Author: Callie Oettinger (page 16)

December 8, 2022: This article was updated to include this mention of Office of Civil Rights (OCR) November 30, 2022, letter of findings about Fairfax County Public Schools and OCR’s resolution agreement with FCPS. OCR’s findings cite this systemic complaint and make it clear that parents should have prevailed in 2020.

Part III of this series discussed the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) extending Fairfax County Public Schools’ (FCPS) deadline for responding to the Notice of Complaint (NOC) issued by VDOE.

It discussed, too, FCPS missing the extended deadline and VDOE accepting FCPS’ late submission, even though VDOE’s NOC states, in bolded type:

“Both the school division’s response and supporting documentation must be provided by the response due date in order to be considered for review by this office. Should the supporting documentation not be included, our review will rest on the documentation submitted by the response due date.”

What happened next?

A colossal mess.

December 8, 2022: This article was updated to include this mention of Office of Civil Rights (OCR) November 30, 2022, letter of findings about Fairfax County Public Schools and OCR’s resolution agreement with FCPS. OCR’s findings cite this systemic complaint and make it clear that parents should have prevailed in 2020.

When rules are set in concrete for parents, but set in Jell-O for school divisions, it is hard to believe that children will ever have their rights implemented in full.

If the very state education agency that is mandated by law to ensure the rights of children, is in noncompliance itself—and bends its own rules for school divisions—who will ensure the rights of children are implemented in full?

December 7, 2022: This article was updated to include this mention of Office of Civil Rights November 30, 2022, letter of findings about Fairfax County Public Schools and OCR’s resolution agreement with FCPS. OCR’s findings cite this systemic complaint and make it clear that parents should have prevailed in 2020.

May 8, 2020, the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) received a systemic complaint against Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS).

VDOE issued its Notice of Complaint (NOC) May 18, 2018.

When you review the NOC, compare it with the parents’ complaint. You’ll see that the items VDOE picked to investigate aren’t the actual complaints, but information supporting the complaints.

As I wrote in Part I of this series, this is classic VDOE—and is a topic I’ll cover in depth at a later date.

December 6, 2022: This article was updated to include this mention of Office of Civil Rights November 30, 2022, letter of findings about Fairfax County Public Schools and OCR’s resolution agreement with FCPS. OCR’s findings cite this systemic complaint and make it clear that parents should have prevailed in 2020.

This is part one of a series based on a pending systemic complaint against Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) and based on the Virginia Department of Education’s (VDOE) handling of the complaint.

May 8, 2020, a complaint against FCPS was submitted to the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE).

Five families and six children are listed on the complaint, which the parents asked VDOE to investigate at the systemic level.

In the three months since the complaint was submitted, VDOE and FCPS have exhibited how stacked the system is against the very children it is supposed to protect.