Following a unanimous, if rather briskly conducted vote on adopting a 2025-26 instructional calendar at Monday night’s Fredericksburg City School Board meeting, board member Katie Pomeroy asked for an opportunity to discuss the topic.
“Sorry, discussion wasn’t on my script, so I guess we skipped it,” replied Matt Rowe, who represents Ward 1.
Rowe can be forgiven for not picking up on every cue associated with a position he’d held for all of an hour. At the start of Monday’s meeting, Rowe was nominated and elected as chairperson of the board. Pomeroy, meanwhile, takes over Rowe’s previous role as vice chair.
“Thank you all very much for the trust you’ve vested in me,” said Rowe, as former Chair Jarvis Bailey retrieved his nameplate and placed it next to Superintendent Marci Catlett on the dais.
The board then presented Bailey (at-large) with a gift to recognize his tenure as board chair.
“From all of us, thank you for your leadership and for being our resident educator on the board,” Rowe said. “We’ve leaned on you for advice and guidance, and your very valued and unique perspective. We couldn’t be the good board that we are without you.”
“I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years, and I’ve loved every minute of it,” replied Bailey, who teaches business and economics in Stafford County Public Schools. “I can’t wait for my grandbabies to go to Fredericksburg City Schools.”
Division aspires to help immigrant students with new program
Starting in the second semester, 25 Walker-Grant Middle School students will participate in a pilot program designed to help Hispanic newcomers and immigrants.
According to a presentation from Director of Student Programs Matt Terry, the students must be active English Language Learners (ELLs) to participate in Northern Virginia-based Aspira, which includes a tutoring program, leadership club and training for parents to better support their children’s education in the U.S.
Terry said the division will first look internally to fill key staff roles in the program, which has an approximate cost of $75,000. “Club facilitators” will require 20-plus hours of training.
The division originally explored the program for all students in grades K-12, said Terry, but that option proved cost-prohibitive.
“If we’re going to have to execute those, what are we contracting for?” asked school board member Jennifer Boyd. “Do they give us materials? Is it a computer program?”
Catlett compared the Aspira program to the James Farmer Scholars Program, a partnership with the University of Mary Washington that supports local high school students.
“It’s wrap-around services for students that need wrap-around services,” the superintendent said. “They need family involvement, all of those pieces of what develops the competency level of a student, because they have a village. It’s a very successful model if we can make it work.”
‘Massive’ data breach potentially affects FCPS student information
On Monday afternoon, FCPS sent a message to staff and families alerting them of a “massive data breach” at a third-party company that the division uses for software.
“On Tuesday, January 7, PowerSchool, an international provider of education administration software, announced that it had suffered a cybersecurity incident in late December,” the FCPS statement reads.
“PowerSchool is a cloud-based data program that stores over 60 million students’ information from 18,000 schools globally. Although security of PowerSchool’s systems has been restored, data pertaining to students and employees at many school systems around the country were subjected to unauthorized access.”
The division states that FCPS is one of thousands of school districts affected by the “massive data breach,” which was limited to PowerSchool’s “internal systems” and that the company is investigating the incident.
“FCPS takes the privacy of our students’ and employees’ information very seriously,” the statement reads. “We are committed to holding PowerSchool accountable.”
