Investing in Our Children
Sally’s vision for Arlington Public Schools is one that prepares all of Arlington’s children with the tools, support, and opportunities necessary to achieve maximum individual success. She understands that each student’s journey is directly influenced by every layer of his or her community, and it is therefore our responsibility to support and strengthen all of those layers. By investing in every student, and their personal community, we invest in our entire community.
Sally knows that children are different, and that they are individuals with unique needs. Over these past four years she has focused her energy on helping to meet those diverse needs, with specific emphasis on:
Ensuring appropriate preschool opportunities
Expanding foreign language instruction
Implementing health and wellness initiatives
Raising minority student achievement
The Arlington community has a stake in the success of every Arlington student. As a member of the Arlington School Board, Sally strives to make the journey of education a more fulfilling one for students, parents, and teachers alike, and is devoted to securing the foundation for that vision–one that results in individual success for every student.
Preschool
Ensuring appropriate preschool opportunities is essential for low-income and second language students. Increasing early literacy and math skills prior to entry into kindergarten is a critical component in closing later achievement gaps. Data from Arlington Public Schools (APS) confirms that Arlington children who attend preschool demonstrate sustained higher achievement through fifth grade than children who do not attend preschool, with children attending APS preschool programs showing the highest and most sustained achievement levels.
APS-provided preschool programs include the Virginia Preschool Initiative, Montessori, and special education preschool. During the last four years, the Arlington School Board has supported the continued expansion of these preschool opportunities.
While recognizing the capacity constraints faced by the school system, Sally will continue to advocate for expansion of preschool opportunities for Arlington’s most at-risk learners. Sally believes that our youngest learners are best served when they have the opportunity to attend preschool within their neighborhood school. However, Sally knows that capacity concerns will require APS to evaluate other alternatives for meeting the preschool need in the County. In doing so, careful consideration must be given to the many factors which contribute to a young learner having the most successful preschool experience.
The investment which Arlington makes in its youngest learners is one of the best–and highest yield–investments our community makes.
Courageous Conversations and Cultural Competence
At its core, “cultural competence” is the ability to interact effectively with people of different cultures. All of us, regardless of who we are and our cultural backgrounds and understandings, bring those experiences and perspectives to bear on everything we do. Building cultural competence means creating a set of attitudes, skills, and behaviors that enable organizations, and individuals, to work effectively in the cross-cultural situations that are not only part of our daily lives here in the Arlington community, but most certainly in the Arlington Public Schools.
With the support of the School Board, the cultural competence initiative began in 2003. A commitment to building cultural competence is critical to two of our Strategic Plan Goals: eliminating the achievement gap and building effective relationships. Fostering these deeper understandings of how culture affects both teaching and learning greatly supports higher student achievement. For these reasons, the School Board has continued its support of the Cultural Competence initiative.
This initiative, which involves ongoing professional development and facilitated discussion groups, includes staff at all levels, from system-wide and school-level administrators to school-based staff, as well as individual teachers and support staff.
Sally will continue to be a strong proponent of the cultural competence initiative. She believes that building cultural competence benefits everyone in the school system. And, as such, it is one of several critical elements to raising student achievement.
Foreign Language Instruction in Elementary School
Our children are growing up in a global society that requires them to mature into world citizens as adults. Ensuring that Arlington students graduate from high school with proficiency in a second language must be a basic expectation as our school system moves into the future.
The evidence is clear that early second language instruction is one key to achieving proficiency. Early second language instruction has significant ancillary benefits, such as improving overall school performance, building problem-solving skills, and enhancing understanding of a student’s native language. While there are numerous foreign language instruction opportunities at the middle and high school levels, Arlington does not yet offer foreign language instruction in all its elementary schools.
Over the last four years, the School Board has supported the expansion of the Foreign Language in Elementary School (FLES) model to seven of Arlington’s 20 elementary schools (two additional schools provide a full-immersion language program). Unfortunately, budget constraints prevent the expansion of FLES to additional schools for in FY11. This financial problem cannot be a roadblock to this critical education component.
The continued expansion of elementary foreign language instruction will be an area of School Board attention in the coming months and years. Sally is committed to expanding elementary foreign language instruction across all elementary schools. She will work to evaluate how to best accomplish that objective in a way that well serves students and works within existing budget constraints.
The investment our community makes in elementary foreign language instruction ensures our students are equipped with the skills to be most successful in our world culture.
Health and Wellness
Healthy kids come to school ready to learn. Ensuring Arlington’s children are ready to learn each day and acquire healthy habits for their lifetime is a very high priority. In recent years, the School Board has supported the following health and wellness-related initiatives:
- Recess policy – Recess is not only an outlet for expending physical energy, but it increases overall learning and productivity. For this reason, since adopting a recess policy in 2006, the School Board has monitored the consistent application of this policy across the school system. Additionally, the School Board has worked to ensure that the withholding of recess is strongly discouraged.
- Healthier food choices on breakfast and lunch menus – Recent changes to school menus include the availability of fresh-cut fruit, whole wheat bread choices, reducing sugar content in drink options, and smaller portion sizes.
- Healthy food during the school day – School Board priorities include working to ensure healthy foods are served at school-sponsored celebrations and afterschool programs, and to strongly discourage practices such as using food as reward in the classroom.
- Cook-in kitchens – To facilitate the preparation of fresh food choices for students, the School Board supported the conversion of school kitchens to cook-in kitchens.
- Integration of health and wellness efforts across curriculum areas – including physical education, reading, math, music, art, and science.
(For more information about recent Board priorities related to health and wellness, see School Board Policy 25-3, “Support for Students, Wellness.”)
Minority Student Achievement Programs
Different students need different supports to reach their greatest academic potential. Recognizing and responding to these different needs must be an ongoing priority for Arlington Public Schools. Raising minority achievement requires supporting minority students, their parents, and their teachers.
A sampling of the current programs targeted to raising minority achievement include:
Student Programs:
- Early Childhood Education – A variety of preschool options are available for economically disadvantaged and second-language learners [see preschool above]
- Latino Leadership programs
- Cohort Program – Wakefield High School’s Academic Cohort Program identifies African American and Hispanic males in 9th grade who are capable of taking a more demanding course load. Cohort students are supported through graduation by weekly meetings with Wakefield’s Gifted Coordinator, a school counselor, and social worker.
- College Tours – Minority students from each high school and middle school are given the opportunity to spend the day at colleges or universities. The visits always include tours of the campus and a discussion of admissions requirements by university personnel.
- Early Identification Program (EIP) – The Early Identification Program at George Mason University (GMU) provides academic and cultural enrichment to minority students. EIP graduates with a 3.0 or better GPA are guaranteed admission to GMU. The APS Office of Minority Achievement provides programmatic, academic, and financial assistance to EIP students.
Parent Programs:
- Parent Expectations Supporting Achievement (PESA) – A weekly program, running for 6 consecutive weeks, assists parents in building parenting skills that demonstrate high expectations for their children. The PESA program emphasizes the importance of the influence of the child’s first teacher, the parent, and provides strategies for improved communication and strengthened relationships.
- Bi-lingual Support – Language support is provided to second language families in a variety of ways, including bi-lingual resource assistants in schools.
Staff Programs:
- Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN) – Arlington Public Schools is a founding member of MSAN, a national coalition of multiracial, suburban-urban school districts that study achievement gaps existing in their districts. Through conferences, sharing data and best practices, and ongoing professional development programs, Arlington benefits from – and contributes to – the minority achievement success stories from other similar jurisdictions.
