School Board Update - 08/09/2022
The FCCPS school board met on Tuesday to welcome the new principal of Oak Street Elementary (Ms. Karim Daugherty), continue to discuss the calendar policy, and approve various policies. The new principal comes to FCCPS from Beech Tree Elementary in Fairfax County. You can watch Dr. Noonan introduce Ms. Daugherty to the school board and hear a few words from Ms. Daugherty here and you can find the announcement from the schools here. You can find the policies adopted by the board here and here. Below, I provide some highlights from the May and June meetings (including the student results from the climate survey administered last spring) following the recap of the discussion of the calendar policy. I also want to highlight the summer parent sessions available on FCCPS youtube page. You can find videos on the strategic plan, depression and anxiety, IB, bullying and harassment, and executive functioning.
The majority of the board meeting was taken up by the discussion of the proposed calendar policy. You can find the draft of the proposed policy here, bearing in mind it is not final.
The majority of board members seem to be in favor of starting school 2 weeks prior to Labor Day, rather than the proposed 1 week prior to Labor Day. It was noted that this would allow the schools to maximize time prior to end-of-year tests, allows student athletes who start back to practice at the beginning August a bit more of a summer break than previous calendars, and doesn’t start the school year with a 4-day week followed by a 4-day weekend.
The proposed policy calls for a two week winter break and should include December 25 and January 1. It was noted by a few board members that some of the winter break days could be used as school days in order to adjust the date for the end of the school year if needed. Ms. Tysse noted that a 2-week break can sometimes be awkward to schedule based on what days Christmas and New Year’s Day fall (e.g. this year will include 8 days at home prior to December 25, which can be burdensome on families who need to find child care or who don’t celebrate Christmas).
The board discussed the placement of spring break and whether to tie it to Easter or have it fixed to the end of the third quarter. While the board expressed the desire to de-couple spring break and Easter as an overall move towards a more secular calendar, it was noted that given how many staff live in other districts (whose calendars tie spring break to Easter) choosing a spring break different from that of other districts would cause severe operational difficulties. The board appears to be in favor of keeping spring break tied to Easter while also expressing a desire to work with other district boards to move towards a decoupling of Easter and spring break.
Holiday discussion: in keeping with the desire to move towards a more secular calendar, some board members expressed a desire to adopt only federal holidays plus election day. Others noted that due to the two teacher workdays at the beginning of November (which includes election day and is used for parent-teacher conferences) and the Thanksgiving break, including Veterans’ Day as a holiday will add to the disruption of the school schedule in November (continuity of education has been highlighted as a priority during previous meetings where various holidays were considered). It was also noted that many people do not get all the federal holidays off, and including more holidays can be burdensome to families that require childcare and have inflexible work schedules.
Early release Wednesdays: there was a desire by some to codify the practice of not having early-release Wednesdays during weeks that also have a holiday. Early release Wednesdays will likely receive more discussion in the fall.
May and June highlights:
Recognition of student representatives on the school board and school board advisory committees
Recognition of The Lasso, Coach Spinello, and FCCPS theater, band, and choral programs
After hearing public comments from 3 girls from the wrestling team (in May), the board voted in June to adopt a resolution urging the Virginia High School League to sanction girls wrestling as high school sport.
The budget was adopted. You can find more information on the budget here.
Adoption of the strategic plan. See here as well.
Student results from the climate survey were presented to the board
Here are the presentations for Mt. Daniel, Oak Street, Henderson, Meridian, and the combined results of Henderson and Meridian
Overall, these are baseline results that can be compared with results of future surveys. If you are interesting in diving, I often find comparing the answers to questions about one’s own behaviors with answers to questions about others’ behaviors.
Participation in the primary schools was above 90%. Participation in the secondary was 64%, which would be considered extremely high for most surveys these days.
Demographic information is somewhat inconsistent with information on the FCCPS website. The percent of white, Asian, and African-American students was close, but the surveys recorded 0% Hispanic and above 10% multiracial whereas the schools report 8% and 2%, respectively. This may be a difference in how and who reports student race on the survey vs. to the schools, but it is something to be aware of when considering representativeness of the survey.
The results from teachers will be presented at a future work session.
The board and staff discussions regarding the collective bargaining resolution stalled in May. The main disagreement seems to have come from whether collective bargaining should be certified if the majority of all staff agree to collective bargaining or whether the majority of staff who vote agree to collective bargaining.
