High Energy Costs Force New Thinking

Next Tuesday begins the new fiscal year, but already LCPS is working on the next operating budget, anticipating a very tight year. In the midst of this I find stories of school districts around Virginia and the DC region changing some fundamental operating assumptions in order to save energy costs. Longer walks to school, elimination of field trips, four-day work weeks and even four-day school weeks are among the solutions that public school districts are turning to.

Henry County, VA (link): "every school system employee will only work Monday through Thursday this summer – a mandatory schedule." Summer school is also on a 4-day schedule. "The school system will save about $100,000. That includes utility cost, fuel for the buses, and commuting cost for the employees."

Montgomery County, MD (link): "The school board last night approved a change to its transportation policy that gives officials emergency powers to extend the distances that students walk to school next year if rising diesel prices leave the school system in fiscal distress."

James City, VA (link): "Hundreds of students may be walking to school this fall if the division scales back on bus routes. So-called “non-transportation zones” would affect students who live within a half mile of their elementary school or within a mile of middle or high school.

Wayneboro, VA (link): "Waynesboro school leaders hope to beat back the heat of rising energy costs this summer by moving to a four-day work week. School divisions in Richmond and Chesterfield County are looking at similar summer energy-saving options."

And around the country (USA Today): "The reality of rising fuel prices cost students in a Tennessee school district their bus ride to school this week on the last day of the year. In Minnesota, a district west of Minneapolis plans to eliminate classes every Monday to come up with the extra $65,000 it needs to fill its buses' tanks. And in North Carolina, Nash-Rocky Mount Public Schools teachers have scaled back the number of field trips this spring to save fuel."

New High School North of Leesburg

Fall 2009 will see another new high school open in Loudoun County, just four years after the opening of Freedom HS in South Riding. The new school, currently code-named HS-5, will be located just north of Leesburg(see exact location) across from Smart's Mill Middle School.

You may be interested in the HS-5 Site overview presentation developed by the LCPS Construction Department. There is a particular emphasis in the presentation on energy efficiency and reducing environmental impact.

This week there is also attention on a possible name for the new High School, particularly since the naming committee deadlocked after several weeks of consideration. There are now three potential names on the table:

• Tuscarora High School, after the Tuscarora Indian Tribe which lived in this region. Advantages: Regional, Historical, Distinctive. Disadvantages: Tuscarora means "hemp gatherers." Confusion with Tuscarora Mill Restaurant. Neighboring Frederick County MD already has a Tuscarora High School. Can't use native American symbols for mascots.
• Old George Town High School, after the original name for Leesburg. Advantages: Local, Historical. Disadvantages: Too many words. Confusion with present-day Georgetown. Just doesn't strike me well.
  
• Leesburg High School. Advantages: Obvious name. Resurrects the name of the old Leesburg High School on North Street (1925-1970). First choice of a certain man who has dedicated 40 years of his life to LCPS and whose opinion is universally respected. Disadvantages: Leesburg has two other High Schools (County, Heritage). Second choice of naming committee.
  

Smart's Mill Sixth Grader Chiarra Solitario was a member of the naming committee, and spoke from the podium at Tuesday's meeting:

When I did the survey for my whole school they gave recommendations and we went through them and to the tally of the top 12. The highest was Tuscarora, and it came up the most often when I would talk to my friends about the names.

I'm going to experiment with a poll on this blog to see what my readers think. I won't vote based on this poll, but I am interested in your opinions. I'll try to support the preference of the representatives of the kids who will attend the new High School, Leesburg's Tom Marshall and Catoctin's Jennifer Bergel, but in the event that they can't agree I'll be developing a preference.

The Board votes on the new name on September 9th.

New No Tobacco Policy

Several weeks ago School Board Chairman Robert DuPree brought forward a policy proposal that would ban all tobacco use by adults at any LCPS building, facility or activity. The current policy is below:

After September 1, 1990, smoking or use of tobacco in the buildings of Loudoun County Public Schools by anyone at anytime will be prohibited.

