Reply to APS School Board candidates?

Forum Index » VA Public Schools other than FCPS

Reply to "APS School Board candidates?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=ChenLing]Hello everyone -- Chen Ling here.

For the person who asked, here is the link to the candidate forum hosted by APE and moderated by Jo DeVoe from ArlNow: https://vimeo.com/923302481?share=copy

I have an engineering/science/data background, with a focus on bringing visibility and understandability to complex data systems. I think that is a skill the current school board is sorely lacking.

For example, APS pays about 20% more per student than our neighboring locales, and *no one on the board knows why*. You can read the report from their Budget Advisory Council for the last several years where they call this out. We pay our teachers less -- we're on average 5th out of 8 in the area.

What they have done instead is to make small cuts uniformly across all of the schools, to the point where many schools are on a tipping point. I spoke with one principal who is losing yet another special ed teacher spot, after losing multiple teacher and staff positions in the last few years. Because of the rules, they have to get rid of their youngest teacher, who is apparently amazing. Right now they can barely provide enough special ed services to meet the needs of at need students in their school. They were down one at the beginning of the year, and the classroom teachers were not able to manage the classes because those students became too disruptive. With that extra special ed teacher, they were able to provide help for those kids and now everyone in those classes can focus on learning.

What the current board has been doing has not been enough. When you ask them questions you get a response, but often not a real answer, especially on the why.  When I encountered this, I wondered whether they didn't want to give an answer or if they didn't know the answer, and it quickly because obvious that they didn't know the answer.

This is why I'm running. Like many of you, my wife and I moved to Arlington for the great schools and the great community. But our schools are in trouble, and what the board is currently doing is not enough. I think my unique skills will help provide clarity to the decision making process, and I will not stop asking questions or pushing until we start providing real answers. I think the current members of the school board care about the teachers and students. I think the other people running care as well, but caring is not enough -- you have to have a plan. I will do something different. I may fail, but it will not be for lack of trying.

Thank you if you've gotten to the end. :)
I'd be happy to respond to any questions. 
You can see more about me and my platforms at: https://chen4arlington.org, or send me an email at chen@chen4arlington.org.[/quote]

What do you mean the board doesn't know why we spend more than other counties? Four-fifths of the budget is staff salaries and Arlington has lower class sizes and smaller schools than most other counties (i.e., more staff). You talk about special ed staffing above--this is all based on planning factors and the number of students in the school with IEPs. You're suggesting that each school be allocated different numbers of staff based on (something) instead of having a uniform staffing model? How would that work? Who determines how many staff are really needed at each school? And as for letting go the "youngest" teacher, you probably mean the teacher with the least tenure, which is how that works in every school district in the country. Not to mention that APS staff are offered positions elsewhere in the system if a position is eliminated at a specific school.

Maybe you should volunteer for some committees and learn some more about how school systems work before running for one of the five board seats--we don't need another board member who only started paying attention when their kids hit elementary school and is now going to learn on the job by asking questions that have already been asked and answered a thousand times. You might also learn about what a school board is responsible for versus the paid school administration, and why you don't get answers from the people you are asking. [/quote]

+1000. Thank you. Sit down LC. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics