Welcome to the 2010-11 School Year

“All Learners will believe in their power to embrace learning, excel, and own their future.”

Albemarle County Public Schools Vision

Dear Albemarle Families:

Welcome to the 2010-11 School Year!  School will begin for our young people on August 25.  Educators have been at work all summer creating and revising learning plans for this year. They will all return to their schools on August 17 to set up their classrooms and prepare Open House activities to welcome families back. We hope you will be able to visit your child(ren)’s school during the scheduled Open House.

New Principals: You will find some personnel changes this year. Several schools now have new principals as a result of the following appointments:

• Mrs. Ashby Kindler: Murray High, Community Middle Charter School, Enterprise Center
• Mrs. Gwedette Crummie: Crozet elementary
• Mrs. India Haun: Brownsville Elementary
• Mrs. Kendra King: Broadus Wood Elementary
• Mrs. Lisa Molinaro: Woodbrook Elementary
• Mr. Mark Green: Murray Elementary (permanent appt)
• Dr. Nicholas King: Stone-Robinson Elementary

We also have begun to use Facebook as a communication tool. If you would like to become a “fan” to receive updates and comment, please go to:  http://www.facebook.com/K12Albemarle We have 139 Facebook fans as of August 8 and hope you will sign up and encourage other parents to do so as well.  You can also follow our school activities on twitter, @k12albemarle.

Bus Change Alert: Please look for the school calendar coming by “snail mail” to your mailbox by August 15.  Bus route schedules are on page 17 and look for possible changes in the bus number, location of bus stop, or bus pick up time. Most of these changes are occurring to increase efficiency and reduce fuel and other operational costs as part of budget reductions for 2010-11.  If you do not receive a calendar, please do not hesitate to call 434-296-5820 and ask for Mrs. Kathy Halvorsen to help you obtain one or call your child’s school for information.

School Quarterly Newsletters: If you would like to subscribe electronically for updates from the archive page for quarterly school newsletters please go to: http://bit.ly/ddMWfw and complete the “click to subscribe” link. We continue our efforts to reduce the use of paper in our schools and the expenses of both paper and copying.  School websites can be accessed at http://bit.ly/dkKKgF .

We look forward to working with you this year!

Sincerely,

Pamela R. Moran

Superintendent

Chapter 2009-10: Celebrating Learners and Learning

Each year completes a chapter in the history of Albemarle County Public Schools. In the last two weeks of school our young people, staff, and parent community have engaged together in activities that bring this school year to a close. A multitude of events showcase our learners’ project-based learning work as well as athletic and artistic skills. It’s so worthwhile to see our young people demonstrate in a variety of ways that they are learning far more in our public schools and family homes than can be measured through the approximately 80,000 grade level Virginia Standards of Learning tests and other standardized tests that we administer annually.

Graduation

“Success is not a six figure salary.  It’s about finding something you love and doing it well.” WAHS graduation speaker

High school seniors graduated from Albemarle High, the Ivy Creek School, Monticello High, Murray High, and Western Albemarle High in the space of a few recent days. Our graduates will attend two- and four-year colleges and universities across the country, including 19 of the top 25 colleges in our nation, offsetting college costs for their families with over three million dollars in scholarships. The CATEC Completers Ceremony also provides a clear picture that many of our graduates have acquired industry certifications and licenses that allow them to enter specialized careers in areas such as automotive repair, nursing assistance, and medical tech fields.  Many CATEC completers will continue pursuing college pathways, having already accrued community college credits as well. One of the most important graduation ceremonies, Board members and I attend is one that few attend or know occurs. We run Post-High for young people who have significant disabilities and who need extra time beyond their senior year to further develop workforce and lifespan readiness skills that allow them to be as independent as possible. This year, graduates from our post-high program will work at Martha Jefferson Hospital, local businesses, and Worksource Enterprises.  As all our graduates enter the next stage of their life’s journey, whether it is the workforce, the military, or two-year and four-year colleges and universities, we hope they hold true to our vision that they embrace lifelong learning, excel in all they do, and own their future.

Learning Beyond the Virginia SOLs

Other culminating events across the county over the last two weeks offer insight into the capabilities of our young elementary learners.  I have had opportunity to hear Stone-Robinson “rising up” fifth graders sing an original song, “Piedmont,” that they collaboratively composed as fourth graders. At Baker-Butler Elementary, third graders performed an original musical, “Zumo,” using Orff instruments and African drums to accompany singers. First graders from Scottsville Elementary came to Lane Auditorium where they shared their original books with adult reading buddies. I was delighted to hear their stories and look at illustrations of animals they had chosen to individually research. No matter where I have been on visits across western, southern and northern feeder pattern schools when I chat with learners, teachers, principals, and parents the evidence that the work in which our young people engage far exceeds the minimum specified in SOL content standards. The portfolio of work compiled by our young people includes original documentary and narrative films, robotics solutions to complex problems, well-developed research projects that blend technology applications with deep knowledge development, original choreography for high school musicals, and civic presentations to community organizations.