Use of tobacco products by adults coaching and/or supervising extracurricular activities on or off school property is prohibited.
All persons attending school events and/or extra-curricular activities are prohibited from smoking or using smokeless tobacco products on school property.
Use of tobacco products by any person at anytime on any Loudoun County Public Schools’ property, will be prohibited except by employees of Loudoun County Public Schools in designated smoking areas, which will be out of sight and inaccessible to the general public and students.

The proposed policy is:

The use of tobacco products on school property, including all schools and school athletic facilities, parking lots and grounds, support facilities and vehicles including school buses, is prohibited.

I abstained from the vote in committee because I wasn't ready to decide at the time. Obviously it would be better for people's health not to use tobacco products. It would save taxpayers money with the savings realized in the LCPS insurance program. At the same time, there's a Libertarian in me that doesn't think it's appropriate for an employer, particularly a government entity, to attempt to mold its employees in ways that don't have anything to do with work.

I could go into all the pros and cons, but I'm sure you can figure them out. After long and careful consideration I have decided to vote yes to this policy change. Not because I want to push LCPS employees not to smoke, but because this is a student-focused organization. Even in buildings and areas that aren't frequented by students such as the LCPS Administration building, transportation facility and warehouse, LCPS is student-focused. It is illegal for LCPS students to use tobacco products at any time in any place, by law and policy. As a student-focused organization, I think it's appropriate for us to set a single standard for everyone.

Agenda for June 24, 2008

Tomorrow night's meeting features a few items that may be of interest to various folks.

• We'll vote on a change in the tobacco use policy to ban tobacco use at all times and in all places at LCPS.
• We'll vote on a new policy for comments and complaints. A few changes will be proposed at the meeting before the final vote.
• We'll vote on a change to the way that the staff investment program works (403B, similar to a private-sector 401k)
• We'll vote to affirm the purchase of the Rouse property pending Board of Supervisors approval. This one has been in the news recently.
  
• We'll also hear information about the dates for this fall's budget planning meetings, the name of the new high school in Leesburg, and dates for the Fall 2008 attendance boundary adjustment calendar.
• Finally we'll receive a presentation on Bylaws for a formalized Minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee (MSAAC).
  

LCPS has the board book online, complete with the text of the proposed policy changes, and the proposed MSAAC bylaws.

There are no meetings in July, we will reconvene on August 12th.

Graduation Speeches

Graduation time will forever bring to my mind the 1997 "Wear Sunscreen" speech... not really a speech at all but an exercise by Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich. The Tribune in its wisdom requires you to pay to read the original, titled "Advice, Like Youth Probably Just Wasted on the Young." Fortunately you can find it all over the internet for free. My favorite line:

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Loudoun had 10 graduation speakers this year (I know... commencement addresses) but I've only heard about two that I didn't actually attend, and predictably it was the professional entertainers who drew the comments. Dancer Philip Clyde Bernier spoke to the grads at Park View for what was apparently a very long time, and then sang for them. Comedian Patton Oswalt spoke to the Broad Run grads. Each was invited because he is an alum who showed up on national television several years after graduating.

I'm sure complaints are annual. Last year some folks were upset by the speaker who derided Vice President Cheney from the podium. This year Mr. Oswalt drew the written complaint. I don't know exactly what he said to upset people though "cussing" was mentioned. You can read the parts that weren't controversial in this press release. I think that someone so inclined could have taken a moment to type "Patton Oswalt" into YouTube and then penned a complaint letter well in advance of the speech itself. Not that the person who filed their objection did this, just that I saw this one coming.

Look a little deeper though. Someone doing some checking might also have found Patton Oswalt's own blog entry a few weeks ago discussing this invitation to speak. In it he acknowledges that he wasn't invited to bring gravitas to the stage:

They've got access to museum docents, Senators, Congressmen, political reporters and The Greaseman. But despite this deep pool of wisdom to draw from, they thought, "Let's get that fat dude who tells dick jokes to drunks." I'm lucky enough to count people like Michael Penn, Harlan Ellison and Carl Gottlieb as friends. These are people with true, hard-won wisdom slung from their gun belts. I'm armed with the equivalent of a cheap, Turkish Taser.

