Executive Orders Harming Public Education If you’ve been hiding under a rock (or your bed), you may have missed the news of the myriad of Executive Orders (EOs) coming out of the White House in President Trump’s first couple of weeks in office. Trump has signed more EOs in his first 10 days than any President in their first 100 days. These EOs are Project 2025 incarnate, each worse than the one before it: pardoning violent criminals, removing critical environmental protectio

Join the FLE Committee on February 12th from 7-9pm at Gatehouse It is a year with a number in it, so you can be sure that Fairfax Public School (FCPS) volunteers on committees are hard at work. Few committees are as attacked as the Family Life Education (FLE) committee which provides suggestions to modify the sex education curriculum in FCPS to ensure that it is scientifically accurate, age-appropriate, accessible, and relevant for kids in the 21st Century. This year, the FLE

Our Students, Staff, and Families need the Equity Office If you’ve been reading the news in the last two weeks, it is pretty clear that political rhetoric pertaining to “DEI hires” has become code for efforts to roll back qualified women, Black, Hispanic, disabled, and Veteran hires. On social media, anti-DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) rhetoric is frequently unleashed against non-white, non-male, disabled, non-straight, non-cis, and/or non-Christian people in leadersh

DEmyst-I-fied from a K-12 Perspective Author's Forward: (January 31, 2025): Earlier this week, 4PE approached me about republishing my post on DEI written last year. Just in one week... one day, not only has DEI become a dirty word, but now it's executive ordered out of our lexicon, soon to be out of all levels of government. You can Google all of the anti-DEI EOs and corporate capitulation to know that we're in dangerous times where only dominant culture is valued and cent

When I first heard that President Trump was going to abolish the U.S. Department of Education (USDoE), I was horrified, but now, I may be on the bandwagon. Wait! Hear me out. I would NEVER want to abolish a fully functioning USDoE that supports our public schools, students, educators, and families. But that is not what we have anymore. We have a full blown propaganda machine that makes unprofessional posts, pushes school vouchers, and likely doesn’t know IDEA (Individuals wi

The question of what makes a good school has never been more complicated, and questions like “What are we educating students for?” have never been more relevant. Those are questions Virginia educators have long asked. Unfortunately, the most recently proposed answers from the Governor and Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) are not what kids, grads, or Virginia need. There are four important reasons the Governor’s VDOE School Performance and Support Framework (Framework)

Although not the sexiest sounding program, the Capital Improvement Program (CIP) is one of the most critical analyses in Fairfax County when it comes to schools. Annually, the CIP reviews current student membership and facilities data in order to identify future capacity needs and capital requirements (e.g., renovation, new building, etc.). Thus the CIP drives resource allocation among schools and communities across Fairfax County. However, the total flow of capital resources

Best Schools Update 2024 “Above all, I believe every child, no matter their ZIP code or their parents' jobs, deserves access to a quality education.” - Betsy DeVos 2016 “A child's course in life should be determined not by the zip code she's born in” - Barack Obama “Literally nothing is evenly distributed by zip code, except having a zip code.” - Elon Musk Part I: Rankings v. Zip Codes “All children should have a great education regardless of zip code,” is perhaps one of the

A Strong Student Production of Kinky Boots While several hate groups descended on the FCPS high school last weekend, the students, teachers, and families of West Potomac High School chose to work together, put on an excellent show, and have a great time. Like their shirts said, “You can change the world when you change your mind.” The administrators, parents, students, and educators who put their hearts, souls, and bodies on the line for this production should be commended.

You can’t just ignore problems away. Author's forward: I wrote this piece on a snowy day in January. Dr. Claudine Gay had just resigned, and I feared that more officials (both at the college and local levels) were next. While there are copious articles about how states and entities actively dismantling DEI programs, I wasn’t finding much on why it’s important in itself... until recently. WHY are we letting billionaires frame our discourse? They have benefitted from legacy a

Thursday, April 24th, was a beautiful day for a moving experience of shared trauma, survival, triumph, and advocacy. Many thanks to Lisa Sales of Virginia National Organization for Women (Virginia NOW) who organized a press conference in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month in front of the Federal Courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia where she gathered local experts, survivors, and legislators to advocate for strengthening laws, culture change, and better enforcement mechani

Glenn Youngkin and Secretary Aimee Guidera’s constant narrative since taking office is that Virginia public schools are failing: In spite of consistent real time proofs to the contrary. Virginia public schools are among the best in the nation, and in some cases the world. Even with two years of VDOE repeating the narrative of failure, VA is ranked 10th overall and 7th in student success in their own dataset. The Accountability and Accreditation Proposed Regulations, which the

Discover the complexities of Virginia's budget cycle and the contentious budget put forward by Governor Youngkin. Learn how it impacts public education in VA.

The National Merit Commended Certificate "Crisis" School Districts are Under Fire School districts across the country are under fire. The assaults on our school systems are not just being fought just at school board meetings and by FOIA, but they are also being conducted through politically motivated lawsuits and investigations, many of which lack merit. Here in Northern Virginia, we are in the eye of the storm with near constant politically-motivated news coverage, lawsuits

Courtesy of Cappies NCA Why Schools Should have a full-time dedicated Theatre Arts teacher in every K-12 school Spring Productions are underway! Let me detail why a Theatre arts program is one of the most important elements in a school's repertoire of offerings. In the Theatre all are welcome and students learn to be accepting of the wide array of humanity and their beauty. It has always been and will remain a safe place for all our unique, commonplace, variedly able, and

TJ and FCPS Win in Court after Three Years of Litigation Fairfax County and Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) are celebrating a victory for its students, families, taxpayers, and schools because the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of the Coalition of TJ on February 20, 2024, thus permitting the May 2023 U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that ruled that TJ admissions did not constitute discrimination against Asian students. When Thomas Jefferson High Scho

Improving support for K-12 public education to help students thrive is a widely shared goal. Students across Virginia deserve funding that unlocks their potential. Unfortunately, the governor’s proposed budget for the upcoming two years, which was unveiled in December 2023, will not provide enough to keep up with the rising cost of current programs for our students, let alone the significant need for additional state funding to bring the state closer to paying its fair share

This week is Public Schools Week, so it’s a great time to share some of the things that make public schools important and wonderful. Public schools are and have always been a microcosm of our communities. They are where poor and rich students sit side by side, eat together, ride the same buses and have access to the same teachers, books, and media of any given community. From public schools, we develop our plumbers and our doctors, our electricians and our car designers, our

The following is a letter posted by 4 Public Education Board Member Robert Rigby to Loudoun County Public Schools in response to their devastating advancement of Youngkin's anti-transgender "model policies" last week. In the face of the revelations of horrific beating death of nonbinary 16 year-old Nex Benedict on school grounds in Oklahoma, we feel that the sentiment in this letter needs to be public. Please consider standing up to be counted and speak out for our most vulne

The 2025 FCPS budget is worth reading. This 211 page document is extraordinary for its length, surely, but really for its fully integrated structure that includes the strategic plan, quality standards, and performance benchmarks. It provides details on every aspect of where the funds come from and how the money will be spent and basically how each dollar will forward the goals for our children. Most families may not have the time to read this hefty tome, so FCPS also created