No better representative examples exist anywhere in the United States of high-powered student work than in our schools. The citizenship action projects at Monticello High, the invasive plant species study conducted by seventh graders at Sutherland Middle School, digital fabrication lab constructions by Crozet Elementary students and data mapping projects in the nationally recognized GIS class at Western Albemarle all represent such work. Every school in every feeder pattern has examples of project-based work that results in our young people acquiring some of the workplace, content, thinking, and technology skills that Virginia’s employers and our college educators say are needed. Even that classic end-of-the year activity, the “field day” teaches an important skill, teamwork—listed fifth in a current survey of Virginia employers’ essential skills for all 21^st century employees. Our young people who receive ample opportunities to function in a team, across all curricular areas, learn something that in the past was reserved mostly to participants in extra-curricular and athletic programs.

Our middle schools also offer an amazing range of project-based learning options from film festivals at both Sutherland and Jack Jouett Middle Schools to the annual National History Day, Piece by Peace, and “green” solutions project work at Henley Middle School. Walton Middle School has opened the door for its students and staff to learn any of the world languages offered through Rosetta Stone – from the more common Spanish to the less common Chinese.  At Burley Middle School, student leaders and arts performance groups have created a powerful, ongoing relationship with the Burley High School Alumni and Varsity Club organizations, teaching all Burley students about their shared history with the accomplished graduates of Burley High, an all-Black high school Albemarle’s segregation history.

Customized Learning

Albemarle has a number of customized options available to young people. Our schools are encouraged to develop an identity that goes beyond the established curricular programming.  Some examples include Cale Elementary’s strong focus on project-based engineering that parallels Greer Elementary’s work to embark upon opportunities for students to explore any discipline through the concept of “expedition.” Murray, Meriwether Lewis and Agnor-Hurt elementary staff are embedding international studies units into their curricula as a way to expand learning horizons. Stony Point Elementary is known for an arts-infused approach to all curricular areas while Broadus Wood and Brownsville have pursued inquiry learning across content areas, with focus on environmental themes. Red Hill and Yancey Elementary staff use iPods, laptops, and Smartboards as technology learning tools that offer students opportunities to accelerate learning, including connecting with each other on common project work through the Internet. Woodbrook Elementary has developed a fabulous after-school enrichment and intervention program, Edge, to extend learning options for the young people serve there. At the same time, Hollymead Elementary continues to offer one of the strongest academic programs in Virginia, being recognized for the Governor’s Excellence in Education Award.

Two charter schools serve young people from Albemarle County, Murray High School and the Community Charter Middle School which uses an arts-infused curricula. Murray High School has been in operation since 1988 and is the first nationally recognized Quality Public High School certified through the William Glasser Institute. Murray students engaged this year in a long-distance learning relationship with the Mira Pal School in India, causing our students to occasionally meet at school in the late evening to Skype with their Indian peers in a different time zone.

This year we also opened the MESA Academy at Albemarle High; a space in which teachers and learners together worked as innovation lab specialists in our effort to align the disciplines and skills of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). MESA Students worked in a mostly paperless environment, applying contemporary understandings of the intersection of STEM concepts, skills and knowledge in their studies. The mission of MESA is to serve a demographically representative cross-section of students. We expect to learn from the program how we must shift to a Pk-12 STEM curriculum to ensure all students become a literate citizenry that is important to the innovative future of this country. With the 2010-11 MESA cohort, we will have doubled the numbers of students we expected to enter MESA in its first two years to meet student demand.

Excellence On Stage and On the Field of Play

“While we are done with high school we still have a future of hope. Let’s work together to create sheer beauty.” MoHS graduation speaker

We can only celebrate the significance of an arts learning community that continues to deepen and extend its reach in our schools, despite the economic downturn that has spawned reductions in arts programs across the nation. The Walton Middle School Band joins the ranks of exceptional performers as a national award winner this past spring in competition in Atlanta. The Burley Bearettes girls’ chorus recently returned from performing at the internationally acclaimed Piccolo-Spoleto Arts Festival in Charleston, SC. The AHS Drama Troupe travels to the international juried Drama Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland in July. Audiences were delighted with the Monticello High performance of Fame.  Arts are important not just as a pathway to learning but also because successful nations throughout history have flourished as places where creativity and innovation in the arts intersect with the inventiveness of scientists and mathematicians.

