The Letter

*names and places have been changed to protect the ignorant.

Good Morning! My name is J&J's Mom and I am the PTO President of this Elementary School. It has recently come to my attention that our school will continue to be understaffed next year when renovations are completed and we move back in as a K-5.

Having been a teacher myself, I can relate to these issues personally. As a parent, I am concerned because it involves the quality of my son's education that is ever so important in these early years.

The point of this email is to make sure that you are aware of the staffing situation at our school and that if you are unable to answer these questions, to please make sure they are addressed to the appropriate people who are presenting our budget for next school year.

The following is a collaboration of questions and concerns that I believe have merit, although I cannot verify the their truth. This is where I am hoping you can help. Please bare with me and thanks so much for your time and attention in this matter.


The county agreed to renovate Our School and they have an obligation to staff it at a comparable level of service as the other schools. If that means pinching the budget somewhere else, so be it. They can find the money.

*Will we have a comparable G/T program to other schools?
*Will we have comparable library service?
*Will our students have a guidance counselor available when needed or are they only allowed to have problems on Tuesday when the guidance counselor is there?
*Can our office staff adequately serve the school? (We have half the staff as the other schools – but when there’s a report due the school does the whole report, not half a report. When there is a meeting to attend, the principal attends the whole meeting, not just half the meeting. When it’s time order supplies, it doesn’t take half as long because we’re smaller.

We need a five day rotation for specials because they are keeping the specials teachers part-time. They have to account for that fifth special in some way – either increasing the hours for one of the specials teachers or giving us another one..

Here is a summary of how we are currently operating...I apologize for the length...again, it is a collaboration.

Guidance – we currently only have a Guidance Counselor two days a week. One day is spent covering planning periods for teachers as part of the Specials rotation with Library, Art, Music and PE. There is no other school in the county that has to use its Guidance Counselor as a specials teacher. All other schools use a variation of some sort on a four day rotation. Currently, "another school", due to its size, has a fifth specials teacher (Spanish). With all specials position staffed part-time at Thompson, we are locked into a five-day rotation but have only four specials teachers. The extra day is covered by Guidance and Drawing.

Music/Art/Drawing are currently being taught by one person. If this schedule continues next year, she will have five full teaching days (which other Music and Art teachers have, also) but will have to plan for six grades in three subjects every week – this is a greater load than any other specials teacher in the county. I’m not sure what the answer to this is and I haven’t talked to Bonnie Williams to get her thoughts. Marypat asked for a full-time music teacher and a full-time art teacher, which was turned down.

G/T – we currently have a G/T teacher on a very part-time basis (I think she works maybe 10-12 hours a week). I’m not familiar enough with the G/T program to know how the classes are normally scheduled. Without someone there on a daily basis it will be difficult to develop an effective program for our G/T kids, leaving them unchallenged and underserved relative to the rest of the county.

Office Staff – Two people cannot adequately run the front office. The way the redistricting lines have been placed, we will have a high ESL population coming into the school. ( I know this for a fact because I live in this town and have served this neighborhood in various capacities from Boy Scouts to Food Bank.) I’m pretty sure Marypat asked for another full-time person in the office. This would be a tremendous help to Darlene in terms of her workload and would make it easier for the rest of the staff to function. Darlene is only one person and she can either be one the phone, helping a parent or assisting a teacher but she can’t do all three at once! Darlene, in turn, can take some of Marypat’s workload. This would allow Marypat to focus more on the things that only the principal can do.

In Spring 2003, we were promised a full-time person by H.R. to split between the office and the library. It never happened. We may be a small school but we have the same requirements for submitting reports, communicating with parents, conducting fundraisers, attending meeting, etc. that the bigger schools have. Just because you have half the students, doesn’t mean you have half the workload.

