Tuesday, May 21, 2013
FCPS students help build the $800 home in Springfield.
A home constructed by Fairfax County high school students is now on the market as part of a program that helps teens build up their resumes. “It really provides the real world experience for students,” said Chad Maclin, program manage for trade and industrial programs the Fairfax County Public School System. The house on 7005 Springville Court in Springfield is one of 21 homes students have built in the 42 years that FCPS' residential construction program has been running. It’s done as a partnership between the school district and the nonprofit Foundation for Applied Technical Education (FATE). Maclin is the executive director of the program. “Our model is we always have two homes under construction, one in rough carpentry one in finished …
Monday, May 20, 2013
The students, Olivia Franjie and Jessica Gallogly, were three-year varsity starters for the Annandale Atoms.
The Northern Virginia Community College women’s volleyball team has some new, familiar faces on their team with the addition of two Annandale High School volleyball players. Olivia Franjie, a three-year varsity starter for the Atoms and captain of her junior and senior campaigns, and Jessica Gallogly, also a three-year varsity starter, signed National Letters of Intent Friday with NOVA, according to a news release. “Both Olivia and Jessie are well rounded players and can play multiple positions,” said NOVA Women's Volleyball Coach Marcus Robinson in the release. “Olivia is a very talented setter and will bring strong leadership to that position. Jessica is a versatile player with good court awareness.”
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology student Lauren Huang is one of 141 high school students recognized by the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program
A student at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) has been named as a 2013 Presidential Scholar by the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program. Senior Lauren Huang joins a total of 141 high school seniors who were recognized by the program, which is administered by the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars and the U.S. Department of Education. Huang participates in a variety of extracurricular activities at TJHSST, including the Math, Computer and Debate teams, according to a news release from Fairfax County Public Schools. She also writes for the school's literary magazine, Threshold. In addition to being named a Scholar, Huang was named a 2013 National Merit Semifinalist by the National Merit Scholarship …
Friday, May 17, 2013
Fairfax County School Board will hold listening sessions next week to help develop a strategic plan for digital learning.
Teachers, students and parents in Fairfax County didn't have the smoothest experience with digital learning in 2012-2013. As Fairfax County Public Schools rolled out a new online math program in Fall 2012, students and teachers complained they had difficulty navigating the books, saying there were publisher errors and inconsistencies, technology roadblocks and student difficulty in accessing the information, among other complaints, like a lack of teacher buy-in to the program. They said the program, instead of advancing learning and achievement, was pushing it back, calling the $10.4 million initiative "a big disaster" with no clear solution. The short-term solution was to re-negotiate contracts to get some hard copy books back in the …
Thursday, May 16, 2013
The early education program helps prepare students for K-12 education, but more than 800 are waiting for services.
Lillian Hill’s Head Start classroom at Camelot Elementary School is bustling and filled with kids the Friday before Mother’s Day. Hill teaches 16 kids -- a full classroom. Head Start has 89 classrooms across 62 Fairfax County elementary schools, but it's not enough to meet the demand. The program is at capacity but a lack of funds for expansion, partly because of sequestration, means 800 children will stay on a waiting list for Head Start, leaving them less prepared than their peers to enter kindergarten and to learn. The White House estimates that because of the sequester, 70,000 children nationally who would have been served by Head Start will not have access to the program by the end of the year. On this day in Hill's classroom, she is …
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Both Annandale area schools exit the Northern Region tournament with losses.
The Annandale High School boys lacrosse team fell 15-5 to Chantilly in the first round of the Virginia AAA Northern Region tournament Tuesday. With the loss, the Atoms end their season 10-8 overall. On the girls' side, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology girls lacrosse team met a similar fate when they fell 19-18 in overtime to Yorktown. The Colonials put up a fight to end their season 10-8 overall. The Woodson High School boys and girls lacrosse teams both won in the first round of the Northern Region Tournament on Tuesday. See the Full Northern Region Boys Lacrosse Playoff Schedule and Results
Teacher pay and foreign language cutbacks are also concerns as Fairfax County School Board looks for another $30 million in reductions for next year's budget.
If push came to shove, Jane Lipp would give her right kidney to keep an instructional coach at her school. The principal of South County High School, which has a 49 percent minority population, said that's the kind of sacrifice she'd make, drama aside, to keep a position that's been 'instrumental" in helping her teachers push the school's diverse student body to succeed. More than a dozen of the 40 speakers who addressed the school board Tuesday night in a public hearing about Fairfax County Public Schools' budget spoke about the role coaches play in the day to day lives of teachers and students, including their help toward narrowing student achievement gaps. The public hearing comes as the school board prepares to adopt a $2.5 billion …
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
The Unified Prevention Coalition has partnered with the Fairfax County Police Department for an annual "medicine cabinet clean-out" which aims to raise awareness about prescription drug abuse in the county.
Prescription drug abuse is on the rise in Fairfax County and a handful of local organizations are working to put a stop to what the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has classified as an epidemic. Prescription drug abuse is a different problem compared to others in the county, due to its reach and rate of expansion, said Amy Reif, health sector coordinator for the Unified Prevention Coalition (UPC) of Fairfax County, who spoke with reporters Tuesday at the Mason District Governmental Center in Annandale. According to statistics from UPC, there were 51 drug/poison deaths in Fairfax County in 2011 and deaths by prescription drugs such as fentanyl, hydrocodone, methadone and oxycodone than by cocaine and heroin. In an effort to curb …
Officials say no funding for consultant as school board members say there is a "facilities crisis and a capacity crisis."
The Fairfax County School Board decided Monday to postpone re-evaluating how to determine the order in which county schools are renovated. Heeding the recommendation of the county’s Facilities Planning Advisory Council, Board members agreed they need more time to discuss the matter to implement any real changes. The board develops its Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) every five years, which includes new schools, renovations, capacity enhancements, additions and infrastructure management. Schools currently receive improvements in the order in which they're ranked on the system's renovation queue, driven by a list of weighted criteria ranging from how the buildings serve "Fundamental Educational Requirements (FER)," to their age and physical …
Some school board members say "disconnect," mistrust still exists between principals, parents.
As the Fairfax County School Board prepares to vote on another round of changes in a years-long push for reform of its discipline policies, board members are struggling to find common ground on when parents should be notified if their child could be suspended or expelled. Fairfax County Public Schools staff returned to the school board Monday with a number of proposed changes to the Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, some of them based on a list of 52 recommendations to overhaul discipline practices systemwide a community committee put forth earlier this spring. See all proposed changes here. But parental notification — an issue on which there has been little agreement since the push for reform began following the suicide of two…
Frederick C. Cassiday
4:44 pm on Saturday, May 18, 2013
A picture of her instead of the artwork in front of TJ would have been much better. more ›