Mason Boys Take 3rd in Holiday Basketball Tourney

By STAN FENDLEY
Falls Church Times Staff
December 30, 2011

The George Mason boys varsity basketball team defeated Freedom-South Riding High School 50-37  Thursday night to take 3rd place in the  Joe Cascio Tournament at Falls Church High. 

The Mustangs played a strong defensive game, executing a man-to-man defense with efficiency, while riding the offensive performance of senior Co-Captains Nate Ogle and Phillippe Griffiths.  Ogle, named to the All-Tournament Team at evening’s end, finished with 20 points and 13 rebounds, while Griffiths had 16 points and nine rebounds. 

MEH Robotic Teams Conquer Regional, Move to State Tourney

By STAN FENDLEY
FALLS CHURCH TIMES STAFF

November 14, 2011

Two teams from Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School have qualified for the Virginia State Championships of the “FIRST” Lego League Robotics Tournament.  The two teams are the “Plantain Pirates” and the “Bacteria Busters,” which qualified by placing among the top four spots at a regional competition at the Smithsonian Institute on Saturday.  

FIRST is an organization whose mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills.  FIRST, which stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology,” was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, the prolific New Hampshire inventor who has developed products ranging from the insulin pump to  the Segway personal transportation system. Some 250,000 students have participated in the organization’s competitions. Read more

WEDNESDAY, 11/9: Last Day to Order a Pie for Education

The Falls Church Education Foundation has a way to make your holidays easy and delicious! Order a pie from Mom’s Apple Pie Co., and the proceeds will benefit the FCEF and its teacher grants fund.

The mission of the Falls Church Education Foundation is to ensure that our students are prepared to effectively meet the challenges of the 21st century. The Foundation provides all friends of the Falls Church City Public Schools with a means to contribute a legacy of support for the system’s educational excellence.

Information for ordering a pie (apple and more!) is available on this flyer.  Deadline is Monday, November 9, so order yours today!

Video: Lou Olom on FC Schools, Elections, and Development

Long-time City resident and activist Lou Olom recently sat down with Falls Church Times’ Stan Fendley for a taping of the Falls Church Forum program at FCC-TV.  In the interview, Lou talks about City schools, elections, and real estate development.  The interview is 30 minutes long.

FC Lacrosse Team Wins NoVA Championship

By Falls Church Times Staff
June 14, 2011

Falls Church Youth Lacrosse’s U11 Black team won the Northern Virginia Youth Lacrosse League U11B Championship on Sunday, June 12th. After a regular season record of 7-0-1, the team was seeded 4th out of 37 teams and competed in the top-flight tier for the the overall U11B title. After wins against Western Loudoun in the quarterfinal on June 4th and Algonkian in the semis on June 11th, the team outlasted South County Youth Lacrosse 5-4 to take home the title this past Sunday.

Pictured with their trophies are: (front row) Henry Wildman, Jack Felgar, Elliott Levri, Burke McLaughlin, Andrew Tyeryar, Jack MacKinnon, Bryan Gagnon, Will Hammond, Colin O’Leary, Ben Meeks, and Luke Sausville; (back row) Asst. Coach Dave Levri, Jack Gradle, Carson Hopkins, Thomas Majure, Jacob Jafari, Head Coach Steve Smith, Trevor Corn, Nate Spurlock, Asst. Coach Dave Sausville, and Henry Casillas.

The Case for Drug Dogs

By Stan Fendley
June 6, 2011

Last week Falls Church News Press columnist Michael Gardner criticized Falls Church City public school officials for the recent use of police dogs to sniff backpacks at George Mason High School.

Gardner drew a stark picture of the use of drug dogs, saying “The incidences of misuse of dogs; where the animals caused elementary-age children to involuntarily urinate themselves, or poorly trained dogs bit students, or vaguely documented alerts led to strip searches of teenage girls, should give parents pause.”

Huh?  What’s he talking about?  That’s not what’s going on at George Mason.  As Gardner himself points out, in the recent search at GMHS, school officials kept the dogs separated from the students.  The students were instructed to bring their backpacks to the hallway — and then return to class.  Then the dogs were brought in to sniff the backpacks.  When a dog alerted on a backpack, the student owner was called to the school office to discuss the contents of the backpack, and the student’s parents were contacted.  The dogs did not come in contact with the students – and thus, there was no occasion for the parade of horribles Gardner suggests.  No dog bites, no urination, no strip searches.  Given the care that was taken to keep the dogs away from the students, I believe it is unfair to suggest that FC school officials may begin to use dogs in an irresponsible fashion.

