the Board explored the relationship they …
Friday, March 1, 2013
Board members wrestle with community surveys, system expansion as they give nod to staff study, which will be completed in June.
The Fairfax County School Board is continuing to weigh what advanced academics mean in the system, authorizing a scope of study Thursday night it hopes will provide better information about how and where services are delivered now — both in the county and across the country — and how that might improve in the future. The study was spurred by a discussion last fall on whether the school system should expand its Advanced Academic Program Centers, a move many vocal parents said needed further analysis and community dialogue. While the board voted in January to expand the centers to three additional elementary schools this fall, to relieve overcrowding, they stopped short of expanding across about a dozen and a half more elementary and middle …
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Superintendent Jack Dale, some school board members say lower-than-expected increase in transfer from the county won't meet classroom needs.
Fairfax County schools officials said Tuesday they were surprised at County Executive Ed Long's lower-than-expected proposed increase in transfer to the school system, which will leave school board $62 million short on their own Fiscal Year 2014 budget. Just more than half of the county's revenues go toward Fairfax County Public Schools each year; nearly three quarters of the school system's annual budget relies on a transfer from the county. Long's proposed $7 billion budget includes an increase of 2 percent in transfer to Fairfax County Public Schools, or $33.7 million. Schools officials requested $95 million, a 5.7 percent increase in transfer, for a total of $1.78 billion in FY 2014, largely to fund what is expected to be an …
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
In town hall meeting with school board members Monday, teachers ask for solutions to workload and morale issues that, after half a decade, are as "worse as they've ever been."
Dan Hale has been a teacher in Fairfax County Public Schools for 20 years, but he’s never felt or seen his colleagues as overwhelmed as they are today. He used to know his students as readers and as writers, he says; now he only knows them as bits of data or ECART scores; pacing points and percentages. And after spending far more than eight hours at school, he leaves (with work in tow) thinking ‘What am I doing tomorrow?’ — planning time in the context of the school day, he says, is nearly nonexistent. The story was one of many shared by a few hundred teachers Monday night at a town hall sponsored by one of the county’s largest teachers unions, an effort to better connect school board members with teachers and workload issues that have …
Friday, February 22, 2013
Fairfax County's Ad Hoc Community Committee on Student Rights and Responsibilities hosts last listening session Saturday in month-long tour to get input on the system's disciplinary process.
A committee tasked with reviewing the system's student rights and responsibilities handbook will host its last community meeting Saturday seeking input from residents on what changes it should consider moving forward. The Fairfax County School Board appointed the Ad Hoc Community Committee on Student Rights and Responsibilities in September. The 40-member group has met regularly since October, and tthroughout February, it has traveled across the county seeking parent, student and community member feedback on how to improve Fairfax County Public Schools' disciplinary procedures. The group's final meeting is from 1 to 3 p.m Saturday in Falls Church High School's Little Theater. At one of the group's meetings earlier this month in McLean, …
Friday, February 15, 2013
Senate Committee Kills ‘Tebow Bill’ on Thursday night, but some Patch readers think proposal should be voted into law.
Virginia's Senate Education and Health Committee shot down a bill Thursday that would have allowed home-schooled students to participate in public schools’ sports teams. Committee members killed House Bill 1442 — also known as the “Tebow bill" — on a 7-8 vote, shelving it for the remainder of this legislative session. But should the bill have reached the full Senate floor? In a Patch blog post, Fairfax County School Board member Ryan McElveen highlighted the defeat of the bill as one of the three most important actions residents could advocate for this session as Richmond pressed on with what he called an "educational extremism." The school board voted to advocate against the proposal, McElveen wrote, "because, in short, the bill would …
Monday, February 11, 2013
Parents can apply to interview semifinalist candidates for Fairfax County's next superintendent.
The Fairfax County School Board is seeking parents, staff and community members for a committee that will help interview candidates for the school system's next superintendent. Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates (HYA)—the search firm hired by the board this fall that held a number of input meetings with stakeholders — met with thousands of parents, staff, members of the business community and other stakeholders in late 2012. Those meetings were to gauge what kind of qualities people would look for in a leader to replace Superintendent Jack Dale, who retires in June after nine years at the helm of one of the country's largest school systems. But the board, in an effort to make this search process more open and inclusive than the one that …
Kim
3:42 pm on Saturday, March 23, 2013
Kim M.: I'm sure any professional would welcome the presence of amateurs telling them how to do their jobs. No wonder the teachers wouldn't let you in the classroom! more ›