FRIDAY 6/4: 10 Tips for a Stress-Free Home? Sign Me Up!

The Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School PTA and the Falls Church Elementary PTA have a great deal for those looking for a free night out — and who would love to kick off the summer with some tips on creating a stress-free, calmer home.

Friday, June 4,  from 7 – 9 p.m. at Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School, nationally recognized parenting expert Kirk Martin will  present “10 Secrets to A Stress-Free Home: A Workshop for Moms, Dads (& Teachers, too).” The event is free.

Attendees will learn how to:

• Create a calm home—eliminate yelling and arguing.
• Improve focus, attention and behavior in school.
• Create stress-free mornings and homework time.
• Relieve anxiety, meltdowns and sensory issues.
• Eliminate defiance and disrespect.

What’s not to like? Mr. Martin has trained more than 100,000 parents and has a web site, www.CelebrateCALM.com, to learn more.

Although walk-ins are welcome, registration will help the PTA ensure adequate space and handouts. Please take a few seconds to sign up at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/57CZL32

PTA Home & Garden Tour Raises $16,000 for Schools

By STEPHANIE OPPENHEIMER
Falls Church Times Staff

May 27, 2010

It was a gorgeous day on Sunday, May 16, providing the perfect setting for nearly 200 enthusiastic ticket holders to tour seven Falls Church City homes and two gardens during the 3^rd biannual Falls Church Elementary PTA Home & Garden Tour.

Thanks to generous donations from major sponsors Home Depot, Don Beyer Volvo, GreenBuilt Homes, Moore Architects, and Pie Tanza; private family donations; ticket sales; and countless volunteer hours donated by PTA members and docents, the event grossed approximately $16,000.

The hefty proceeds will help purchase more SmartBoards (interactive white boards) for classrooms, help fund teacher grants, and support the outdoor classrooms at both Mt. Daniel and Thomas Jefferson elementary schools.

“The Home & Garden Tour has become one of the PTA’s biggest fundraisers, and we could not have done it without the generosity of the homeowners, our sponsors, and the dedication of the Home and Garden Tour Committee,” observed Elementary PTA President Terri Tornell. “We are grateful for the support of so many in our community. The event was a huge success, and we are especially grateful to the eight homeowners who offered up their houses and gardens for this year’s tour and to the City of Falls Church for opening Cherry Hill Farmhouse. It was a great event, and it’s very rewarding to see such hard work and dedication result in thousands of dollars for our schools.”

SUNDAY 5/16: Falls Church Home & Garden Tour to Benefit Elementary PTA

The Falls Church Elementary PTA has organized a benefit Home & Garden Tour for Sunday, May 16, from 12 to 4 p.m. Six homes and two gardens, all located within the City of Falls Church, will be open for ticket-holders. Read more

Plan to Attend Home & Garden Tour Sunday, May 16

By STEPHANIE OPPENHEIMER
Falls Church Times Staff

Which of the below best describes you:

a) I frequently use an alias on Realtor sign-in sheets at Open Houses because I have no intention of buying a house; I just like to look.

b) I like to go trick or treating with my kids so that I can peek inside all the houses while they’re getting their candy.

c) I look up neighbors’ houses on Realtor.com the second they go on the market so that I can check out the interior photos.

d) Puh-leez. I’m not that tacky. I consider myself an aficionado of architecture, home décor, landscaping, and local history.

e) All of the above.

Whether you’re a hopeless voyeur (choice e) or just a lover of great design, mark your calendars for Sunday, May 16, noon to 4 p.m., because that will be the date of the 3rd biannual Falls Church Elementary PTA Home & Garden Tour! (Rain date is Sunday, May 23.)

The self-guided tour will take participants through six homes and two gardens in the City, with featured home styles including three varying Craftsmans, a Virginia Forest custom home, an Ellison Heights “green” Colonial and a contemporary farmhouse. The Cherry Hill Farmhouse will also be home from noon to 2 p.m.

Advance tickets cost $20 per person and can be purchased online at http://www.fallschurchpta.org/hgtour.html. Limited ticket sales will be held the day of the event at the Cherry Hill Farmhouse beginning at 10:30 a.m. for $25 each. (Every tour-goer must have a ticket, regardless of age.)

The tour is a major fundraiser for the Falls Church Elementary PTA, which this year will use proceeds to help purchase more SmartBoards (interactive white boards) for classrooms, help fund more teacher grants, and support the outdoor classrooms at both Mt. Daniel and Thomas Jefferson elementary schools.

“This has been an extremely tough year with the school budget,” said Falls Church Elementary PTA President Terri Tornell. “The PTA is acutely aware of the cuts and wants to be poised to help our teachers—and therefore our City’s children—through the upcoming school year.”

Premier sponsors for the volunteer-run event are Home Depot, Don Beyer Volvo, GreenBuilt Homes, Moore Architects and PieTanza.

Mount Daniel Celebrates Earth Day with Family Discovery Series: Science in Nature

By STEPHANIE OPPENHEIMER
Falls Church Times Staff

April 28, 2010

Earth Day was a hit at our house. But that’s no surprise—my four-year old regularly holds up scraps of paper smaller than his little toe and asks, quite seriously, “Is this garbage or recycling?” And our seven-year old carefully marks every bird species we see at our feeder in a book about Virginia’s suburban birds. So we’re pretty excited about Mount Daniel Elementary’s “Family Discovery Series: Science in Nature” event, scheduled for Wednesday evening (April 28) from 6:30 to 8:00pm on the upper blacktop behind Mount Daniel (rain or shine).

