June 2024 School Board Update
So it’s been a while since I’ve given an update, but now that things have settled down for me, I hope to make them more regularly (though the board is in recess for July, so expect more in August). On Tuesday night, the board received the annual reports from the Health and Wellness, Special Education, and Gifted Education Advisory Committee chairs. I want to thank all the chairs and members for the work they do in their capacities of keeping the board informed about important issues and providing the board with advice on policy. I also want to give a shout out to the staff liaisons and other staff members who join the committees for their regular meetings.
The board also received an update on the state budget situation (presentation). The state budget was not passed until May 13, so the school board was not able to fully incorporate any changes by the time we passed our budget. On net, FCCPS will receive $545,377 more than budgeted. This allows for the positions of secondary school counselor and elementary math resource teacher (budgeted at $104,430 each) to be moved from one-time expenditures to recurring expenditures. The $336,517 leftover will remain unallotted for now so as to give flexibility in hiring any teachers if enrollment is higher than projected. Below is a table summarizing the impact of the state budget changes on FCCPS’ budget.
A big portion of the night was spent discussing tech usage in schools. As I’m sure everyone is aware, there has been much talk on the national level about the impact of technology, particularly social media and smartphones, on student mental health. Several stories have come out about schools banning phones and having positive experiences (example 1, example 2). In addition to receiving community feedback about phones in schools, the board has also received emails from parents at the elementary, middle, and high schools expressing various concerns about school-provided tech, such as unrestricted access to YouTube, ability to access games with inappropriate content, and Securely (the filtering and monitoring FCCPS uses at MEH and MHS) providing incomplete information to parents about student computer usage during school hours.
While the board has received concerning reports, we also don’t know how widespread those issues are, what daily computer usage (both educational and not) looks like at the different schools, how teachers are productively using tech in class, what guardrails are put on student usage of tech, what teachers think of various tech issues, or what enforcement looks like. Those questions and more were asked at Tuesday’s meeting, and the administration will be providing answers to those questions at our next tech discussion in August.
In the meantime, Dr. Noonan updated the board on a couple of things. Starting in August, students at the elementary will no longer be allowed to wear smart watches on their wrist. If the student does have a smartwatch, it must be in the student’s backpack. The middle school will redouble its efforts in enforcing its “off and away throughout the day” policy. There are exceptions based on IEPs and 504 plans.
You can find FCCPS Technology Use Guidelines here. There is currently no policy change that the board is formally considering, but Tuesday’s meeting was meant to kickstart discussion and this will be a topic of discussion in the fall.
You can get in contact with the board at schoolboard@fccps.org (this address includes some district leadership). You can also find more contact info on the school board website. Feel free to contact me individually at janderson@fccps.org.
I’ll close with a some of my own personal thoughts on tech issues (these are not necessarily representative of other board members):
In the educational setting, phones are by far a net distraction to students, not just to the students with phones but also to students without phones.
If there are legitimate educational uses for phones that cannot be served by the laptops already provided (I can readily think of various kinds of digital art and film projects), then the schools should provide the devices and not rely on kids and families to provide the devices.
It’s harder for students to fully engage in school when they have an easy escape in their pockets.
Teachers are already tasked with multiple mandates that can change year-to-year, so I don’t think the schools should be tasked with the additional burden of teaching students how to use personal tech appropriately (outside of the rules and regulations that enforce appropriate usage (e.g. anti-cyberbullying) or as it relates directly to school work (e.g. teaching good study habits)). School could be a place where students learn that they can survive without their phones.
One of the main concerns I hear from parents is that they want to get in touch with their kid in an emergency.
That is exactly how I feel. If there’s an emergency with our family I want to get in touch with my kids. And God forbid, if there’s an emergency at school, I want to be able to talk to my children. That’s natural and completely understandable.
As the parent of an elementary school child, I can say that if I need to get a message to my kids, there are many ways of getting in touch with the school, and they are capable of getting the message to my children faster than I can. Given that phones are supposed to be put away at the middle school, and off during class at the high school, I imagine the same could be true for older kids, as well.
And if there’s an emergency at the school, even though I would want to get in touch with my kids, I know that if my kids are on the phone with me, they are not listening to the instructions of the teacher. And I know that if all the other kids are on their phones with their rightfully concerned parents, then no one else is listening to the instructions of the teacher. That creates more danger and is something that many school security experts mention in these discussions.
Regarding laptops:
Many (all?) of the textbooks (especially at the secondary) are online. There are also many valuable educational resources online and students can’t do research without getting on the internet.
That doesn’t mean that students should get unfettered access to the internet. In my experience teaching college students, laptops caused major distractions (possibly more so than phones) because the siren call of YouTube or some other entertainment destination was just a tab away. There is still a place for pencil and paper in education.
Integrating tech into classroom instruction is hard. This is where teachers should be most supported rather than managing phone and internet use. The more the schools can put appropriate and effective restrictions on student use of tech, the more teachers can focus on teaching rather than monitoring.
