Two Q's and A's with Libby Garvey

Also, please note that Raising Kaine has NOT endorsed anyone in the Arlington school board race. The Democratic endorsement caucus will be held on May 1 and May 3, and RK has profiled five of the six candidates (Karla Hagan, Emma Violand-Sanchez, Terron Sims,  Reid Goldstein, and Libby Garvey).  One candidate, James Lander, has not responded to our questionnaire.

Question #1: I'm wondering what's your position on environmental issues with regard to the Arlington Public Schools.  Several people have told me that Arlington schools are not doing what they need to be doing on the environment -- any thoughts?

Libby Garvey's response: We are doing quite a lot environmentally.  We are designing our new buildings to LEED Silver rating and built the first LEED Silver rated school building in Virginia (Langston Brown). We do recycling (yes we can do more), have gardens in many of our school grounds that the teachers use to teach from.    We've switched to paper trays from plastic in our cafeteria distribution system. We've begun traffic demand management in a couple of our buildings and are increasing that next year. We've begun a program to help students ride public transportation and have information in our high schools to support that. We have 4 CNG buses and a number which use biofuel. As we buy new buses we are continuing to move towards a more environmentally friendly school bus fleet. I'm sure there is lots more, but that is off the top of my head.

More on the "flip."
 

We do more every year, but we're not doing as much as some people want and we never will keep everyone happy.  On any issue.   This is one of the issues I mean when I refer to my concern that we will lose our focus on education.   Student educational achievement is our first priority and must remain so.   At times I feel "being green" is the main focus for some folks, even if it means taking away from our primary mission of education.  I understand the importance of environmental activists and appreciate their work, afterall my husband spent much of his career at EPA.  However, as a School Board member, I have to stay focussed on our main mission and not get pulled away from that.  I understand how members of our community feel very strongly about this, but I realize that many people have one overriding issue that interests them.  We cannot let that pull us away from good management of the school system.

I believe a case in point is the current budget we are just finishing, our Board is poised to put in about  $100K for more traffic demand management over and above the increase already suggested by staff.    Our staff is already increasing that program and, under questioning from me, told us that they really could not well use another $100K for that purpose this next year.  They simply do not have the staff and would need to pull people off of other work to do it.   My colleagues seem to be assuming that the "other work" is not as important or that stretching our staff which is already stretched with school constructionprojects, keeping our HVAC systems going etc. is a good way to go for this extra increase in TDM.  I do not agree.   I have now suggested that we use that money to pay for paper trays in our cafeteria instead of the styrofoam we are now using.  Paper costs about 3 times what the paper trays cost.   This is a strong environmental suggestion and it is, I believe, a much more responsible use of the money in this budget.  I am very hopeful that my Board colleagues will yet agree with me.  

Question #2: With regard to foreign language instruction in the Arlington Public School system, someone emailed me to say that "Abby Raphael, Ed Fendley, and Sally Baird voted for the additional [Foreign Language in the Elementary Schools, FLES] school for next Fall. Libby and Frank Wilson voted against the additional FLES school for next Fall. Karla Hagan supports the additional FLES school for next Fall."  Any comment on that?  

Libby Garvey's response: FLES is a similar issue to the environmental issue. Again, I am very supportive of early language training. I've lived and worked in a French speaking country as a Peace Corps volunteer and, at one time, was close to being fluent in French.  I've studied Latin, Russian and a little Sango, the native language of the Central African Republic. All of these have been important learning experiences for me. Two of my grandchildren have Hispanic backgrounds and my daughter is very proficient in Spanish. I hope to have some time to learn that language, too.  I well understand the importance and value of speaking at least two languages in the 21st Century.

And I've supported language programs in our schools.    Our Immersion program is outstanding and I've been supportive of adequte resources for that program for many years.    We began the FLES  program as a pilot and increased to 4 more schools this year. This is a new way of teaching languages in Arlington (indeed, in much of the United States). Many of our teachers are very upset about FLES. They lose their early release Wednesdays, which is when many of them do a lot of planning. Elementary school teachers are very, very short on any kind of planning time -- much more so than secondary teachers. Every year elementary teachers are asked to do more and more.   The program seems to be working in the schools that have it, but we've not done a thorough look at it yet. At each school, months of planning and work on schedules and with teachers occurred before starting the next school year.    

We do not have another school ready to go next fall. One of the big issues is that the next schools do not have space, so the teachers will not have a room of their own, but will likely need to have their materials on a cart and move from room to room to teach.  Our teachers are not used to this and are very upset about it in many instances. I think this can and will be worked out, but it takes time to do that well.  Sure, we can just order a school and its teachers to do this. This is what my colleagues want. That means a lot of upset and a lot of time spent by our central staff and the school's principal to try to make this work as well as possible.  Again, this is, I believe, not a good use of time and energy. This is a large institution that depends on people to function well. The climate we set and how we work with people and respect their concerns determines the quality of  organization we have.  Ordering people to do what they are not ready to do sets a bad tone, I believe, and if that sort of tone continues will ultimately affect our students. Good staff will not want to work here and those that are here will feel increasingly disrespected and unappreciated.

So FLES is, I believe, another example of where we are allowing an issue to pull us away from our central focus. Rather than approaching language training in a deliberate and well thought out fashion, Board members seem intent on pushing ahead and seem unconcerned about the consequences.  I believe this  is not good for the school system as a whole. There are many important curriculum issues, such as how we organize our middle school curriculum, that need attention. Staff time is finite. If staff is scrambling to put together as well as they can a program that they are not prepared for, they cannot be working on other issues. I see it as a misallocation of our resources. Obviously, several of my colleagues do not agree with me, although we have not yet voted and that could still change.  

While each one of these issues is not huge in and of itself, they are setting a pattern that worries me very much. It is the focus on student achievement and the support we've given to an excellent administrative and teaching staff that brought this school system to be nationally recognized for its excellence. If we begin to focus on other issues and to not support our staff nor listen to their concerns, we will lose exactly what makes us so strong and the consequences for our schools and County will not be good.

Thank you for asking. Let me know if you have any other questions.

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