Tell me more about the School Board election process

[Anonymous]

Why did none of the Republicans fill out the survey? We deserve to know their answers to these pretty easy questions.
https://www.scribd.com/document/640759921/Nonpartisan-Fairfax-County-School-Board-Voter-Guide-4-26-23-FINAL#

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why did none of the Republicans fill out the survey? We deserve to know their answers to these pretty easy questions.
https://www.scribd.com/document/640759921/Nonpartisan-Fairfax-County-School-Board-Voter-Guide-4-26-23-FINAL#

Because the surveys were NOT sent to candidates not seeking endorsements from Fairfax Democrats.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:As a Republican, I say let the Democrats continue to own the disaster that FCPS has become. No saving it at this point.

They will, anyway. Most pay no attention to politics, they just vote Democrat.

I pay attention to politics which is why I continue to vote Democrats. Not because I think they are great. They are just better than Republicans at this point.

How can you say that with a straight face?

I'm new to this thread, but I'll answer: because it's true. Local Republicans are the same as national Republicans, Trump trash to the core. Davis is a Republican, period, who is just in disguise. When local Republicans en masse dump Trump and Trumpism, and stop as their primary agenda attacking LGBTQ+ kids and racial and religious minorities, and focus instead on issues most voters actually care about, THEN they will start competing seriously again. This election will end with another 12-0 Democratic school board because voters from all walks of life uniformly reject the local GOP every time now, in every election. There are over 260 precincts in Fairfax County, and Republicans can't win even a couple dozen of them. They few they win are scattered and isolated.

The books in the schools are just fine, including the ones the local GOP theocrats complain are "sexually explicit." I have 3 kids long in FCPS, 2 in high school and 1 in 5th grade, and I don't want conservatives touching my kids' schools. They are vile.

New to the thread but posting the same trash talk on the forum for years, no doubt.

The people who try to DQ all the GOP-endorsed candidates right off the bat are often the same ones most frustrated when the all-Democrat School Board does one stupid thing after another, in part because the board is an echo chamber with no serious debate and no members really willing to challenge each other’s worst ideas. And if their ideas weren’t so consistently stupid, they wouldn’t be so afraid of having at least a few members with different perspectives willing to challenge them.

Have you ever been to a school board meeting? There is very serious debate and disagreement between all the 12 members and the student member. But those disagreements are about specific policies and things that will actually make a difference in the community. The only thing Republican members of the board used to do were spew homophobic remarks and skip most meetings. She provided no actual substance to the conversations at all and she was a terrible advocate for her district. I don't see any reason to indicate any of these other Republicans will be any different. The same local Republican party that just nominated a wife-beater also nominated Davis.

Give it a rest. These clowns gave Karl Frisch a blank check to waste $60 million on a new school in Vienna that isn’t needed and is surrounded by under-enrolled schools. There was no real debate. They let Karen Keys Gamarra push ahead with the “Lewis Academy” that has no clear purpose, again with no real debate. They changed TJ admissions with no real probing as to the impact in would have on other schools. They let Karen Corbett Sanders get her way with a $50 million addition to West Potomac even though Mount Vernon has excess capacity. And so on. The only time they ever really went at each other was over a largely meaningless resolution on supporting equity in education, where three or so members lit into the others because they didn’t think a competing resolution proposed by McLaughlin and Tholen was laden with enough progressive buzzwords. Meanwhile, academic performance suffers, teachers continue to struggle under the excessive demands placed on them by Gatehouse, and overcrowding in some parts of the county goes largely ignored.

This isn’t the product of a board that focuses on the toughest challenges facing FCPS and engages in healthy, thoughtful debate. It’s the product of a self-indulgent bunch of virtue-signaling lightweights who have the attention span of gnats, and value sound bites pitched to special-interest groups over hard work. And your canned response will always be to contend that others who might compete for their jobs aren’t sufficiently committed to supporting trans rights or the like, every single time. So bad mouth Saundra Davis all you want, but she was right in anticipating the negative impact that shuttered schools would have on kids’ academic and social development, and plenty of us want an alternative to the likes of Omeish and Keys Gamarra, who have accomplished nothing of value to FCPS during their terms.

+ 1,000,000.

+2,000,000

X3

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why did none of the Republicans fill out the survey? We deserve to know their answers to these pretty easy questions.
https://www.scribd.com/document/640759921/Nonpartisan-Fairfax-County-School-Board-Voter-Guide-4-26-23-FINAL#

I see this is “uploaded bt Lowell Feld.”

Feld runs the highly partisan “Blue Virginia” blog. In his world only the most “progressive” Democrats deserve praise; anyone else will get torn to shreds.

I’m assuming the GOP- endorsed candidates decided nothing good could come out of cooperating with Feld. We do need to understand their priorities but they will have other opportunities before November to communicate them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why did none of the Republicans fill out the survey? We deserve to know their answers to these pretty easy questions.
https://www.scribd.com/document/640759921/Nonpartisan-Fairfax-County-School-Board-Voter-Guide-4-26-23-FINAL#

I see this is “uploaded bt Lowell Feld.”

