We have a good school division that, together, we can make the best in the Commonwealth – and the nation.  Our students enjoy a diverse educational experience; sharing the classroom together are students from 88 countries, with 69 native languages.  With my background, experience, and skills, I believe I can accurately represent our progressive community on the School Board and help successfully address the many opportunities and challenges we face.

While I describe each of these points in greater detail below, first and foremost, I believe we must engage our entire community to be a part of improving our schools.  I believe the Board should leverage the Strategic Planning process over the next year to provide clear guidance to our new Superintendent that is reflective of our community’s priorities: 

• small class sizes;
• challenge for every student;
• consistency of quality instruction;
• universal access to preschool;
• fostering partnerships between the community and schools; and,
• increasing the focus on environmentally sustainable schools.

The Special Election for the School Board on August 12th is to fill the remaining year of a three-year term.  If elected, I will focus in this year on three key areas: communications, strategic planning, and sound decision-making.

Communications

Communications among Board members, central office staff, ACPS stakeholders, and the community should be optimized.  This can begin by leveraging existing communications vehicles, including the ACPS cable channel and the ACPS Web site. Clear, open and accurate communications benefit students, parents, and the community.  With my professional background in technology and communications, this is a critical area in which I can provide leadership immediately upon being elected.

Transparency and Consistency – Parents have raised concerns regarding how ACPS information is communicated to the public on myriad issues. Responsiveness to public inquiry and input is a crucial component of building trust among the School Board, school staff, and families. Information must be timely, accurate and consistent.

School Board Accessibility – The Alexandria School Board has a serious responsibility to make information accessible and to operate transparently. The City Council and city staff provide an excellent model for the School Board to follow. Public notice of all meetings and posting of related documents must take place in a timely manner, with no exceptions. I will provide leadership in investigating ways to make video recordings of all meetings available electronically so parents and taxpayers can be engaged with our schools regardless of busy personal schedules. From TiVo to YouTube, asynchronous sharing of news, information, and content is ubiquitous in our society.  The ACPS can implement cost-effective technologies to ensure that parents and members of the community have the information they need to make informed choices concerning their children, their schools, and the use of their tax dollars.

Celebrating our Successes – Even as we encourage members of the community to share their concerns about what needs improvement, we should never forget to speak out about what our schools are doing well. I will support better communications efforts by ACPS to ensure that all members of our community understand the strengths and successes of our school system.

Strategic Planning

The primary role of our School Board is to develop a vision for the school system that is articulated in our strategic plan. The current Board will be reviewing and revising the strategic plan during the 2008–09 school year.

As a member of our School Board, I will be a tireless advocate for:

Small Class Sizes – We are fortunate in Alexandria that we have community consensus on the importance of small class sizes. The reality, however, is that it is a costly and complex model to maintain. In order to do it successfully, we need to strive for equity across the school system. Student transfer decisions are often impacted by state and federal requirements, leaving the school system with few options to achieve citywide class size parity. Now that these external parameters have been in place for a number of years, it may be time to re-evaluate our internal transfer policy to determine if there are ways to better meet the needs of all students in all schools. Additionally, the policy should be clear and easy for parents to understand, widely communicated and strategically aligned with multi-year demographic projections.

Challenge for Every Student  – It's vital that every child, at every grade and ability level be challenged.  If elected, I will focus on making sure that is happening.  Students at all proficiency levels should receive the support to succeed and maintain a path to a bright future.  To do less is to fail everyone.

Minnie Howard, our ninth grade center, has offered open enrollment honors courses for sixteen years. After Advanced Placement courses at TC Williams were converted to open enrollment several years ago, it became apparent that the next logical step would be to better prepare incoming high school students by opening honors courses in middle school. The School Board, administration, and TAG Advisory Committee expressed unified support for this initiative when it was approved over a year ago. With the start of the upcoming school year, all of the Board-approved honors courses will be in place. The Board must continue to closely monitor the success of this program to ensure all enrolled students are sufficiently challenged.

