Superintendent's Weekly Reflections

Hello Team FCPS!

Well, what a week we have had for our first week back!! I want to thank each of you for your patience and grace as we navigated a significant winter storm, one of the most significant in recent years. I know that we all work to stay in the light and lift one another up, and it is even more important during challenging times as we model for our next generation how to work together and problem solve; together all things are possible. I also want to share my profound sorrow and hope for an end to the fires raging on the west coast.  For those of you with family or friends in the midst of these fires, I pray that all will be as well as possible as soon as possible. 

Mother Nature decided to ring in the new year with one of the more abundant snowfalls that we have seen in this area in quite some time. Thursday, I had the opportunity to stop by Luther Jackson Middle School during one of our snow days to thank our dedicated facilities teams who worked so hard to clear our sidewalks and school lots.

Thank you to each and every member of our facilities and grounds teams for caring for our students by making sure our buildings were ready when it was time for them to return. Our transportation team also worked tirelessly to ensure our fleet of 1,625 buses parked across 131 locations was ready to roll. Using snow rakes and a newly installed snow scraper at our Stonecroft Depot, our dedicated team cleared the buses over two days to ensure safe and efficient transportation for our students. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this incredible effort! A team member made this short video to showcase their efforts. Wow -- I definitely need one of those jumbo snow scrapers for my car :)

Finally, a big thank you to our Food and Nutrition Services team for providing 2,426 meal kits during our three days of closure. The team supported four sites the first two days and three additional sites the second day. This is what makes Team FCPS! The team recognized a need and made it happen. This work matters!

Congratulations to Matthew Barker, an adapted physical education (APE) teacher at Bren Mar Park Elementary School, who has been named the Southern District Adapted Physical Education Teacher of the Year by the Society of Health and Physical Education (SHAPE) America! Matthew will now move through the process for National Adapted Physical Education Teacher of the Year. He’ll find out the results during the SHAPE National Convention in Baltimore in April. There are four total District Finalists moving forward for the National APE Teacher of the Year award. Last year, Cadi Doyle, APE teacher from Oakton and Waples Mill elementary schools, was the District and National award winner. The Southern District consists of 13 states, and thanks to the wonderful members of Team FCPS, this is the first time a teacher from one state, as well as the same district, won two years in a row! Good luck in April, Matthew!

Some other good news this week: eight students from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology have been named scholars in the 2025 Regeneron Science Talent Search! The students are part of a group of 300 scholars selected from nearly 2,500 entrants in the 2025 competition. The Regeneron Science Talent Search (Regeneron STS), a program of the Society for Science & the Public, is the nation’s most prestigious pre-college science competition. Alumni of STS have made extraordinary contributions to science and hold more than 100 of the world’s most distinguished science and math honors, including the Nobel Prize and National Medal of Science. Each student will receive matching awards of $2,000 along with the school. A total of 40 finalists will be announced on January 23, who will be invited to Washington, D.C., in March to participate in final judging, display their work to the public, meet with notable scientists, and compete for awards, including the top award of $250,000. You can see the complete list of FCPS’ Regeneron Science Talent Search Scholars online. Go Colonials!!

And finally, 693 FCPS students have been named National Merit Commended Scholars by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. View the full list of scholars by school. This represents a 10% increase in Commended Scholars for FCPS compared to 2023! 

As you may be aware, we are entering the time of year when the School Board discusses and approves the Capital Improvement Program (CIP) for the next five years. The CIP identifies projects such as new school construction, capacity enhancement, renovation, and potential site acquisitions with a focus on maximizing quality educational spaces for all students. 

Ms. Janice Szymanski, FCPS’ chief of facilities services and capital programs, recently shared this update with me: “In last year’s CIP, FCPS saw a large increase in projected costs for capital projects to accommodate for rising inflation, Fairfax’s prevailing wage requirements, and supply chain challenges. In response, active design and construction projects were budgeted in the CIP using a design-specific cost estimate. Additionally, the FCPS team has been strategic about the packaging and timing of solicitations and fostering interest from the professional community and has seen an increase in the number of participating bidders to ensure best possible pricing. Since last year’s CIP, FCPS is happy to report that all CIP renovation projects that have gone out to bid for construction have come in on or under budget with the last three renovation projects averaging 12% below estimates. As a result, FCPS has been able to back build up the construction reserve and value-engineering (or reducing scope in the designs) has not been required at bidding on these projects.

“Lastly, FCPS is conducting an annual review of cost assumptions as part of the CIP work to ensure historical bidding data and market trends are reflected in CIP budgets. Please note, while the updated estimates have allowed for more realistic planning of the capital pipeline, the current bond funding is not sufficient to cover cost increases and meet School Board policy for a 20–25-year renovation cycle and meeting the Joint Environmental Taskforce (JET) carbon neutrality in 2040.”