Our young student-athletes also distinguish themselves through excellence on and off the fields of competition. We routinely field male and female championship teams in a wide range of sports as recently exemplified by the state championship girls’ lacrosse team from Western Albemarle. However, our Board, staff and parents also celebrate that our young athletes, almost all of whom will never play college or professional sports, often are selected as exemplars of character and sportsmanship through regional and state awards. This is a measure of the many great coaches who define themselves as teachers of the lessons of life, not just the sport.

Our Educators Make the Difference

Finally, our Albemarle educators represent the highest level of excellence. Their performance is as good as the best that can be found in the state and nation. Across this country, educators are often confronted by media stories of what is not working in classrooms or schools. While not every day is a perfect day in our classrooms or schools either, I believe that our young people and community are fortunate to have the educators we employ in our learners’ corner. In the balance of learning, we want the successes of our young people to far outweigh their failures, but we know that life is about both and our educators work to both challenge and support our young learners.

We live today in what appears to be an increasingly hyper-critical world and often we experience what appears to be a glass-half empty rather than full perspective from those around us,a focus that often feels more divisive than unifying. Our educators, who work late hours and are on call daily in their personal and professional lives, accomplish the highest levels of learning with a more diverse population of young people than have been educated in the history of our community.  Our teachers meet the highest expectations ever set in Virginia for what we call upon them to achieve.  They support our young people to not just become college and workforce ready, but also citizenship ready. They support our young people to learn to use their voices to speak on behalf of others as well as themselves.

“We may bring an end to domestic violence. Silence is dangerous. We must speak up in face of injustice.” WAHS graduation speaker

In ending this year’s chapter in the history of Albemarle County Public Schools, I tip my hat to all the employees of Albemarle County Public Schools who live our Mission every day. Thank you for a job well done.

In Remembrance: Memorial Day

Memorial Day represents one of those commemorative federal holidays that seems to get lost in meaning for some citizens. We share meals at picnics and barbecues. We open pools for the first time. We mow our grass and watch a little television in the afternoon. Some of us attend memorial services, watch a parade, or buy a poppy to wear in memory of those who served and died.

Unlike Veterans Day which honors all who have provided military service to the United States of America, Memorial Day is about remembering all those who have lost their lives in service to our country.  From the American Revolution to the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, men and women have given the supreme sacrifice. Memorial Day is their day of remembrance.

I remember well from my own youth the most controversial war (labeled a conflict at the time because it was not a declared war) of the 20^th century, the Vietnam Conflict. According to History.com, the average age of the 58,000 + killed in military service during the Conflict was 23.2 years. Over 11,000 of those killed were less than 20 years of age.  Today, the average age of those dying in service in Iraq and Afghanistan is closer to 25 years of age according to the New York Times. However, those who have died on average are not long out of high school, college, or away from their first job before they were lost to us in service of our country.

I was raised on stories of World War II by a mother and father who both served in that Great War of the 20^th Century. My mother will honor the loss of “brothers and sisters” in arms on May 31 just as she has done for as long as I can remember. She reminds her family every year that Memorial Day is not a holiday of celebration but a day of consecration and remembrance. She reminds us that this is not a day to honor her service but to honor all those who lost the opportunity to start and raise families, hold grandchildren, become college graduates, enjoy a career, argue politics, watch major league baseball, celebrate anniversaries of friends, sing in choirs and grow old watching the world change around them. At age 89, she does not forget that all she has enjoyed since she left the service in 1946 was taken away from so many during that war.

My mother also reminds me why it is important for my generation and her grandchildren to remember that Memorial Day is not about the living but about those who died for the Declaration of Independence- the Constitution- the Bill of Rights of the United States of America. She reminds me that communities of responsibility in this country have sent their young into war over hundreds of years. Our men and women serve the United States of America not just to protect our own nation but to extend that protection to others less fortunate who live in countries where freedom is not just denied but where the basics of humanity we hold dear are threatened and in peril. It’s why we teach our young people about Memorial Day beginning in elementary school.

