Letter: Bookfair in Support of School
On Friday, May 17, the Barnes & Noble at Fair Lakes will host a book fair to raise funds for the Mountain View High School Scholarship Foundation. From 5-9 p.m., families can enjoy face painting, storytelling, bookmark making, musical performances and an art display while purchasing books for graduations, birthdays or personal enjoyment.
Letter: TJ: Competition, Not Quotas
Your editorial, "Value-added Evaluation," [The Connection, April 18-24, 2013] seems to appear regularly—in slightly different forms and it remains misguided.
Looking “ASCANce”
It wasn’t exactly “Executive Clemency.”
Editorial: Value-added Evaluation?
TJ admissions illustrate growing gap between “haves” and “have-nots.”
More than 181,000 students attend Fairfax County Public Schools. So why do the 480 students who were accepted for next year’s freshman class at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology seem so important? Fairfax County Public Schools have a single elite magnet school, Thomas Jefferson, and TJ is frequently referred to as the top high school in the country. Dramatic disparity in the makeup of admissions at TJ is an indicator of disparity in early identification of students as gifted and talented, of access to advanced classes and enrichment, and in the basic education that the Fairfax County Public school system offers to all of its students.
‘We Have Not Forgotten’
Residents rally in Vienna to support stricter gun control measures.
Less than six miles from the National Rifle Association (NRA) headquarters in Fairfax, more than 100 people gathered on the Vienna Town Green Saturday, April 13, to urge Congress to support stricter gun control measures.
Editorial: Voting Again
Every year is election year in Virginia, and it’s a bit much.
The most hotly contested race for statewide office in Virginia, the Republican contest for lieutenant governor, will be decided at a statewide convention on May 18. That’s about a month from now.
Letter: An Interesting Perspective
I found Andrea Worker's article, "Muslim Women Encouraged to Explore STEM" [Connection, March 28-April 3, 2013] to be well-written as well as informative.
Column: Paying More for Less
Poorer taxpayers are hit the hardest.
When it was first presented to the board, I described the county executive’s proposed FY 2014 budget as asking taxpayers to pay more for the same services, and asking county employees to work harder for the same pay. It’s clear that county taxpayers are hurt by this budget.
Protecting Both Gun Rights and Public Safety
It was an historic year in the Virginia General Assembly. We passed a once-in-a-generation transportation funding bill and laid the foundation for 400,000 thousand Virginians to gain health insurance through an expansion of Medicaid that will create nearly 30,000 new health care jobs.
Editorial: More Obstacles to Transparency
General Assembly puts more information out of public reach, but other factors also limit access.
The first paragraph of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, passed by the General Assembly in 1968, states that all public records "shall be presumed open." It doesn’t add, “except when we don’t want to,” although that provision does seem to be available in many cases. Individual government entities have a variety of ways of making it hard for the public to access public information.
Column: 14.8 Percent
That is the percentage of diagnosed lung cancer patients who survive beyond five years, according to The National Cancer Institute’s SEER Cancer Statistics Review, 1975-2009, in a graph published in the Feb. 26, 2013 Washington Post’s weekly Health & Science section. As a non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) survivor beginning his fifth year post-diagnosis, charting my prospects in such a cold and impersonal manner is both chilling and arguable. “Chilling” in that facts speak for themselves and are hardly made up of whole cloth, to invoke one of the late Jack Kent Cooke’s more famous quotes. And “arguable” in that charts, statistics, etc., may very well measure the mean, but it sure doesn’t measure the man (this man, anyway). Meaning, from my perspective: sure, the chart is scary as hell, but I’m not sure I’m on it, if you know what I mean? (I know you know what I hope.)
Editorial: Say Yes to Health Coverage
Governor, state panel must accept coverage for 400,000 Virginians without health insurance.
More than 140,000 residents of Fairfax County have no health insurance. That’s more than 13 percent of the slightly more than 1 million people who live in the wealthiest county in the nation. Arlington and Alexandria have similar percentages of uninsured.
Column: Just Wondering
Having never attended medical school (and not really having had the grades or commitment to do so), and having only completed 10th grade biology and freshman year astronomy, and rarely even driven by a medical school growing up, my understanding and/or instincts regarding how a medical professional plans and/or prepares for his day is as foreign to me as sugar-free chocolate (if I’m going down, I’m going down swinging; in truth however, considering the anti-cancer, alkaline diet I’m following, I do need to swing a little less frequently).
Column: Writing What Four
As far as anniversaries go–and I hope this one “goes” a lot further; acknowledging, dare I say celebrating my four-year survival anniversary from “terminal” stage IV (inoperable, metastasized) non-small cell lung cancer, a diagnosis I initially received on Feb. 27, 2009, along with a “13-month to two-year prognosis” from my oncologist, is certainly column-worthy.
Editorial: Hybrid Hijinks
Discouraging innovation in high-tech Virginia.
Consider this as a possible scenario (although perhaps we should have saved this for April 1): Fewer people are smoking, and many of those who do are smoking less. Virginia’s cigarette tax, the lowest of any state at 30 cents a pack, is a declining revenue source. Higher cigarette taxes are proven to reduce smoking. Under current logic in the commonwealth, there would be two courses of action to raise revenue: a) cut the cigarette tax, and b) charge non-smokers a fee to make up the difference and to compensate for the fact that they don’t pay cigarette taxes.