April 10, 2019

Thanks for reading Fluco Blog!  I’m Perrie Johnson, Fork Union’s representative to the Fluvanna County School Board.  My goal with Fluco Blog is to let people know what’s going on at School Board meetings beyond the reports available online.  Be forewarned, when it comes to discussion, most of the comments I remember turn out to be mine!  Here’s the latest….

One of the first things to happen at the April regular meeting was a presentation by the administration’s testing committee.  I counted about a dozen teachers who showed us a testing matrix with one test requirement (sort of) eliminated from the original plan, but two more added.  I pointed out that the federal and state government are requiring less testing, and that the committee’s recommendations were far apart from conversations I had with over half of our classroom teachers in grades K-3, when all but two told me we test too much.  I wondered if anonymity might clear things up and suggested four specific testing questions for the staff survey.  One made it in.  Staff can look for it at the very end of Professional Responsibilities.

I said a lot more than that, including how much I appreciated the work of the committee and recognize their results, but also need to consider the voices of other teachers who’ve spoken directly to the Board about excessive testing, the concerns of many parents with objections to testing, the documented lack of visibility of administrators among students and staff (which I attribute in large part to test data meetings), and Fluvanna’s recent selection as a participant in the Virginia Innovation Network which emphasizes assessments based on products and processes, not multiple choice tests.

Two groups came forward wanting to name school facilities after current and former employees.  The Board is waiting for input from the community before making a decision.

Suntribe Solar came back. We’re still working on agreements for solar power to the schools.

Our next meeting is this Friday, April 26 at 9 am.  I know it’s an inconvenient time but special meetings are hard to schedule and we want to settle contract amounts for next year as soon as possible once our allocation is determined by the Board of Supervisors on April 24.

 

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This blog is a personal blog, written and edited by me.  The views expressed in this blog are purely my own and do not represent the Fluvanna County School Board, the school superintendent, or anyone else. Comments added by others are not necessarily my opinions and I am not responsible for their content.

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