As a tumultuous year of school closures and virtual learning inches toward a close, students in Fairfax County Public Schools say they are exhausted and feel forgotten by the administration and school board.

Their frustrations bubbled over during a school board meeting on Dec. 3. Two students took issue with recent headlines about upticks in failing grades and the board’s focus on how to resume in-person classes over how to improve the distance-learning experience.

John R. Lewis High School student Kimberly Boateng, who previously served as the school board’s student representative, chastised the board, saying its members have not demonstrated that they have turned the comments and criticisms she has submitted by letter, email and tweet into action.

She urged the county to do better, saying that she is tired of “aspirational goals” and wants the board and FCPS administrators to take concrete actions.

“I’m tired of the ‘we see you’ emails, the ‘we hear you’ tweets,” she said. “…Students are surrounded by so much grief, trauma, and death, and we are expected to continue on as if this is normal. This is not normal.”

As the board’s current student representative, South County High School student Nathan Onibudo said he is caught between knowing the extent of the county’s efforts to address the challenges caused by COVID-19 and experiencing the reality of student life.

“I see what’s possible and I see the hard work being put in,” he said. “[Many students] feel like somehow, they’re being forgotten even though all the conversations are about them.”

He told the school board that, for many students, the debate over whether they should learn virtually or in-person has become secondary to the struggle to survive each day.

“Students are simply suffering,” he said.

Boateng echoed that sentiment, saying that she feels unable to take a mental health day because it would bury her deeper under tasks.

“Students are sitting in front of their computer screens wondering when they’re going to catch a break, and the break never comes,” she said.

During an open comment period later in the school board meeting, FCPS Superintendent Scott Brabrand and a handful of board members promised to take action.

“Nathan, I heard you. Our leadership team heard you, our principals heard you, our staff heard you,” Brabrand said. “Kimberly, I sat with you here last year. I heard you. We want your voice and your input as we continue through this year, and we will use your recommendations to make the changes necessary to be sure students are heard, listened to, respected, valued.”

Mount Vernon District Representative Karen Corbett Sanders noted the board is also hearing about the impact of the pandemic on the county’s school children from parents, parent-teacher associations, neighbors, and relatives.

Springfield District School Board Member Laura Jane Cohen told the students that the board is “trying to get better answers.”

“I know sometimes it rings hollow, but please, hang in there and just know that we’re trying to make things better right now,” Cohen said.

The Fairfax County School Board is postponing its decision to rename Mosby Woods Elementary School to solicit more community engagement.

“We have not had the level of public participation that we had hoped for, and therefore, we are working with staff to come up additional options and to solicit additional community input,” Providence District School Board representative Karl Frisch said during the school board meeting last night (Thursday).

“More information about these two items will be announced as details are worked out with staff,” he said.

Frisch and at-large member Karen Keys-Gamarra proposed renaming Mosby Woods Elementary School on June 18 with the support of descendants of Mosby.

The school board voted on Oct. 8 to change the name so that it no longer recognizes John S. Mosby, a Confederate colonel who led a guerrilla campaign against Union supply and communications lines in Northern Virginia during the Civil War.

Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Scott Brabrand assembled a list of recommended names in October:

• Mosaic – a nod to the school’s proximity to the Mosaic District
• Five Oaks – the name of the road where the school is located
• Katherine Johnson – a mathematician who helped make spaceflight and the Apollo 11 moon landing possible as a “computer” for NASA
• Mary McBride – a teacher who helped start a school near Fairfax Court House for the children of freed slaves after the Civil War
• Barbara Rose Johns – a student civil rights activist who led a strike in protest of conditions at the all-black Moton High School in Farmville, Va., paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education

Five Oaks currently has a slim lead in Tysons Reporter’s poll on the subject.

During a public hearing on Wednesday (Dec. 2), Mosby Woods teachers Nikki Hudson and Jenny Smith endorsed Mosaic.

“Every teacher on our staff, every enrolled student, all have colorful pieces within themselves that represent their nationalities, religions, heritage and beliefs, and so much more,” Hudson said. “These pieces come together to create an atmosphere that is conducive to acceptance and learning.”