On that blog entry, just before launching into a "rough draft" of a graduation speech that reads like an adolescent fan sequel for an amalgam of Office Space and Mad Max, Patton Oswalt mentions a speech given by David Foster Wallace in 2005 at Kenyon College.

David Foster Wallace's commencement speech has truly changed me. I think about it every day. Like Bernstein thinking of the girl on the ferry in Citizen Kane. It's changed me for the better.

I was intrigued enough to go out and find Wallace's speech, and to read it. It's so meaningful that even just to quote from it here would detract from it rather than summarize or tease as a good quote should do. Take 15 minutes out of your day to find it and read it. How odd that its wisdom would be brought to me by a "fat dude who tells dick jokes to drunks" and the man who complained about the words he used.

If you attended a 2008 LCPS graduation ceremony (or if you graduated!) let me know what you thought of the speaker you saw... and whether you remember him. (I can say "him" because all of the speakers this year were men. Class of 2009 take note.)

Last Day of School

Thanks to everyone who made it a successful year... teachers, students, parents, administrators, custodians, bus drivers, warehouse employees, food service workers, maintenance employees, teacher assistants, IT guys, nurses, counselors, speech therapists, librarians (this list goes on for a long time)...

New Grading Scale? Patience.

Momentum is building and interest is obviously running high among many LCPS parents in a new grading scale proposal branded “Fairgrade” by its advocates. A recent meeting drew quite a crowd and some press coverage as well (Loudoun Times Mirror, Leesburg Today).

I find myself in a weird “elected official bubble” here, trying hard to assess people’s feelings about an issue and knowing that the bulk of the conversation is going on out of my earshot. Conversely, there seem to be many parents who want to know my position and are going to third-party sources to find out. This blog, and my email address and phone number, are available for direct communication. If you ever want to make me aware of things, or ask me something, please use them.

First, let me state clearly my position on the 10-point grading scale proposal. Before I write something new, I’ll give you the exact words I have written to the several parents who have written directly to me on this subject:

I am very interested in the impact of a challenging LCPS grading scale and I am watching the issue closely as the conversation in Fairfax progresses. Much of the research that Fairfax County is conducting will inform us about the impact of our similar grading scale on Loudoun students. I have two secondary students of my own at LCPS, I take these concerns very seriously and I look forward to learning more. There is no official consideration of a change in the grading scale currently underway at LCPS.

I have written posts about the grading scale previously, in February with “What should a B Be?” and in April with “Following Fairfax,” you might be interested in those as well.

That’s all. There is plenty of information out there and more being generated and sent to me every day. I am reading and listening and assessing and taking no position until I feel fully informed. Please keep informing me. I don’t expect that I’ll take a position on this until well into the fall, and hopefully that is an indication to you of how closely I am listening and how seriously I take this.

There was a gathering at Potomac Falls High School on June 4th where dozens of parents (estimates to me ranged from 100 to 200) went to hear from the advocates of reforming the grading scale. I know that no school board members attended, and I know that some people were very unhappy with that. I can only speak for myself when I say that I wish I could have been there, but by the time I was made aware of the event I was already committed to two conflicting events that evening. As it turned out, this was also the day of the storm. Like many others, my house was without power and I chucked the evening’s schedule to take care of my family. I have encouraged the organizers to plan another forum after Fairfax releases its study. Given a couple of weeks’ notice, attendance will be a very high priority for me.

I won’t lay out the arguments for or against the current grading scale here. I will say that it takes a mountain of evidence to convince me to go against the recommendations of the professional educators who have built LCPS into the well-respected system that it is. These folks have dedicated their careers to studying and implementing educational best practices. They do need to provide the education that the community asks for, but the community would do well to give enormous weight to their professional judgment.

