Falls Church School Classrooms Staffed With 1 Special Ed Position Open

FALLS CHURCH, VA — While teacher shortages made national headlines during the summer, Falls Church City Public Schools' approximately 2,600 students will start the school year with only one teacher vacancy and no double runs on buses.

In a video news update, Superintendent Peter Noonan said all but one classroom are staffed due to a teacher being promoted to assistant principal in another school division. The open position is a special education teacher, a FCCPS spokesperson confirmed.

The superintendent said the teacher position will be filled as soon as possible. In the meantime, the classroom will be covered as the Falls Church School Board included five permanent substitute teachers in the last budget, which provides one substitute for each school.

"In the event we need to cover a class on day one, which we won't except for one, we're set to go and really excited about that," Noonan said.

As for transportation, FCCPS will have bus routes covered without any double runs, Noonan said. The school division is still hiring bus drivers, who have to get a commercial driver's license.

"We were quite worried up until about a week ago that we were going to have to open with some double runs, because we've been not immune to some of the bus driver [shortages] you've been reading about in other school divisions. We still are looking for a couple of bus drivers."

The school year will start with a theme of "revitalization."

"My hope and my wish for you this year...is that as your students come back and as you come back to our system, as we turn the corner on COVID, and we recognize that COVID is still in our community, but we know how to handle it much better now than we did before," Noonan said. "We're going to have fun, and we're going to rediscover the joy of coming to school every day and just loving every minute of it."

Families can watch Noonan's full video update for information on getting to and from school, construction impacts at the secondary campus, guidelines for COVID-19 cases and exposures, and more.

SEE ALSO: Standards Of Learning Results 2022: How Falls Church Schools Performed