Mr. Gardner also makes the charge that the search was poorly executed, but in my view, the opposite seems true.  First, GMHS Principal Tyrone Byrd gave students and parents fair notice some time ago that dogs would be used to search for drugs.  Then, when proceeding with the search, he used trained narcotics detection dogs to conduct sniff tests, a technique blessed by the U.S. Supreme Court almost 30 years ago.  In addition, Byrd has kept parents apprised with email messages providing significant detail.  In my view, that kind of forethought and follow-through indicate good execution, not the reverse.

Byrd is right not to report the detailed results of the search to the community, notwithstanding Mr. Gardner’s call for a report.  Although some may want to know the details, privacy considerations dictate otherwise.  Sharing such information with anyone other than need-to-know school administrators, school board officials, and law enforcement officials could subject the schools and City to even more lawsuits than we already face in other areas.  Given the City’s experience with recent litigation, Byrd is to be commended for avoiding more of it.  [As Gerald Pressman points out in his comment below, it may be in order for Byrd to report generalities, such as numbers, percentages, or funding of the costs.  Personal information,  however, should remain confidential unless release is required at some point -- for example, as a matter of law enforcement.] 

Let’s be honest – we have drug issues at GMHS, and it is the duty of school officials to deal with them.   The safeguards Mr. Gardner prefers — teachers, parental communications, attendance polices, health screenings, and counseling programs — are all good and necessary, but they do not serve the purpose of keeping drugs out of school in the first place.  For that purpose,  the use of drug dogs to sniff backpacks while students are in class may well be the most effective and least threatening technique available.  It provides universal scrutiny on an equal basis, provides deterrence going forward, and avoids physical threat.

If there are alternative methods to be considered, great, but they must be effective and efficient.  We cannot afford for school officials’ time and attention to be inordinately consumed by the few students who bring drugs to school, to the detriment of the many who stay away from drugs and just want to get a good education.  Given the availability of a tool like trained drug dogs which can sniff hundreds of backpacks in minutes, it is reasonable for school officials to use them.

As a parent of a GMHS student, I appreciate the work of Principal Byrd and other school officials to keep drugs out.  It’s one of the most important duties they have, and I urge them to continue their vigilant efforts to accomplish it.

OPINION: Congratulations Mr. Benton – AND Mayor Baroukh

By STAN FENDLEY

July 23, 2010

This week the Falls Church News-Press printed edition number 1,000.  That is quite a feat.  Those of us involved in the Falls Church Times can tell you that it’s a lot of work to put together even an online publication.  A hard copy newspaper is a much bigger operation, and doing it 1,000 weeks in a row is an accomplishment to be proud of.

In this week’s edition, FCNP publisher Nick Benton includes two lengthy pieces about the paper’s history and his reflections on the meaning of a free press.  First, in a story entitled “1,000 Wednesday Nights at the Mighty News-Press,” Mr. Benton relates how the paper began and who helped him along the way.  It’s an interesting story, particularly in light of the fact that newspaper economics no longer work in many cases, causing paper after paper to shutter in recent years.

Mr. Benton started the paper in 1991.  The headline of his first edition was “Rancorous Public Hearing on School Cuts, Tax Increase” – one he could have re-used this spring.

With obvious delight, Mr. Benton writes that when the printer’s wheels began to turn on that first edition, “I began to bellow above the din of the press, ‘Let every tyrant tremble!  The free press is the voice of the people in defense of liberty and freedom everywhere!’”

And he notes that after staying up all night to finish the first edition, he looked outside to see “that the cherry trees lining N. Virginia Avenue [near his office] had blossomed into their full pink radiance.”

“It was a sign,” he said.

Mr. Benton started the FCNP in a small office behind the Exxon station at Broad and North Virginia.  He planned for the paper to be a monthly or bi-weekly publication, but started the second edition immediately after putting out the first one, giving birth to a weekly.

In Mr. Benton’s editorial this week, “A Celebration of the First Amendment,” he speaks to the importance of a free press and his role in it, mentioning a variety of figures including First Amendment author George Mason, White House correspondent Helen Thomas, and recently fired-and-rehired USDA employee Shirley Sherrod.  He goes on to note a number of public officials who accepted his invitation to sign a congratulatory ad that appears in this week’s FCNP, saying “The elected officials have every reason to affirm these things.”

Mr. Benton goes too far, however, when he reports that newly-elected Mayor Nader Baroukh declined the invitation to sign the ad – and pointedly contrasts him with other public officials who did sign the ad.