I hope you will join me in honoring those who have died in military service to our community, state and nation for still…

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below… (J McCrae, 1919)

2010 Virginia Lottery Super Teacher Award Winner: Analisa Herring

On May 24, I attended a recognition ceremony for Albemarle County Public Schools’ latest Virginia Lottery Super Teachers Award winner, Analisa Herring, 4^th grade teacher at Brownsville Elementary.  Analisa represents the best of what educators across our county offer to our young people. In chatting with a representative of the Lottery Program, she said, “It’s obvious that something special is going on in Albemarle to have three teachers recognized in the last three years when only eight teachers are recognized each year in Virginia for this award.” I couldn’t agree more. I only wish that we could recognize all the Super Teachers who come to work each day and involve our young people in fabulous learning experiences. I am fortunate to see our quality teachers at work in every school. As superintendent, I am thankful that our children, from the youngest in our pre-school classes to our soon-to-be 2010 graduates, are in such good hands.

Elizabeth Saunders, the parent who nominated Analisa Herring is allowing me to share her nomination letter, one of over a thousand sent to the Virginia Lottery Super Teachers Award Program. Her letter follows:

Committed…Caring…Inspiring…Diligent…Motivating…Passionate…Kind…Dedicated…  These are all words that I would use to describe Analisa Herring, my son’s fourth grade teacher at Brownsville Elementary. Mrs. Herring is an amazing teacher who tirelessly goes above and beyond the call of duty to see that her students get the very best education possible. Her desire to see her students succeed is an inspiration to our entire family.

Mrs. Herring has a true passion for teaching. Her ability to engage her students in a fun and creative class environment is phenomenal. Students are excited about what they are learning when she is teaching. She draws their attention by inventing creative ways of learning. One example of this was our Virginia Regions Project. Each child was involved in producing a commercial, which was filmed by Mrs. Herring, to advertise their particular region of Virginia. The children thought of creative ways to convey their region’s facts. Some danced, some sang, but all were imaginative in expressing ways to encourage television watchers to come to visit their region of Virginia. This was a wonderful way to enhance a geography lesson!

Early in the school year, Mrs. Herring organized a Math Parent Workshop. The purpose of this workshop was to help the parents of her students better understand the current methods of math being taught in class so that we could, in turn, reiterate these methods at home with homework. This helped our son to solidify his confidence and ability to excel in math class. He tends to be a little anxious about learning new material, and Mrs. Herring has oftentimes sent home hand-written sheets of rules, instructions, and examples that have been invaluable to us as parents in assisting our son with his homework.

Mrs. Herring makes herself very available to both students and parents. She offers her time in and outside of the classroom, especially if extra help is needed. She often responds to my emails between the hours of five and six o’clock in the morning, so I know she starts her day very early!

Mrs. Herring is very involved in other areas outside of teaching in the classroom. She is currently working on her Master’s Degree in Math Education, which requires weekly classes and extra studies. She is also a Team Manager for Destination Imagination at Brownsville and is very involved in the production of our school yearbook. Her commitments extend beyond her classroom into our community. Mrs. Herring manages all of this with an ease and a calmness that I admire, while staying true to her own children and family.

Analisa Herring is incredibly deserving of the Super Teacher Award because she is, indeed, super. It is with great pleasure that I nominate her for your very special honor.

Appreciating Albemarle’s Great Teachers: Teacher Appreciation Week 2010

We celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week, May 3-7, 2010 in Albemarle County Public Schools. It is with gratitude that I thank our teachers who bring to our schools dedication, commitment, and care for young people so that each may learn. There has been no time in our nation’s educational history that has been any more challenging to work as a teacher than today. Our teachers educate all young people in what I call our “Statue of Liberty” public schools- learning spaces in which all children who walks through our doors are enrolled with an expectation that they will learn. Thank you Albemarle Teachers!

Our teachers work with children with significant disabilities. They teach young people who do not speak English or who live in significant poverty. It has only been a few decades ago that public schools were not required to even enroll all children or expect them to graduate. Children who lived in poverty were expected to drop out early and go to work, often to help support their families. The number of children who entered the United States and who did not understand English was limited, and of little impact in most schools.  Today, on a daily basis our teachers step up to meet the challenges of working with the most diverse learners ever placed in our classrooms. Despite this, Albemarle’s extraordinary teachers have met this challenge and we now graduate more young people with the highest quality of education ever provided to students leaving our schools. In fact, Albemarle County was one of only fifteen school divisions in Virginia to receive the prestigious Virginia Board of Education Performance Excellence Award in 2010. Thank you, Albemarle Teachers!  

