Anonymous wrote:Brabrand has been doing his best and there is room for improvement. Some board members, Asst. Superintendents, Principals (even the new ones), and Asst. Ppals. must go.

Is that you Scott?

Anonymous wrote:Brabrand has been doing his best and there is room for improvement. Some board members, Asst. Superintendents, Principals (even the new ones), and Asst. Ppals. must go.

Brabrand has totally bungled distance learning.

Academic performance hasn't improved.

He has been a complete failure when it comes to facilities.

He lucked into a good economy from 2017 to early 2020, which allowed FCPS to pay teachers more.

What exactly has he done well? If anyone should pay the price for the mess here, it's Brabrand and some others at Gatehouse, along with long-time SB members, not principals or assistant principals. They raise issues and get ignored.

Brabrand has been doing his best and there is room for improvement. Some board members, Asst. Superintendents, Principals (even the new ones), and Asst. Ppals. must go.

What they need are school-based representatives. A high, middle, and elementary school teacher/principal. There is a student representative, but nothing for the staff. Because VA is a right to work state, unions hold very little sway.

Teachers and principals said from the beginning that what they were trying to implement wasn't going to work with the technology in place. School-based staff had very little input. Plus, there are different needs and concerns for different grade-levels. Apparently, this all worked pretty well for elementary school, but it was a nightmare for high school. Middle school teachers had office hours, and they had a lot of the same issues.

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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.

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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?

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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.

That's Braband passing the buck for their own incompetence. The statement from Blackboard in his email looks like a "FCPS threatened to cancel our contract, so we're going to take the fall for FCPS not configuring our software correctly."

Read it again Blackboard is supposed to provide distance learning. They need to do that. They're getting paid by the client, they need to provide the service, whether the client is tech savvy or not.

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.

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.

That's Braband passing the buck for their own incompetence. The statement from Blackboard in his email looks like a "FCPS threatened to cancel our contract, so we're going to take the fall for FCPS not configuring our software correctly."

Anonymous wrote:100%

I think the problems extend far past the superintendent and the board but someone needs to be held accountable for this disaster of a virtual learning plan. It does not surprise me at all that it has been a disaster because of the year after year problems I have seen.

Brabrand should be terminated for cause, and KCS should step down immediately as the Chair of the School Board.

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.

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.

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.

Wasn't it Brabrand's responsibility to make sure proper precautions were taken?

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.

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.

You’ve got my vote, PP.

I’m in social services in Fairfax County and have watched our schools creep into food distribution and social work - basically overstepping boundaries and making established charities and networks superfluous.

Also entirely too much focus on unisex bathrooms and menstrual supply availability when we have ignored sinking graduation rates, overcrowded schools and changing demographics.

It’s been smoke and mirrors for too long.

Aren't schools paid by the federal government to feed students? They agreed to it, so they need to fulfill that contract even if school is closed.