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Education Committee
What We Do
The Education Committee monitors the performance, activities, and actions of the elected Fairfax County School Board members, reviews proposals to establish, expand, or reduce County and State-level educational programs, and proposes Federation positions on the annual Fairfax County Public School System budget.
For committee-specific inquires, contact our Chair, listed HERE.
Recent Actions
The Federation’s Education Committee has worked as partners with FCPS to help improve the school system’s operations. We regularly provide input through testimony, regular informal communications, and by serving on a variety of standing and/or temporary committees. Over the past few years we have supported joint operations between FCPS and the County, encouraged more intensive investments in computing technology, pushed for greater strategic thinking, and encouraged our schools to maintain a strong Advanced Academic Program. In Richmond among our other accomplishments we are proud to have helped pass two pieces of long-awaited legislation: (1) In 2019 we helped obtain local control over our school calendar with the passage of SB1005 and HB1652 after almost a decade of advocacy, and (2) In 2020 we helped obtain greater flexibility to fund schools by more closely equalizing the taxing powers of counties with those of cities, through SB 588 and HB 785. In 2022 we have notified FCPS on several significant issues (see below).
Recent Announcements
Everyone,
Due to popular demand, Annmarie and I will be hosting our first in-person Federation Education Committee Meeting since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020! We look forward to catching up with as many of you as possible on Tuesday, October 11 at 7:30 p.m. in room 5056 of the FCPS Gatehouse Administration Center, which is at 8115 Gatehouse Road in Falls Church. For those of you who are longtime committee members, this is the room which we have traditionally used.
The last time Annmarie, Tim, and I had a meeting at Gatehouse there were some new parking procedures and/or certain entrances were locked, so I will ask about that before our next meeting, but the space is reserved in any event. If you would like to attend virtually, please do let us know that so that we can prepare to have at least one of us in charge of running the meeting as a hybrid event. We are happy to do so, of course!
Our agenda for October 11 will be to prepare the legislative issues our committee will be sending to the Federation Board and Membership for our annual legislative package, which is addressed to Fairfax’s delegation of state senators and delegates. As a refresher, here is last year’s legislative package. The Education Committee’s contributions can be found on pp. 7-8
Nancy Trainer