Fairfax County will resume an effort today (Wednesday) to avoid arresting people in mental health crises by using behavioral health experts in the hopes of eventually putting the service into effect 24/7.

Pairing a crisis intervention specialist with specially trained police officers, the “co-responder” teams address 911 calls related to behavioral health issues for the resumed service, a micropilot program that’s expected to be in place three days a week.

“Over time, we’re going to have a better sense of handling these types of calls, and we might get to a place where we don’t have to have both behavioral health and police at the same time,” said Lee District Supervisor Rodney Lusk, chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors’ Public Safety Committee.

The county initially tested the approach for over a month this past March with teams working in eight-hour shifts Wednesdays through Fridays, ultimately diverting 40% of incidents from potential arrest or hospitalization.

One such case involved a family situation between siblings, where an autistic man assaulted his adult sister, said Abbey May, emergency and crisis services director for the Fairfax-Falls Church Community Services Board (CSB), which provides multiple mobile emergency response services, among other health supports.

“She had locked herself in the bathroom and reported her brother had slipped a knife under the door to intimidate her,” May said.

A co-responder team gathered critical information from talking to the woman, asking what calms her brother down and what makes him upset. The responders explained that they were there to help.

“They were able to successfully de-escalate the situation without the use of force, incarceration, or hospitalization,” May told the Board of Supervisors yesterday (Tuesday) at its public safety committee meeting.

To support the resumed micropilot program, the CSB is reallocating one of its two Mobile Crisis Units. The pairings with police will continue on a limited basis, and it’s unclear how long the initiative will last this time, but it could serve as a bridge to an expanded service, said Lisa Potter, director of the county’s Diversion First program.

The county’s effort to reform how it responds to certain 911 calls comes after Virginia adopted a law last year creating a Marcus Alert system.

Named after high school biology teacher Marcus-David Peters, who was killed by a police officer while experiencing a mental health crisis in 2018, the statewide system is designed to ensure behavioral health experts are involved in emergency responses related to mental health and substance use issues.

The law requires every Community Services Board to create a co-responder model. Fairfax County must have a program in place by July 2023 and is now working to align its initiatives with the new state requirements.

Fairfax County could use its American Rescue Plan Act money to fund an expansion of the micropilot. County leaders have identified a multi-pronged approach that includes having an officer and crisis intervention specialist travel and respond together in teams that would each cover two police districts.

The $4 million ARPA-funded proposal would create four co-responder teams in the field and cover 26 positions — which would include 10 crisis intervention specialists, eight police officers, and other staff — as well as vehicles and other equipment.

While other mental health efforts help divert unnecessary arrests and jailing, the co-responder approach provides real-time 911 responses, May said. Diversion First leaders have pressed to eventually make the effort available around the clock.

Fairfax County Public Schools has pulled two books from its shelves after a local mom complained to the school board that the titles contain graphic sexual content and pedophelia.

A spokesperson for FCPS confirmed to FFXnow that “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison and “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe have been temporarily pulled from shelves.

Two committees under the supervision of the school system’s library service coordinator will assess the suitability of both texts for high school libraries. The committee will include representation from staff, students, and parents, according to the spokesperson.

“The recommendation of the committees will be put forward to the Assistant Superintendent of Instructional Services who will make a final decision as to whether FCPS continues to provide access to these books in our high school libraries,” the spokesperson said.

Stacy Langton, a Fairfax County mother, held up content from the books at a heated Sept. 23 school board meeting. The material — which was blurred in a recording of the meeting — included details of a man having sex with a boy, oral sex, masturbation, and nudity.

“Pornography is offensive to all people,” Langston said. The recording also muted Langton’s descriptions of the books’ content, which she said includes a scene in which a 10-year-old boy recounts sucking an adult man’s penis.

A Patch review of the two books disputed that characterization, reporting that “Lawn Boy” — a coming-of-age novel about a Mexican landscaper — contains no scenes of adults having sex with minors and that the illustration that drew objections in “Gender Queer,” an autobiography, appears in the context of the author’s teenage fantasy.

Another county resident and former FCPS teacher — Adrienne Henzel — said she was appalled by what she described as “homo-erotic material” supported by county taxpayer dollars.