The parent community teachers serve has also changed. We have more single parents and blended families than ever experienced in our schools. We have more families today in which both parents work, making face-to-face communication a more difficult task. At the same time, our teachers are expected to respond during the day, after hours, and on weekends to significant numbers of emails and voicemail messages from parents-the result of relatively new technologies that have added hours to teachers’ workdays. Parents also want to be involved in their child’s education to a far greater degree than ever before in the history of education and they expect the very best from our teachers. To our teachers’ credit, in the most recent Albemarle County government poll of citizens, 92% of our parents indicated they are satisfied or very satisfied with their child’s education. Thank you Albemarle Teachers!   

Learning expectations also have increased dramatically over the last ten years. The prescribed Virginia Standards of Learning were implemented in 1998 and many said our schools will never meet the minimal standard that 70% of our students be proficient on the rigorous state tests used to assess the performance of each student, each school, and each school division. Not only has Albemarle County surpassed these minimal standards but today more than 90% of our students are proficient in all content areas. Thank you Albemarle Teachers!  

As I walk the hallways of schools and visit classrooms or attend performing arts programs, ball games, academic competitions, and visual arts exhibitions, I see the performance portfolio that represents the work of not just our learners, but also the work of our teachers. It is an impressive portfolio of accomplishments that benchmarked against regional, state and national standards places Albemarle County in the company of the best districts we can find. By any standard, our young people perform with top tier peers. This does not happen by chance. Thank you Albemarle Teachers!

Many community members today do not have children in our schools, but many once did. Yesterday’s Albemarle graduates run our local businesses, fill positions of great responsibility at the University of Virginia and in other local nonprofits, serve as elected officials, act as volunteers who give back to this community, and, yes, also teach in our schools.  Our realtors know and appreciate the value of great schools to their slice of Albemarle’s economy. The University of Virginia, public sector agencies, and private sector companies who routinely recruit employees to the area understand the importance of our great school division to their recruitment efforts. In fact, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Chamber of Commerce just recently communicated to our Board of Supervisors that a strong economic vitality plan first begins with support for a strong educational program.  Our teachers do their part, day and out, to make our community a place with a quality of life that caused Forbes magazine to recently rank Albemarle County in their top ten places in America to raise a family. Thank you Albemarle teachers!

I am privileged as superintendent to work with as great a cadre of teachers as one can find anywhere in this nation. Our teachers are dedicated to giving their personal best to the young people they serve. They do so in spite of not receiving a raise in the current year and also not again going into next year. They do so while educating more young people today in our schools than ever with smaller school budgets than they had just two years ago.  They knew when they came into this profession that the challenges would be significant compared to choosing many other professions that pay more and demand less from their employees. Thank you Albemarle teachers!

We should all appreciate our teachers every day of every week because they educate America’s citizens, past, present, and future. Teachers are responsible for democracy continuing to thrive now over hundreds of years in our community, state and nation. Our teachers know that they are not just employees, they are teachers, the most significant profession in this nation. I am proud to call Albemarle’s teachers my colleagues. Our community is honored by their work with our learners.

Thank you Albemarle teachers for a job well done!

Not By Chance: Extraordinary Learning-Extraordinary Teaching

Every week, our community hears about the high performance, by any measure, of our Pk-12 students. Just in this past two weeks, our young people have distinguished themselves at regional National History Day, Destination Imagination, Piedmont Regional Science Fair, VHSL forensics competition, selection into All-Virginia’s chorus, band, and orchestra, our Fine Arts Festival portfolio, Virginia Festival of the Book, a national C-SPAN film documentary competition, a national teacher blog competition, and so on. The public recognition (see news releases) of our young people and educators occurs week after week throughout the school year.

All of our young people are advantaged by opportunities to demonstrate their learning in a variety of formats, not just through their top performance on high-stakes state and national tests. Participation in customized performance-based learning options in our classrooms leads to young people who can “show” us what they know, understand and can do- rather than just tell us ala multiple choice tests what they are learning. Some choose to take this to a competitive level, but our explicit, strategic expectations for learner engagement mean that we want the full range of young people we serve to have project-based opportunities throughout the year in all classrooms.

In classrooms across our schools, young people are making documentary films and creating digital stories as a form of narrative as well as historical study- from Burley’s award-winning documentary on firefighting to Scottsville Elementary learners’ perspective on the history of the River and the town. Through citizen action projects at Monticello High, our teenagers identify issues of interest and critical importance, research, argue ideas, pinpoint actions, and go to work to make change happen. I am amazed at the WAHS learner who committed in ninth grade to a deep-research science project on HPV oncogenes that as a junior will take him to compete at the International Science Fair. At the same time, our science educators know that inquiry learning motivates all of our learners to acquire the knowledge, skills, and concepts of scientific literacy. Just this past Thursday, amid all the ongoing community angst about budget woes, a video from Red Hill Elementary arrived in my email inbox showing “planetary” children on the black-top revolving and rotating around the “sun.” I have no doubt that this lesson will stay with them far longer than a fill-in the blank worksheet or teacher-talk to explain these concepts.