Thanks for sharing, Janice! If you would like to comment on this year’s CIP, the School Board will be holding a public hearing on Tuesday, January 14, starting at 6 p.m., at Jackson Middle School. You can sign up online to speak at the meeting.    

On Friday, we held our first virtual Community Boundary Review meeting. As I mentioned last week, if you weren’t able to attend one of our recent in-person Community Boundary Review meetings, registration remains open for the following virtual meetings:

• Thursday, January 16, 2025, 1-2:30 p.m. 
• Saturday, January 25, 2025, 9:30-11 a.m. 
• Monday, January 27, 2025, 6:30-8 p.m. 
• Tuesday, January 28, 2025, 6:30-8 p.m. 
• Monday, February 10, 2025, 6:30-8 p.m. 

All virtual meetings will follow the same format as the recently held in-person meetings, and the same information will be shared. Click one of the dates above to register and receive your unique Zoom link. Please note that each virtual meeting will be capped at 400 participants to help provide a meaningful experience for all. Language interpretation will be available. You can also sign up for the School Boundary Review newsletter for updates.

For this week’s Advancing Literacy segment, we have this video from Riverside Elementary School, featuring first grade teacher Rebekah Griffith. Rebekah gives us a great example of implementing Benchmark Advance with integrity! She gets students up and moving with a hunt for colors in the classroom that begin with the consonant blends (“br” for brown and “bl” for blue) that they’ve been studying. Then she scaffolds the day’s Benchmark Advance warm up by counting sounds on her fingers (a teaching technique from evidence-based literacy instruction) to highlight the individual sounds students are switching out. Go Team FCPS!!

I also have an update on the new Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) 2024 Accountability System. Earlier this week, I received news that the U.S. Education Department (USED) has now approved Virginia’s consolidated state plan under the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This approval marks the final regulatory step allowing Virginia’s School Performance and Support Framework (SPSF) to be implemented for fall 2025, based on data from the current 2024-25 school year. Approval from USED alleviates the largest uncertainties about what schools’ accountability expectations will actually look like moving forward. It also opens the path for the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) and Virginia Board of Education (VBOE) to finalize the remaining decisions about specific details of the plan. 

As we receive information about further state decisions, here at FCPS we will continue to advocate for the SPSF system to accurately reflect the strengths and needs of our students and schools. I appreciate the thoughtful involvement of our elected officials, including a recent appeal from the chairs of the boards of multiple Northern Virginia school divisions and new bills introduced in the General Assembly requesting a delay in implementation to allow further time to study impacts. No matter what happens with the state accountability system, FCPS will continue to hold ourselves accountable to our local community’s priorities, as reflected in our 2023-30 Strategic Plan.  

This weekend we finally resumed our afterschool athletics and activities. Among these was one of our new athletic programs we have added this year, girls wrestling. It has been an exciting season and one that follows the sport being added as an Olympic sport. The student athletes pictured below competed on Saturday. 

Excitement for this new sport continues to build. I think Coach Dick Adams said it well when he shared, “Just wanted to thank again, Jason Planakis, John James, and the entire Lewis staff and team for putting The Lewis all Girls "La Luchadora" tournament together under a tough situation. Not knowing if the weather was going to shut down everything, the Lewis staff put it all together and it went great! Some great competition and the Championship Masks were a really unique touch.” We know the importance of our coaches and athletic administrators and support staff in making these events so memorable; together all things are possible. Thank you!!

Also on Saturday, the FCPS Talent and Acquisition Management (TAM) team hosted a virtual job fair for instructional positions. The planned in-person fair quickly pivoted to virtual due to the inclement weather forecast. This event made a final recruitment push to hire for remaining vacancies this year and to soft launch the 2025-26 hiring season. Nearly 120 candidates attended the fair and dozens of offers are pending! In addition to TAM, we would like to thank over 40 school-based administrators who interviewed candidates. It’s a team effort to build our world-class educator workforce! The next instructional job fair will be in person at Lake Braddock Secondary School on February 1, leading the way for twice monthly events through June. These efforts support our FCPS Strategic Plan Pillar C as we recruit and retain a diverse, adaptive, and supported workforce. I remain so grateful for all those in our human resources department and across the school division who are working on our mission driven recruitment work, it matters, 

I love the winter season and find its tempestuous nature both compelling and exhilarating, reminding me that; “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

Let's continue to treasure the gifts of this winter season ... I look forward to seeing you as I am out in the schools and community in the coming days and weeks. 

Take good care,

Michelle Reid, Ed.D.

Superintendent