Fairfax County school officials fear Virginia’s new accreditation system could disproportionately harm schools with large populations of English learners and students with disabilities.
Adopted last month by the Virginia Board of Education, the School Performance and Support Framework places more weight on standardized test scores and graduation rates — a move state officials argue will hold schools to higher educational standards and improve accountability.
Commissioner of Elections Susan Beals on Wednesday expressed concerns with the operational performance of the U.S. Postal Service ahead of the 2024 presidential election in Virginia, warning that mail-in ballots may not be processed in time to be counted.
“Election officials depend on the U.S. mail service to deliver ballots to voters and to return ballots to election officials,” Beals told members of the Virginia House of Delegates Privileges and Elections Committee at a meeting in Richmond. “What I am hoping to change is the expectation of voters, that if I put my ballot in the mail five days before election day that it is going to get there. You need to plan further out than that.”
The Virginia Board of Education on Wednesday approved the final touches on the state’s Every Student Succeeds Act plan, designed to address concerns with how schools were rated and student performance was measured to determine better how to direct state resources.
During the special meeting in Richmond, the board approved Virginia’s ESSA plan, readiness weighting for different grade levels, and the overall school performance and support framework proposal as part of its package of accountability system changes.
Fairfax County Public Schools is giving the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) a demerit for its recent reveal of annual student test scores.
The results released last week omitted assessments outside of the Standards of Learning (SOL) tests that students take statewide, creating a misleading impression of how FCPS is doing, Superintendent Dr. Michelle Reid said in an Aug. 23 letter to state officials, including Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Fairfax County is no longer at high risk of experiencing a drought, thanks to the rain brought last week by Tropical Storm Debby.
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) announced today (Friday) that it has lifted its drought advisories for almost all of the state, including Northern Virginia, which has been under a drought warning since late June.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s recent executive order to limit phone use in Virginia schools may align with a new pilot program being considered by Fairfax County Public Schools.
Signed Wednesday (July 10), the executive order directs the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) to gather feedback from parents, teachers, and administrators to create guidelines for enforcing “cell-phone-free” classrooms in public schools.
The recent heat wave and a lack of rain could lead to a drought in much of Northern Virginia, including Fairfax County, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) says.
The department issued a drought warning advisory today (Monday) for the Northern Virginia and Shenandoah regions, announcing that “a significant drought is imminent.”
The average Dominion Energy Virginia residential customer will soon see a charge of about $4.50 dropped from their bills. The fee was being collected to recover costs through the state’s participation in the regional carbon market.
On Monday, the State Corporation Commission, which regulates Virginia’s utilities, approved a request from Dominion to stop tacking the fee on customer’s bills to recoup the costs the utility racked up through participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which Virginia is no longer a part of.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said Wednesday that the state will no longer follow car emissions standards set by California, despite his party’s failure to repeal or roll back a 2021 Democratic law that tied Virginia to those regulations.
The move tees up what could be another legal fight over Republican leaders’ efforts to undo climate change-related measures Democrats passed when they had full control of state government a few years ago.
At the halfway point of his administration, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin unveiled a budget proposal that calls for significant income tax cuts, increases in state sales and use tax — and a push to get rid of the car tax, which the Republican called “the single most hated tax” in Virginia.
“The car tax belongs in the trash can and not in your mailbox,” he said.