Library ( this part was written by our librarian ) – current plans are to staff the library only 2 ½ days a week. The library will be CLOSED the rest of the week except for teachers coming in to borrow materials. The librarian will not be there to help teachers with questions on materials. The library will not be open for teachers to bring their classes in to use the resources. It will not be open for students to take AR tests. It will not be open for students to get another book to read every day. Currently every other elementary library has two full-time staff members – a librarian and an assistant. An assistant has two main responsibilities:
To assist when classes are there during their specials time with book check-in/check out. This frees the librarian to assist individual students locate materials, find a good book to read, supervise on-going activities – really focus on the students. Without an assistant in the library, our students get much less personalized attention. We have been told that our student population is too small to warrant hiring an assistant. That is so irrelevant to me when I’m by myself in the library trying to help the kids. To me, it’s like telling a kindergarten teacher she can’t have an assistant because the school is too small. The wrong frame of reference is being used. When the library is a classroom (during specials) it should be staffed at the same level as every other elementary library classroom in the county – two people!!! She also assists during lessons as needed (research, etc.)
Book processing, cataloging and repair, shelving and other administrative tasks necessary for a smooth running library. This is a big task. We have had to rely on volunteers for this – no other library in the county used volunteers for basic day-to-day functions.
There is absolutely no way that I can teach two full days (12 classes) and then in my extra ½ day a week do the following: plan and prep for six grades, select and order books, process them, cataloging if necessary, book repairs, help the teachers with their resource needs, shelve books, have a Book Fair to augment the meager county book budget (I work full-time during this time, unpaid), attend librarian meetings (which now are almost always on my days off).

For the administration, it has always come down to numbers to justify our low staffing level. Although these numbers don’t represent what we may have next year, this is what appears on the county’s website for the 2005-06 budget. Each of the other schools has 4 times the library staffing than Thompson has (2 full-time v. 1 half-time):

Our School 220
School #1 470 2.25 times the # of students
School #2 659 3.15 times the # of students
School #3 398 1.90 times the # of students
School #4 451 2.16 times the # of students
School #5 534 2.55 times the # of students
School #6 427 2.14 times the # of students
School #7 2.55 times the # of students
School #8 573 2.74 times the # of students
School #9 553 2.64 times the # of students

By the numbers, we are understaffed. At least as far back as 1991, the "Old Name" library was staffed by a full-time librarian or was full-time equivalent with a part-time librarian and a part-time assistant. That changed in 2002 when the school became Our Elementary School and the job was abruptly cut to a half-time position.

The county also falls back on the Virginia Standards of Accreditation that say a full-time librarian isn’t required until a school has 300 students. That is inadequate. If we followed the other SOAs for staffing our school would have:
Principal – ½ time
Guidance Counselor OR Reading Specialist – 2 hours per day
Clerical – ½ time
Also, no school would qualify for an assistant principal except "another school" – and then only half-time at 600 students. These standards are so obviously inadequate and have been rejected by the county as such, it is hard to understand why they embrace only one standard – the one for the librarian position – and use it as justification for their staffing decision.

Although I don’t expect the library at "Our School" to be staffed with two full-time people, it should be staffed with a full-time librarian and a half-time assistant. This would give Marypat more flexibility in scheduling specials and give the teachers time to bring their classes to the library or send students there for research.
(An alternate solution would be a half-time librarian and full-time assistant. What wouldn’t work is a half-time librarian and half-time assistant. In order to keep the library open every day, the two would work opposite each other – no assistance for the library during classes, and no overlap for coordination purposes. I believe there should be at least one person there full-time.


P.E. This position is currently 15 hours a week and is very hard to fill since benefits don’t kick in until 17.5 hours. At the very least, it should be half-time (18.75 hours) – or, my favorite idea – full-time and get the kids to PE twice a week. The would also solve the 5th specials problem. I know that will never fly because then we would have something the rest of the county doesn’t have – it’s OK for us to have less, but never more.


Okay, I think that does it. Please don't take any of this as malicious or hostile. I really am just trying to do whatever I can to make my child's education the best it can be. I grew up in and taught in Fairfax County Schools. It is my experience that if you know the right people and push the right buttons, things happen. You are our voice in this county and I know you want what's best for our kids. If there is anything else I can do, or anyone else I should talk to, please let me know.

Thanks so much for your time and attention in this matter.

Sincerely, J&J's Mom

Update: As a result of the timing in which this letter was received, our County Chairman brought up the salient points in the budget hearing. I have now done all I can do. The rest is up to the B.O.S and the Planning Commission. Keep your fingers crossed!!