Our Loudoun Schools

Supervisor vote on NCC land for High School due next week

2012-02-08T17:06:00.000-05:00

After successfully punting a million-dollar decision down the road for 30 days, the Loudoun Board of Supervisors is once again facing the question of whether to put down one million dollars in earnest money on the National Conference Center property. The deal, which was negotiated by the previous Board of Supervisors, is uncommon for school property. LCPS has generally set earnest money amounts

Tardiness Charges Getting Lots of Attention

2012-02-08T15:06:00.001-05:00

Getting the kids out the door and off to school every day is such an assumed routine for most of our community that we forget about the kids who don't for one reason or another. We have kids who don't complete high school. We have kids who are home schooled. We have kids who skip school. And then we have kids who don't make it to school on time, which happens a few times for lots of kids (

LCPS School Board's FY13 Budget

2012-02-08T11:55:00.003-05:00

As was seen in last night's vote on the LCPS budget: Motions were made that revealed a financial impact but not a human/educational impact. These motions were shared with board members mid-afternoon on budget-adoption day; they were not vetted by staff in advance. The educational professionals who are held responsible for the decisions made by a school board were not given an opportunity to

From my inbox... mostly-empty buses

2012-02-02T09:18:00.003-05:00

Did you ever see a bus with just a few kids on it and wonder why it wasn't full? That's a question that comes up over and over again. In response to an inquiry into one of those buses, I received the following email chain: This bus is a designated Senior Only Bus. It is scheduled to pick up students within the Tuscarora High School attendance area who have been grand-fathered by the School Board

Let Them Clap, Eric

2012-01-31T20:46:00.002-05:00

I'm sitting through hours of speakers at tonight's School Board meeting in a room completely filled with members of the public, many of them bus drivers, teaching assistants and cafeteria workers. People are sitting on the floor three-deep against the wall. Speakers are making very emotional statements. Nearly all are LCPS employees. Chairman Eric Hornberger has repeatedly asked people not to

Benefits for LCPS Employees

2012-01-31T20:02:00.001-05:00

I'm sitting in the School Board meeting tonight, listening to speaker after speaker talk about their concern that the Board may cut benefits from employees working less than full time: Chairman Eric Hornberger (Ashburn) asked senior school staff Jan. 20 to provide the estimated cost savings, types of positions and number of full-time employees affected should the policy be modified to no less

Bergel Newsletter Jan 24, 2012

2012-01-25T07:07:00.001-05:00

24 January 2012 Greetings! This meeting appears to be running late, but I wanted to make sure I got a mailing out to remind you of a few things: • We will be in Richmond this next week. We approved our Legislative Agenda recently and will be speaking to our local reps who are currently in session. • We went through a couple agenda items tonight that addressed sports for home school students

LCPS Employees sneaking peaks at Board Member Emails?: Updated

2012-01-24T14:06:00.002-05:00

Yesterday morning I checked the agenda for tonight's School Board meeting online, and wrote a routine post about it. This afternoon, after learning that the School Board would not be voting on its budget tonight as previously announced, I checked the agenda again to see if it had been updated to reflect the change, and indeed it had. But there was something new on the agenda as well, Item 10.01,

Top Subject Areas for School Board Budget Questions

2012-01-23T11:03:00.000-05:00

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A different look at School Board Budget Questions

2012-01-23T10:42:00.001-05:00

Click here for a larger view

Who's Asking? School Board Budget Questions

2012-01-23T08:15:00.000-05:00

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School Board Jan 24 Meeting: Legislation & Budget

2012-01-23T07:31:00.001-05:00

UPDATE: The agenda has completely changed in the past 24 hours. The meeting will now be a budget review session, not a vote on the Budget, and a proposed policy change (see next post: LCPS Employees sneaking peaks at Board Member Emails?) The original post, with the original agenda, is below: The School board Agenda for January 24th includes review of three education-related proposals in the

A FOIA Attempt

2012-01-12T06:00:00.000-05:00

At the first real meeting of the new School Board, returning member Jennifer Bergel accused the six incoming members (the six-pack) of taking secret straw votes on the Board's legislative packet in advance of the meeting. I knew that the other returning board members were also unhappy about the way that the legislative issues were raised by the six-pack,

