Later start times for Fairfax County High Schools

After several years of studies commissioned to the Children’s National Health System, the Fairfax County School Board voted yesterday to implement later start times for high school students.

Sleeping lion

Everybody needs their precious sleep

Later start times for high schools means earlier start times for middle schools

The new strategy will cost over $4M to implement and it will flip-flop the middle school schedules with the high school schedules.  Fairfax County Middle schools will now have earlier bell schedules (around 7:30am), and High schools will now have bell schedules starting at around 8:15 am.

This is one of a couple of recent changes favored by FCPS parents

Continue Reading…

It’s time to move! Fairfax County Real Estate Market Sept 2014

How has the real estate market been in Fairfax County over the past few months?

We definitely had an interesting Spring season

Late Winter is a good time for Realtors® to go on vacation

The real estate market in Fairfax County is usually quiet in late Winter

Some of us, Northern Virginia Realtors®, saw good activity in the late Winter (when it’s normally nice and quiet and a great time to go on a cruise vacation… hey, it’s ok to dream!).

Many of us thought that this Spring would bring so much work that we’d have to quit sleeping for several months.

So we braced ourselves in exited anticipation for a wonderful, active Spring.  But Winter lingered (and it lingered so much that I thought that I had been transported to Canada in my sleep) and the Spring market took quite a while to thaw out.

Spring sprung late in 2014

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How to evaluate SOL scores

Welcome back to school!

By now, kids who took the Standards of Learning (SOL) tests at Fairfax County Public Schools might have received their SOL scores in the mail (or they will receive them soon).

What do these SOL scores mean?

(If you want to understand more about SOL tests, passing rates, and scores, see How SOL passing rates are different from SOL scores)

The letter that parents receive with their kids’ test results via mail look like this: Continue Reading…

Fairfax County Schools calendar 2014-2015 (with a few good surprises)

A few weeks ago, the Board for the Fairfax County Public Schools voted to implement a new master calendar.  We had mentioned it on our Full Day Mondays post.

The new FCPS school Calendar includes several student holidays

The new FCPS school Calendar includes several student holidays (click image to download)

At the time, the Board had made the decision to implement Full Day Mondays.

However, there seem to have been a lot of push-back from teachers and school personnel regarding the lack of teacher planning time with the new schedule.

Teachers pushed back for the lack of planning time

The teachers seem to have made a strong case for their lost planning time with the new schedule, so the Board analyzed the situation and voted to adjust the master calendar to allow for enough teacher planning time throughout the year.

What does this mean to you?

Continue Reading…

How to commute from Fairfax to DC

Clare got a great job offer in downtown Washington, D.C. and is considering taking it.  But first, she wants to figure out how long her commute would be from her home in Fairfax. She lives in Fairfax County, in the Chantilly High School boundary, and Fairfax’s 22033 zip code.

First, Clare looked into public transportation

Silver Line now open

The Silver Line of the Metro is another option for commuting

She could take a bus to the closest Metro station:

  • Wiehle Ave. on the Silver Line
  • Vienna on the Orange Line

Or, she could drive to either of these stations and park.

Clare used the WMATA trip planner app to figure out the bus routes and the time that it would take to get into DC in the morning.

Next, Clare looked into how long it would take to drive to DC. Continue Reading…

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