FCPS School Board and Brabrand Must Go

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile, across the river at MCPS, my DS just finished his second week of daily online lessons with the teacher. It's only a 30-minute Zoom session per day, but he enjoys seeing his classmates and his 1st grade teacher usually takes the last 5 minutes to unmute everyone's mic so the kids can socialize and she asks if they have anything they want to share. One kid showed off his new puppy.

There is no issue with disruption since you need to log in with your school ID to get in the online classroom, then the teacher lets each kid into the room.

I can come up with a long list of ways MCPS is incompetent, which is why I'm really surprised FCPS is messing this one up so badly -- I'd expect them to do a better job than MCPS, as MCPS rarely gets anything right!

Congratulations. Good for you. Thanks for telling us how great things are going for your kids. Very helpful!

I appreciate it because if true it shows that it can be done, fcps has no excuse and can be justifiably held accountable for this massive failure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Laura Jane Cohen can be too emo for me but she stuck up for the teachers and school-based technology specialists yesterday, which was very important for morale. The tech failures with distance learning are entirely the fault of Gatehouse and Blackboard, not the personnel at individual schools.

LJC is my member, and I talked to her the day all of this happened to voice concerns as parent and staff. I was really surprised she got back to me honestly as I didn’t expect a call from my email. Say what you’d like about her, but she’s taking her job seriously as a representative. She’s also a lot more moderate than you’d think. She did not advocate for FCPSOn because she didn’t think the cost warranted the academic achievement data that FCPS provided, and she wanted more guidelines when approving temporary pay. I personally didn’t agree with her on either of these votes, but I respect that she made an informed decision using data vs. politics. There are a couple of people on that board who just make decisions that will be popular with wherever the tide is rolling at the time. Take McLaughlin for example. I think a lot of this is less about politics and more about the “prestige” or using this as a jump start to greater things.

As a staff member, I find it interesting there’s a student rep but not a teacher rep.

I think FCPS teachers are ineligible to serve on the FCPS School Board. Pat Hynes started teaching in Arlington when she was on the School Board and wanted to teach.

They are. I’m aware of that. And it’s ridiculous. The student representative isn’t a voting member, so if a teacher representative is on the board they’d be able to give staff feedback without having to necessarily vote. Gatehouse isn’t in the school, and they aren’t in the classroom. Neither are the board members, yet they make decisions. They often don’t think about implementation. I’m sure they didn’t think of these security concerns as they related to kids being jerks because the assumption was that kids would be worried about it being recorded. They weren’t. They do crap like this in the class, so why would being online give them pause? Teachers, Principals, etc. brought this up, but it’s all in separate meetings that aren’t community facing. Now, the board is shocked! Without staff having the ability to give input and hold these people to the mat, the buck gets passed and plausible deniability can occur. Look at what happened at Oakton when kids were getting tased. Perfect example of the school board backtracking to public opinion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Chantilly HS pyramid gives all students grades 3 and up a laptop and literally only teaches from the computer. Parents have always hated this and complain all the time bc the teachers rely so heavily on computers. Every assignment is a link to youtube or khan academy. Their entire school day is spent on screens. Nothing is created by the teacher. It's insane that we have had our computers at home and the technology to start right away on the morning of Math 13th and we have done not one thing from FCPS in 5 weeks (except we had the ONE hour with the teacher on Tuesday). That was it. Our kids can't even do the packet we got in the mail bc our school must have decided to go rogue at the beginning of the school year and completely changed the order in which they were teaching. The last 2 packets we have gotten had nothing at all of what they were taught and aligns with nothing that happened prior to march 12. The teachers didn't even assign the packet and they acknowledged they had been doing things differently. I've been looking at the Arlington County threads on here and have been able to get lesson plans and worksheets from their sites to keep my child engaged and learning. But for FCPS to literally do nothing for 5 weeks is not right.

Sounds like the worst of all worlds - a school pyramid that was functioning autonomously but with too much emphasis on technology then shoehorned by Gatehouse into a distance an "equity"-driven, one-size-fits-all approach that didn't take differences among schools and kids into account.

This is why people want Brabrand sacked. He is not up to the job.

The entire Chantilly Pyramid CERTAINLY does not teach that way. I teach in a CHS pyramid school, and I don't know of a single teacher in my school who just uses YT or KA. We create almost everything we use. There are a lot of hyperdocs used in classrooms, but our school uses a lot of blended learning.