There will be plenty of activities to help kids learn more about our world: From 6:35 to 7:30, families can circulate through several different activity centers, including Design & Fly, where participants can design their own butterfly species and learn everything they ever wanted to know about butterfly habitats; Magnify Your World, where kids can examine bugs, plants, feathers and rocks with a magnifying lens or microscope; Feathered Friends, which will feature a station for make-your-own pinecone bird feeders; and Nature Bingo, a new twist on an old favorite. Volunteers will also read favorite stories about nature throughout the hour.

At 7:30, guest speaker Mr. Alonso Abugattas, acting director at Long Branch Nature Center, will weave together the evening’s activities and discoveries with a presentation about our Natural Neighbors.

“I’m hoping to provide some ‘edutainment’ by bringing along some native critters for the kids to see and touch, and by telling stories about the animals to help kids understand them better,” said Abugattas. “I’ll bring some animals that the kids may see every day, as well as some that used to be common in our area but no longer are because we haven’t been very neighborly to them. In honor of Earth Day, my overall hope is that by giving people the opportunity to learn more about our natural neighbors, we’ll all do more to help protect them.”

Falls Church PTAs Seek Combined Federal Campaign Dollars

The Falls Church PTAs — Mount Daniel/Thomas Jefferson Elementary Schools, Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School, and George Mason High School — are reminding parents who are federal employees that they can designate part or all of their Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) contributions for their local PTA/PTSA chapters.  All three organizations are charities associated with the campaign, and federal employees have until December 15 to sign up to contribute through the CFC.   Designation codes for the three PTAs are:

• Falls Church Elementary PTA: 14598
• Mary Ellen Henderson PTA: 40097
• George Mason PTSA: 79191

School Superintendent Recommends Trailer to Ease Mount Daniel Overcrowding

At a school board work session last night, Dr. Lois Berlin recommended that the school system purchase a “relocatable” or trailer to house the increasing school population at Mount Daniel next year. Even though an addition was completed in 2006, Mount Daniel is currently unable to house a necessary seventh first grade class for the 2009-2010 school year. Preliminary counts of eligible kindergarten-aged students indicate there may also be a need for a seventh kindergarten class and having a relocatable will allow Mount Daniel to welcome that additional class as well. In order to plan and hire a seventh kindergarten teacher, however, at least 135 children need to be registered for kindergarten by June. Kindergarten registration begins May 6.

The Elementary PTA and Mount Daniel parents had strongly supported the addition of a relocatable over other options being considered. But in previous meetings, the addition of a relocatable was considered to be the most lengthy and costly solution due to the Fairfax County permitting process. Since Mount Daniel is one of three Falls Church City schools located outside the city limits, school officials must work with the Fairfax County government in order to place the trailer on the school grounds. Fairfax County residents and public officials were less than pleased when the recent addition was planned on the side of the school with the least amount of buffer for the neighborhood residents, and over the years, Falls Church City has gotten a reputation for not being particularly sensitive to its Fairfax county neighbors when it comes to school expansion.

The need for additional space at Mount Daniel came sooner than expected. Even though the FY 2009 CIP report anticipated the growth of the schools:

…the addition of Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School has alleviated immediate needs for additional capacity at any of the existing four school facilities. However, steadily increasing enrollment and new residential construction in the City of Falls Church has resulted in revised projections that indicate capacity could be reached within the next five years. New construction may be necessary to accommodate the growing number of students. In addition, three of these buildings are aging facilities where major renovation or replacement may be needed as buildings and major systems may be nearing the end of useful life.

Mount Daniel was not expected to reach capacity until 2014.  The school system is currently conducting a new facilities study to identify the greatest needs for the city schools, and one can expect that adequate classroom space is being considered.  To read more about the facilities study, click here.

No More Room at Mt. Daniel Elementary – No Money Either

 

Mount Daniel Elementary School has a problem: more kindergarten and 1^st-graders anticipated in 2010 than classrooms to put them in. 

In past years as enrollment grew, administrators freed up space at Mount Daniel by moving entire grades over to Thomas Jefferson Elementary, until the oldest children at Mount Daniel were 1^st-graders. 

Currently Mount Daniel has 15 classes – three pre-school, six kindergarten, and six 1^st grade. Two more classes – one kindergarten and one 1^st grade – will be needed in little more than a year, according to projections. 

Over at Thomas Jefferson Elementary, the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th grades already each have seven classrooms. Space was made available by moving the entire 5^th grade to Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School. 

Several options for Mount Daniel have been considered, most of them unpalatable to parents: 

• Create six oversize 1^st grades and hire a seventh teacher to “float” between classes; or
• Move one 1^st-grade class to Thomas Jefferson, and create a combined K-1^st grade class in the freed-up space at Mount Daniel; or
• Move the preschool program to another location, such as Thomas Jefferson, or even a local church; or
• Buy trailers (the only solution acceptable to parents). Unfortunately, this is the only option that the City school administration initially ruled out, due to cost. 

Mount Daniel Principal Kathy Halayko agrees with parents (who made their feelings known at a March 9 PTA meeting) that adding classroom trailers is the best option.

But so far, School Superintendent Lois Berlin refuses to commit any funds for trailers. 

And in addition to the cost, there’s the question of obtaining a permit from Fairfax County. (Mount Daniel is located just outside the Falls Church City limit.) This could be a lengthy and costly process, especially considering the “bad blood” between the City and Fairfax County over water issues (each entity has sued the other). 

Ironically, as one parent pointed out at the PTA meeting, the City had extra trailers but donated them for use by Katrina victims. Can we get them back, she asked? 

At a March 7 Parents Forum, School Board liaison Kieran Sharpe suggested using federal stimulus funds to buy trailers. He said the School Board would work with City Council this month on what to do at Mount Daniel. 

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