No matter where I go to observe our educators and young people at work, I am privileged as superintendent to see the best, most interesting, and exciting work that goes on in any workplace in this county- and it’s happening in every one of our twenty-six schools. Despite the national, state and local media spinning its own version of budgetary bad news for education, our educators daily stay on point to ensure that our young people take away far more from our classrooms than just the capability to efficiently bubble the upcoming multiple choice tests facing them from now until late May.

Like educators everywhere, our teachers know we must prepare our young people for those tests and they do that work to a greater degree than probably any of us would choose. But, our teachers also attend to the kind of work that leads our young people on a lifelong learning journey through standards that go far beyond those specified by the Commonwealth. We like to think that our young people do well by any measure because of our efforts to engage all of them in creative and analytical thinking, reading, writing, critical inquiry and problem-solving opportunities. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, we expect our learners to use a variety of technologies to accomplish this work. Whether paintbrush or photo-shop, oral or iPod multiplication-fact practice, page-turner novel or online Physics flexbook on a netbook, both old and new technologies serve young people better when they are taught by talented and skilled educators.

As Saint Patrick’s Day approaches, I thought this weekend about how “lucky” we are to have competent educators in our schools. Then, upon further reflection, I realized we don’t have these excellent educators working here by chance at all. They are here because we have been a community that values education as the most important service our money can buy. They are here because we are the kind of community that sees our young people as the future of our community, our state, and nation. They are here because they believe they make a difference- and they do.

Moving the 2010-11 Funding Request Forward

The School Board funding request has been submitted to the Board of Supervisors for its consideration. The Board of Supervisors will hear public feedback on March 3. This funding request represented a three-year trend line in decreased revenues. During the last two years of building funding requests to reduced revenues, I have worked with staff and the School Board to reduce centralized staff positions by over 26 positions and operational expenses across all departments that indirectly support student learning.  The School Board and I have had a strong commitment to maintaining direct services to learners and learning and making reductions in ways that touch young people and those who serve them directly to as small a degree possible.  Thus, we have worked hard to keep cuts away from our learners- including services in the arts, physical education, career/tech education, media centers, and guidance and all other areas of learning.  

This year is different. Our Board considered a funding request from me resulting in cuts in services and program options that clearly will impact learners.  My initial funding request was based on a little more than $5 million dollars in reductions and an addition of $3 million to offset an increase in benefits costs for employees. Because our employees are facing a second year of frozen wages and a possible five-day work furlough, it only made sense to reduce the impact on our employees as wage earners.

Since the School Board received my request, two more financial blows have occurred:

• the reversal of the Governor’s opinion to uphold a proposed freeze on composite index changes
• an additional reduction in state revenues to increasing shortfalls at the state level.

Together, these changes result in a new shortfall that could be close to $15 million less than the 2009-10 budget.  After receiving news of this revenue setback, the School Board realized that our division was looking at a catastrophic shortfall. We would be faced with not just implementation of the Tier I reductions I had recommended but both the Tier II and III worst-case scenario reduction strategies projected for 2010-11 and 2011-12.

The School Board faithfully has used the Resource Utilization Study conducted in 2007 by the Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute to guide our staff’s focus on increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the division. One recommendation included in study was related to creating a common secondary school schedule.

 For two years, the Board with staff has considered this recommendation to determine feasibility, potential merits, and concerns. Moving to a modified 4×4 schedule was placed in Tier III as an option for future cost savings. When the worst case scenario emerged as likely, the Board requested staff to prepare an immediate overview and assessment of moving to such a schedule for 2010-11.  At my direction, assistant superintendent Billy Haun and secondary director Dr. Matt Haas put together prior and new information about this schedule which was shared with the Board. In that presentation, Mr. Haun noted that the major issue which would emerge would be communication to build understanding, commitment, and ownership for such a rapid change. In a typical year, staff would work with stakeholders for 4-6 months to move towards such a change. This shift has occurred in less than a month as a result of the significance of this proposed budget. And as we predicted, communication has been our greatest challenge.

