(Updated at 9:45 a.m. on 3/1/2023) The College Board’s much-debated course on African American identity and history will be available in several Fairfax County high schools this fall as part of a pilot program.

While the state scrutinizes the course, Fairfax County Public Schools plans to offer Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies at the following schools in the next school year, which will begin on Aug. 21:

• Chantilly HS
• Fairfax HS
• Hayfield HS
• McLean HS
• South County
• Westfield HS
• West Potomac HS
• Woodson HS

The course’s availability at each school is “pending student interest/enrollment,” FCPS says.

(Correction: FFXnow was initially told that Centreville High School would be among three schools participating in the pilot, but FCPS says the school won’t be offering the course this coming year.)

According to FCPS, the participating schools “self-selected” for the pilot “based on student and teacher interest.” Principals filled out an interest form sent out by the College Board, which launched the pilot at 60 schools last fall after spending over a decade developing the course.

“FCPS supports offering students multiple opportunities to achieve their academic goals and pursue their academic interests,” an FCPS spokesperson said. “College Board AP courses offer students the opportunity to take nationally recognized curricula with potential college credit, which is why we sought this opportunity for our students.”

A nonprofit focused on access to higher education, the College Board oversees the SAT as well as the AP Program, which provides college-level courses that high school students can take to earn college credits.

The organization released an official framework for its new African American Studies course on Feb. 1, days after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said his state rejected the course as “indoctrination” for its inclusion of LGBTQ studies, the Movement for Black Lives and other topics.

The document has drawn criticism from some educators and advocacy organizations for shifting away from subjects and texts in Florida’s complaint. The College Board has denied letting the state influence the curriculum, though it said it independently chose to remove terms like “intersectionality” that are often “misunderstood, misrepresented, and co-opted as political weapons.”

Virginia is one of four states reviewing the course. Gov. Glenn Youngkin has directed Education Secretary Aimee Rogstad Guidera to see if the course violates his executive order prohibiting “inherently divisive concepts” in public schools, spokesperson Macaulay Porter said.

The order defines divisive concepts as ideas that suggest an individual can be racist or sexist based on their identity or bears responsibility for past oppression, citing “critical race theory” as an example even though the academic theory views racism as a structural issue, rather than an individual one.

Five Fairfax County School Board members, including chair and at-large member Rachna Sizemore-Heizer, sent a letter to Youngkin and Guidera on Tuesday (Feb. 21) urging them “not to impede the teaching” of the AP course. Read More

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares will be in Annandale today for a town hall that may address his ongoing civil rights investigation of Fairfax County Public Schools.

At the town hall, Miyares will “hear from members of northern Virginia’s Asian American community regarding allegations of anti-Asian discrimination in education,” the Office of the Attorney General said in a media advisory.

The event will take place at the Korean Community Center (6601 Little River Turnpike, Suite 200), starting at 6:30 p.m.

While the OAG didn’t share more details about the referenced allegations, the description of the town hall suggests it may be connected to the office’s scrutiny of FCPS for delays in notifying students who were commended by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) last fall.

At the urging of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Miyares launched an investigation of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) on Jan. 4, alleging that the school had deliberately withheld the notifications until after early admissions deadlines for colleges to punish “some students…in the name of ‘equity.'”

After a review by FCPS found that more schools had failed to notify students, the attorney general expanded the investigation to the entire division, which has maintained that the delays were an oversight, rather than an intentional withholding of information.

“The School Board echoes and supports Superintendent [Michelle] Reid’s comments that FCPS understands and values every student’s hard work, achievements, and dedication,” the Fairfax County School Board said in a statement on Jan. 20, detailing Reid’s efforts to review FCPS’ protocols and request that the NMSC start notifying recognized students directly.

The National Merit Scholarship Program gives scholarships to the country’s top scorers on the preliminary SATs, though college admissions experts say a commendation doesn’t factor into their evaluations of student applications.

When announcing his initial investigation, Miyares tied his allegations of racism to the recent revisions of TJ’s admissions policies, which he argued “significantly decreased the amount of Asian American students enrolled in recent years.”

Since the new policies were approved in 2020 in an effort to diversify the magnet school, Asian students have gotten about 54% of the admission offers each year compared to 73% the year prior to the changes. As of the 2021-2022 school year, the student body was about two-thirds (66.6%) Asian.

A lawsuit challenging the admissions changes as discriminatory toward Asian students is pending in a federal appeals court.

A new workgroup focused on ensuring the equitable enjoyment of Reston’s lakes for all is seeking members.

