News Brief

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

Guest Commentary

What a Fantastic Time To Be In Public Education

by Peter J. Noonan Ed.D.

FCCPS Superintendent

In the past two weeks, Falls Church City Public Schools has welcomed back our leaders for a day-long retreat working on how to set a great tone, goals, and outcomes for the coming school year. We also welcomed back our Collaborative Team Leaders (CTLs) to engage in how our new Strategic Plan impacts the quality of education we provide, what best practices in curriculum and instruction look like, and also help set us up for success for the coming year.

And, just this Monday, we welcomed 35 new professionals representing teachers, school counselors, therapists, technology experts, etc. All that to say, we are back, and I couldn’t be more excited for the 2022-23 school year. In reflecting on my five years as superintendent, in many ways, it represents the “tale of two halves,” to steal a sports analogy. When I arrived in 2017, our team set to work on our Triennial Plan (the division’s strategic plan at the time).

Proactively we worked to support our big goals; being the premier IB school division in the world, closing achievement gaps, and building a culture of care for staff, students and the community. We also developed and implemented a plan to build a new flagship high school that represents the core values of the community. By all accounts, we “knocked it out of the park.” FCCPS has been named the Best School Division in the Commonwealth of Virginia for the past four years running, and two Decembers ago, we welcomed students to the new Meridian High.

And then — Covid. For the past two and a half years, we’ve been in a reactionary posture; problemsolving, communicating to our best ability with information that changed often and without notice (for you and us) and trying like crazy to support our families and learners as well as possible during this very difficult time. Again, by most accounts, we did well. We were the first division to reopen school in Region IV, our students were safe, and learning was maintained at high, and prepandemic levels (based on SOL to be officially published next week — it’s amazing, all things considered!).

The past five years, in my opinion, have created a context for us in education to return to school this year with a renewed spirit and return to the proactive work that we had to set aside due to Covid. I believe after what we have been through, now is that once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-engage and return FCCPS to what we are best at: relationship building, great instructional programming individualized to meet the needs of all of our students, support for those students who struggle learning and for those who need more depth and complexity to their learning and enjoyment in the teaching and learning process.

To that end, the joy is palpable among those I’ve met in the past two weeks. Maybe it is the glow of some summer downtime or, perhaps, the realization we are opening our doors without pandemic-forced reactionary issues. For the first time in a long time, what we do is what we want to do — dedicate our fullest effort to educating students. We again have agency over our work and consequently have a chance to feel the allimportant sense of self and collective efficacy, which research shows has the greatest single positive outcome on student learning.

Teachers and leaders I’ve spoken to are returning and feel “in their bones” the work they are about to embark on will make a difference in the lives of the students they serve. Don’t underestimate this in a country that is experiencing the “great resignation” in teaching. That didn’t happen in FCCPS, and this alone is a huge celebration that indicates a pivotal positive moment in FCCPS and for our community.

Lastly, my message for our entire school community is to rediscover joy. The past two years have not been joyful for most and traumatic for many who experienced some sort of loss and a few the worst possible loss of family who died from Covid. Our community has been divided on policy implementation, the science of infectious disease, and more.

This year, join us in the idea of “calling in” as opposed to “calling out” by rebuilding together with the education of our children at the center. This common goal and outcome can bring us together in the end. So, join me in emerging from the second half of the past five years, and let’s write a story of hope, enjoyment, love, and care for our schools, our students, and each other.

Peter J. Noonan is Superintendent of Schools for the City of Falls Church. He will host a Welcome Back Livestream on the FCCPS YouTube Channel on Wednesday, August 24th at 7pm.

Natural talents blended with natural delights at the shady Lubber Run amphitheater July 30. Two of Arlington’s most cosmopolitan musicians offered a one-of-a-kind opportunity for a baby-boomer audience singalong.

The five-member Veronneau and Friends, featuring Quebecois chanteuse Lynn Veronneau and British guitarist-scholar Ken Avis (her husband), departed from their usual world music and jazz fare to present “Blue Tapestry,” fresh interpretations of 1971 masterpieces by Joni Mitchell (“Blue”) and Carole King (“Tapestry”).