FCPS Pride, an employees’ group that represents the LGBTQIA+ community and formed in 2015, said the inclusion of books that represent “oft-excluded communities such as LGBTQIA+ and other marginalized groups” help feel students more welcome and safer. LGBTQIA+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and questioning, and asexual.

“These books are ‘mirrors and windows’ as  they ‘tell a story’ to give a window on a community that a reader may not belong to, and they share a narrative with which a given student may identify,” said Robert Rigby, co-president of FCPS Pride and an FCPS high school teacher.

Rigby told FFXnow that FCPS Pride is thankful for librarians who have established catalogs and collections that include all communities — especially marginalized ones.

Langton’s comments drew several objections from Springfield District board member Laura Jane Cohen, who noted that there were children in the room and that the books are available only in high schools.

She was cut off when she went over the three-minute time limit for public comments and refused to leave the podium for the next speaker, prompting the school board to take a five-minute recess “to clear the room.”

The incident was picked up by several conservative-leaning national news outlets and flagged by Asra Nomani, vice president of strategy and investigations for Parents Defending Education, a recently formed nonprofit organization that fights what it calls “indoctrination” in education.

At last night's @FCPSNews school board meeting, brave mom Stacy Langton revealed porn + pedophilia in library books. The board cut her mic + fled but I was able to record Stacy. Parents yelled, "Shame!" at the board for turning the county into #Fairfaxxx. No rest for @defendinged pic.twitter.com/efbT6c79H2

— Asra Q. Nomani (@AsraNomani) September 24, 2021

Langton said she was inspired to protest the distribution of the books after a similar discussion at a school board meeting in Texas.

But Rigby says the current “attacks” on literature with LGBTQIA+ and Latinx characters reflect a longstanding trend of protests against books that center marginalized individuals, including Black and Asian people, people with disabilities, and immigrants.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, says her office has seen an increasing number of challenges to books focused on LGBTQIA+ characters and related themes based on the data it collects from censorship reports and media coverage.

Six of the top 10 most challenged books in 2018 and eight of the books on the 2019 list drew objections due to “LGBTQIA+ content,” though the 2020 list is dominated by texts that deal with racism and Black people’s experiences.

Protests of LGBTQIA-related material, which have targeted picture books like “And Tango Makes Three” as well as novels aimed at a more mature audience, often stem from a perception that it sexualizes children or is otherwise inappropriate, a stance that the ALA has “great difficulty with,” Caldwell says.

“There are families who have a desire and a need for this information,” she said. “There are young adults who have the ability to understand and want to read about other people’s lives, and they should be able to read this without another person’s values coming into play.”

The removal of “Lawn Boy” and “Gender Queer” from Fairfax County high schools came just before the start of Banned Books Week, an annual initiative organized by the ALA and other literary and free speech organizations to advocate for open access to information and spotlight censorship issues.

This year’s event kicked off on Sunday (Sept. 26) and lasts through Saturday (Oct. 2).

While parents can guide what their own children read, those personal beliefs should not dictate whether students in general have access to specific books, says Nora Pelizzari, director of communications for the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), another group involved with Banned Books Week.

“It is imperative that books be judged based on the stories they tell, the way they tell them and what they can share about the world, rather than on passages taken out of context of the full book,” Pelizzari said in a statement. “When selecting books for school libraries, librarians have a responsibility to ensure that diverse voices and stories are available to all students, perhaps particularly those who have traditionally struggled to find stories they feel represent their lives and experiences.”

Both the ALA and NCAC argue that books should remain on shelves whenever a school or library reviews them in response to a removal request. Taking them out of cirulation before a review is conducted “privileges the personal viewpoints and opinions of the challengers,” Pelizzari says.

“NCAC encourages districts to ensure that they have strong book review policies in place and to follow them closely when challenges do arise, to ensure that educational reasoning and not personal viewpoints guides the selection of school materials,” Pelizzari said.

Angela Woolsey contributed to this report.

Over a month into the current school year, Fairfax County Public Schools is grappling with two key issues: how to recruit and retain staff, especially in special education and transportation, and how to feed students.

FCPS officials have said shortages in those areas are affecting the rest of the country, while supply chain issues have resulted in more students getting fewer choices to pick from in school cafeterias, thanks in part to free meals becoming available to all students.

