LCPS and Board of Supervisors fail miserably this week

Loudoun County schools remain closed despite cleared parking lots, functioning utilities, and a predictable winter storm.

You’ll often hear Republicans or otherwise conservative Americans complaining about the large, somewhat nebulous concept of “government or public school waste.”
This week, we watched government and public school waste in real time. Yes, we had a snowstorm. Yes, it became cold and icy. It’s also normal. Loudoun County averages between 20 and 24 inches of snow annually.

We all know the regionalized phrases: “We don’t get snow like northern states,” or “We’re not used to snow!”

The problem is, facts do not support those statements. Because we average almost 25 inches of snow annually, is it too much to ask that our Loudoun County Board of Supervisors (LC BOS) and Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) be prepared to serve the taxpayers in a timely and reasonable fashion by doing everything they can to re-open schools?

LC BOS and LCPS failed miserably this week. Again.

Perhaps you read that and think that sounded like a cheap shot. You might think, “They’re doing everything they can!”

Are they? I challenge every reader to think more deeply about what really happened in the past week. A week ago, we all knew a significant snowstorm was coming. We prepared. We took precautions. We made contingency plans for our individual households, our loved ones, friends, and family, and ironed out work contingencies, too.

We also pay an endless stream of taxes, in over a dozen different forms, to Loudoun County for the county government and county school system to be prepared on our behalf.

Here’s what happened during the storm. The power never went out. The phone lines didn’t fail. Wi-Fi and cellular service didn’t falter. Heating and water delivery systems remained operational. Water mains didn’t break. Grocery stores, businesses, and other retail entities didn’t shutter for days on end. School parking lots and walkways were cleared, too.

But our LCPS buildings are empty this week because no one at LCPS or LC BOS advocated for a preparedness plan for the main roads and bus routes to be cleared.

LCPS obviously didn’t advocate to LC BOS or the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to mark the curbs of main roads and school bus routes. Utilizing thin rebar stakes sheathed in orange or lime green would have helped plow drivers know where the sides of the roads were during their important first and second passes. Instead, the snowplow drivers were essentially plowing blindly. They missed badly. We’ve all seen four-lane roads with barely one or two lanes effectively plowed.

Now it’s an icy mess, requiring large-scale machines to move massive boulders of ice – machines the county and state don’t have in large supply. Had they marked their routes, is it fair to assume the plows might have cleared roadways the first time, before everything froze over?

We all recognize Northern Virginia is not Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Michigan, but in those states, thin rebar markers sheathed in orange or lime green go in the ground after Halloween and come out after tax day. With all the money the Board of Supervisors and public school system waste on non-essential expenditures, doesn’t marking main roads and bus routes for a four-month period in a region that averages as much as 25 inches of snow yearly strike you as an essential bad-weather precaution?

The answer is obviously yes.

The main roads and busing routes should be 1 and 1A on public works priorities after a snowstorm. Did LCPS advocate for this precaution to their infrastructure partners, within their budget, or to the public at large? Were they prepared? Did they make agreements with private contractors to make bus routes a priority?

We don’t get big snowstorms every year, but they happen, so budgeting for it is a smart allocation of taxpayer resources. If you don’t need to use it, it rolls over, but with the amount of money LCPS is allocated yearly, this seems like a no-brainer.

You might be reminded that neighboring counties are also closed. Fairfax and Prince William in the Commonwealth, or Montgomery, Prince George’s, Howard, Baltimore, and Anne Arundel counties in neighboring Maryland, are also closed.

Now recall how much LCPS likes to tell you of their exceptionality and excellence in their endless mission statements, publications, and publicity events. They had yet another opportunity to prove their excellence this week. They failed.

Instead, LCPS showed you how just unexceptional they are — not exceptionally prepared, either. And even though all their schools are closed, LCPS is still not communicating well. LCPS waited until 5 p.m. to alert teachers, staff, students, and parents of their decision to close, even though anyone with eyes can see the roads and walkways are still impassable.

About the only thing LCPS is prepared to do is move to the virtual learning platform from the COVID-19 days because they can’t open their buildings.

On Wednesday, LCPS declared a Teacher Work Day for Thursday, but later in the day, around 7 p.m., sent another email alerting staff that the day was being reclassified as a Universal/Exempt (Licensed) Staff Work Day to satisfy language in their teacher contract for remote work.

LCPS also alerted teachers to begin planning for “potential virtual learning,” telling staff that any additional weather situations beyond this week could result in virtual learning situations.

Great. We already know virtual learning is an ineffective platform and a poor substitute for in-person learning. Besides being unprepared for any weather event to keep their state-of-the-art, taxpayer-funded buildings open, about the only thing LCPS is prepared to do in the likely event of a weather incident is revert to the loser of a learning platform.

This is the government and public school waste Republicans and conservative Americans speak of. You had a chance to be better than the rest, LCPS and LC BOS, and all you’ve been able to communicate is that you’re just as incompetent as every other county government and county school system.