The performers enjoyed it as much as the full-house, multigenerational crowd, who echoed familiar lyrics to “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?,” “It’s Too Late,” “Carey” and “All I Want.”

“Lubber Run has excellent acoustics,” Veronneau told me in a later interview. “The upgrades they made are fabulous” and engineer Chris Cooley “does an amazing job on sound. It’s a wonderful opportunity for artists to be out in a beautiful setting.”

The singer satisfied my curiosity in reporting that backstage, the performers enjoy a dressing room with air conditioning, a mirror, cold water and a bathroom.

“There’s a great sound on stage, you’re surrounded by everyone singing, and we could hear them all,” added Avis, noting that attendees he knew came from as far as Silver Spring and Gaithersburg. “We felt like we were playing at Wolf Trap.”

Having performed four times at Lubber Run, Avis appreciates the work of the county arts program and the Lubber Run Foundation, who keep the free summer shows alive (unless that venue in the forest is rained upon).

The key ingredients of Veronneau, whose albums rise on world music and jazz charts, perform at Georgetown clubs, the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage and festivals. But they need not travel far to set up the instruments at Lubber Run. Veronneau and Avis live near Jamestown Elementary School. They also host a radio show on Arlington’s community station WERA-FM called “The Antidote.”

The couple met in Geneva as World Bank and nuclear research employees. Both were moonlighting as musicians when a producer pulled them away from existing band-mates and paired them. As both would earn “second chances” at marriage, Ken settled in Arlington in 1996 because “you typically have two days to find somewhere to live, so you rely on other ex-patriots at the Bank. There’s a couple of ghettos — Bethesda and Arlington, which is close to the airport and has good schools,” he says.

Ken gives music history lectures. (I heard him this April at the Washington history conference on DC’s days in the 1940s and ‘50s as the “Capital of Country Music.”

That predated the rise of Nashville and included the Arlington-centric careers of producer Connie B. Gay and singer Jimmy Dean.)

Lynn grew up in Montreal, where she studied art history and opera in Italian. But after spending eight years in France and studying voice, she said, she adjusted her Quebecois twang. Though she doesn’t speak fluent Portuguese, she is careful to understand lyrics to the songs she performs in Brazilian samba sets. (Her unusual claim to “fame” is that she appeared in the first photograph ever published on the World Wide Web, back in 1992, posing with a doo-wop parody group in Geneva, Les Horribles Cernettes.)

“We like adventuring, discovering new places and people,” the couple said by phone while vacationing in Quebec. “At the same time, we feel so much at home in Arlington.” ***

A taste of Arlington in the days of bootlegging was served up Aug. 12 by park historian John McNair.

Seventeen of us assembled in Clarendon at the convergence of three boulevards (Wilson, Clarendon and Washington), site of the old trolley car line. That’s how determined 1920s drinkers and illicit distributors (many from DC) made their quick escapes, McNair explained as he unfurled the dozens of pages of the Volstead Act that governed Prohibition under the 18th amendment.

After walking to the Courthouse to be near sites of the old courtrooms and jail (now a parking lot), the group hoisted a glass at a legal bar, the Board Room.

COMMENT Our Man in Arlington

By Charlie Clark

AUGUST 18 - 24, 2022 | PAGE 5

Rep. Beyer in Congressional Delegation Visiting Taiwan

U.S. Rep. Don Beyer, who represents Falls Church in his 8th District of Northern Virginia, is currently part of a Congressional delegation that followed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to visit Taiwan this week. The delegation is being led by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific, and is due back in this region this weekend. The bipartisan delegation includes Beyer and his co-chair on the congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, Rep. John Garamenda of California. Reps. Alan Lowenthal of California and Aumua Coleman Radewagen of American Samoa are also on the trip. The delegation was due to reaffirm the United States’ support for Taiwan as guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, U.S.China Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances and encourage stability and peace across the Taiwan Strait.

It was slated to meet with elected leaders and members of the private sector to discuss shared interests including reducing tensions in the Taiwan Strait and expanding economic cooperation, including investments in semiconductors.