• Adding 1-2 more students to already-large classes
  
• Discontinuing foreign language programs in elementary schools (FLES) and immersion programs
  
• Eliminating elementary band and strings
• Another year of no pay raises for teachers and staffs, possibly a furlough (school closure & day without pay)
  
• Rolling back full-day kindergarten to half-day at all but the 34 Title I elementary schools
• Reducing needs-based staffing in elementary/middle schools, eliminating special needs staffing in high school
• Increasing (or introducing) fees for tests, new students, etc.
• Closing schools
  

What You Can Do

• Email and/or visit Fairfax County BOS and advocate they vote in favor of the full transfer of funds to FCPS (Chairman Sharon Bulova, Braddock Supervisor John Cook; office location is adjacent to the Kings Park library).
  
• Email your recommendations and concerns to FCPS School Board Vice Chairman and Braddock District representative Tessie Wilson
• Click here to email our Commonwealth of Virginia Legislator and encourage the local composite index (LCI) be adjusted to more accurately allocate state funding to schools, and to change, as appropriate, archaic Virginia laws limiting revenue sources that could ease the budget crisis. 
  
• Attend a Fairfax County Community and/or FCPS community sessions and school board meetings.  Click here for dates and locations.

A Few Ideas of What You Can Say

• Fully fund the FCPS requested transfer to FCPS.  Prioritize and proactively plan for school funding in all years, regardless of temporary economic setbacks.  FCPS has maintained modest per-pupil funding despite delivering world-class education over the years.
  

• Retain SBTS positions.  Smart Boards, laptops, automated IEP databases, 24-7 Blackboards, etc have become so integrated in daily lessons that teachers have become reliant on such technology, and on SBTS support for training, maintenance and technical support.  Without SBTS support, technically-minded teachers could probably compensate for the training and technical support, but already stretched too thin with increasingly bigger classes, teaching time would suffer.  Non-technically-minded teachers would inevitably stop using the more complex equipment like Smart Boards, wasting money and educational opportunities.
• Avoid increasing class sizes further.  Larger class sizes adversely impact our children's quality of education.  Often combined or split classroom models are inevitable.  Always, teachers have less time to devote to each student and to target teaching strategies to what sets each child up to succeed and learn.  General education teachers with mainstreamed special education students will have less time/energy to effectively implement these students' individualized education plans (IEPs)--especially as there are fewer general education IAs.  These mainstreamed special education children -- and in fact children with no diagnoses at all -- may find it harder to succeed in larger classrooms with more stimulation and activity.  The time spent by teachers on those students requiring more time and attention -- special education, ESOL, gifted, those with undiagnosed behavior issues -- is time diverted away from the children who normally are in the middle of the bell curve.  While grouping strategies could encourage children of like abilities to help one another -- and higher-achievers to assist their struggling peers -- it is more difficult to implement grouping strategies with fewer general education IAs.   While research is not conclusive on this emotional issue, it seems anecdotally clear that no child could benefit when placed in a classroom too large for the teacher to effectively tailor strategies to each child's learning style.

• Reconsider outgoing Governor Kaine's request to "hold harmless" local composite index (LCI).  The LCI was designed to calculate the appropriate level of state funding to each school system's according to each's ability to pay, and therefore the LCI should be recalculated fairly as economic situations change.  Fairfax County deserves its equitable share of state funding just as every other school system based on current, not legacy, LCI calculations. 
  
• Stand up -- or communicate the current status of -- task forces that will aggressively pursue appropriate changes to current state statutes that prevent creative pursuit of funding alternatives.  Currently FCPS funding is primarily dependent on real estate taxes that are subject to economic volatility.