n LOUDOUN
Pg. 4 | n LEESBURG
Pg. 6 | n EDUCATION
Pg. 8 | n OBITUARIES
Pg. 17 | n PUBLIC NOTICES
Pg. 23
MEET THE MERCHANTS A SPECIAL FEATURE SECTION INSIDE PAGES 14-15
VOL. 7, NO. 40
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SOL Scores Show Progress, Work Still to Go
Kite Day at Ide Lee The 2022 Leesburg Festival of Crafts & Kites was held Saturday at Ida Lee Park. Produced by Chic Events DC, the free, family-oriented event included displays from businesses and nonprofits, music, and kid’s activities—and lots and lots of kites.
BY ALEXIS GUSTIN
agustin@loudounnow.com
projects built. At their Aug. 9 meeting, School Board members expressed concern that only one firm bid on the middle school project, when four contractors had been pre-qualified to handle a project that size. Lewis said the other three pulled out on bid day. “What everyone is dealing with right now is the pressures on the market,” Lewis said. “There’s a tremendous amount of work out there.” He said one contractor expressed concern that it wouldn’t have the labor force to complete the project on time. Those concerns have also prompt-
The Virginia Department of Education last week released results from the statewide Standards of Learning tests, showing Loudoun students making progress toward reaching pre-pandemic scores, but with much work still to be done. From spring 2021 to spring 2022, Loudoun’s pass rates for all SOLs increased or remained the same. But VDOE numbers show local students still have some ground to gain to get back to the pass rates of the last pre-pandemic year of testing in spring of 2019. That year, 87% of Loudoun students passed their English writing SOL. Because of the pandemic, no SOL tests were administered in the 2019-2020 school year. And when they were tested again in the spring of 2021 school year, the pass rate had dropped six points to 81%—and Loudoun schools gained no ground last year, with 81% passing once again. Math and science SOLs showed the biggest pandemic drop for Loudoun County students. In math, the 2021 pass rate was 64%, a 23-point drop from the pre-pandemic 87% pass rate. Students gained back 10 percentage points this year, reflecting progress still less than halfway to
CONSTRUCTION CRUNCH continues on page 39
SOL SCORES continues on page 38
Photos by Norman K. Styer Loudoun Now
County, School Staff Plan for Growing Construction Crunch BY RENSS GREENE AND ALEXIS GUSTIN
rgreene@loudounnow.com agustin@loudounnow.com
Loudoun School Board and staff members were startled earlier this month when only a single construction firm entered a bid to build a new middle school—and that bid was $23.4 million, or about 25%, over the project budget. The district administrators were able to scrape together the money for the much-needed middle school, which is hoped to relieve overcrowding at other schools in the area, especially Brambleton Middle School. They did it through a mix of new grant funding from the state,
AUGUST 25, 2022
scrapping plans to renovate an old school building that had been used as the Staff Training Center, and trimming $6.3 million in project costs. But it also prompted a warning from Chief Operations Officer Kevin Lewis that those cost-cutting measures were particular to that middle school, and School Board members to ask if that sort of problem would come up again. The Loudoun County government and the school system have aggressive Capital Improvement Programs, the parts of their budgets that plan for new construction, as both the county administration and schools work to keep up with the county’s continuing growth. But they are also facing growing prices to get those
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