So in the meantime, while I'm listening and learning and pondering, advocates for or against a change in the grading scale should refer to my post Successful Advocacy at LCPS for the best advice I can give you on how to be most effective.

Ms. Lorenzo's Potowmack Family

Today, Potowmack Elementary School dedicated a new section of its playground to Ms. Amanda Lorenzo, a Third Grade teacher who died in April. All of the children were involved in a very moving ceremony, and it gave me cause to think...

Unsung Educators Scholarship

Over the past few months I have been working on a new and very important project. Finally I was able to announce it publicly from the dais at this week's meeting. I have created a scholarship fund as a way to honor a very special group of Loudoun County Public School employees.

This is the Unsung Educators Scholarship, and it is a $5,000 annual award.

The Elaine Avington Griffin Unsung Educators Scholarship honors the role that custodial, facilities, food service, transportation and maintenance employees play in the health and safety of our children every day. They aren’t the teachers and principals that we usually think of. They aren’t in the classrooms and their names don’t come home on paper in backpacks. Yet with every good meal, every safe bus ride, every day spent in a clean building that is comfortable summer and winter, they give our children their best chance to learn. These unsung educators are the people who literally create Loudoun Schools’ Climate for Success by making our schools safe and healthy.

Please follow the link to read all the details.

It has been a joy for me to get to know many custodians and bus drivers and kitchen staff personally because I spend a lot of time in the schools. But most parents don’t have an opportunity to get to know them, and often their work is overlooked as a result. I was moved to create this scholarship after years of seeing the difficult and yet excellent work that so many employees do that is rarely discussed in PTO meetings or School Board meetings.

I first announced the scholarship last week to the transportation employees (mostly bus drivers) at their annual end-of-year picnic and awards ceremony. A few days later I announced it at the food service banquet to the great kitchen staff we have around the county. It has received a little press so far (Leesburg Today), and I hope to see much more in the next few weeks.

I owe many thanks to two terrific local organizations who have worked with me throughout the spring to make this happen. The Loudoun Education Foundation, led by Chairman Paul Lin and Executive Director Dawn Meyer, were instrumental in putting shape to my inspiration. The LEF Board of Trustees deserves tremendous credit for agreeing to take responsibility for the administration of the scholarship, and for expanding its reach beyond what I had hoped. The primary role of the Northern Virginia Community Foundation is to accept and manage the contributions that the fund will receive, but they have also shown me tremendous possibilities for reaching out to different sectors of the Loudoun community.

I am very pleased that the Unsung Educators Scholarship will have the experience and guidance of NCVF and LEF, two established non-profit leaders in Loudoun, from the very beginning. Their involvement is a key component to the success of this project and an assurance to the community that their contributions to honor the LCPS support staff will be expertly managed.

I am seeking contributions to the Fund from many sources, including local businesses, labor organizations and private donors. However, I hope that the primary source of contributions will be Loudoun County’s 75 Parent-Teacher Organizations (or PTAs as the case may be). I am a former president of an elementary PTA, and I know that those parent volunteers often wish to thank the support staff for their schools but aren’t sure how. Geographic, cultural and language barriers often stand in the way. With a gift to the Unsung Educators Fund, PTOs can express their appreciation to these important people in their children’s lives in a tangible, meaningful way. When a PTA makes a contribution, the LEF will notify those employees of the contribution to let them know that they are truly valued.

I will write more about the scholarship over the next several days, and I will reach out to many people for help as we get the momentum going for what I hope will be an everlasting benefit to these LCPS employees and their children.

If you can help, please contact me. If you can donate, please use the online donation form.

Week of June 9, 2008

We're in the thick of end-of-year recognitions, celebrations and graduations now.

Monday: I'll be at a faculty-sponsored dinner in honor of the Potomac Falls High School custodial staff. As I hear it the teachers will serve and the administrators will clean up.

