September 2023 School Board Update
Hey everyone
The FCCPS school board wrapped up September with a presentation on student performance data and a discussion of potential use of one-time funds. Before getting into those topics, I wanted to address two topics:
Traffic safety: Yesterday was Bike, Walk, Roll to School Day. I regularly bike with my 1st grader from the Winter Hill neighborhood to Mt. Daniel, and it was great to see so many kids out there yesterday walking, biking, and rolling. My 3rd grader (along with many other Oak Street kids) is in the walk zone and bikes to school, as well. I know my 3rd grader has appreciated the independence that getting himself to school has brought.
As I’m sure many of you who walk or ride just a little in your neighborhoods will have noticed, car drivers don’t always respect traffic laws (I’ve seen plenty of drivers who have a loose definition of the word STOP). The board has received questions asking us to provide safer routes to schools. This is something I wholly support but is also something the board has very little ability to change as we do not have jurisdiction over road infrastructure. If you would like to support safer streets through more traffic calming, bike lanes, etc., I recommend contacting the city council and letting them know that safe roads that promote walking and biking are a priority for you.
Early Release Wednesday and Start Time Town Halls: The board has been holding town halls to get feedback from the community and staff about potential changes to the early release Wednesday and start times. We have held several town halls to receive feedback from staff, and we had our first community town hall this past Tuesday. I want to thank everyone who came out to share their thoughts. If you couldn’t make it, then you will have a couple more opportunities to meet with us and share your perspective. The next community town halls will be:
Thursday, October 12, 7:00 p.m. at Meridian High School Learning Stairs
Sunday, October 22, 3:30 p.m. at the FC Community Center
Please look over the presentation from August 22. The options in the presentation are not set in stone and should rather be used as a rough guide for understanding the kinds of changes being considered. Also, one question we get is “why can’t we start elementary earlier”. During the renovation and expansion of Mt. Daniel (which is located in Fairfax County) several years ago, FCCPS signed an agreement to not start prior to 8:50 a.m. and to end no later than 4:00 p.m.
Student Performance Data
On September 26, the board was presented with the student performance data. You can find the presentation here (video here). It was a detailed presentation that included non-standardized data (including National Merit Awards, athletic achievements, and IB projects) and standardized data (SOL, SAT, etc.), so I will just highlight a few things. You can dive into the presentation yourself to find achievements related to each school and a breakdown of student rates of getting advanced, proficient, and passing scores on the SOLs.
As an IB school district, I appreciated the following slide on participation in IB at the high school. FY 2022 and FY 2023 senior enrollment was 225 and 212, respectively, meaning that about 25 percent of seniors were diploma candidates and about 20 percent of seniors received the IB diploma in each of the past two school years.
Here’s the slide of overall pass rates by test since the 2018-19 school year.
On slide 52, you can find the quartile ranges of scores for each test since the 2020-21 school year. I have included graphs based on those data for those that prefer visual information rather than text. The blue line is the minimum score, the green line is the median score (50 percent of students scored below that score and 50 percent scored above), and the red line is the maximum score. The blue shaded region is the interquartile range (i.e. the 25th to the 75th percentile), which represents the middle 50 percent of the score distribution (i.e. 25 percent of students scored above the blue shaded area and 25 percent scored below the blue shaded area). Click the image to scroll through data for each subject.
Budget Review
After the $920,500 portion the schools received as part of the revenue sharing with the city government, the schools have an available fund balance of about $3.5 million at the end of this fiscal year. Below you can see what the schools have proposed to spend this one-time funding on.
The baseball field was the only field to not receive any attention during the construction of MHS. I had the opportunity to tour the field last week, and it is in need of significant grading and repair. The purchase of two buses keeps FCCPS on track to maintain a fleet of buses that turns over once every 11-12 years. The board is looking over these requests and will be voting on budget amendments on Tuesday.
Feel free to email the board at schoolboard@fccps.org with any questions, comments, or concerns. Hope y’all have a great weekend.
