I can't believe that the school board's biggest beef with the cuts was sports fees. They look ridiculous, especially after voting on those turf fields as well this summer. Seriously, is Fairfax only interested in athletics or actually educating our children in academic subjects? Should I just enroll my child there so he or she can play on the football team and homeschool the rest of the time? Most of the county has been writing in that class sizes are out of control and they choose increasing class sizes verses charging for athletics. Unreal.

Anonymous wrote:

This thread is depressing.

Let's raise taxes, pass bonds, and fund our schools. Where's the problem here? In the richest county in the country, let's pay for our kids' education.

Thank you, PP. I am not generally in favor of increased taxes, but if you want a world class school system in one of the wealthiest counties in the country, we all may need to see our property taxes raised a smudge. It is ultimately good for our kids and property values. There is a lot of talk about waste of taxpayer dollars at the national level, but let's not confuse that with what FCPS is doing. Per pupil costs are actually quite reasonable, but the number of kids keeps increasing.

This. I imagine many of us moved here in no small part because of the outstanding schools. I think we can nibble around the edges and find wedge issues to exploit, but I have yet to see a realistic proposal that cuts $140 million without diminishing the overall quality of education provided to students.

I'm no more interesting in paying higher taxes than anyone else, but if doing so will continue to ensure that Fairfax has an effective and desirable school system, then I think it is a worthwhile investment.

Anonymous wrote:Also note that Fairfax County has been deemed a "Santuary County" for Illegal immigrants that are driven out from Prince William and Loudon starting in 2007

http://asu.news21.com/sanctuary-cities-fairfax-county-va/

This is a link to a Fairfax County powerpoint analyzing the demographics:
http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/demogrph/pdf/behind_the_headline.pdf

on page 7 of 14
2009 persons below poverty: FX 57,890 DC 104,901
Persons Below Poverty by Place of Birth Fairfax County and Washington, DC, 2009:
born in state of residence FX 28.5% DC 58.7%
citizen born outside state of residence FX 21.1% DC 33.8%
foreign born FX 50.3% DC 7.4%

FCPS has many new and renovated schools that serve immigrant populations. Low class sizes etc. County/FCPS classes plus faith based organizations offer English language instruction:
http://www.hogarimmigrantservices.org/s6.html#Education
http://www.cbesol.org/locations.html

Those faith based organizations were the type of instruction in English that immigrants have used for over 100 years. Asians have started churches that provide language and other instruction just as the Slavs/Irish did generations ago. The birth of the Catholic parochial school system that parallels public districts.

Elementary and Middle AAP shouldn't be a "sense of pride" as it exist today it is an embarrassment! Self selected offerings of AP/IB in middle and high school and TJ should be and are a sense of pride. Having ALL of our elementary and middle schools offer ALL children an equal chance to do their very best would be a sense of pride.

A subjective, hand picked, few children getting a better education than the rest is a "sense of shame". Not offering a program to benefit ALL children is a failure!

Yes truly advanced children should have their needs met in their base schools along with all the other advanced children in Fairfax County. But giving a select group of children a better education by allowing them into a "not cost effective" selective program is discriminatory and quite frankly a waste of tax dollars. It is an unnecessary expense, and, a great place to start cutting unnecessary spending.

Fortunately citizens of Fairfax are finally starting to recognize the AAP elementary and middle years program is not working and are speaking up.

And is it even 9.6 million that would be saved? Teacher expenditures seem to be a line item at 4.9 million.

Presumably, if AAP didn't exist, you'd need that 4.9 million to hire teachers in all the base schools for the greater number of kids.

I think it may make sense to talk about changes to AAP for various reasons, e.g. are too many kids being pulled into AAP such that it really dilutes the gen ed classes, etc..., but I'm not sure budget reasons seem substantial. Saving $5-10 million to slash what is a popular program that actually attracts people to FCPS and is at least educationally focused seems like a bad move -- and its proponents seem to mostly have sour grapes about AAP. Again, I think changes to AAP should be considered but it is not exactly an area of tremendous waste financially.

I would much prefer dropping FLES personally, although the school board has apparently said that's a nonstarter. I think FLES sounds good on paper - it's a very multicultural, international area and everyone likes the idea of kids learning foreign languages early. The problem is that they don't really learn much of anything with one hour a week. My kids get FLES at their school and it is more or less a waste or time.