Smith said that sixth-grade teachers had the opportunity to share the recommended names with all seven classes. Students “overwhelmingly” voted for Five Oaks and Mosaic, which received 56 and 74 votes, respectively.

While students said Five Oaks was “simple” and “sounds good,” their answers for Mosaic went deeper.

“They said things like, ‘We are all different cultures, and when we are all put together, we are a beautiful picture where we all belong,'” she said.

They were very concerned, however, about the mascot: “The mascot of mustangs is very important to these sixth graders,” Smith said. “Mosaic Mustangs seems to fit.”

Speaking for unionized Fairfax teachers, Fairfax County Federation of Teachers President Tina Williams recommended Barbara Rose Johns because of how “her dedication, perseverance and hard work contributed to the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education.”

“Unfortunately, racial segregation is still alive and present in Virginia,” she said. “A recent report found that racial segregation has gotten worse over the last 15 years, especially in Virginia metro areas, due to overt and covert racist policies.”

A few people suggested names not on the list, including civil rights icon Ruby Bridges and L. Douglas Wilder, the first African American governor in the country and the Commonwealth.

“He was a man who brought so much service and dedication to our Commonwealth and the country as a former war hero, governor and state senator,” student Teddy Geiss said.

Photo via FCPS

The Fairfax County School Board will select a new name for Mosby Woods Elementary School in Fairfax around 8 p.m. during its regular meeting tonight.

The board voted on Oct. 8 to rename Mosby Woods after at-large member Karen Keys-Gamarra and Providence District Representative Karl Frisch proposed replacing the moniker of Col. John S. Mosby, who led a Virginia calvary battalion for the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War.

Feedback collected from a community meeting on Oct. 1 suggests the renaming has widespread support, as commenters said Mosby’s role as a Confederate officer clashes with Fairfax County Public Schools’ current values of diversity and inclusivity. Some descendants of Mosby also wrote a letter to the school board advocating for a change.

Here are the possible names that FCPS Superintendent Scott Brabrand recommended on Oct. 22:

• Five Oaks — the name of the road where the school is located
• Mosaic — a nod to the school’s proximity to the Mosaic District
• Mary McBride — a teacher who helped start a school near Fairfax Court House for the children of freed slaves after the Civil War
• Barbara Rose Johns — a student civil rights activist who led a strike in protest of conditions at the all-black Moton High School in Farmville, Va., paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education

Brabrand also suggested the late NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, but that has presumably been taken out of the running after the City of Fairfax got to it first for Lanier Middle School.

The school board held a public hearing on the possible new name yesterday (Wednesday).

Which of the recommendations would you prefer to replace Mosby Woods? Do you think the board should choose an entirely different name, or do you object to changing the school’s name in the first place?

Photo via FCPS

Tysons IT Company Expands Microsoft Collaboration — “DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) today announced an expanded strategic collaboration with Microsoft to deliver a more personalized, intelligent, secure and modern workplace experience to help companies to address rapidly evolving business challenges and customer and employee needs.” [Business Wire]

Falls Church City School Board Member to Resign — “Lawrence Webb, a member of the Falls Church City Council and School Board since 2008, announced his resignation as of Jan. 1 from the School Board on Tuesday.” [Falls Church News-Press]

Northrop Grumman Finishes Design Review of Artemis Astronaut Living Quarters — “Falls Church-based Fortune 100 defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. announced Wednesday it has completed the initial preliminary design review (PDR) for the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), which will serve as living quarters for astronauts at the Lunar Gateway mini space station during lunar exploration missions.” [Virginia Business]

The Boro Commissions Mural from D.C. Artists — “The new addition to the Boro is designed to invite passersby into the neighborhood and ‘infuse happiness and joy to everyone who sees it, whether that is a commuter on the metro, a resident or shopper at the Boro, or a driver on Route 7,’ the company said in a news release.” [Inside NOVA]

Photo via VDOT

The results of a recent survey on whether to rename Thomas Jefferson Elementary School and George Mason High School triggered surprise, anger, and tears during a Falls Church City Public Schools School Board meeting on Tuesday (Nov. 17).