The modified 4×4 schedule is used in high schools across the Commonwealth and the United States. It is another common schedule just as is the 7 A/B schedule currently used in our high schools. Four middle schools and Murray High already use a version of the 4×4 schedule. While there are advantages and disadvantages to every version of secondary schedules in use, the new schedule as we will use it will maximize advantages and minimize disadvantages. And, of course, the key reason a schedule change is being implemented so quickly right now will be the cost savings and lessening of impact on increased class sizes in grades k-12.  This is a different year.

11 Reasons I am Thankful for Public Education in the United States

1. In the People’s Republic of China, the decision was made in 2007 to fund nine years of compulsory public education for the 80% of young people who live in rural poverty and cannot afford the many fees attached to schooling in China. 
2. In India, less than 40% of adolescents attend school. An increased commitment of India to educating its young people has resulted in only 9.6 million school children not being enrolled in school at all.  
3. In Mexico, only 68 % of children completing first grade will complete nine years of education. Compulsory education now extends to 8 years of schooling, a recent extension across the country.   
4. In Afghanistan, only 14% of female children are enrolled in primary school.  
5. In Morocco, approximately 40% of females between the ages of 15-24 are illiterate.  
6. In Saudi Arabia women attend gender-segregated schools and are prohibited from studying architecture, engineering, and journalism.  
7. In Japan, gender gaps in society, workforce, and education continue into this century. Women make up only 38% of students enrolled in Japanese universities as compared to 54% of college students in the United States. 
8. In South Korea, performance on exit exams is considered a “life and death” matter. Parental pressure and personal pressure lead to high suicide rates, inflated grades, and enrollment of significant numbers of students in private tutorial schools. Even the American military limits operations to provide maximum quiet on exam day.  
9. In Finland, 42% of teenagers in school reported being intoxicated within the last thirty days, more than double the U.S. reported rate. 
10. In Germany, most “special needs” students attend “special schools” that only serve students who have learning or emotional difficulties.

Bashing public education has become a national sport for media and politicians who compete 24/7 for public market share. While our public education system certainly has room for improvement across multiple factors, we continue to educate far more of our young people for more school years than either India or China. Our best students may not be as academically driven as South Korea’s best or as academically successful as the Finns, but overall our young people are far less self-abusive teenagers. Our young women today have far more educational and career opportunities than their peers in Japan, the Middle East or on the African continent. Children who enter the United States from third world countries are better served in our Statue of Liberty Schools than in their own countries. We are dedicated to including, not excluding, special needs and immigrant children in our regular school communities and to keeping learning doors open rather than closed.

11. America’s dreamers created the reality that all young people, regardless of class, gender, race, ethnicity or religion are afforded the right to a free, public education. This gift, I do not take for granted.

Strong Communities Sustain Strong Schools.

Learners in good school divisions have access to a high quality of basic educational services – they meet or exceed minimum standards. But, students in great school divisions don’t just perform at the highest levels on the basics. They also have access to programs that engage them well beyond the basics. Their accomplishments set them apart against peers in the region, state and nation. People who live here know that Albemarle County Public Schools is a great school division by any measure. Our young people benefit from excellent program value for the dollars invested in them by the community. Our young people return that investment with dividends. We know that strong public schools contribute to the strength of our community. Here’s evidence.

1)Families relocating to the area choose homes in Albemarle County. After all, Forbes Magazine has ranked us as one of the top 13 places in the nation to raise a family- and our schools are a major reason why. Parents find our schools provide a variety of options, from rural to suburban schools. Enrichment opportunities abound in our schools and the quality of our special education services are known throughout the state.  We have specialty centers such as the new MESA academy for budding inventors and engineers, two charter schools that provide customized, small-school environments, and an Air Force JROTC program. High schoolers can take just about any AP or college course that’s offered- if not in-class then virtually, at Piedmont Virginia Community College, UVA or JMU. Our high school students perform at the highest of levels in the performing arts, academically, and athletically. We offer European and Asian world languages in our elementary, middle and high schools. And, our technology tools for teachers and learners are the envy of the nation-with our schools featured in state and national news for our tech learning innovations.

 2)It’s also easy to see why our business community partners appreciate our school division. Expansion Magazine, four years ago, labeled us a gold level community for business relocation- a designation rarely given to districts across the country. Why? The number one reason is the quality of our public schools in Albemarle. Our schools are a great recruitment strategy to support the economic vitality of our community, now and into the future.

 3) Our community is proud of our young people and sees maintaining the quality of our schools as its number one priority according to the most recent citizen survey conducted on behalf of the Board of Supervisors. Our volunteers and partners- senior citizens, parents, UVA, PVCC, and employees from businesses throughout our community- give us their best when it comes to helping our schools.  Our Board of Supervisors has made collaboration with our School Board to support world class education a top priority in sustaining a high quality of life in our community.

