FCPS School Board and Brabrand Must Go

[Anonymous]

Dear FCPS Families,

We apologize for the significant difficulties experienced with the FCPS 24-7 Blackboard system.

FCPS 24-7 (Blackboard Learn) will be unavailable beginning 6 p.m. tonight, April 16, until 8 a.m., April 18, to allow Blackboard to perform system maintenance and updates to ensure stability for FCPS Distance Learning.

Please continue to access instructional programming for elementary, middle, and high school students on local cable channels. Additional distance learning resources by grade level are available on the FCPS website: Distance Learning.

Thank you for your patience and support.

Fairfax County Public Schools

[Anonymous]

PP above and I just want to scream, “You have ONE job, FCPS!”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no question that FCPS over the past few months has been a disaster. This new FCPS school board is filled with egomaniacal fools. They lack the experience and strength to hold Superintendent Brabrand and administration to account, and they instead focus all their energy on sending out repetitive newsletters, isolating video clips of themselves and holding juvenile “quaranstreams.” I’ve received as many as six newsletters from school board members in one day. This shows their lack of respect for the community—they only respect themselves. Most gallingly, they voted in secret to add 1.5 personal staff for each board member without disclosing it to the public, amounting to more than $1M in additional taxpayer dollars.

They’ve been in office less than four months and have already run the system into the ground. It’s no wonder principals and staff are revolting against the board and Brabrand. Hopefully the community and parents will revolt, too, so we can get new leadership.

Right, and past school boards bear no responsibility for this. This is the result of central administration having no oversight for many many years. Not a damn thing has really changed on the school board with the exception of having slightly fewer embarrassments and petty spats during meetings now that Elizabeth is gone. Otherwise, it's exactly the same. The problem is that they hire a Supervisor and then delegate everything, and the supervisors have always a "you need me more than I need you" attitude. I'm not sure how Gatehouse has become so much more powerful than its supposed bosses, but that's the way it's been for many years. The school board has no teeth and Gatehouse is a bloated bureaucracy with no oversight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree. But people voted in this schoolboard over national party politics and not based off who is qualified or what their goals are for fcps. Their incompetence is an unintended consequence of a conscious choice by voters.

They are no worse than any previous board. In fact, they are certainly better than some who are gone now. What we are seeing is not the result of a few months of one group of people, but rather years of neglect that has nothing to do with political party. The school board for whatever reason does not have control of Gatehouse and hasn't for a very long time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't you let them figure this out. Then find out what went wrong. Then advicate for corrective action.

Demanding termination of the superintendent at this time would be even more disruptive. He's doing his best to solve the problem. Maybe it's someone in IT who screwed up.. Maybe it's BB didn't provide what they promised. Maybe it's something else.

Proceed with logic. Not a lynch mob emotion.

They should require you use your school login to join videoconferencing (so your real name appears), and the teacher to let each person into the room.

MCPS did this from the start. It's a configuration option. Why did FCPS not think to do the same thing. This is basic IT stuff, and with numerous articles about "zoombombing", how did they not think of this?

Rumor is the IT director either decided not to configure it that way, or forgot to. There will be no accountability.

Yup. Nobody got fired today, or yesterday, not will they tomorrow.

They should have been fired back when they said they needed 4 weeks off to get to, what, This?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree. But people voted in this schoolboard over national party politics and not based off who is qualified or what their goals are for fcps. Their incompetence is an unintended consequence of a conscious choice by voters.

They are no worse than any previous board. In fact, they are certainly better than some who are gone now. What we are seeing is not the result of a few months of one group of people, but rather years of neglect that has nothing to do with political party. The school board for whatever reason does not have control of Gatehouse and hasn't for a very long time.

The school board doesn't have control over Gatehouse? I thought the problem was that the school board had too much power and was focused on feminine products instead of education. Can't even keep your complaints straight...

[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.

That's a very misguided comment. It's not an either/or situation. Kudos to them for getting the food distribution up and running. That's important for a lot of families and it is their responsibility. Getting that right has nothing to do with the horrible execution of distance learning.

For you to say, "let the kids starve...just get the online education working" is selfish and quite idiotic. Also, you need to take some initiative to provide educational resources to your own kids. I hope you weren't waiting over a month for the distance learning to start before engaging your kids in educational activities.

No, it is not the school system’s responsibility to feed the needy breakfast and lunch, or at least it shouldn’t be. It is, however, the responsibility of the public school system to educate the children that reside within its boundaries. That’s why people pay the exorbitant property taxes required to reside in Fairfax County.

Where is the Fairfax HHS? MIA.

There is no good reason why the organization responsible for education should be doing this while the organization responsible for Health and Human Services is AWOL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no question that FCPS over the past few months has been a disaster. This new FCPS school board is filled with egomaniacal fools. They lack the experience and strength to hold Superintendent Brabrand and administration to account, and they instead focus all their energy on sending out repetitive newsletters, isolating video clips of themselves and holding juvenile “quaranstreams.” I’ve received as many as six newsletters from school board members in one day. This shows their lack of respect for the community—they only respect themselves. Most gallingly, they voted in secret to add 1.5 personal staff for each board member without disclosing it to the public, amounting to more than $1M in additional taxpayer dollars.

