Willmore is a recent graduate of University of Virginia’s Doctor of Education program. He began his career with Arlington Public Schools in 1995 and has served as assistant principal at Wakefield since 2002.
Willmore is fluent in Spanish and has taught abroad.
Flags In at Arlington National Cemetery — Service members from each branch of the armed forces placed decorative flags in front of Arlington National Cemetery’s quarter million graves yesterday. “Flags In” has been a Memorial Day weekend tradition at the cemetery since 1948. See more photos here.
Remembering Arlington’s Forgotten Baseball Phenom — He was considered one of the greats of his day, although he was never voted into Cooperstown. George Hartley McQuinn, born in 1910, was a six-time All-Star who spent 12 years playing professional ball. In his rookie season, McQuinn went on a 34-game hitting streak. Take that, Ryan Zimmerman. Plus, McQuinn was an Arlington resident who opened a sporting goods store in Clarendon after he retired from the game. He would have turned 100 on Saturday. Read more about him here.
Notably, funding for the David M. Brown Planetarium was partially restored. Originally set to be closed and converted into classroom space for Washington-Lee High School, the planetarium will now be staffed part-time.
Instead of serving K-5 students five days a week, starting this fall the planetarium will serve K-2 students two days a week. There will also be some flexibility to hire a an hourly worker to open the planetarium on weekends.
About two dozen sign-holding, banner-unfurling and speech-making residents came to ask the board to keep the David M. Brown Planetarium open.
During his budget presentation, superintendent Dr. Pat Murphy acknowledged the “Save the Planetarium” movement, which has attracted nearly 3,000 fans on Facebook.
Meanwhile, the Save the Planetarium Facebook page now has more than 2,900 fans.
On Monday, Perrino presented the petition to school board member Dr. Emma Violand-Sanchez. “The meeting went very well,” Perrino said.
A group of German students from Arlington’s sister city of Aachen, Germany has managed to fluster members of two Arlington governing bodies nearly simultaneously.
The group of nearly two dozen students attended last night’s county board tax rate hearing. They were acknowledged by board chairman Jay Fisette at the beginning of the session. Fisette assumed they were going to stick around to watch American democracy in action. Instead, seven minutes into the hearing, they all suddenly got up and left en masse, which caused some board members fits of laughter (see video below).
Dr. Murphy made the comments at Thursday night’s school board meeting. He did not elaborate on what sort of partnerships might be possible.
“I think that a lot of the noise we’ve been making online has helped to do this,” said an elated Raphael Perrino, who has been helping to lead the charge with comments on the popular “Save the Arlington VA Planetarium” Facebook page and with an online petition that has garnered more than 220 signatures.
Since Arlington Public Schools announced its plan to permanently close the planetarium one month ago, the family of the late Columbia astronaut David Brown, for whom the planetarium is now named, has spoken out against the closure.
And now a “Save the Arlington VA Planetarium” Facebook page has amassed nearly 2,500 fans.
After missing a week of classes due to Snowmageddon and Snoverkill, Arlington public school students will have to make up for it by giving up a couple of previously-scheduled off-days and early release days.
“Of course I was hoping school would extend into August so I could save on summer camp fees,” Robert Cannon said on his bArlington blog.
At tonight’s school board meeting, Arlington County Schools superintendent Dr. Pat Murphy will reveal significant cuts in the school system’s proposed fiscal year 2011 budget. Here are some of the notable items in Dr. Murphy’s proposed budget:
The meeting will take place at 7:30 in the board room of the Arlington Education Center.
