The Standards of Quality (SOQ) establish the foundation for public education in Virginia. The Standards of Quality are state law, adopted by the Virginia General Assembly. These standards:
Set pupil - teacher and other instructional ratios.
Mandate the subjects and skills that school divisions must teach and the services divisions must provide.
Require the Standards of Learning assessment program.
Are the basis for calculating most state funding to local school divisions for public elementary and secondary education.
Fairfax County Public Schools, apparently unbeknown to the School Board are abandoning the SOQ's. This is occurring despite several loud pronouncements about how FCPS is a "world class school system."
The Standards of Quality are not benchmarks. These standards are only minimums below which divisions must not fall.
Now in several areas FCPS has unilaterally decided to ignore the SOQ's in favor of "site based staffing" (Fail to remember when the School Board adopted that).
This policy places staffing completely in the hands of the principals.
Take library assistants for example.
Principals have the "right" to not fund these positions. This occurs despite the fact that the SOQ’s DEMAND a library assistant in the event a school houses over 700 people.
There is no directive that in the event that these positions are not funded the program MUST be scaled back accordingly.
No, we will pretend that everything is as usual. We will give ourselves labels.
Does anybody care about what is actually going on in the schools?
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12 comments:
I understand the middle school principals have gotten together and decided to eliminate ALL library assistants despite the fact that not eveyone wanted to. I guess when one decided to drive off a cliff, everyone else decided to follow?
We need friendly voices on our school board. We need someone who will take a Superintendent to task for non-policy decisions. Anyone interested in running for School Board next term? Let me know. Perhaps we can make it happen.
It is wonderful that people are willing to give up so much time to be on the school board.
It is a shame that the system is so complex that they never really understand it.
They are dependent on the staff who has a personal agenda
Sadly, most of the current members of the boards ran on a pledge to hold the system accountable - they said they would collaborate, but would not become doormats -
They are simply overwhelmed with what's going on, and trying to balance the needs of over 1 million constituents, 168,000 students, and 22,000 employees. We all want different things.
There is improvement to be made, absolutely. But we need to be careful not to sound petulant in our complaints. We risk becoming like the athlete who always complains to the ref- he only ends up getting more scrutiny in the end.
How is this possible? Isn't there something more we can do? I think more teachers, etc...need to be a more active member of FEA and have our voices heard.
Now I understand what has happened to staffing in our schools which may not be the best situation for our students. Isn't there something that can be done?
"This policy places staffing completely in the hands of the principals."
I think it is a good idea to have staffing in the hands of principals however, certain minimum criteria MUST be in place. I say that a principal should have control over staffing since they are (hopefully) most aware of the needs of thier school's specific needs. By abandoning the SOQs completely, we are risking the future of many important prpgrams and services at schools.
How is it legal for FCPS to ignore these standards issued by the state when all of its institutions are public education facilities? I feel our students are ultimately the ones who end up suffering in these situations. And by the way, I'd love to know which delegates decide the "subjects and skills divisions must teach" because nearly every adult I know that doesn't teach fourth grade has no clue of the history of Virginia that our ten year-olds are required to know.
A number of office assistants lost their positions as well. I don't know how much more can be taken away and still have the schools be as effective as they can be for the students.
FCPS is the 12 largest school system in the nation. U.S. school districts watch what we do either because they don't have the resources to try their own initiatives or they don't have the money to pay for lawyers to fight their fights. By seeing what FCPS does and does not get away with, gives them the "legitimacy to do it as well.
FCPS should be a vehicle for setting precedents that better our nations educational system, not hinder it. I agree that many times the School Board doesn't understand how schools work, nor do they understand Virginia law. I do think that they are well meaning but, they are accountable for their actions and therefore obligated to know how their decisions affect the learning environment.
By the way, Library Assistants aren't the only positions that can be traded. There are instructional staff positions that can also be traded. And, why is there a student representative on the board, but no instructional or other representatives that actually work in a school?
They don't want effective schools they want to spend just as much as they have to and not a penny more on kids. Let's put more money into the central office. They can teach the kids - no problem.
SOQs are not important as long as you have the best interests of the system in mind, right?
I say principal's discretion trumps SOQs. Don't they know that we are all happy to do more with less.
From what I remember about comments made at a BOS hearing last year - FCPS used to get a larger percentage of the county budget and did not have as many employees, as many students, and certainly not as many schools. Now we get less money (percentage-wise) but we have more staff, many more kids, and more school buildings.
Less is more right?
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