Educate the Whole Student
Our students need learning opportunities that develop their essential knowledge and critical thinking abilities while striving for success. They should be simultaneously building skills in resiliency, communication, and healthy habits through a public education that works the muscles in students’ heads, bodies, and hearts.
Students Receive a Robust Education
Fairfax is a fantastic school system, and all students should receive the promise of its resources. Access that includes language arts and math, science and STEM, civics and government, world languages, music & performing arts, visual art, physical education, outdoor learning, trade-based skills, and more is critical.
Honor Teacher and Staff Professionalism
A world-class education force requires competitive compensation and benefits, vital instructional resources, and realistic expectations on their time. FCPS must attract and retain the most talented instructors, staff, and administrative personnel.
No matter where in Hunter Mill students live, all children deserve the promise of a Fairfax County Public Schools education. Students must be educated for their own personal success aligned with their strengths to cultivate their path beyond school and into adulthood.
Students should have every possibility along the spectrum of curricula content. The greatest challenge a pupil should have is understanding what array of choices lay before them, not if they’ll have learning opportunities. Let’s not just level the playing field in our schools, let’s raise them up to new heights.
Serve Students with Special Needs
Students have different strengths and needs, and our schools must include all children in our school community as they work toward aspirational and realistic expectations for success. Melanie will work with FCPS staff and community partners to ensure an appropriate public education is received by all our children – including those who have disabilities and those who need advanced academic opportunities.
Improve Facilities, Reduce Trailers
Kids deserve inspiring and comfortable learning spaces, and time outside. Let’s reduce trailers and ensure that all schools have outdoor learning spaces.
Decrease Classroom Sizes
Forging the teacher-student bond is critical to growth mindset and success: as we move our students out of trailers and into permanent classrooms, we’ll have the opportunity to reorganize classes in favor of smaller learning settings. With more attention per student we can improve student outcomes.
Foster Environmental Stewardship
When students learn the value of natural resources through hands-on learning, they gain academic knowledge and skills, plus a meaningful passion for protecting our environment! When combined with actions that make our facilities and bus fleet more sustainable we prepare interested students for Green Sector jobs in Virginia and worldwide.
Staff Diversity To Reflect Our Community
Our school employees should represent Fairfax County: diverse in thoughts, experiences, and appearances. By celebrating and honestly discussing differences and common experiences, we’ll open up imagination and creative powers that harness our diversity as the asset it is.
Expand School Counseling
Every public school should have full-time, dedicated professionals who help students overcome anxieties, growing pains, and roadblocks to future success and health. Student mental health is essential for being ready to learn.
Gun Violence Elimination
No student should fear for their safety, and every parent should have peace of mind when their children are in school. Weapons of war don’t belong near or in schools, or in Virginia.
Budget to Maximize Taxpayer Resources
Melanie managed millions of taxpayer dollars when working at the U.S. Department of Education. She views fiscal responsibility as a shared endeavor with precise requirements for stewardship and resource allocation.
Welcome New Virginians
Virginia has a unique past, but we are building a diverse, welcoming school system free from racial, ethnic, gender, or orientation discrimination. Our public schools serve all children and are safe havens.
Early Childhood Education
A strong education that begins early in life is scientifically-proven to improve lifelong success for our children. We must serve more young learners instead of keeping them and their families on waiting lists for education that for some can truly be the difference between success and failure.
Family Life Education
Equipping and empowering students and families to develop knowledge and skills to enhance their well-being and strengthen interpersonal relationships through an educational, preventive, and strengths-based approach is part of a robust public education. Our student population’s experiences must be reflected in the curriculum, including that of our LGBTQ students.