The Board should take a leadership role in ensuring that policies and programs exist that protect the educational rights of all students. Improving programs for students who face learning challenges ultimately strengthens the entire school system. Learning differences affect children in every corner of our diverse student body. Every parent should be able to rely on our teachers, principals, teaching specialists and administrators to meet their child’s accommodations and special educational needs.  Every student learning English as a second language should be challenged to master grade level (or higher) critical thinking and problem solving skills even if their English mastery is below grade level.

Consistency of Instruction – This is a critical piece of educational success for our students K-12, but seems to currently require the most attention at our middle schools. For the middle schools to be more successful both in perception and in fact, it is essential that ACPS improve consistency of instruction and programs between the elementary and middle schools, and work to ease the transition from fifth to sixth grade, particularly for those students coming from small schools. Upon entering middle school students may find their learning experiences vary significantly from that of peers assigned to different teaching teams. The administration has identified improvement in this area as a goal.   The School Board should support the central office in this endeavor and carefully monitor its progress.

Universal Access to Preschool - Quality early childhood programs are a key building block of a successful society. Money spent on preschool programs now can save our city money in the long term. The city of Alexandria has recently identified the goal of creating access to quality preschool programs for all of the city’s four-year-olds. With an increased awareness statewide of the importance of school readiness and its impact on achievement throughout a student’s career, now is the time for ACPS to work more closely with city staff to look at creative ways to use our facilities and potential state funding to increase preschool opportunities in our city.

Community/School Partnerships – We are fortunate to live in a city with so many resources and strong advocates for children.  Even as we strive toward an increase in preschool opportunities, we must maintain strong ties with Alexandria’s existing preschool programs. We also have active community and volunteer groups that are enthusiastic about improving our schools and serving as tutors and mentors. There are also numerous local businesses invested in our schools. These types of relationships should be encouraged and optimized so that volunteers and resources are able to meet identified needs.

Environmentally Sustainable Schools – In many ways Alexandria has been a leader in this area, with our new “green” TC as the prime example. There are so many ways that “going green” can benefit our students and our schools. School gardens and outdoor classrooms create interdisciplinary learning opportunities that address multiple learning styles. Programs such as recycling and composting conserve energy in our facilities and impart a sense of environmental stewardship to our students. The Ad Hoc working group on Environmentally Sustainable Schools did important work on this topic during the 2006–07 school year. Involved parents from schools across the city have begun to come together to share ideas about exciting environmental initiatives at their schools. Ideally these efforts will continue and expand, and be supported on an ongoing basis. The School Board should consider creating an advisory committee for environmental issues to assist our school system in continuing its leadership in this area.

Sound Decision-Making

The School Board has an extraordinarily important charge.  To be successful, I think the Board must receive relevant community input, fully utilize the expertise of our highly trained and highly skilled professional educators and administrators, and make policy decisions based on objective data.

Community Input – Public hearings should be a component of any major decision made by the School Board. Teacher listening sessions provide another critical source of information about what’s happening in our schools. Input from Board advisory committees, PTA’s and other school and community groups should be carefully considered by Board members before holding any significant votes. Collaboration between stakeholders is crucial to determining which programs are beneficial for students and to maintaining a positive, productive community environment.

Expert Advice - The Board's role is to set policy.  The Superintendent, whom the Board hires and supervises, is responsible for implementing curriculum and managing school employees and staff.  Dr. Sherman, the new Superintendent, is a proven and highly respected educational leader. I intend to ask Dr. Sherman and his staff of educational experts to carefully review the ACPS curriculum to determine if it is sufficiently rigorous and challenging for those children who are highly motivated, while setting high expectations for students who are underachieving.

Data-based Decision Making - Sound decision-making promotes fiscal responsibility. Whether our school system is initiating new programs or evaluating ongoing ones, decisions should be made based on quality data, results, and objective facts. We should be dropping ineffective programs to free up additional resources for ones that work.

We have a wealth of data available to us. The school system should explore investing in software that allows us to utilize this data and identify our successes as well as the areas that need improvement.