A majority of respondents — 56% overall — support keeping the names Thomas Jefferson and George Mason, two key historical figures from Virginia who publicly supported an end to slavery, while privately enslaving Black people. For George Mason, 26% support a name change, and for Thomas Jefferson, that population is 23%. The rest had no opinion.

K12 Insight, a consultant hired by the school board, surveyed parents, staff members, students in grades 6-12, and community members from Oct. 14 to 28 to gauge whether they want to see new names for the schools. For both schools, three-quarters of the community members who responded wanted to keep the names, and the margins were smaller for parents, students, and staff.

The discussion to rename the schools began on June 30. With the survey results back, school board members have scheduled a vote on whether to move forward with the name changes for Dec. 8.

Those who support changing the names cited the fact that the men participated in slavery and urged the school to embrace social change and support students who may feel marginalized.

Those who voted to keep the names responded that slavery was a norm at the time that should not disqualify these men from being honored.

School Board member Lawrence Webb, the only Black person on the board, said during a work session on Tuesday that he was surprised by the results of the survey.

“There are a lot of folks who are progressive and supportive of community relations,” he said. “I’m sort of bothered by how folks have couched this conversation of ‘This is something that was acceptable at the time.'”

Webb disagreed with those who characterized a school name change as a waste of resources. The amount of money would be “nominal,” and for George Mason, the timing would coincide with an ongoing project to build a brand new high school.

According to FCCPS, renaming George Mason would cost an estimated $96,760, and renaming Thomas Jefferson would cost around $13,500. The K12 Insight survey cost $8,500. Read More

Driven by the uncertainty created by the COVID-19 pandemic, 8,959 students left Fairfax County Public Schools this school year with elementary school students, particularly kindergarteners, representing the most withdrawals.

About 87% of the students who left are in elementary school, and of those, 2,208 students would be kindergarteners, according to a Membership Trends Report presented to FCPS School Board members last Wednesday (Nov. 4). This report is used to inform the school board’s capital improvements planning process.

Transfer rates to other public schools in Virginia and the U.S. are on par with previous years, but FCPS has seen new spikes in students who transferred to private schools in Fairfax County or who switched to homeschooling.

“Right now, this is an unprecedented time, and it is reflected in the data we have,” Jeffrey Platenberg, the FCPS assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services, said. “We have a lot going on and we don’t know how to proceed forward until we get this pandemic under control. To do anything during this time might not be recommended by the wisest of folks, because the data reflects such a marked difference from last year.”

If the dip in enrollment is temporary, FCPS will see a bubble in kindergarten next year that will roll through Fairfax County for the next 12 years, according to Superintendent Scott Brabrand.

“You have to do some things differently in our facilities for the next decade,” he said.

School board members and FCPS staff are already bracing for kindergarten enrollment to surge both when FCPS welcomes them back to school on Nov. 16 and for the next academic year starting in the fall of 2021.

That influx is a source of concern for school principals, Springfield District School Board member Laura Cohen says.

“Short-term and long-term kindergarten problems, how are we going to solve this?” Cohen asked.

Brabrand said FCPS is “overstaffed in kindergarten” because it acquired staff in the spring, when attendance had not yet taken a hit, rather than in late summer, when the hiring pool is much smaller.

“I know people don’t want to hear the ‘t-word’ of trailers, but we’re going to have some space challenges at those schools,” he said.

The remaining membership decreases were more modest, with 217 middle school students, 392 high school students, 356 center and alternative program students, and 165 students in other programs.

Yearly, FCPS sees thousands of students leave for public schools in other states, but the number of students who instead chose to homeschool or attend a private religious or secular school in the county this year is out of the ordinary.

Nearly 1,900 left to be homeschooled this year, up from 264 last year. About 1,100 left for a private religious school in Fairfax County, and 713 for a non-religious private school, up from 296 and 237 last year, respectively.

“When you look at those who have chosen [private schools], there is a significant increase over the prior year,” Platenberg said. “That’s pretty informing why families chose to withdraw from FCPS.”

Of the five FCPS regions, the largest withdrawal rates come from Region One, which has schools in Herndon, Reston, Vienna, and the Langley area of McLean, and Region Three, which encompasses the area south of the city of Alexandria.