Feld runs the highly partisan “Blue Virginia” blog. In his world only the most “progressive” Democrats deserve praise; anyone else will get torn to shreds.

I’m assuming the GOP- endorsed candidates decided nothing good could come out of cooperating with Feld. We do need to understand their priorities but they will have other opportunities before November to communicate them.

And, if you look at the sponsors--they are anything but "non-partisan."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why did none of the Republicans fill out the survey? We deserve to know their answers to these pretty easy questions.
https://www.scribd.com/document/640759921/Nonpartisan-Fairfax-County-School-Board-Voter-Guide-4-26-23-FINAL#

Because the surveys were NOT sent to candidates not seeking endorsements from Fairfax Democrats.

They literally were sent to all filed candidates. It clearly states that in the survey. The Republicans just didn't respond. Maybe they don't know the answers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why did none of the Republicans fill out the survey? We deserve to know their answers to these pretty easy questions.
https://www.scribd.com/document/640759921/Nonpartisan-Fairfax-County-School-Board-Voter-Guide-4-26-23-FINAL#

Because the surveys were NOT sent to candidates not seeking endorsements from Fairfax Democrats.

They literally were sent to all filed candidates. It clearly states that in the survey. The Republicans just didn't respond. Maybe they don't know the answers?

Well, the questions were not the ones i would have asked.

[Anonymous]

I hadn't seen this before. It's clear from the responses that Munir has zero idea what they are talking about, and Moon has some spectacularly bad ideas (annual mental health checks "by a professional in the building" for both students and staff??)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hadn't seen this before. It's clear from the responses that Munir has zero idea what they are talking about, and Moon has some spectacularly bad ideas (annual mental health checks "by a professional in the building" for both students and staff??)

Big Brother? I'll take a pass on that. This is what parents are worried about. Teachers, too? That would really trouble me. What would the screening involve? Troubling and expensive.

[Anonymous]

No questions about restoring academic excellence on the questionnaire.

I just skimmed through. It will take a lot of time to seriously read all answers, but it appears to be mostly "word salad."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why did none of the Republicans fill out the survey? We deserve to know their answers to these pretty easy questions.
https://www.scribd.com/document/640759921/Nonpartisan-Fairfax-County-School-Board-Voter-Guide-4-26-23-FINAL#

Because the surveys were NOT sent to candidates not seeking endorsements from Fairfax Democrats.

They literally were sent to all filed candidates. It clearly states that in the survey. The Republicans just didn't respond. Maybe they don't know the answers?

Because blue virginia is a joke. They are crazy partisan radicals.

No centrist, moderste or conservative should give that group the time of day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why did none of the Republicans fill out the survey? We deserve to know their answers to these pretty easy questions.
https://www.scribd.com/document/640759921/Nonpartisan-Fairfax-County-School-Board-Voter-Guide-4-26-23-FINAL#

Because the surveys were NOT sent to candidates not seeking endorsements from Fairfax Democrats.

They literally were sent to all filed candidates. It clearly states that in the survey. The Republicans just didn't respond. Maybe they don't know the answers?

Because blue virginia is a joke. They are crazy partisan radicals.

No centrist, moderste or conservative should give that group the time of day.

Read the questions in the survey. Please point out to me where they were concerned about academics and merit--other than "equity."

[Anonymous]

To the posting at 05/06/2023 08:18, Moon did not say that. It was someone else. Go to the below site and take a look.
https://www.scribd.com/document/640759921/Nonpartisan-Fairfax-County-School-Board-Voter-Guide-4-26-23-FINAL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Has anyone announced that they are running against Anderson, Meren, or Frisch yet? Either as a Democrat trying to get the D endorsement (seems unlikely without a primary) or as a R or I.

They all have opponents:

https://www.vpap.org/localities/fairfax-county-va/elections/

Thank you! Also how in God’s green earth has Karl Frisch raised nearly $200k?? WHO likes this guy that much??!?

His funds come from out of state.

Mostly west coast/California.

He also gets financial support from nqtional donors.

He has very lottle support from fcps parents and local families.

No one cares what I think but I feel like you should only be able to fundraise from your own constituency. I feel like people who live out of state don’t know about our local issues by not sharing our lived experience here & I really don’t think their funding should be able to influence our election.

I don't care who donates to them as long as they're responsive, and Karl Frisch always has been.

So, you wanted the dog park instead of a school. Got it.

Honestly yes. My kids went to Shrevewood and it was so overcrowded - this new school in Dunn Loring will finally ease overcrowding in the nearby schools as Tysons and West Falls Church develop. I don't care about the dog park, but I like this new school site better than Oakton.

Key Word - "WAS" overcrowded - it no longer is overcrowded and neither are the schools that are around it. This project is a $60 Million waste of money that Karl Frisch is fully responsible for. Elected officials should be good stewards of tay payer money. I wonder if any school board member in history has wasted more money than Karl.