Few schools ASSIGNED the packet, so please don't be upset with your school for not assigning the packets. I dont see how math or social studies could be done in a different order than the county uses. Language Arts can be done in any order the teacher chooses. Science, I suppose, could be done in a random order?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile, across the river at MCPS, my DS just finished his second week of daily online lessons with the teacher. It's only a 30-minute Zoom session per day, but he enjoys seeing his classmates and his 1st grade teacher usually takes the last 5 minutes to unmute everyone's mic so the kids can socialize and she asks if they have anything they want to share. One kid showed off his new puppy.

There is no issue with disruption since you need to log in with your school ID to get in the online classroom, then the teacher lets each kid into the room.

I can come up with a long list of ways MCPS is incompetent, which is why I'm really surprised FCPS is messing this one up so badly -- I'd expect them to do a better job than MCPS, as MCPS rarely gets anything right!

Congratulations. Good for you. Thanks for telling us how great things are going for your kids. Very helpful!

I appreciate it because if true it shows that it can be done, fcps has no excuse and can be justifiably held accountable for this massive failure.

+1000.

Honestly, if FCPS took 4-5 weeks and screwed up this badly, Brabrand needs to be fired now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile, across the river at MCPS, my DS just finished his second week of daily online lessons with the teacher. It's only a 30-minute Zoom session per day, but he enjoys seeing his classmates and his 1st grade teacher usually takes the last 5 minutes to unmute everyone's mic so the kids can socialize and she asks if they have anything they want to share. One kid showed off his new puppy.

There is no issue with disruption since you need to log in with your school ID to get in the online classroom, then the teacher lets each kid into the room.

I can come up with a long list of ways MCPS is incompetent, which is why I'm really surprised FCPS is messing this one up so badly -- I'd expect them to do a better job than MCPS, as MCPS rarely gets anything right!

Congratulations. Good for you. Thanks for telling us how great things are going for your kids. Very helpful!

I appreciate it because if true it shows that it can be done, fcps has no excuse and can be justifiably held accountable for this massive failure.

We all already knew it could be done. I mean, that’s why people have been so upset. Because other large school districts are up and running without these issues. If no one could figure out how to do this, the reaction towards FCPS would be much different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile, across the river at MCPS, my DS just finished his second week of daily online lessons with the teacher. It's only a 30-minute Zoom session per day, but he enjoys seeing his classmates and his 1st grade teacher usually takes the last 5 minutes to unmute everyone's mic so the kids can socialize and she asks if they have anything they want to share. One kid showed off his new puppy.

There is no issue with disruption since you need to log in with your school ID to get in the online classroom, then the teacher lets each kid into the room.

I can come up with a long list of ways MCPS is incompetent, which is why I'm really surprised FCPS is messing this one up so badly -- I'd expect them to do a better job than MCPS, as MCPS rarely gets anything right!

Congratulations. Good for you. Thanks for telling us how great things are going for your kids. Very helpful!

I appreciate it because if true it shows that it can be done, fcps has no excuse and can be justifiably held accountable for this massive failure.

+1000.

Honestly, if FCPS took 4-5 weeks and screwed up this badly, Brabrand needs to be fired now.

Yes. But it's not going to happen.

[Anonymous]

Can we just give up the pipedream of online teaching and send packets through Google Classroom? At this point, I just give up & would rather have something than nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FCPS spent their time and resources focusing on the wrong priorities. As a school system, they should focus on education. It took FCPS 4 weeks to get distance learning up and running, poorly, but only a few days to get their meal distribution up and running. I have received infinitely more communication regarding meal distribution than distance learning. Let the food banks feed the kids. The school system needs to focus on educating the kids.

+1 - at the very least this should could be run through the county government, not the schools!

The food services and transportation people wouldn't have been working on technology issue and distance learning if the food distribution was handed off to the county government. Honestly, do you really think this is the real issue as opposed to say giving teachers two weeks of leave instead of spending that time training them how to use the technology and how to have secure log in to their virtual classrooms. Do you really think that the food and transportation people would have been load testing the system to see what would happen when 180,000 people logged on. The problem wasn't feeding the needy. The problem was giving teachers two weeks off instead of taking that time to train them on the technology and asking for their input on any issues they saw, and the other problem was the IT people failed miserably in taking into account the load requirements and failed to spot security issues with video technology that were all over the news on a daily basis. This had nothing to do with the food distribution.