Tuesday morning I'll attend the Douglass School awards ceremony, and then our twice-monthly Board meeting starts at 4pm. At this meeting, we will:

• Review (but not vote on) proposed changes to the Board's policy on Tobacco Use (section 6-40);
• Review (but not vote on) a proposed new policy for handling written comments and complaints from parents and students;
• Review the LCPS Head Start program; and
• Discuss attendance boundaries for a new High School to be build on the northern edge of Leesburg.

All of these items will be presented in the afternoon, before the Board breaks for dinner. Note that no votes will be taken during this time, we generally save those for the evening sessions when the public is better able to witness.

• We'll start again at 6:30 by honoring the many employees who have served LCPS for 25, 30, 35 and 40 years. There will be a reception afterwards, catered by students in the Monroe Technology Center culinary arts program
  
• Public comment time won't begin until after the reception, so if you come to speak you should anticipate a very late starting time.
  
• There are pro-forma action items regarding our Group Health Insurance plan, bonds to be issued for school site acquisition and construction, and the pre-purchase of diesel fuel and gasoline in 42,000-gallon allotments from the LCPS fuel contractor.

You can see the agenda online and download the "Board Book" with details from the LCPS website.

On Wednesday evening I'll be at the Monroe Technology Center graduation ceremony, and depending on how long that goes I may be also able to attend some or all of the Potomac Falls High School awards ceremony.

Thursday is the monthly meeting of the joint School Board/Board of Supervisors committee, 4pm at the school Admin building. On the agenda:

• A Proclamation Supporting Energy Efficiency in Public Buildings drafted by Tom Reed,
• Overview of Board of Supervisors Fiscal Policies,
• FY 10 Budget Calendar Adjustments,
• and a discussion on Collaboration/Consolidation of LCPS/County departments
  

Each of these items, in their own obtuse way, reflect ongoing tension between the two boards regarding budgeting and the cost of administering schools.

On Friday I will attend the dedication of a new playground at Potowmack Elementary in memory of third grad teacher Amanda Lorenzo, who died on April 19th.

Saturday evening is the graduation ceremony for the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. I'll be out of town earlier in the day and I'm still a little uncertain about whether I'll make it back in time for this one, but I'll try.

Audio Post

This is an audio post. Why? Because sometimes I just don't have time to write it all down. Leave a comment and let me know what you think of this option.

After-storm report

There's still no power at my house this morning, as thousands of other homes and seven elementary schools in Loudoun are also experiencing.

Aldie, Banneker, Lucketts, Middleburg, and Waterford Elementary in the west are without power and closed for the day, as are Forest Grove and Sully Elementary in the east.

I'm sure it's a crazy day at LCPS headquarters too as everyone assesses this valuable experience to determine the lessons learned. I look forward to hearing more about their side of the experience soon. In the meantime, parents should provide feedback to their principals and School Board representatives.

There are already online reactions to the event by parents and journalists:

• Living in Loco has parent reactions
  
• Municipalist has very good thoughts on how to improve communications with parents
• There are comments from parents on yesterday's post as well, I'd love to get more and also some teacher feedback.

Given what I know now, this was a significant event but ultimately a drill, training for a much larger future event. Let's all work together to assess how it went, not in an effort to either congratulate or scold, but to be well prepared for 'the big one.'

Bad Weather Delays Closing

Well, ain't this a switch? Usually we delay opening in the winter. Now here we are delaying closing in the summer. In case you hadn't heard, Loudoun County Public Schools has delayed closing by 15-20 minutes due to the effects of the thunderstorms currently rolling through the area. Funnel clouds were spotted near Middleburg not long ago. The LCPS website is being hammered by parents and as of now does not have information about the delay on it.

This is also a great time to evaluate the new ConnectEd service that LCPS has used to quickly put out information to parents, especially during states of emergency. I got an automated phone call at 3:12pm. Here comes another at 3:19, saying that they are now delaying elementary students, and to expect delays for all students coming home this afternoon.