Think of the addition that McLean High or Chantilly high could have had with this money.

The issue was that the money was originally earmarked in a bond for a "Fairfax/Oakton elementary school." I'm sure Frisch had John Foster jump through some hoops to make the case that an elementary school in Dunn Loring was still a "Fairfax" elementary school.

In comparing, while re-allocating the money to McLean and Chantilly (assuming there is no need to build another ES in Fairfax/Oakton, though Mosaic sure is awfully big for an ES) would have made far more sense, it probably would have required more work on the part of county staff to justify. And they'd rather throw $60M in taxpayer money at a school that isn't needed at that site than actually work through how to adjust their plans and build more sensibly.

This is primarily on Frisch, but every other Board member who went along with his nonsense deserves to be voted out as well. These people are total nitwits and anything but good stewards of county resources.

Yes, this. And all of you just glossing over where the *new* site was chosen... there were PLENTY of families in Fairfax who are displeased because the school was NOT built on the "dog park." My child attends Mosaic and it's huge. Way too huge for an elementary school. It's not just about the physical building, which they are renovating (although, interestingly, not increasing the capacity, just making better use of space). It's about having a school so huge -- and the challenges that creates in terms of creating a sense of community, in terms of logistics for things. Every school wide event is an enormous challenge, with no parking, so many families that they need security, no elbow room, etc. Most Elementaries don't have that, so they end up with a LOT more PTA Bingo nights, ice cream nights, fun family nights, etc. But Karl wouldn't know or care about that since he isn't a parent and apparently cares more about dogs and / or their loudmouth nimby owners than our children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone announced that they are running against Anderson, Meren, or Frisch yet? Either as a Democrat trying to get the D endorsement (seems unlikely without a primary) or as a R or I.

They all have opponents:

https://www.vpap.org/localities/fairfax-county-va/elections/

Thank you! Also how in God’s green earth has Karl Frisch raised nearly $200k?? WHO likes this guy that much??!?

His funds come from out of state.

Mostly west coast/California.

He also gets financial support from nqtional donors.

He has very lottle support from fcps parents and local families.

No one cares what I think but I feel like you should only be able to fundraise from your own constituency. I feel like people who live out of state don’t know about our local issues by not sharing our lived experience here & I really don’t think their funding should be able to influence our election.

I don't care who donates to them as long as they're responsive, and Karl Frisch always has been.

So, you wanted the dog park instead of a school. Got it.

Honestly yes. My kids went to Shrevewood and it was so overcrowded - this new school in Dunn Loring will finally ease overcrowding in the nearby schools as Tysons and West Falls Church develop. I don't care about the dog park, but I like this new school site better than Oakton.

Key Word - "WAS" overcrowded - it no longer is overcrowded and neither are the schools that are around it. This project is a $60 Million waste of money that Karl Frisch is fully responsible for. Elected officials should be good stewards of tay payer money. I wonder if any school board member in history has wasted more money than Karl.

Think of the addition that McLean High or Chantilly high could have had with this money.

The issue was that the money was originally earmarked in a bond for a "Fairfax/Oakton elementary school." I'm sure Frisch had John Foster jump through some hoops to make the case that an elementary school in Dunn Loring was still a "Fairfax" elementary school.

In comparing, while re-allocating the money to McLean and Chantilly (assuming there is no need to build another ES in Fairfax/Oakton, though Mosaic sure is awfully big for an ES) would have made far more sense, it probably would have required more work on the part of county staff to justify. And they'd rather throw $60M in taxpayer money at a school that isn't needed at that site than actually work through how to adjust their plans and build more sensibly.

This is primarily on Frisch, but every other Board member who went along with his nonsense deserves to be voted out as well. These people are total nitwits and anything but good stewards of county resources.

Yes, this. And all of you just glossing over where the *new* site was chosen... there were PLENTY of families in Fairfax who are displeased because the school was NOT built on the "dog park." My child attends Mosaic and it's huge. Way too huge for an elementary school. It's not just about the physical building, which they are renovating (although, interestingly, not increasing the capacity, just making better use of space). It's about having a school so huge -- and the challenges that creates in terms of creating a sense of community, in terms of logistics for things. Every school wide event is an enormous challenge, with no parking, so many families that they need security, no elbow room, etc. Most Elementaries don't have that, so they end up with a LOT more PTA Bingo nights, ice cream nights, fun family nights, etc. But Karl wouldn't know or care about that since he isn't a parent and apparently cares more about dogs and / or their loudmouth nimby owners than our children.

Meh, Mosaic is on the bigger side, but it's not some huge outlier, there's 115 FCPS ES with a smaller design capacity, but there's also 26 with a larger design capacity. The average FCPS ES has a design capacity of ~900, Mosaic at 1,038 is ~15% bigger than your average ES. *shrug*