The new school year got off to a “roaring start” this Monday, according to Dr. Peter Noonan, in an exclusive interview with the News-Press this week. He made the rounds of all the City of Falls Church’s five schools on opening day, starting with helping preschoolers off the bus at the Jesse Thackrey Preschool at 7:30 a.m. and culminating at Meridian High School, where classes now begin at the new and later start time of 8:30 a.m.

The smooth start, he said, was a carryover from the calm experienced throughout the now-shorter summer break since the high school graduation ceremony in mid-June. A first glimpse at enrollment has established that earlier estimates for this school year of an overall increase of about 100 students, as predicted by the Weldon Cooper and George Mason University Fuller Institute was just about right.

“We had about 100 more students last year than the year before, will have about 100 more this year and 100 next year,” Noonan said, based on the aggressive new development of residential and mixed use housing in the City that has contributed so much to the tax rate that pays for the schools.

At the two-day convocation of all FCCPS (Falls Church City Public Schools) employees held last week at the Meridian High auditorium, Noonan touted the Falls Church system as one of the best, if not the best, in the entire U.S.

That is due to the fact it is one of only seven in the nation that has incorporated the full, globally-renowned International Baccalaureate (IB) program into its entire system, from Pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade, with the Pre-K program being introduced just last year.

Now, over 95 percent of students in the entire system take at least one IB course and the core skills that are the subject of IB courses are weaved into the entire range of course offerings.

Those core skills are designed to encourage students to become inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, risk takers, open minded, caring, balanced and reflective, according to IB materials, and this is achieved through an inquiry-based approach that, simply, involves asking questions.

“How does this information make you a more caring person,” students may be asked, Noonan said, as an example. Students may also be asked to take a course that is a bit of a stretch for them, he added, as an example of what risk taking might look like.

Being reflective about behaviors and interactions, what makes them positive, for example, and “doing the right thing for others” might be elements.

Actually, a large delegation from Falls Church schools attended a conference at the IB’s U.S. headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, this summer that included education leaders from Singapore, Japan, Korea, Costa Rica, Azerbaijan, and other countries, following on last year’s hosting by the FCCPS of participants of all seven school districts in the U.S. that are, like the FCCPS, “continuum districts” that offer IB frameworks for the entire Pre-K to 12th grade educational system.

“They like to call what the IB offers more of a ‘framework’ than a curriculum,” Noonan noted, and educators can access “training modules” to improve their teaching skills. “It is a very powerful way to teach,” he said.

What makes the Falls Church system unique, Noonan added, is the connection of the system to the wider Falls Church community and the quality of the instructional staff. This is set against the pressure the system experiences in recruiting and keeping the best teachers and staff.

“I wish we could change our society’s appreciation for what our teachers do” in terms of compensation, he said. “I would love for ours to be the highest paid in Virginia. Our educators deserve it.”

He said the first negotiation with employee organizations for a collective bargaining agreement last spring went very smoothly, which, he said, coming from a labor family himself (of teachers), he was very appreciative of. The next round of such negotiations will come a year from now.

The new high school building and improvements to other buildings in the system “are one of a kind, with every institutional expectation met,” he said, fitting in perfectly with the collaboration and project-based, inquiry approach, by contrast with multiple-choice approaches to education.

The high school building “dignifies the students,” making them experience more of a community college than high school experience, he said, with strong relations with the community and parents.

Noonan said the current discussion on the proper role of student smart phones, as discussed at length in the season’s first school board meeting last week, will be decided by the School Board in October. The choices are between an all out ban on their use or one which for students above the eighth grade, permit use during lunch and passing periods.

Currently, he said, “the board is split.” Meridian Principal Peter Laub was among those involved in last week’s School Board forum who argued a more nuanced policy would be preferable at the high school level.

Noonan noted there is currently no wifi access at any of the schools other than what is used in teaching.
An executive order from the governor last week to remove all cell phone use in the schools from “bell to bell” was implemented by the Department of Education in the form of a recommendation only, leaving local school districts to implement their own policies. Noonan said that so far, all the districts around Falls Church are inclining toward permitting high school student use during lunch and passing periods.

Dr. Noonan praised the work of the general government in Falls Church for developing a strong, diversified tax base through economic growth, which allows teachers and others in the system to have their expectations met, which requires financial resources.

He said that based on projected enrollment growth this year and next, for teachers to be granted “step” cost-of-living increases based on inflation rates, a seven percent increase in the schools’ budget for the next annual budget cycle might be needed.