Superintendent's Weekly Reflections
Hello Team FCPS!
What a great week!! I love this fall season and all the abundant joy it brings.
I trust all of you have moved your clocks back an hour for the end of daylight-saving time and have enjoyed the extra time!! It is so exciting to contemplate all the possibilities for an extra hour of time ;>)!! Autumn is moving right along, and I’ve so enjoyed all the beautiful fall foliage on display in our area. There’s something so special about this time of year! As Emily Brontë wrote: “Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree."
On Monday evening, I stopped by Oakton Elementary School (OES) for the launch of the “Oakton Elementary School Library of Games.” This initiative is the result of many hours of hard work by Luke Brauer (pictured below, center), a junior at Oakton High School, as part of his Eagle Scout service project. Also pictured below, from left to right, are Oakton Elementary School’s retired second grade teacher Julia Patchan, librarian Corin Harmon, Elizabeth Brauer, assistant principal Keith Eck, and PTA president Bethany Messer.
Luke and his classmates worked with staff from Oakton elementary and high schools to collect more than100 games to form and launch the game library! According to Luke’s mother, Elizabeth, “Luke and his fellow 11th graders were members of the Oakton Elementary School 6th grade class whose grade school years came to an abrupt in-person end on Thursday, March 12, 2020, due to the pandemic. During the pandemic, Luke and his friends missed the in-person human interaction of grade school and the many fun OES PTA-sponsored evening activities like puzzle nights and international nights. Thus, Luke and his Oakton High School friends are thrilled with the opportunity to give back to Oakton Elementary School, a place they dearly loved filled with people they dearly loved, with a project that provides today's Oakton Elementary School students new ways for fun and educational in-person human interactions, as students can use the games at this event and, going forward, check the board games and card games out to enjoy at home with their families and friends, just like a library book.” Congratulations, Luke!! Go Cougars!!
I really enjoyed attending the Herndon pyramid chorus concert this week and in particular hearing the voices of our young vocalists. Knowing the effort necessary to put an event such as this on, I continue to be so inspired by the efforts of our educators; this work matters.
Later on Monday, I stopped by Herndon High School to watch the girls volleyball team play in a district playoff match. Go Hornets!! There are so many opportunities to cheer on our student athletes as they participate in contests that stretch them and support their growth. This work matters.
On Tuesday, I attended the first Strategic Plan Advisory Group meeting of the year, held at Gatehouse Administration Center. The group consists of parents and community members, and its goals are to provide feedback to help inform the implementation of the Strategic Plan, and to share ideas about opportunities for potential partnerships with community groups as we advance our strategic priorities. The topic for this meeting was the report data for the FCPS 2023-30 Strategic Plan’s Goal 1 - Strong Start, PreK-12.
On Wednesday, I held the final fall Community Conversation at Herndon Middle School. I want to thank everyone who took the time to join me at a fall community meeting and share their thoughts and ask questions. It is great to have the opportunity to hear from our community and engage in thoughtful conversations.
The meeting focused on a variety of topics including teacher retention, the effectiveness of multilingual learner programs, student support, and concerns related to AI and technology integration in education. As a listening leader, I value this time to connect and engage with our parents, students, staff members, and the community. A new set of Community Conversations meetings will be held in the spring. Look for more information on these in 2025! Learning happens best in community!!
Thursday morning, I stopped by Fairview Elementary School to help celebrate its 125th anniversary. If you do the math — and you know I love math ;>) – it means that Fairview opened in 1899, wow!! The school, which began as a one-room schoolhouse, has seen a lot of history over the years
Students and staff members celebrated all week with spirit days, including Fairview is 125 Day! (when they took the picture above), Future Day, Historical Figure Day, and Decades Day. The school also unveiled a new anniversary banner, as well as a curated museum exhibit showcasing its rich history, featuring memorabilia, photos, and artifacts that capture the legacy of Fairview Elementary and the generations of students, staff, and families who have made the school such a special place in the Fairfax Station community. Go Soaring Falcons!!
Recently, I met with two students from Woodson High School, Lily Eng, and Leah James, who are involved with the school chapter of March for Our Lives, a national student-led gun violence prevention movement. They shared what many students think about this important topic and how it affects them, in particular mental health, and safe firearm storage. I look forward to working with them on a video and possible future lesson plans about gun safety. Our students will continue to lead us!!