According to Benton, Mayor Baroukh’s reason for declining to lend his name to the ad was, “As an elected official I should not be in the business of congratulating the media on what it does or does not do.”

I believe Baroukh is right.

Although Baroukh was quickly criticized by former Mayor Robin Gardner and former Vice Mayor Lindy Hockenberry for not supporting a local business, it is important to remember that the media is not just another business.  Its business is reporting news and opining on it — most importantly, the news of government.  The media influences government action, and unabashedly so.

As a result, the media can be extremely powerful.  The adage, “Don’t pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel” is a wise reminder that the person who controls public information wields great power.  This is very relevant in Falls Church City, where Mr. Benton is the only person whose words touch every doorstep in town.  By the mere reach of those words, he is arguably the most influential person in Falls Church City.  And the fact that he would report Baroukh’s decision not to lend his name to a congratulatory ad indicates Mr. Benton’s willingness to use his influence.

That the press is powerful is not necessarily a bad thing.  Its power is necessary in order to offset the power of government.  But – and here is the thing — in order for the media and the government to work properly, they cannot become too cozy.  Government officials kowtowing to the press or vice versa could be a disastrous thing for democracy.

In my view, the FCNP’s ad has the feel of kowtowing.  It is one thing for community members to congratulate Mr. Benton, but it is another when a group of public officials, who may at any time receive the sting of his lash, line up to congratulate him.  Frankly, it makes me uncomfortable, and I think Mayor Baroukh was wise to decline the offer.    Yes, it is part of his job to promote local businesses, but a much more important part of his job is maintaining the proper relationship between institutions, particularly those upon which a democratic system depends.

Therefore, I believe two congratulations are in order.  Mr. Benton is to be congratulated for his remarkable run of a 1,000 weeks of newspapers.  And Mayor Baroukh is to be congratulated for his mindfulness of the appropriate line between government and the media.  May they both continue to do their jobs well.

Snyder Voted for Criticized Water Litigation

By STAN FENDLEY
Falls Church Times Staff

May 3, 2010

Although he has been a vocal critic of Falls Church City’s lawsuit against Fairfax County over water services, Councilman David Snyder joined his colleagues in a unanimous vote to initiate the litigation in 2007, he told the Falls Church Times this morning.  Snyder justified his vote for the litigation on the grounds that to have done otherwise would have weakened the City’s litigation position.

Snyder’s vote for the “Water Wars” litigation was disclosed in an article in last week’s Falls Church News Press. The News Press went on to endorse Snyder for reelection.

“When the Council debated whether to sue Fairfax County, I advised heavily against it,” Snyder told the Falls Church Times this morning.  “However, once the majority of Council members decided to vote for it, I voted for it, too, because otherwise it would have weakened the City’s litigation position.”

Snyder says that he attempted to get the lawsuit dropped shortly afterward.

“Within two weeks of the time the City filed the lawsuit, I talked to a representative of Fairfax County who was very angry at the fact that there had been no real effort by the City to resolve the dispute through negotiation,”  Snyder said.  “I then came back to the Council and gave my strong advice that we withdraw the litigation.”

Snyder has publicly criticized the decision to sue Fairfax County.  In a 2009 interview with the Falls Church Times, Snyder said, “The City’s litigation against Fairfax County over the water system is an example of the ineffectiveness of the current leadership.  We used to work matters out with Fairfax, but this tradition was broken by the decision to resort to the lawsuit, which was approved by the Council majority over my objection.”

In the recent candidate debated sponsored by the League of Women Voters and Village Preservation and Improvement Society, Snyder also stated his intent to mend fences with Fairfax County if reelected to another term.

This morning, Snyder elaborated on his vote, saying, “It was extremely difficult to be put in a position where if I voted against the lawsuit, it would have weakened the City’s position,” Snyder said.  “It really would have undercut the effort.”

It is unclear if the City communicated the unanimous vote as way to strengthen its hand.

Falls Church sued the Fairfax County Water Authority in federal court in March 2007, alleging that the City had the exclusive right to deliver water services in certain areas of Fairfax County.  A federal district court dismissed the City’s lawsuit two months later, followed by the City’s appeal, in which the lower court was upheld in spring 2008.

In a reversal of the roles, Fairfax County Water Authority (FCWA) sued Falls Church City in state court in December 2008, alleging that the City was engaging in anti-competitive behavior by blocking a Fairfax customer from hooking up to FCWA’s lines.  The two sides came to an initial settlement earlier this year but continue to squabble over some issues.

Snyder is the longest-serving member of the City Council, having been first elected in 1994.  He is seeking his fifth term in tomorrow’s election.

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