The problem is that there doesn't appear to be that much "fat" in FCPS' budget. Certainly, there may have been money wasted during past years (hello, Gatehouse), but, overall, if you want a world class school system, you don't want to be cutting art, music, FLES, gifted, etc...Garza said the cuts are going to be "to the bone" and it's hard to sustain excellence for long with that kind of austerity. Bottom line - more money is needed.

The school board has also said athletic fees are a nonstarter. Again, I kind of thought that made sense. No doubt it would hurt certain kids who can't afford the fees, but I wondered if private businesses might be able to step in at certain schools to underwrite the fees, etc...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:17 pages? I knew it - the AAP crazies got out of their pen again.

I beg to differ. This is talking about where to cut the wasted tax dollars in FCPS schools. Looking for $148 million in cuts FY2014. AAP in elementary schools would be a good chunk to start with. It is not necessary and as it exist today a waste of $10million in tax dollars. Not to mention it is creating a community of divisiness, putting a lot of stress on very young children, offering a better education to a select few, creating wasteful spending, creating elitist entitled children, and bottom line wasting my tax dollars!!!

no, those who need it benefit from it very much. State law requires a special program for advanced learners. A few disgruntled people like yourself not withstanding, AAP and TJ are an understandable source of pride for the FCPS.

Anonymous wrote:17 pages? I knew it - the AAP crazies got out of their pen again.

I beg to differ. This is talking about where to cut the wasted tax dollars in FCPS schools. Looking for $148 million in cuts FY2014. AAP in elementary schools would be a good chunk to start with. It is not necessary and as it exist today a waste of $10million in tax dollars. Not to mention it is creating a community of divisiness, putting a lot of stress on very young children, offering a better education to a select few, creating wasteful spending, creating elitist entitled children, and bottom line wasting my tax dollars!!!

Anonymous wrote:Around $10 million
The FY 2013 total budget for the Advanced Academic Resource Program is $9.6 million and includes
69.5 positions.
*School-based expenditures total $8.8 million.
*Contracted salaries for 62.5 resource
*teacher positions total $4.9 million
*hourly salaries for teacher participation in screening and selection of advanced academic students, attendance at orientation, and substitute teachers total $0.3 million.
*Employee benefits of $2.2 million include retirement, health, dental, disability, and other employee benefit
expenditures.
*Operating expenses total $1.3 million, which is allocated to schools on a per-pupil basis
for textbooks and supplies.
*The school-based total represents the incremental cost which applies at the
elementary level and at the three middle schools that have a sixth grade. Costs and positions for the
elementary and middle school center programs and the middle school honors program are included in the
elementary and middle school core programs because the students are being served by positions allocated
from the standard staffing formulas.
*The Advanced Academic Resource Program also includes nonschool-based funding totaling $0.8 million
and 7.0 positions.
-Contracted salaries for the 7.0 positions total $0.6 million. Hourly salaries total $648.
-Employee benefits of $0.3 million include retirement, health, dental, disability, and other employee benefits
expenditures.

So that is a small percentage of the $140 million shortfall, especially considering that many of the expenses are teacher-related and would exist regardless of the program of study. These kids would need teachers whether or not they were in AAP.

Anonymous wrote:Around $10 million
The FY 2013 total budget for the Advanced Academic Resource Program is $9.6 million and includes
69.5 positions.
*School-based expenditures total $8.8 million.
*Contracted salaries for 62.5 resource
*teacher positions total $4.9 million
*hourly salaries for teacher participation in screening and selection of advanced academic students, attendance at orientation, and substitute teachers total $0.3 million.
*Employee benefits of $2.2 million include retirement, health, dental, disability, and other employee benefit
expenditures.
*Operating expenses total $1.3 million, which is allocated to schools on a per-pupil basis
for textbooks and supplies.
*The school-based total represents the incremental cost which applies at the
elementary level and at the three middle schools that have a sixth grade. Costs and positions for the
elementary and middle school center programs and the middle school honors program are included in the
elementary and middle school core programs because the students are being served by positions allocated
from the standard staffing formulas.
*The Advanced Academic Resource Program also includes nonschool-based funding totaling $0.8 million
and 7.0 positions.
-Contracted salaries for the 7.0 positions total $0.6 million. Hourly salaries total $648.
-Employee benefits of $0.3 million include retirement, health, dental, disability, and other employee benefits
expenditures.

So that's not the issue what is the large expenditure?

