A Note from the Principal

Greetings Laurel Ridge Families,

What a wonderful first week of the 22-23 school year!  This week, students and staff have spent time building relationships and learning classroom routines.  There has been a lot of excitement and smiles in the building.  The administrative team has been meeting with grade levels to introduce the FCPS Student Rights and Responsibilities.  We have enjoyed meeting your students and look forward to working together this year. Throughout the year, we will be reviewing the FCPS Portrait of a Graduate Program, which highlights attributes and skills that our students will need throughout their lifetime.  You can learn more about the attributes here. Laurel Ridge will have a yearlong focus on the Communicator attribute, while providing a quarterly focus on the other four attributes. 

Thank you for your patience with arrival/dismissal procedures.  Student safety is the highest priority and the new procedures are designed with safety in mind.  Finally, I would like to thank our amazing custodial team for their hard work and preparation to ensure a safe and beautiful building for the opening of school.  

We look forward to partnering with you for a successful school year.

Megan Counts
Principal

Buses and Delays

Please be aware that all of us are getting used to new routines at the start of the school year. Thank you for your patience as those routines are established. If a student’s bus is delayed, parents may access the Bus Delay Notification System or use the Here Comes the Bus mobile app to receive the delayed bus report. E-Notify (School Messenger) email messages will also be sent to announce significant bus delays. Contact the Area 3 Transportation Office at 703-249-7000 with questions during school hours.  For any concerns after hours (after 5:30 p.m.), contact Safety and Security at 571-423-2000.

Community Conversations with Dr. Reid

Please save the date for a very special event! Dr. Michelle Reid, FCPS superintendent, will host Community Conversations at our feeder high schools.

Robinson Secondary School

• Thursday, September 29 ~ 6:30 PM -7:30 PM
• Please register to attend: https://forms.gle/KgpZRCJPG4cWfkCW8 

These events will be a unique opportunity to help Dr. Reid get to know our school community and learn more about her vision for our district.

Language interpretation will be provided, as available, as well as child care and light refreshments. 

Annual Notice of Survey, Records, Curriculum, Privacy, and Related Rights

Fairfax County Public Schools wants all parents to understand its policies regarding surveys, records, curriculum, privacy, and related rights.

Please look for an email that you should have received August 18 in which FCPS shared the Annual Notice of Survey, Records, Curriculum, Privacy, and Related Rights and Opt-Out Forms (Annual Notice), FCPS provides explanations of the rights listed above as well as forms that may be used to exercise opt-out choices. Two versions of the Annual Notice are available—a grades K-8 version and a grades 9-12 version. If you have children at different grade levels, please read each applicable version of the Annual Notice because the notices and opt-out rights vary depending on the student’s grade level.

Get more information and view the 2022-23 Opt-Out Booklets.

COVID Updates

Recently, FCPS sent an update on COVID-19 layered prevention strategies that will continue to be in place this school year. While we had hoped that the pandemic would be behind us, it seems that COVID will be something we must manage as a community for the foreseeable future. FCPS will continue to follow the guidance of national, state, and local health experts when determining the layered prevention strategies that are needed to keep our schools safe and open for learning. It is important that we all work together towards this goal. 

Highlights from that guidance include: 

• FCPS continues to require families to review the Daily Health Screening before sending students to school. 
• The 5 Day Isolation Period will continue for COVID positive students and staff.
• The CDC recommends the COVID vaccine as a safe and effective way of significantly lowering your risk of severe illness, hospitalization, and death if you get infected. Vaccines are now available for our youngest students. However, COVID vaccines are not part of the required immunizations for school entry. 
• At this time, masks are not required. The current CDC COVID-19 Community Level for Fairfax County is low. However, should the community level rise to “high,” FCPS would then require all students, staff, and visitors to wear a face covering when indoors on school property (to include the buildings, school buses and other school provided vehicles; except while actively eating/drinking). The Code of Virginia allows parents/legal guardians to elect for their child not to wear a face covering while on school property.
• Diagnostic testing will be available beginning Tuesday, August 16, for FCPS students and staff who are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 or have been in close contact with someone diagnosed with COVID-19. Information on diagnostic testing will continue to be updated on our website.
• FCPS will no longer send a daily or weekly COVID case update. Parents/Guardians will only receive an email from their child’s school when several cases of COVID-19 occur in a single classroom, sports team, or extracurricular activity within a 14-day period. Individual case reports will be available on the FCPS COVID-19 Dashboard on our website.

To stay up to date, please continue to review our Health and Safety Guidance on our website.

Text Messages for Parents

Parents can Receive Text Messages from FCPS for Emergencies and Essential Information

Make sure your cell phone numbers are listed in the parent/guardian contact information section on the emergency care information form for each of your children. Parents and guardians can view and update emergency contact information online using weCare@school. 

Text messages will be sent in the event of emergencies, delays or school closings, if buses are running more than 30 minutes late, if your student missed the morning attendance deadline, and for other important reminders. 

Standard message and data charges may apply for text messages depending on your cell phone service plan. More about text messages is available online.

Lightspeed Parent Report on Child’s Device Activity

FCPS has tools to help parents and guardians know more about their child’s activity on any FCPS device. These tools are provided by Lightspeed, our internet content filtering service, at no cost to families. You may sign up for a weekly Parent Report, which will provide a list of the top sites your child visited. If you want more detailed information, sign up for the Internet Use Parent portal and log-in anytime to see more detail about your child’s browsing and “pause” access to the internet during non-school hours. Find out more and sign up for these services on FCPS website.