As we begin a long overdue review of school boundaries across FCPS, I am eager to share information about our upcoming Boundary Review Community Meetings. You may view the schedule on our website. These meetings are an essential part of our commitment to ensuring that staff, families, and community members have a voice in the boundary review process. A meeting will be held in each of FCPS' six regions, and we encourage you to participate in your region's meeting. If that session isn’t convenient, feel free to choose another one. All meetings will be in person, and they'll have the same format. Registration will open in a few days, so stay tuned for those details. I hope to see you at one of the sessions. Your ideas and feedback will help inform this important work to better support student population growth, changes in school capacity, student health and wellness, and evolving community needs. In the meantime, please visit our Boundary Review webpage for more information.
For this week’s Advancing Literacy segment, I’d like to share more about the importance of strong reading and writing skills. The research is clear that literacy helps set students up for a lifetime of success:
- Children who do not read proficiently by the end of third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school.
- Literacy is positively linked with higher education levels, income, health, and civic engagement.
- Adults who struggle to read are more likely to be unemployed, underemployed, and incarcerated.
As Kofi Annan wrote on International Literacy Day in 1997: “Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development … Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.” His words resonate just as strongly today. This work matters!!
And… It can also be fun! Thank you Jordan Vachon, second grade teacher at Beech Tree Elementary School, who shared this photo on Halloween of the three little kittens who lost their mittens, bringing Benchmark to life for their students. Your costumes are purr-fect! ;>) I love cats and know that we all need to keep track of our mittens ;>)!!
I’d like to share a story about West Springfield High School, where, recently, football players and cheerleaders joined Cardinal Forest Elementary first graders on the football field for a literacy event. The first graders ran a high-five gauntlet, picked out books, and then each of them sat down with an older student athlete to read.
Cardinal Forest first grade teacher Jennifer Walrath, the mother of West Springfield junior and quarterback Brian Walrath, came up with the idea for the event. She says she was hoping to build community and drive home a love of reading in the younger students. She also hoped to encourage more mentorship and positive connections between the two schools. You can read more about this on the FCPS website. This type of event helps us achieve 2023-30 Strategic Plan Goal 3: Academic Growth and Excellence, specifically, making sure students are reading on grade level by the end of third grade. Go Spartans and go Mighty Red Birds!! This work matters!!
Across Virginia, we are all beginning to build understanding around the new Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) 2024 Accountability System and the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. One big shift in the new system is that schools will receive two separate accountability ratings beginning in fall 2025, based on their outcomes from this school year. The metric, which is called “school accreditation,” will no longer be about school performance. Instead, it will be an indicator of whether the school complies with basic operational regulations. At the same time, schools will be assigned a new “summative performance category” as part of the Virginia Department of Education’s (VDOE) new School Performance and Support Framework. These performance categories will be assigned based on the total points the school earns across achievement, growth, and readiness components. Below are the four summative performance categories for schools within the new accountability system:
- Distinguished (90+ points): Schools which exceed the state’s expectations for achievement, growth, and readiness.
- On Track (80-89 points): Schools which meet the state’s expectations for achievement, growth, and readiness.
- Off Track (65-79 points): Schools which do not meet the state’s expectations for achievement, growth, and readiness.
- Needs Intensive Support (less than 65 points): Schools which significantly do not meet the state’s expectations for achievement, growth, and readiness.
The shift represented by these state accountability changes is significant. I’ll continue to bring you updates as we navigate this change and learn more about what it means for our community. Regardless of the VDOE plans, I remain proud of the work each and every one of you are engaged in and the work of each and every one of our students; it matters.
Thank you to Kambar Khoshaba, principal at South County High School, for recently sharing two thought-provoking videos with me. The first video is from a 1994 episode of the “Today Show,” where the hosts ask each other exactly what the internet is. It’s a quaint video from our modern perspective, but the truth is that digital access (and understanding!) isn’t as ubiquitous as we might think. The second video highlights this fact with a demonstration of the “homework gap” that arises when students are assigned homework which requires using the internet, though not all students have home access to it. This lack of digital equity is an important issue to consider as we best prepare our students for their interconnected and technology-driven futures! Together, all things are possible…
And so in closing, as I contemplate my excitement over the possibilities associated with my extra hour this weekend, I am reminded of a quote recently shared with me; “The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking, don't settle.” —Steve Jobs (1955-2011) Co-Founder Apple Inc. I am loving what we are doing here and so grateful to be doing it with you ... Hoping you have enjoyed your extra gift of time, let’s do this!!
Take good care,
Michelle Reid, Ed.D.
Superintendent
Fairfax County Public Schools