Around $10 million
The FY 2013 total budget for the Advanced Academic Resource Program is $9.6 million and includes
69.5 positions.
*School-based expenditures total $8.8 million.
*Contracted salaries for 62.5 resource
*teacher positions total $4.9 million
*hourly salaries for teacher participation in screening and selection of advanced academic students, attendance at orientation, and substitute teachers total $0.3 million.
*Employee benefits of $2.2 million include retirement, health, dental, disability, and other employee benefit
expenditures.
*Operating expenses total $1.3 million, which is allocated to schools on a per-pupil basis
for textbooks and supplies.
*The school-based total represents the incremental cost which applies at the
elementary level and at the three middle schools that have a sixth grade. Costs and positions for the
elementary and middle school center programs and the middle school honors program are included in the
elementary and middle school core programs because the students are being served by positions allocated
from the standard staffing formulas.
*The Advanced Academic Resource Program also includes nonschool-based funding totaling $0.8 million
and 7.0 positions.
-Contracted salaries for the 7.0 positions total $0.6 million. Hourly salaries total $648.
-Employee benefits of $0.3 million include retirement, health, dental, disability, and other employee benefits
expenditures.

Anonymous wrote:I sense the anti-AAP crowd is out in force again. I actually was in AAP - at the time it was called GT -- years ago here in FCPS and I think it was of tremendous benefit to me. I would have been very bored and unchallenged in a gen ed classroom. But, it does seem like the numbers have gotten out of hand in recent years such that I think the program could benefit from some retooling.

However, bringing this back to the budget question - is AAP costly? Aside from the bus issue, which could be considered separately, regardless of whether the kids are in AAP or not, they need to be educated and need a teacher and I do not believe the AAP teachers get paid differently than other teachers. What kind of additional costs are involved in offering AAP?

This is just to run the program:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcps.edu%2Ffs%2Fbudget%2Fdocuments%2Fapproved%2FFY13%2FFY2013ProgramBudget.pdf&ei=fH1lUo7tFcS82wXTioHACg&usg=AFQjCNElhOsrlac-Dub_TMZn-vlPOZSQTA&bvm=bv.54934254,d.b2I&cad=rja

I sense the anti-AAP crowd is out in force again. I actually was in AAP - at the time it was called GT -- years ago here in FCPS and I think it was of tremendous benefit to me. I would have been very bored and unchallenged in a gen ed classroom. But, it does seem like the numbers have gotten out of hand in recent years such that I think the program could benefit from some retooling.

However, bringing this back to the budget question - is AAP costly? Aside from the bus issue, which could be considered separately, regardless of whether the kids are in AAP or not, they need to be educated and need a teacher and I do not believe the AAP teachers get paid differently than other teachers. What kind of additional costs are involved in offering AAP?

What I meant was it favors smart kids and those whose parents know how to work the system.

Not to mention all of the average, not really smart kids whose parents know how to work the system.

I thought the article mentioned some good studies examining the effect, but I see your point -- you want proof in a professional journal...or conference. So I guess this wouldn't count:

A study published by Martin Gardiner (currently at Brown University's Center for the Study of Human Development) in the May 1996 issue of the journal Nature, groups of first graders were given music instruction that emphasized sequential skill development and musical games involving rhythm and pitch. After six months, the students scored significantly better in math than students in groups that received traditional music instruction. (Reading scores for the two groups didn't show marked differences.) Follow-up studies with different groups of students showed similar results.

Nor this:

"Examination of Relationships between Participation in School Music Programs of Differing Quality and Standardized Test Results,” [ http://people.ku.edu/~cmj/researchreports/musicandtestscores.pdf ] published in 2007 by Christopher Johnson in the Journal of Research in Music Education, professor of music education and music therapy at the University of Kansas, revealed that students in elementary schools with superior music education programs scored around 22 percent higher in English and 20 percent higher in math scores on standardized tests, compared to schools with low-quality music programs, regardless of socioeconomic disparities among the schools or school districts. Johnson compares the concentration that music training requires to the focus needed to perform well on a standardized test. Aside from test score results, Johnson’s study highlights the positive effects that a quality music education can have on a young child’s success.

The researched and peer reviewed papers from these studies have been published...a little internet searching will find them. There are dozens more but I have made my point.

Anonymous wrote:PP again. And for those suggesting taking all music out of schools, this might be an interesting read for you.

Using Music to Close the Academic Gap

http://m.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/Using-Music-to-Close-the-Academic-Gap/280362/

Beautiful fairy tale. Let's wait and see the results published in credible journals...and let's try and avoid another Mozart effect fad.