Cutting a budget without cutting into people

2012-01-11T13:45:00.000-05:00

Bill Fox (Leesburg) explains why cutting a program from the LCPS budget "doesn't mean that this is a program that we don't support." As Mary Poppins sang, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. I'm really glad that Bill took the time to say this. Some people will criticize him for it, from one side to say that if he likes something that he should fund it

Budget Facts: Loudoun's Cost Per Pupil

2012-01-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

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Tidbits

2012-01-11T06:00:00.000-05:00

Governor McDonnell supports a "Tim Tebow" law allowing home school students to compete in public-school sports leagues (Washington Post) Full Day Kindergarten is finally a serious subject of conversation in Loudoun County Morse, Turgeon, Hatrick and York met with the Dulles South Alliance, discussing growth, the budget and taxes.

Hatrick releases Full-Day Kindergarten construction costs

2012-01-10T17:09:00.002-05:00

School Board members received a report this afternoon detailing the projected costs of implementing full-day kindergarten in Loudoun County over the next four years. The Superintendent's proposed budget for next year includes additional kindergarten teachers for schools that have available space, but any further expansion will require additional construction. According to Dr. Hatrick's remarks,

Committee & Liaison Assignments for 2012

2012-01-10T16:55:00.002-05:00

The School Board announced committee & Liaison assignments today. These assignments are made by the Chairman. It's interesting to note that there are only three members per committee. In 2010 the Board had three-member committees at my suggestion. After a year of doing that the Board went back to five-member committees, concerned that a three-member committee gave two members total control over

Governor endorses pre-Labor Day school start

2012-01-10T07:59:00.001-05:00

This year's pre-labor day school start may stick around longer than anticipated... The Virginia School Boards Association, meanwhile, praised McDonnell for supporting the repeal of the so-called Kings Dominion law, which prohibits districts from opening before Labor Day without a waiver from the state. Two-thirds of school districts already qualify for waivers, most of them because they have

Special Ed Moms and Whispered Predjudice

2012-01-09T15:47:00.000-05:00

Bitchy lady: So what do we have here. (She gestures to the literature on the table all which is clearly labeled and obviously special needs related.) Me: We are part of the Special Education Committee and we have information for any parent who has a child who happens to have an Individual Education Plan. Bitchy lady: Oh well then I will keep moving along because I don’t have one of THOSE

Sheridan vs. Fox on public employee benefits, Hornberger vs. Audience on Applause

2012-01-08T14:18:00.001-05:00

The most electric minute of last week's School Board discussions about potential legislation came during debate about the ability of retiring employees to trade in unused sick leave for additional "years of service" credits for the purposes of calculating retirement benefits. The six new Board members, consistent with their fiscally conservative campaign platforms, removed support for this

January 10th School Board Agenda

2012-01-06T13:54:00.003-05:00

The first regular business meeting of the School Board will be held on Tuesday January 10th, and the agenda has been published in BoardDocs. The 4pm session will include a few pro-forma items, the Superintendent's report and board member comments. The 6:30pm session will start with public comment, and then will be a budget work session for the following areas of the operating budget proposal:

Rose challenges LCPS budget video

2012-01-06T10:35:00.003-05:00

Debbie Rose (Algonkian) promises to be one of the most skeptical of the new School Board members about the proposed LCPS budget, looking for waste around every corner. She got off to a quick start after the Superintendent's presentation on Wednesday night, asking about a budget video produced by GMU interns: So, is this a reasonable argument? Or much ado about

15 Facts about the Superintendent's Proposed FY13 Budget

2012-01-05T22:13:00.001-05:00

The Superintendent laid out his budget proposal to the new School Board last night. The intent of the new School Board members is to work hard to find significant savings in the LCPS budget without impacting instruction, savings enough to reduce the property tax burden on all of us. Dr. Hatrick will tell them that it isn't possible, that everything in the budget ultimately supports instruction

Marshall Applies for Leesburg Town Council Seat

2012-01-04T06:00:00.000-05:00

Former School Board member Tom Marshall isn't through with elected office yet, apparently. He is among 22 applicants for the post vacated by Ken Reid when he won election to the Board of Supervisors. Marshall certainly knows Leesburg well. He represented Leesburg for 4 years on the School Board, knocked on thousands of doors last year in his re-election bid, and ran previous campaigns for