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Parents Will Advocate for Alternative School TonightBy Amber Lester Kennedy Tuesday, December 07, 2010 For parents of students at the Academy for Life and Learning, the fall semester has been plagued with one rumor after another. They’ve heard whispers and outright confirmations that the alternative education school would be closed at the end of the school year. Not long after the school year began, character education teacher Archie Jefferson, who has been with the program since it started four years ago, left to teach at Lafayette High School. It was the first hint to parents that the program might not last. Parents began advocating for the school during the citizen comment periods of Williamsburg-James City County School Board meetings in November. At that time, neither the administration nor the school board had made any announcement that the program was under review. Tonight, parents will make their case again as the board reviews a plan to dismantle the program in an effort to reach more children and cut costs. The agenda for the board’s meeting contains a proposal to close ALL and create three middle school “dean” positions. Currently, ALL has 40 students; the division would like to see the three deans reach 40 students per school, at least. The deans would serve as intervention specialists akin to dropout prevention specialists at the high school level, identifying at-risk students, helping them get the services they need and working to come up with appropriate disciplinary actions. ALL’s budget this year is $570,000; the new plan would result in a savings of approximately $300,000. Parents of ALL students aren’t convinced deans will deliver the same level of service to their children, however. Several of them have organized the ALL Program Parent Advocacy Coalition, an effort to save the program. At ALL’s previous commencement programs, students have spoken eloquently about how they couldn’t focus in traditional classrooms, often saying it was the one-on-one attention at ALL that helped them develop study skills and confidence. Sheryl Johnson Fox, whose grandson attends ALL this year, said ALL’s students “don’t function in a big environment…they get lost.” Veronica Colon, a mother of an ALL graduate and a current ALL student, says she struggled to get her son admitted to the program because of his special education needs. In the fall of 2009, he had started getting into more trouble and was failing his classes. “I decided I thought the ALL Academy would be the best fix,” she says. But administrators disagreed, saying the services offered in his home school could help him. “I said, ‘What you’re doing isn’t working,’” she says. “Once students start disengaging themselves, then they become a behavioral problem. That’s their way of telling their school and telling us, ‘I need help.’” ALL also had exceeded its allowed enrollment for seventh-graders, so Colon had to convince the administration to make an exception. It took time, but her son was eventually accepted in the second semester. By the end of the year, he had passed an SOL test for the first time in his school career, she says. Since then, she’s talked to other parents who have said the ALL Academy was never recommended by counselors, administrators or others. ALL Principal Anthony Mungin was tasked with recruiting for the school, and many of them heard from him in the summer, after their children had failed SOLs or courses. “I don’t think it’s fair to these kids when I know that this program will help them,” Colon says. “A lot of children in the program that are benefitting are not special education; they might just be academically struggling in a large-size class without any one-on-one attention. In the Academy, they don’t allow them to give up and they make them responsible for their actions.” She says she would love to see them expand the program, rather than close it. Right now, ALL serves seventh- and eighth-graders to prepare them for the transition to high school. She would like to see the school expand to include ninth grade or more, because the students struggle to adapt when they return to high school. “They see their teachers and guidance counselors aren’t giving them that strength and support and then they fail in ninth grade,” she says. Education advocate Jennifer Taylor, a professor at The College of William and Mary, has also said that the program should be expanded. “Before they replace the ALL with yet another plan, I would hope the administration and the board would first expand the ALL for a few years,” she says. “Many people probably don’t know about the ALL. Certainly middle school principals are aware of children who would benefit from a program such as the ALL and could point them in that direction.” She also questioned why the board is reviewing this proposal without input from its future superintendent. The board is currently interviewing candidates to replace Gary Mathews, who accepted a job in Newton County, Ga. last year. They will make an announcement by the end of the month. James Nickols, chair of the WJCC school board, says the proposal will likely come to a vote before a superintendent is chosen. He said he couldn’t share the opinions of any prospective candidates, who are not being named during the interview process, but did say all of the candidates have been following the news about the proposal. The board will review a presentation of the proposal at tonight’s meeting, starting at 7 p.m. in the board room of building F at the James City County complex. A public hearing on the operating budget and capital improvements plan will be held prior to the regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. |
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In the real world program decisions are made on results, not poor replication of national best practice. The school board fails the community and the elected officials and students when they do not insist on results for all and ALL students, but throw more positions at failing programs.