Food distribution should be 2 times per week for 3 hours per day. Limits exposure for all. Other counties have this...Message boards are full of posts about grocery stores, masks, gloves, social distancing, people fingering produce and oher items.

So take a look at FCPS food distribution pictures. Hutchison has 2 staff with masks and gloves. Person picking up food for 3 doesn't have on even a bandanna. Forest Edge? Not a mask or bandanna in sight. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/school-meals-spring-break/2020/04/06/c8ecf3a4-7825-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html

FCPS laptops are about $400 annually I believe. Not sure. Mean while textbooks are/were reusable. Presidio actually used the B word=Book in a meeting. Students can have real books and workbooks to write in. K-4 could take pics of stuff that write and attach via email or send as text. FCPS wastes money, time, etc. It planned to leave Blackboard. https://wtop.com/fairfax-county/2020/04/why-fairfax-co-schools-say-distance-learning-will-improve-monday/

[Anonymous]

why does the chantilly pyramid have laptops for every grade 3 and up but the other pyramids don'T?

[Anonymous]

we aren't in the chantilly pyramid and the packet had nothing to do with anything the kids learned this year, either. the packet was completely random.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:why does the chantilly pyramid have laptops for every grade 3 and up but the other pyramids don'T?

Weren’t they the FCPSOn test pyramid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can we just give up the pipedream of online teaching and send packets through Google Classroom? At this point, I just give up & would rather have something than nothing.

My DC’s teacher did that this week - slides to read and assignment slides. Video links for content that could best be communicated that way, MyOn assignment reading for other content. Worked well.

[Anonymous]

They were the FCPSOn test pyramid in 2016 and thats when they were given the laptops. In the Chantilly pyramid in grades K-2 the kids each have their own computer in the classroom but aren't allowed to take them home. So each child in the pyramid has their own computer. The FCPSOn website says the rollout was suppose to be the below for the rest of the county.
2019-20 High Schools
2020-21 Middle Schools
2021-22 Elementary Grades 5-6
2022-23 Elementary Grades 3-4

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just received word from my Principal that the SB and Central office folks are now pointing fingers at teachers. In usual fashion, they're trying to deflect the negative attention and point the fingers at us. Meanwhile, I left a very lucrative job in the private sector ten years ago to follow my dream of "giving back to society" via teaching at public school. These clowns have no idea what it is to be leaders. Ugh...

I hope the teachers and principals will vote against these schoolboard members when they come up for reelection.

+1
What about the parents who idiotically voted for these clowns, and called anyone who didn't "racists"? Unbelievable.

Still beyond glad Schultz and Wilson are gone.

Our school was very overcrowded and Wilson objected to any efforts to do something about it, claiming it would be unfair to Oakton, his daughter’s school - which was literally in the middle of a $130M renovation/expansion.

If the Republicans want to attack the current School Board, they are stuck with the fact that some of have memories longer than last week.

Schultz was the one school board member with common sense who advocated for the school board focusing on its primary mission of educating students and being good stewards of taxpayer money.

We need moderates on the school board, or at the very least we need balance.

I don't think you can rehabilitate Schultz this soon. She was a polemical, antagonizing figure who contributed little but attacked often.

Voters in her district saw how little she'd actually done for them and voted overwhelmingly to replace her. If the Democrats had endorsed Walter rather than Cohen, the margin of defeat would have been ever greater.

You are incorrect.

Schultz was not elected because of trump, not because of Schultz. She was a good school board member and it is unfortunate she lost over national politics.

The overwhelming loss came mostly from the Fair Oaks apartments area, people without kids in the school system. In the areas where families live, it was much closer.

Schultz was a one-Trump pony. Many are beyond elated that the School Board no longer has to deal with her fruitless polemics and politics.

[Anonymous]

My understanding is that this new, inexperienced, narcissistic school board has spent the past 3+ months navel gazing at multiple board retreats and wasted countless hours in closed meetings discussing the new plan for 1.5 additional personal staff per member, being paid for at a cost of $1M+ on the taxpayer dime, without any public notice. All the while, the virus was spreading around the world and in our community.

This incompetent group took their eye off the ball at the most critical time. The person most to blame is chairman Corbett Sanders for failure to keep them focused on the most important business, but the entire Board is at fault for not holding her, the superintendent and system staff accountable.