“I’m concerned when I look at some of these numbers at our high school level,” At-Large School Board Member Rachna Sizmore Heizer said.

She said schools with high rates of students who qualify for free- and reduced-price meals are seeing higher enrollment drops from last year to this year. She asked staff whether these changes are due to students not logging in and dropping out.

“We really are tracking that very carefully,” Deputy Superintendent Francis Ivey said.

This is not the first time schools with higher levels of families below federal poverty lines have been impacted by current events, Platenberg said.

“We’ve seen those trends with economic changes and changes in administrations, lags and shifts that occur,” he said.

Photo via FCPS

Since JEB Stuart High School morphed into Justice High School in 2018, debates over changing school names are turning into familiar territory for Fairfax County residents, but the issues they dredge up have become no less contentious.

Held in two parts on Oct. 22 and 29, the Falls Church City School Board’s public hearing on whether to rename George Mason High School and Thomas Jefferson Elementary School featured passionate arguments from both proponents and opponents of renaming schools that bear the monikers of historical figures tied to slavery.

At the crux of this particular name change debate are the legacies of Mason and Jefferson, which are arguably more complicated than that of Confederate leaders like Stuart or Robert E. Lee.

Arguing that romantic notions of America’s founding have wrongly overshadowed the violence Mason and Jefferson committed against the human beings they enslaved, supporters of removing their names from Falls Church schools cast this moment as a chance for the city to move away from its segregationist past and toward a more inclusive future, particularly with George Mason High School in the process of getting a brand-new campus.

“Our changing of the name will not erase or change history,” George Mason High School student Constance Meade said. “It will demonstrate that we’ve learned from our history and that we’ve chosen not to let these men represent our future and our community of students.”

Some critics of the proposed name changes argued that the ideals Mason and Jefferson espoused as the authors of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Declaration of Independence, respectively, are worthy of honoring even if they did not live up to them.

“The fact that Jefferson and Mason were slaveholders and behaved in ways viewed as completely unacceptable today does not at all outweigh the totality of their accomplishments and contributions,” Falls Church City resident and former school board member Hal Lippman said.

Other opponents contended that changing the names of schools is a symbolic gesture not worth the cost, which FCCPS estimates to be $96,760 for Mason and $13,500 for Jefferson.

“I’m a little frustrated with things that I perceive to be more on the order of virtue signaling, rather than content,” Alison Kutchma, the parent of FCCPS alumni, said. “I’d rather that our education dollars and your efforts and your meetings go to what happens inside the building.”

Name change proponents countered that the associated costs are negligible compared to the need to reckon with the damage wrought by slavery and systemic racism.

“I assure you that claiming money stands in the way of promoting an inclusive culture will not age well,” said Jamie Argento Rodriguez, the parent of two FCCPS students.

The Falls Church City School Board decided to consider changing the names of George Mason High School and Thomas Jefferson Elementary School on June 30 after community advocacy efforts gained renewed attention during the protests that emerged in the wake of Minneapolis police officers killing George Floyd on May 25.

The school board will review a draft survey report from the Herndon-based consultant K12 Insight on Nov. 10 before voting on whether to change the name of either school on Dec. 8.

“We’re really grateful for our community members who are taking time to share their thoughts with us,” Falls Church City School Board chair Greg Anderson said. “…The board is not endorsing or supporting any comments submitted to us, but we’re very happy to hear what you have to say.”

Photo via Falls Church City Public Schools

The synthetic turf field at the Graham Road Community Building in Falls Church is going to be replaced.

As part of its consent agenda, the Fairfax County School Board voted on Oct. 22 to award a $93,000 contract for the project to GTR Turf, Inc., a Fredericksburg-based contractor that specializes in artificial turf and grass.

Though the school board is responsible for awarding the contract, the funding will come from the Fairfax County Park Authority as part of a partnership between the county and Fairfax County Public Schools.

“The synthetic turf field at the Graham Road Community Building is one of the few playing fields available for community use in the area,” Providence District School Board representative Karl Frisch said in a statement. “I am grateful for our continued partnership with the Fairfax County Park Authority, which makes the funding for important projects like this possible.”

