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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a veteran elementary FCPS teacher and as a graduate of an FCPS high school in the 1980s, let me offer a point of view.

So much of what contributes to a good school is the principal. There is very little oversight of a principal other than test scores. Principals often do not choose to report things like bullying and violence in schools through official channels, because they will get a phone call from the central office asking them why they can’t control their school. So they underreport or let things slide.

The best way to counteract that is to contact the school board for explanations of why situations are not being handled.

In terms of instruction, elementary teachers had textbooks taken away and instructional policy is made by people at Gatehouse who haven’t been in a classroom in years and who want to cut costs. They jump on bandwagons like whole language and don’t know what they are talking about,

The way to counter that is to take excellent teachers out of the classroom for a year at a time, have them report to Gatehouse to organize and lead teacher training, and then put them back at their schools.

Behavior is out of control because so many kids need more restrictive placements for a while to get under control, but there aren’t enough placements for severely emotionally or behaviorally disabled kids in private placements because the county no longer contracts with schools that use restraint and seclusion, rather than being sure such use is closely supervised and documented. So, the pipeline has backed up.

Kids at Burke School are regularly out of control, assaulting teachers, so that many Burke teachers are suffering from concussions (THIS IS FACT) and the police are frequently called to the building. There are no seats for those kids in private placements, parents refuse to get treatment for their kids, and it’s a zoo.

As a result, kids who should be at Burke are at CSS programs, and kids in gen ed who should be in CSS are stuck trashing classrooms and assaulting peers and staff.

There are many, many students in Title I schools who can barely read in the fifth and sixth grades. That is also a fact. Again, principals are not well-supervised and I know some who have lied to central office about what academic interventions are in place.

It’s a horrifying problem. As parents, please help by contacting your school board members, who are not educators and don’t know what is going on until you tell them.[/quote]

FCPS is FCPS....every school similar  but depends on the teachers and principals which seem to change at most schools frequently.[/quote]

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