They’ve been in office less than four months and have already run the system into the ground. It’s no wonder principals and staff are revolting against the board and Brabrand. Hopefully the community and parents will revolt, too, so we can get new leadership.

Right, and past school boards bear no responsibility for this. This is the result of central administration having no oversight for many many years. Not a damn thing has really changed on the school board with the exception of having slightly fewer embarrassments and petty spats during meetings now that Elizabeth is gone. Otherwise, it's exactly the same. The problem is that they hire a Supervisor and then delegate everything, and the supervisors have always a "you need me more than I need you" attitude. I'm not sure how Gatehouse has become so much more powerful than its supposed bosses, but that's the way it's been for many years. The school board has no teeth and Gatehouse is a bloated bureaucracy with no oversight.

Elizabeth was the ONLY school hoard member who advocated for financial stewardship and focusing on the basics.

[Anonymous]

Elizabeth would have called BS on this by now already.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't you let them figure this out. Then find out what went wrong. Then advicate for corrective action.

Demanding termination of the superintendent at this time would be even more disruptive. He's doing his best to solve the problem. Maybe it's someone in IT who screwed up.. Maybe it's BB didn't provide what they promised. Maybe it's something else.

Proceed with logic. Not a lynch mob emotion.

They should require you use your school login to join videoconferencing (so your real name appears), and the teacher to let each person into the room.

MCPS did this from the start. It's a configuration option. Why did FCPS not think to do the same thing. This is basic IT stuff, and with numerous articles about "zoombombing", how did they not think of this?

Rumor is the IT director either decided not to configure it that way, or forgot to. There will be no accountability.

Yup. Nobody got fired today, or yesterday, not will they tomorrow.

They should have been fired back when they said they needed 4 weeks off to get to, what, This?

Sad. But that's FCPS.

Now back to the important stuff, we still have schools named after slave owning George Washington.

The education stuff is just a distraction anyways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree. But people voted in this schoolboard over national party politics and not based off who is qualified or what their goals are for fcps. Their incompetence is an unintended consequence of a conscious choice by voters.

Blah blah blah. Don’t miss Schultz, Wilson was far and away the dumbest member on the School Board over the past 20 years, and almost every other Republican who got beat last fall was an extremist lunatic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree. But people voted in this schoolboard over national party politics and not based off who is qualified or what their goals are for fcps. Their incompetence is an unintended consequence of a conscious choice by voters.

They are no worse than any previous board. In fact, they are certainly better than some who are gone now. What we are seeing is not the result of a few months of one group of people, but rather years of neglect that has nothing to do with political party. The school board for whatever reason does not have control of Gatehouse and hasn't for a very long time.

True.

The last school board holds a great deal of the responsibility for this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't you let them figure this out. Then find out what went wrong. Then advicate for corrective action.

Demanding termination of the superintendent at this time would be even more disruptive. He's doing his best to solve the problem. Maybe it's someone in IT who screwed up.. Maybe it's BB didn't provide what they promised. Maybe it's something else.

Proceed with logic. Not a lynch mob emotion.

They should require you use your school login to join videoconferencing (so your real name appears), and the teacher to let each person into the room.

MCPS did this from the start. It's a configuration option. Why did FCPS not think to do the same thing. This is basic IT stuff, and with numerous articles about "zoombombing", how did they not think of this?

The easy explanation for this is that FCPS would handle the logins in your setup and they don't have the network capacity for that. But this is really a vendor problem and Blackboard needs to fix it. They have touted their distance learning capabilities. So they need to provide it. They told Brabrand, per his email, that they will.

I'm guessing they didn't do sufficent load testing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree. But people voted in this schoolboard over national party politics and not based off who is qualified or what their goals are for fcps. Their incompetence is an unintended consequence of a conscious choice by voters.

Blah blah blah. Don’t miss Schultz, Wilson was far and away the dumbest member on the School Board over the past 20 years, and almost every other Republican who got beat last fall was an extremist lunatic.

You sound like a child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

The view must be nice from your ivory tower.

People pay for schools for the education. The free meal program was supposed to happen at a school only. Not delivered like an uber service.

It’s the school’s way of keeping bus drivers and nutritional services employees working.

Schools are community resources. That's why they are sites for voting and community meetings, and for food distribution when unemployment spikes suddenly and many people otherwise would go hungry.

Assuming you don't want children to starve, where do you propose to distribute food instead?

I have no problem with FCPS distributing food at the schools. My problem is that FCPS is spending their time and resources working on food distribution while my children have gone without education for 5 weeks now. Assuming that you can’t afford private school, there is no other entity from which they can be educated. However, there are many other community resources that can handle food distribution. School system’s #1 priority should be education and that is where they should put their focus first.

We got far more info about food distribution than we ever did about FCPS's distance learning plans for the first few weeks of this.

Either they had no plan at all and were scrambling, or there are misplaced priorities.