GTR Turf was one of five companies that FCPS deemed qualified to compete for a contract to construct the Graham Road turf field during the bidding period, which closed on Sept. 30. The four other contractors all submitted bids proposing construction costs that exceeded $100,000, ranging from $129,397 from Astro Turf LLC to $169,880 from Hellas Construction, Inc.

Located at 3033 Graham Road, the Graham Road Community Building housed Graham Road Elementary School until the school was relocated to its current site along Route 29 in 2012.

Governed by a shared-use agreement between the county and FCPS, the building now provides education, recreation, and other public services, according to Frisch. It serves as a School Age Child Care program center and a Fairfax County Neighborhood and Community Services drop-in site for students in grades seven through 12.

Construction to replace the Graham Road Community Building’s existing turf field was allowed to start on Oct. 22 after the contract was awarded. The project is expected to be fully completed on Feb. 5, 2021, according to FCPS’s invitation to bid.

Image via Google Maps

Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Scott Brabrand revealed his suggestions for a new name for Mosby Woods Elementary School to the Fairfax County School Board on Thursday (Oct. 22).

Listed in no particular order, the recommended names are:

• Mosaic – a nod to the school’s proximity to the Mosaic District
• Five Oaks – the name of the road where the school is located
• Katherine Johnson – a mathematician who helped make spaceflight and the Apollo 11 moon landing possible as a “computer” for NASA
• Mary McBride – a teacher who helped start a school near Fairfax Court House for the children of freed slaves after the Civil War
• Barbara Rose Johns – a student civil rights activist who led a strike in protest of conditions at the all-black Moton High School in Farmville, Va., paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education

Brabrand compiled his recommendations based on input from the Mosby Woods community after the school board voted on Oct. 8 to change the Fairfax school’s name so that it no longer bears the moniker of John S. Mosby, who achieved prominence as a calvary commander for the Confederate Army.

Providence District School Board representative Karl Frisch and at-large member Karen Keys-Gamarra proposed renaming Mosby Woods Elementary School on June 18 with the support of descendants of Mosby.

Under the current FCPS regulation for renaming school facilities, the school board is required to provide a one-month period for public comment between the superintendent’s submission of recommendations for a new name and the board’s final vote on the new name.

Led by the region assistant superintendent and the school board members who represent the area where the school in question is located, the public comment period must include a community meeting, public hearing, and the acceptance of mail and electronic feedback.

The community meeting on the recommended names for Mosby Woods has been scheduled for Nov. 30, and a public hearing will be held on Dec. 2 before the school board has a deciding vote on the new name on Dec. 3.

Image via FCPS

In an update to the McLean Citizens Association, School Board members Elaine Tholen and Karen Keys-Gamarra outlined some changes coming up as Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) begins to take a look at long-term planning again.

One of the biggest topics in the area before the pandemic was a proposed realignment of McLean’s high school boundaries.

According to FCPS:

Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) is considering a boundary adjustment to provide capacity relief to McLean High School. Currently, McLean HS has more than 2,350 students in a building with design capacity of 1,993 students. Enrollment at McLean HS is projected to increase in the next five years.

Langley High School, which is close in proximity to McLean HS, recently completed a renovation that increased its design capacity to 2,370 students. Current enrollment at Langley is 1,972. Enrollment at Langley HS is projected to remain the same or decrease in the next five years. FCPS is not planning to recommend moving students out of Langley HS as part of this boundary adjustment.

Those plans got put on the back burner as FCPS dealt with the response to the pandemic, but Tholen said those plans are starting to come back.

“We don’t have specific dates around the McLean/Langley boundary change,” Tholen said. “That’s something that we had started working on at the end of last year and through community comments have incorporated Cooper [Middle School] and Longfellow [Middle School] into that process. We anticipate that we will be moving forward with that so we can have something in place for next fall.”

School Board members also said that the Board had told Superintendent Scott Brabrand that the proposal to change admissions the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology needed more data.

“the goal is to make sure those students who rise to the top will not be overlooked while giving oppurtunities to those schools that have previously not participated,” Keys-Gamarra said.

The McLean Citizens Association had previously criticized FCPS for the speed with which it introduced the merit lottery proposal, saying that the process needs more transparency and community engagement.