VICTORY!

Thank you to all that helped with my campaign for school board and who took the time to vote. It was inspiring to be part of the process of a presidential election and see my community come out in full force. Lines were stretched down the block and it gave me the opportunity to talk to my neighbors and friends while they waited. As a result, 9336 people in District A took the time to fill out the box for Karen A. Graf across nine precincts. That gave me a solid second spot out of three to be on the board. I am just amazed and honored by that.

Additionally, the team of people that the City of Alexandria voted for across all three districts are top-notch. They are qualified and offer strong, but different qualities, that will make this board well-rounded and diverse. I think I am more excited about them than my own win.

Please continue to keep in touch. Email me or stop me on the street. For those in Alexandria, teach me about your experiences with ACPS so I can be a stronger board member and represent you and your schools to the best of my ability. For my friends and family in California (Chico alums, Mustangs, Silicon Valley buds), Pittsburgh (work buddies, family, Ben Avon alums), Boston (Attubato clan) and friends all over the world (talking about you Rutherford’s, Hanlon’s and Koon’s), your words of support have carried me along more than I can express. Thank you!

Last Day

Thank you to the people that have helped me since March run a great campaign. I hope to serve this community, so vote on the 6th!

Question of the Day – 2 Days Left!

If you are elected, what kind of ongoing commitment will you make to the community in terms of attending PTA and other community meetings and taking into consideration the thoughts and the concerns of your constituents?

Community is the reason I am running. I love to explore what people think and use that in the decision-making in our district.

I plan to continue to be involved by joining the PTAs in the district, attending meetings, recruiting citizens for the advisory committees, strengthening relationships with teachers and learning what administrators need for their schools. It would be my honor to convey the voices of our community.in Alexandria City.

 

Question of the Day – 3 Days Left!!

What is one decision made by the Alexandria School Board during the past six years that you disagreed with, and how would you have voted differently?

Last February, the board eliminated two weeks of intersession at Samuel Tucker and Mount Vernon Community School without data, community input, or programming alternatives. When I asked Dr. Sherman what data supports this change as being the best for students, he said that there wasn’t data.

For many years, intersession has been a part of ACPS and we could have tracked its progress, but didn’t. That is shameful and a poor model for supporting new programs. After some community pushback, they voted to allow one week more of intersession if the community pays for it. So now we are collecting money from only the families that are not on free and reduced lunch for a program that we aren’t sure works. To pay for the extra week we have to collect $40,000 a session.

Also, the district had been reducing budget and increasing teacher requirements over the past years for intersession, and wasn’t tracking that impact. I am not committed exclusively to the idea of preserving modified calendar, but I am committed to the idea that we let the community decide how they spend the budget to target the needs of the students. The communities at the two schools did not have the opportunity to develop new ideas, and I fear we will be in the same position this February.

And, if I may mention another …

I am disappointed in the choice to approve changes in literacy without looking at how much it costs, the impact on the teachers, and whether it targets the interventions needed. Products, like Success for All (SFA), are not targeted intervention models that we could be using to move student literacy in a positive a sustainable direction. This product mortgages other subject areas, does not target ELL students, violates special education inclusion, eliminates free play time in Kindergarten, undermines TAG programs, and uses a progress measurement system that isn’t compatible with common measurements in literacy.

Over the past few years, ACPS developed the new curriculum and a balanced guide reading literacy manual. I would like to support the work that was done on this project because it raised the standards, had teacher input, and actively solicited feedback. However, last summer, when it was rolled out to the schools, it was not fully supported. The curriculum did not include the balanced guide reading piece, which was the hallmark of the curriculum and a trend in modern education. Instead, new guidelines were developed and rolled out this September year tightly modeled after SFA. One part of the guidelines requires teachers to produce more than 5 hours of reading curriculum per week, without coaching or additional resources. Having teachers do this across grades and at the different schools in the district feels largely experimental given that we are trying to support our teachers to be successful in reducing the achievement gap. I want to add back balanced guide reading to every subject, including the encores.

Question of the Day – 4 Days Left!

Despite the increase in enrollment, there are families of young children who still have doubts about ACPS and plan on sending their children to private schools or move out of the city. How can ACPS improve its communication to families of younger children?

One way we can reach out to families of younger children is to create partnerships with all of the local preschools. Having been very active with our preschool, I see ways that ACPS could help preschools align their programs to address the skills kids need in Kindergarten. There is also an opportunity to educate those parents through the preschool channels with more than just announcements of Kindergarten enrollment. ACPS can run seminars or produce a monthly flyer on a pre-K topic that is relevant to curriculum or trends in the district.

For families that are not in preschool, ACPS needs to do more outreach and this can be by developing more Pre-K programs throughout the city. Most agree that if we can get students in pre-K that they will have more chance of success in Kindergarten and beyond. ACPS needs to continue to define what pre-K looks like, who should be there, and how to reach out to those families.

Question of the Day – 5 Days Left

Despite increasing enrollment, there is a perception that some parents continue to question the quality of Alexandria’s public schools and send their children to private school or to a public school elsewhere. Is this perception accurate, and if so, what can and should the school system do, if anything, to convince these families to stay in Alexandria schools?