Formed on Dec. 15 by Reston Association’s Board of Directors, the Lakes Equity Work Group aims to “maximize the enjoyment of Reston’s four man-made lakes for all RA members, their families and friends,” according to a release by RA.

So far, the group plans to create an equity framework to delineate current use policies, usage disaggregated by demographics and ways to focus on equity and improved access for all. Some focus areas include improving access to lakes, equal opportunities for recreation and the installation of non-discriminatory signage and use policies for all.

RA’s Board Operations Committee will interview candidates at their Feb. 6 meeting, after which the board will select the final members at its Feb. 23 board meeting.

The eight-member group will include one voting RA staff representative and two non-voting staff liaisons.

The application can be found online. It asks candidates to detail their relevant experience and what their goals and objectives would be for the working group. Applications are due by next Friday (Jan. 27).

The group plans to begin work in March. A draft report is set to go before the board in the fourth quarter of the year.

Reston Association is working on the creation of an equity group with a focus on its lakes.

If created, the work group would focus on maximizing the enjoyment of Reston’s four man-made lakes for its members.

“The Equity Working Group will develop an equity framework that clearly defines current use policies, usage by demographics, opportunities for improvement and make policy recommendations that focus on equity and improved access for all,” says a proposal set to go before RA’s Board of Directors at its meeting tonight.

The group could focus on improving access to lakes, equal opportunities for recreation, and non-discriminatory signage or use policies.

Reston has four man-made lakes: Lake Anne, Lake Thoreau, Lake Audubon and Lake Newport, which collectively span 125 acres.

According to the meeting agenda, the proposed group could consist of:

• A voting member representative from each of the four lake communities
• Four voting member representatives from non-lake condominium or apartment communities in each district
• A voting staff representative selected by RA’s CEO
• Two non-voting staff liaisons, including RA’s watershed manager and human resources director

The idea came at the suggestion of director Erwin Flashman and board president Sarah Selvaraj-D’Souza.

ArtsFairfax, the county’s designated arts agency, is expanding its artist residency program for 2022-2023 throughout the county.

Through a $55,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the residency program will place performing and visual artists at county parks, libraries, schools, community centers, and affordable housing complexes.

“Everything we do to increase access to the arts is rooted in the belief that meaningful arts experiences are transformative for all of us, regardless of age or lived experiences,” ArtsFairfax President and CEO Linda S. Sullivan said. “We are so grateful to the County agencies for their partnership in helping ArtsFairfax expand our reach into the communities that need it the most.”

ArtsFairfax started the residency program as an effort to improve access to artistic opportunities for marginalized communities throughout the county. It also provides education and community engagement training to professional local artists.

This year marks a return for the residency program, which limited activities after COVID-19 hit in 2020.

“In recent years because of Covid, we had a few virtual programs in senior centers and middle schools,” an ArtsFairfax spokesperson said. “In the year ahead, we will be in person at a broader range of locations reflecting the needs of areas identified by the County as being underserved in formal arts programming.”

For the 2022-2023 year, resident artists from a variety of disciplines will provide free, interactive programming at five different locations.

• John Marshall Library — Suzy Scollon, visual art
• Strawbridge Square apartments — Edgar Reyes, visual art
• Original Mt Vernon High School — Katherine Zukeri, dance
• Woodley Hills Elementary School — Brad Waller, theater
• Ellanor C. Lawrence Park — Danielle Badra, Fairfax County’s new poet laureate

ArtsFairfax has partnered with the county’s public schools and library systems, Neighborhood and Community Services, the park authority, and nonprofit Wesley Housing for the program.

Participants will work alongside the artists, whose residencies range from one to four months.

“Arts and humanities go hand-in-hand to spark the imagination and nurture creativity. We’re thrilled to launch ArtsFairfax Artist Residencies at the John Marshall Library to inspire and engage the community with visual art,” Kevin Osborne, deputy library director of Fairfax County Public Library, said.

Registration for the artist residency at John Marshall Library in Rose Hill opens tomorrow.

Scollon, a visual artist based in Fairfax, said she sees art as a tool for promoting empathy and attested to the transformative impact of working with students.

“I’ve worked with all ages on creating carved ceramic relief tiles inspired by personal stories,” she said. “It has been remarkable and joyful to see middle school students participate so openly and to see older adults illustrate important memories and life events.”

Fairfax County has opted not to move forward with a potential Sully District renaming.

Sully District Supervisor Kathy Smith announced at yesterday’s board meeting that she believes “the best step forward at this time is to retain” the name of the magisterial district, which encompasses the southwestern corner of Fairfax County.

