Children are our priority. Ensuring their needs are met is our goal.
Hackers breaching its system is another breach in a long line of privacy breaches and failures to secure information.
This evening, news outlets reported that the hackers posted private information about students.
And yet . . .
FCPS has been releasing information about students—without their permission—for years.
This headline appears in an internal FCPS report and precedes the following two entries about two Fairview Elementary School students (Fairfax County Public Schools, Virginia).
For Student One:
“Lack of acceptance of dyslexia by teachers”
For Student Two:
“private dyslexia diagnosis; student parentally placed at ”
“I suggest that you do not email your reply to her questions (no paper/email trail)”
This occurred after the parent shared a private evaluation with the school.
The parent went into the meeting thinking she was providing information that would help the school division address her child’s needs, only to learn later that the principal focused on “paper/email” trails and the psychologist had no intention of responding to her.
Although parents are considered equal IEP team members, in this case, the “rules” were set without their input and included a threat that the meeting would be shut down if the parents violated the rules.
And yet, some of the rules err on the noncompliance side of state and federal regulations.
At least one principal in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), VA sent notice Sept. 2, 2020, that FCPS is again running into tech issues.
This Spring, FCPS’ tech failures made national news.
Not only was their online launch a disaster, their online re-launch was a disaster.
And now, just a week before FCPS launches for the 2020-21 school year. . . . Deja Vu.
“How are we going to train all these teachers in Fairfax, you know, at the rate that we need it? We need to build that capacity. Some teachers are going to struggle even with Orton Gillingham, because it does require teachers to be very prescriptive and, well diagnostic first and then prescriptive in how they tailor their lessons.”
~Dottie Skrincosky, Fairfax County Dyslexia Resource, Region 5 Point of Contact, Intervention and Accommodation
This is a partial transcript of an IEP meeting that occurred toward the end of the 2019-20 school year.
Months earlier, the parent had stated that the program “Just Words” did not meet the unique needs of her son who was diagnosed with Dyslexia. This is not this parent’s first time at the Fairfax County Public School (FCPS) Dyslexia rodeo. She was joined by two friends who know the rodeo and Dyslexia well, too.
The honesty of Dottie Skrincosky was refreshing, but concerning just the same.
These are the words of a Virginia Department of Education Compliance Specialist. They appear in her edits of a State Complaint Letter of Findings.
State Complaints are supposed to be unbiased and investigated in full, with an “independent determination” provided.
However, when the individuals connected to the complaint exhibit very definite opinions about the investigation, unbiased and “independent determination” might as well be thrown out the window.
The document includes a get-out-of-providing-compensatory education/”recovery services” loophole—and exhibits a questionable interpretation of laws related to students with disabilities.