It is not the job of the board to convince people to attend ACPS schools; it is the job of the board to guide the type of improvements in ACPS that compel people to stay and to want to attend their local schools. That said, the board needs to make decisions that are holistic, not only considering the families that are attending, but those that plan to attend. An example of this is the decision to institute an extended day schedule at Jefferson Houston. That school is districted in neighborhoods in which many of the families already are choosing not to send their children there. Are we representing these folks that we are trying to solicit with this type of decision-making? While the choice to go to extended day might be state mandated, there are certainly other options that might benefit the population better. Those decisions might be difficult, but that is the job of the board: to make the best decisions even if they are hard.

Question of the Day – 6 Days Left!

Another one of the school board’s major responsibilities is developing and overseeing the school system’s budget. How would you work to restrain costs while ensuring that students receive the services they need?

Above all, I would like a chance to review the operational, Title I, grant, special project, carryover and capital improvement budgets against the needs of each school. It is not enough to look at the numbers in the budget; you have to know the programs and the unique needs and cultures of the schools. Then, I believe you have to question whether or not we are serving our students well with the programs or staff allocated. A needs assessment should be done, so we do not subtract programs that are working or keep those that are not working.

Many programs in the district are underfunded or not given the resources to succeed. My hope is that we can find ways to fund programs, both financially and with human resources, in order to ensure success. Without having each school’s individual needs assessment and budget requirements completed, I cannot say conclusively what I would keep or cut. My gut tells me that we should see through large projects we have funded, like the new curriculum and the original balanced reading guidelines that accompanied them. Additionally, I would also like to see a resource management function in order to stop spending money each year on learning products we already have in the district. In an effort to save, I would also like to look closely at the contracts we have with consulting companies and see which are actually contributing to the core vision and making a difference for the students at ACPS.

Question of the Day – 7 Days Left!

Despite the increase in enrollment, there are families of young children who still have doubts about ACPS and plan on sending their children to private schools or move out of the city. How can ACPS improve its communication to families of younger children?

One way we can reach out to families of younger children is to create partnerships with all of the local preschools. Having been very active with our preschool, I see ways that ACPS could help preschools align their programs to address the skills kids need in Kindergarten. There is also an opportunity to educate those parents through the preschool channels with more than just announcements of Kindergarten enrollment. ACPS can run seminars or produce a monthly flyer on a pre-K topic that is relevant to curriculum or trends in the district.

For families that are not in preschool, ACPS needs to do more outreach and this can be by developing more Pre-K programs throughout the city. Most agree that if we can get students in pre-K that they will have more chance of success in Kindergarten and beyond. ACPS needs to continue to define what pre-K looks like, who should be there, and how to reach out to those families.

Question of the Day – 8 Days Left!

Despite much effort, many parents of special needs children do not feel satisfied with the services being provided to their children. Indeed, this is evidenced by the fact that parents are often seeking redress in the courts. What do you think the school board can do to address the issues with the system’s efforts to help children with special needs.

First, we need to recommit ourselves to what we believe the goals of special education should be – not the state or federal required levels of services. ACPS can do better and should raise the bar well above what is mandated by law. Then, I would want to match the resources with the need. Many students in our district go underserved due to poor hiring practice and resource planning.

The model of inclusion is an example of how schools need to have training and people in place to make sure classes are running with the proper supports in place. Without the proper staffing, inclusion does not work.

Next, I would want to remodel the IEP process to be more transparent and be a channel of support and advocacy for families. Many times parents are fighting their way through the IEP process and end up not getting even the services their child needs by law, let alone anything more that would help their child succeed. Additionally, ACPS does not specify exactly who is responsible for the supports in a student’s IEP. So, many times, a paraprofessional or aide, without training, is the one left to carry out the supports.

This leads to my last point, and possibly the most important one. Teachers and paraprofessionals need consistent and up-to-date training for the various types of special education services offered in our district and how to support the student in ways the exceed the IEPs expectations so students can be successful.

Question of the Day – 9 Days Left!

There is pressure on school systems to develop rigorous teacher evaluation systems. Virginia requires that 40% of a teacher’s evaluation be based on student outcomes. Because the state allows districts some flexibility in determining those outcomes, what makes sense for Alexandria?

This is a very complicated topic and one that has been poorly developed across the United States. The technical and sociological problems stemming from this change in professional practice are huge. Homeroom teachers are not solely impacting a student’s learning day. For example, my child’s homeroom teacher sees him for 45 minutes in the day due to the Success For All and literacy guidelines. He has four teachers everyday: math/science, encore, Success For All, and his homeroom teacher who teaches writing and social studies. So how do you split achievement data among those four teachers? On the state level, how would you adjust performance evaluations against the ever-changing SOL test? In fact, what is the best measurement tool to use to track the teacher’s performance? These are the technical issues.

The sociological issues relate to the challenges a child faces both in class and outside of class. Is the child in need of special education support? Is the child ELL, and at what stage and what age? What if last week a child’s parents announced a divorce? How about the child that is homeless? You simply have to apply some data points to each possible scenario to explain the teacher’s performance and impact, especially if it means they could lose their job over it.

In summary, yes ACPS should begin to move to include the opportunity for pupil achievement data as part of the teacher evaluation process to provide additional indicators of where teachers need more support or training. However, to assert that evaluating teachers based on pupil achievement will lead to improved student learning is a weak argument. So this is not a practice that will improve teacher morale, performance, or student achievement. As a board, we need to advocate student achievement data to show how to gain better results for students and teachers.

Lastly, if we put this in place for teachers, I would want to promote doing a similar performance review for all administrators and central office staff. If we are doing implementation well, all of these positions are connected to the student.