Dear Members of the ACPS Staff,
It is such a pleasure for me to welcome you back to the 2017-18 school year. While I am new to Alexandria this year in my role as interim superintendent, I am not new to ACPS. Prior to serving as superintendent for Falls Church City Public Schools, I spent 24 years of my career in ACPS as a special education teacher at John Adams, assistant principal at Cora Kelly, principal at Jefferson-Houston and George Mason and Associate Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction in Central Office. During those years, I developed a strong connection and affection for this school system. I may be biased, but I think our school division is the best in the Commonwealth and the nation and it is an honor and privilege to serve as the ACPS interim superintendent. Are our scores the best? Have we closed the gap between minority and non-minority children? No – but we will not stop trying and we have a plan in place to keep us focused on a steady march to improvement. Every one of you is a critical part of that plan.
You all know firsthand the challenges the system faces in making sure EVERY student succeeds, no matter what individual or unique path each student took that brought him or her to an ACPS school. If you drive every corner of our great city, you will see that we are a place of dichotomies from subsidized housing to mansions of the wealthy. Our students come from poverty, from wealth and from everywhere in between. These are important factors to understand and remember as you address each student’s learning challenges, delays or giftedness. I also firmly believe that all we do is about relationships – the relationship between teacher and student, the relationship between school and home and the relationships you have with each other as colleagues. Nurture these relationships and use them to support our students, their families and each other.
I have such confidence in our school division that I came out of six years of retirement to face an alarm clock early each morning. While I recognize the challenges ahead, I believe that we are often faced with great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations. I pledge to you that we will stand together during my time in ACPS to keep working hard to find the right solution for every student, and to keep looking for the answers, even when we think we have tried everything we know how to do.
I look forward to the privilege of working with each of you to find success for every student. All the best for a great start to the new school year.
Sincerely,
Dr. Lois F. Berlin, Interim Superintendent