Based on input from virtual town halls, emails, and community conversations, she proposed instead finding new ways to educate residents and visitors about the area’s history, particularly at the plantation in Chantilly that gave the district its name and is now the Sully Historic Site.

“In working on a path forward, I am actively talking with the NAACP, the county’s equity officer and the Fairfax County Park Authority executive director about ways we can have a more honest conversation about the history of our country, county and the Sully District,” Smith said in her board matter.

Supported without further discussion by the full Board of Supervisors, the decision concludes a months-long effort to gather public feedback after the county’s 2021 Redistricting Advisory Committee (RAC) recommended name changes for Sully and the former Lee District earlier this year.

After completing its primary task of redrawing the county’s electoral district maps, the committee was charged in January with reviewing whether to rename any districts based on possible historical ties to the Confederacy, slavery or racism.

According to a report finalized in March, Sully District was named after the plantation built by Richard Bland Lee, the first person to represent Northern Virginia in Congress. It said four generations of humans had been enslaved and trafficked at the property, including over 100 people during Lee’s tenure as owner.

When Lee inherited the land from his father in 1787, he received 29 enslaved people, according to the park authority’s history of the site, which features Lee’s 225-year-old house as well as 120 acres of park, gardens, a smokehouse and other structures.

While the website acknowledges the presence of slavery, it refers to the property as Lee’s “country home.” Smith’s board matter suggested that the county be more active and creative in providing information and programming about that aspect of the site’s history.

Smith said people weighed in with a variety of perspectives on whether to rename Sully District, including at town halls held on June 2 and Sept. 1, but the “most important thing I heard in these conversations was the need to heal our community.”

“The best way to do this is to work on ways to tell the true story of our sometimes complicated and misunderstood history and that of the Sully District specifically,” she said. “One way to do this is to educate the public about how land was developed, who benefitted and who was marginalized in the process.”

In addition to reevaluating what stories are told at the Sully Historic Site, the county could highlight historically Black neighborhoods affected by its westward expansion, similar to efforts to preserve Gum Springs in the Mount Vernon area. Read More

(Updated at 9:30 a.m. on 9/23/2022) With a new school year underway, students will soon jockey for seats in Fairfax County’s prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ), even as a federal court considers whether its current admission system discriminates against Asians.

For now, thanks to an earlier ruling upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, the upcoming class of 2027 will be determined by the same, much-debated process that has helped diversify the magnet school’s student body over the past two years, FCPS confirmed to FFXnow.

Launching at 4 p.m. on Oct. 24, freshman student applications will consist of a student portrait sheet and a math or science-focused problem-solving essay. Other criteria include a grade point average of 3.5 or higher and consideration of a student’s English language learner, special education, or free/reduced-price lunch status — known as “experience factors.”

Those experience factors and a guarantee that all participating schools get seats equal to 1.5% of their student population are central to a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of policy, which was adopted by the Fairfax County School Board in December 2020.

The revised process — which eliminated a standardized test and application fee — doesn’t explicitly consider race when evaluating students, but a lawyer for the Coalition for TJ argued to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Friday (Sept. 16) that it was designed to boost Black and Latino representation at the expense of Asian applicants.

(Correction: This article previously said oral arguments had taken place on Saturday, Sept. 17)

“That’s clear in the record from the statements that the board members and other senior staff in Fairfax County Public Schools made, that Asian American students were in the way,” Erin Wilcox said to the three-judge panel. “They needed to clear out room to increase the numbers of Black and Hispanic students.”

In February, a U.S. District Court judge ruled in favor of the Coalition for TJ, agreeing that the changes amounted to “racial balancing” in violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which prohibits laws from discriminating based on race.

FCPS promptly appealed the decision, maintaining that the policy is race-neutral, as stated in the school board’s adopted resolution, and backed by legal precedent. Donald Verrilli, the school board’s legal representative, cited a 2016 Supreme Court ruling that supported universities taking steps to diversify, ideally without directly looking at race.

“There are no quotas, no targets, no racial preferences of any kind, no racial classifications of any kind, and it is 100% race-blind in its administration,” he said. “No application contains any racially identifying information, so all applicants are judged on a race-blind basis.” Read More

Against the backdrop of post-9/11 community policing, the Fairfax County Police Department has selected its first-ever liaison for the local Muslim community.

Lt. Wahid Alam, who has served in the department for more than 18 years, hopes to build upon the relationship that already exists between the local Muslim community and the police department.

“I want to be the conduit to all the resources the police department has to offer and encourage Muslims to consider a career in policing,” he told FFXnow in a statement.

