 Special Announcement from Mason District
School Board Member Sandy Evans
Dear Friends,
It has been a great honor to serve as your Mason District School Board member for nearly 9 years. I am proud of the many accomplishments we have achieved together for the education and well-being of our Fairfax County students, families and community. As my third School Board term ends in a little over a year, I wanted you to know that I plan to retire from the Board at the end of this term.
I certainly make this announcement of my retirement from the School Board with mixed emotions. While looking forward to having more time for family, favorite activities and new challenges, I will greatly miss the energy and hopefulness of our children in classrooms, the passion of parents for their children’s education, the support of our community for their local schools, the tirelessness of volunteers and advocates, and the stellar work of Fairfax County Public Schools’ teachers, support staff and administrators.
School Board work has been both enormously gratifying and greatly challenging. The past decade has presented some of its deepest challenges ever, as we faced the recession’s deep budget constraints while welcoming tens of thousands more children into our schools. While we navigated through these difficult waters, and have emerged to better budget times and moderated student growth, I have appreciated the community’s guidance and support in making and keeping our schools among the best in the world.
When I first ran for School Board in a special election in early 2010, I promised all of you that, while the job in theory is part-time, I would be a full-time School Board member. I have kept that promise and will again pledge to be just as full-time and energetic in serving you in my final year on the Board.
My decision to retire has led me to reflect on some of the major accomplishments we have made during these past nine years. These include the creation of a Portrait of a Graduate and a Strategic Plan (“Ignite”); the One Fairfax policy on equity and inclusion, approved jointly with the Board of Supervisors; significant student discipline reform; a comprehensive Wellness Policy, one which includes sleep health; improved school breakfast and lunch; transitioning from half-day to full-day Mondays at elementary school; more recess time; full accreditation for all Mason District schools; adding sexual orientation and gender identity to our nondiscrimination policy; creation of an Auditor General and an Ombudsman, and investing substantially in better teacher pay.
We also finally achieved later high school starts times, approved in fall 2014 and implemented in fall 2015. As a co-founder of SLEEP in Fairfax, this has been and still is a particular passion of mine for the physical, mental and academic well-being of our teen students, who now are in fact getting more sleep with all its many benefits. The 11-to-1 approval of my motion to enact that change, on Oct. 23, 2014, was a particular highlight of my time on the Board.
My advocacy was also instrumental in improving parent notification when a child gets into serious trouble; better pay and benefits for parent liaisons, who are so essential to our schools in Mason District; videotaping and posting recordings of School Board work sessions, so the public can see those important deliberations; adding a Vietnamese language program at Falls Church High School, the first public school in the county and state to have such a program; bringing the first International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program to Belvedere ES; and changing the name of J.E.B. Stuart High School to Justice High School, a name more representative of our values of inclusion and equity. That last change was of course highly controversial and difficult but one I’m confident was the right decision by the Board.
There is certainly more to do. It’s critical that we continue to fight to keep needs-based staffing in our high-needs schools. These extra funds provide more resources and smaller class sizes at schools with higher poverty, ESOL and special needs students. I would like to see this expanded to factor in high mobility, as many students coming in and out throughout the year also presents unique challenges to a classroom and a school.
We need to make sure every student has access to the level and type of instruction they need, regardless of what school they attend. Student mental health also remains a topic of keen interest to our students and to me, as well as continuing to enhance safety and security measures.
While we have added two new elementary schools in Mason District in my time on the Board (Mason Crest ES and Bailey’s Upper ES) and have renovated quite a few (Sleepy Hollow, Beech Tree, Westlawn, North Springfield, Thomas Jefferson HS for Science and Technology and Annandale Terrace in progress), we still have unmet facility needs. The Falls Church High School renovation is finally in planning, though its completion unfortunately remains years away.
Thank you to all of our students, parents, advocates, teachers, staff and community members for your part in making FCPS an amazing place to learn and grow. I’ve appreciated talking and working with you on some of the most important issues our community faces, and look forward to continuing this partnership and work in the year to come.
Sandy
Contact Information:
Sandy Evans
ssevans@fcps.edu
Kathy Partlow - EAA
kfpartlow@fcps.edu
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