Charlottesville Conferences

I have been swamped, and this blog has had to take a back seat to the day-to-day demands of work, family and school boad duties. At the moment I'm sitting in a hotel conference room in Charlottesville for a Policy Workshop sponsored by the Virginia School Boards Association. I love Charlottesville, but as often as I come here now I never see the parts I love. I see the strip malls along the route from 29 to the hotel in the morning, and I see them again when lunch breaks a little before 2pm and I head back home to get my kids from school.


This is my second trip to Charlottesville this month. Prior to today's policy workshop I attended dealt with school distrtict finances and featured a fantastic presentation by LCPS Assistant Superintendent for Business & Finance Leigh Burden. Leigh has been with LCPS for less than a year but comes with tremendous experience from other Virginia districts. Can you imagine a drier topic than oversight of public finances? Leigh made it very entertaining, very informative, and I think that folks in Loudoun should feel good that out of 135 Virginia school districts our CFO is so highly thought of that she is invited to lecture on the topic (this wasn't her first presentation, and she has already been invited back again). She also picked up on ping pong pretty quickly.

For those of you who are interested in what we're being told, VSBA puts some materials and presentations online.

So today I'm here learning about changes to state legislation and about various policy resources. I expect to enjoy it, I'm a policy geek and I make no apologies for that. I'll collect a number of potential updates to LCPS policies to bring them into compliance with recent changes in state law, and at about 1:30 I'll head back north to pick up my kids.

I'll be back here again on June 6th together with Mssrs. Marshall and Ohneiser for a one-day conference on Virginia school law. At the end of July I'll be in Richmond for a training session for new Chairs & Vice Chairs and then the Governor's Conference on Education. And hopefully after each one of these, I'll be a little bit better representative for you.