Alam, who was born and raised as Muslim, says his faith and background in policing makes him a good fit for this role. He also hopes to meet with Muslim faith and business leaders to “networking within this unique community and build even more inroads with the department.”

When asked if the Muslim community faces any unique challenges, Alam noted that many Muslim seems to face many of the same struggles as the community at-large.

“We are all concerned about keeping kids safe from cyber threats, traffic safety, staying safe in our neighborhoods and keeping from becoming a victim of crime. Identity theft, larceny from motor vehicles and street robberies are common concerns throughout Fairfax County,” he said.

Mistrust of police and concerns about community surveillance has been flagged by some Muslim organizations as issues, particularly in the years since 9/11.

Alam says the local Muslim community has strong support for law enforcement — which sometimes isn’t the case in other communities.

“The Muslim community needs to know how the Fairfax County Police Department conducts policing and surveillance in response to crime and dangerous threats,” he said. “FCPD does not conduct targeted surveillance to Muslims or any specific community. Building relationships and being transparent in our policing strategies and practices will build trust with the Muslim community.”

Sufficient health care, college degrees, and homeownership are becoming increasingly unattainable for Fairfax County residents with low to moderate incomes, a new report finds.

Late last month, Fairfax County released its “Needs Assessment” study, which comes out every three years with data on the current economic conditions in the county and the impact those conditions have on residents.

The report paints a pretty harrowing picture in light of the pandemic and recent inflation, particularly for lower-income residents. Low to moderate incomes are generally defined as those earning 60% or below the area median income. In 2021, that number was $77,400 for a family of four.

Just in the last year, those living on a limited income are having more trouble affording basic needs, as rising cost-of-living expenses mean lower-income households are spending more than they did in the past.

“Fairfax County residents with moderate to low income may have little to no money remaining after covering essential expenses, such as food and housing,” the report says. “This limits a household’s ability to build savings and restricts economic competitiveness.”

According to the report, household incomes have not kept pace with rising costs of essential expenses over the past decade.

In Fairfax County, the median household income has gone up about 21% since 2012. However, food, housing, and transportation all have risen more in that timeframe. Most notably, health care costs have risen by a whopping 41% in the last decade.

“Longer-term, health care costs have increased the most over 10 years, which may present challenges for residents who do not have health insurance coverage,” the report says.

As a result, the lowest-income households in the county are spending much more on health care, percentage-wise, than other income brackets.

The lowest 20% of households by income are spending nearly 29% of their expenses on health care, while those in the middle are spending between 15% to 17%.

Consumer prices have also gone up more in this past year than at any other point in the previous four decades. Tuition and child care now cost nearly 4% more than last year, housing more than 5%, health care 7%, and food 8%, according to the report. Read More

A change in Virginia law will allow police to once again pull over vehicles with excessively loud exhaust systems, starting tomorrow (Friday).

At a Fairfax County Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday (June 28), officials said the change was much needed, citing noisy cars as one of the top complaints they receive from constituents.

“This is a very annoying issue to a high percentage of my district’s residents,” Mount Vernon District Supervisor Dan Storck said. “I probably hear about this more than anything else.”

Earlier this year, the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation authorizing police to pull over vehicles and issue violations for loud exhaust systems.

Virginia eased rules on exhaust noise levels after the General Assembly passed legislation sponsored by local lawmaker Del. Patrick Hope (D-47) in 2020. Hope and other advocates argued at the time that police were disproportionately pulling over drivers of color for minor infractions, like broken tail lights, tinted windows, and loud exhaust systems.

That law went into effect in March 2021.

However, the change seemed to lead to a rise in noise complaints related to loud exhaust systems in Fairfax County and neighboring jurisdictions.

So, a new bill was created, passed, and signed into law by the governor this year that specifically made exhaust systems “not in good working order and in constant operation to prevent excessive or unusual levels of noise” a primary offense, meaning police can now pull over drivers specifically for that.

Braddock District Supervisor Walkinshaw and Springfield District Supervisor Herrity said they often hear from residents about loud vehicle exhausts. Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn said expensive, new exhaust systems with the express purpose of making noise are popular among some in his district.

Even Hope, the sponsor of the original bill, admitted to FFXnow that the 2020 bill had “unintendend consequences,” though he did vote against this session’s legislation.

“This [legislation] was in response to the unintended consequence in the 2021 law of some motorists taking advantage of the law change and installing obnoxiously loud exhaust systems on their vehicles, disturbing families and neighbors,” he wrote. “I heard many complaints from constituents that supported the intent of the law but the unintended consequence was a disturbance of the peace.” Read More