When it comes to staff retention, the Fairfax County School Board approved some immediate relief at its regular meeting on Thursday (Sept. 23), increasing seasoned bus drivers’ salaries by 2.5%. The change will show up in their paychecks starting Oct. 23.

The change excludes new bus drivers who got a pay boost in August when the board voted to increase starting hourly rates from $19.58 to $22.91.

“Attract is one thing, but retain is something altogether different,” Springfield District Representative Laura Jane Cohen said.

In consultation with stakeholders, FCPS is conducting an in-depth market compensation study that it plans to finish by the end of the school year. The need to retain experienced bus drivers will only grow in urgency, as 25% will become eligible to retire.

FCPS also offers a $3,000 signing bonus, and Superintendent Scott Brabrand said the changes have boosted applications from about five to seven per week to an additional 20-50 each week.

Meanwhile, as of Sept. 15, FCPS had 133 teaching vacancies, nearly half of them in special education, according to Karen Corbett-Sanders, the school board’s Mount Vernon District representative.

Brabrand has suggested that state requirements for special education teachers need to be adjusted to ease the process for existing teachers, saying Thursday that he plans to bring the school board more information later to help its advocacy efforts.

School systems nationwide have reported bus driver deficits as potential hires turn to higher-paying commercial jobs, among other factors.

However, the commercial driving sector is experiencing labor shortages of its own, which are colliding with supply chain disruptions and increased student demand to create problems in school cafeterias.

In its annual “Opening of Schools” report, FCPS says it is now serving some 138,000 students per day — about 28,000 more than before the pandemic. Brabrand reported on Thursday that the school system distributed a record number of meals the previous week, when 150,000 students used its food services.

Mason District School Board Representative Ricardy Anderson noted that families have raised concerns and wondered about the quality of the food. Department of Financial Services Assistant Superintendent Leigh Burden said the issues have affected the number of the options available to students, but not the quality.

“We’ve had to double down on some of our oldies but goodies like pizza, which maybe doesn’t make students upset, but we want to continue to fully implement the food and nutrition health guidelines,” Brabrand said.

Anderson said knowing about the supply chain issues could help families better understand the situation that FCPS is facing.

A transformer blowing out? A meteor? Or just really loud thunder?

A big boom was reported across a wide swath of Fairfax County from Reston and Herndon to McLean around 10:40 a.m. today, leaving many residents confused regarding the possible source.

Most residents have assumed that the sound was caused by loud thunder that accompanied a slow and steady rain in the region that’s expected to last most of the day.

The Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department reported that it dispatched units to the 13000 block of Woodland Park Road in Reston at approximately 10:59 a.m. after a building there was struck by lightning, though it’s unclear if that was the source of the reported noise.

Heard the loud boom? Can’t totally confirm this is related but-at approximately 10:59 AM, units were dispatched to building struck by lightning in 13000 block of Woodland Park Road. Lightning protection system did its job-no damage to building! Two minor injuries. #FCFRD #weather pic.twitter.com/K0ZFmFvdxK

— Fairfax County Fire/Rescue (@ffxfirerescue) September 28, 2021

One McLean resident told FFXnow by email that she heard “a loud boom/explosion that did not sound like thunder” around about 10:35 a.m.

“We are on Brook Rd between Rt 7 and Old Dominion Dr.,” Diane Van Tuyl wrote. “My friend in Great Falls on Towlston Rd also heard it. She felt rumbling and some shaking.”

Other residents took to social media to share their bafflement regarding the possible source of the sound, which one user compared to a concussion grenade:

Shook the crap out of my house in Herndon. Loudest thunder I’ve ever heard!

— CH (@zaynadu) September 28, 2021

Heard it McLean too. The pup was not happy about it. I thought maybe a transformer blew. Cloudy here but no rain/ thunder/ lightning.

— Tara Ajello (@tara_ajello) September 28, 2021

Big flash and then big boom in south Reston. Set off a car alarm across the street

— Martha Vockley (@MarthaVockley) September 28, 2021

Last week, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said a similar boom heard through the greater Shenandoah County region was a fireball. 

Photo via Breno Machado/Unsplash