Unfortunately, we are challenged, as are school districts (Fox News, Feb 14, 2010) across the United States, to sustain effort to deliver programs and services that are essential to building a vibrant and strong national workforce. We need to educate all young people to the highest level of success we can imagine to obtain the competitive edge necessary to perform well in the global economy. In the twenty-first century, this means more than the basic 3Rs of the last century. It means offering customized options that provide young people with a variety of challenging educational opportunities.

Instead, as a result of the current economic downturn, our School Board currently considers making the following changes to reduce school division expenditures for 2010-11:

• increasing class sizes,
• reducing and eliminating of extra-and co-curricular enrichment activities such as Destination Imagination, National History Day, and science fair,
• passing on charges to participate in a variety of programs including athletics,
• vaporizing 80% of the technology budget,
• reducing intervention programs including summer school and family support workers,
• putting students on longer bus rides,
• freezing salaries and furloughing all employees,
• eliminating assistant principals, principals, elementary art, music and PE specialists, and gifted resource teachers
• cutting learning resource funding more than half – no new science lab equipment, musical instruments, or text materials and,  
• changing school schedules that will eliminate instructional staff.    

They know, if these reductions and cuts come to pass, our school division will offer a different level of service a year from now.

To Open or Not To Open: That’s the Question

This current winter will go on record as one of the worst disruptions to our school schedule in recent history. While it’s certainly not the worst winter ever- some old-timers claim to remember a winter in which our schools were closed for about 20 days- I’ve been thinking that it certainly must rank up there. So, I went back to School Board minutes and discovered that weather in the last decade of the 20^th century was a significant challenge to our community and schools. Albemarle County Public Schools actually closed for 16 days in 1993-94 and for 12 days in 1995-96. In fact, in 1998, our schools qualified under state law to open before Labor Day because we averaged 9.2 days out of school annually, over five of ten years from 1989-1998.  

While this information doesn’t provide solutions to the problems faced by today’s families regarding the closing of schools, it certainly reminds us that our situation this winter is not unique. I know our staff, students, and parents are as frustrated as their counterparts must have been during those 20^th century school closings.  Whether facing childcare challenges or loss of learning time with students, we would rather see our children in school than at home on scheduled school days. However, the biggest consideration faced in making decisions about opening school is whether we are reasonably sure that almost all of our roads are safe for travel, by both bus and car.

In a county of approximately 726 square miles (almost ¾ the size of Rhode Island), weather can vary significantly from north to south to east to west – or be almost the same- on any given day.  After a major snowfall, our main highways and subdivision roads can look very ready for traffic to resume while back roads are still ice-packed and not yet “travel safe” for busloads of children. Interestingly, well over 50% of our students live in rural areas on such roads.  Of all our county roads, of which 75% are secondary and 25% are primary, gravel roads, the hardest to clear, make up 12% of all county road miles.  

So, to determine whether to close schools, our transportation staff 1) monitors multiple weather forecasting centers 2)drives roads in all four quadrants of the county (sometimes at 3:30 a.m.) and, 3)consults with VDOT and local police. Information provided from all these sources informs the judgment made by the transportation director who moves a recommendation up the chain of command to me, the superintendent. All along the chain, questions are asked, more information is requested, until finally, the decision to close, or not, is made.  While childcare, instructional learning time, planned extracurricular activities, and costs are weighed, the most important consideration is whether opening school will create a greater than normal safety risk for the almost 13,000 young people who enter buses and cars to drive to and from school each day. No matter the pressure to open school, the most important question I ask each time is not whether we can get most of our children to school, but given road conditions whether we can get our children to school safely- including our less experienced high school drivers?

While closing schools, especially when our urban and suburban areas look good enough for safe travel, creates frustration, I always will err on the side of caution in this decision. No conversation haunts me as much as one with a superintendent colleague who opened schools one icy morning in which the decision could have gone either way. Several young people, car-pooling together, died in a car accident that resulted from icy conditions that morning. Was the superintendent to blame for opening school? Or, were the parents at fault for allowing a 16-year-old to drive? While such questions grabbed the attention of media and the public, those children were gone forever; a devastating loss to their families, friends, and the educators who served them.  

When road conditions are problematic, to close or not close becomes a tough decision for any superintendent, particularly when days out of school start to pile up. But, when it comes to our children, I will always make a decision in favor of their safety.