WJCC Board Likely To Approve Coaches, Close ALL

By Amber Lester Kennedy Thursday, January 20, 2011

The Williamsburg-James City County School Board hasn’t voted yet to decide the fate of the Academy for Life and Learning, but seemed to reach a consensus to close the school at their Tuesday work session.

At that meeting, Assistant Superintendent for Academic Services Dianna Lindsay presented further revisions to the job description for the proposed Student Advancement Coaches. Since December, the board has been considering a proposal to close the Academy for Life and Learning and hire three Student Achievement Coaches for the division’s three middle schools. The proposal would address two of the board’s goals: reach more at-risk children, while cutting the budget. Only one board member, Oscar Prater, didn't voice support for the proposal, choosing to abstain because he only joined the board at the start of the year.

The Academy for Life and Learning currently costs $570,000 to run; as proposed, the Student Advancement Coaches would cost approximately $225,000, with an additional $45,000 budgeted for programming improvements.

The job description requires a person with experience in education and/or social work and a master’s degree in either education or counseling. The division would also like for the job candidates to have experience teaching or working with grades 6 to 12. The coaches will meet with and evaluate students, preparing Individualized Learning Plans for them, and following up to see how they’re progressing toward their personal and academic goals. The coaches will also mediate in disputes and make recommendations for discipline, acting much like case workers for at-risk students. Recent changes to the draft reflect that the coaches will directly be supervised by principals, but have periodic meetings with Lindsay. To read the revised draft of the job description, click here.

Parents, students and citizens have criticized the plan, instead calling for the division to expand the ALL program, which they say is a program that works. The voluntary program, which currently has 46 seventh- and eighth-graders enrolled, combines one-on-one instruction with lessons in good citizenship. Last year, 91 percent of ALL students passed the writing SOL, 89 percent passed the reading, 83 percent passed the science, 77 percent passed the math and 57 percent passes the social studies. Some of them had never passed an SOL.

While the board members have acknowledged the achievements of ALL and its students, they have maintained that their goal is to reach more students across the division. ALL is not mandatory, and was unable to recruit more students, according to Vice Chair Ruth Larson. Also, the division is pursuing a “philosophical change” away from pull-out programs, and more toward rehabilitating students in their home schools, Lindsay said Tuesday.

The board members still had some questions, but said they thought the coaches had real potential to help catch students before they become at-risk of failing or acting out.

“This isn’t the be all and end all, either,” said Denise Koch. “We may see some additional things are needed. I think we’ve been floundering for the last couple years and we need to move ahead with something we’ve discussed a lot.”

Jim Kelly thought the coaches might reach some of the students who would have benefitted from ALL, but were reluctant to leave their home schools. “There is an at-risk group there that we are not serving,” he said. “I think this has a better chance of reaching more at-risk students.”

Before the proposal comes to a vote, Elise Emanuel asked Lindsay if they could see a profile of the current ALL students, not including their names, to get a feeling of their needs and whether they would be covered by the new program. Larson also asked that the division work toward establishing similar jobs at the elementary level, in hopes of catching kids before they become “at-risk.”

Emanuel said that ultimately, the coach plan is just the first step in a review of the division’s interventions and programs. Board member Joe Fuentes has pushed for the division to review its discipline and attendance policies in order to avoid short-term suspensions, during which students aren’t being educated.

Emanuel also said the division will need to look at Response to Intervention (RTI), a five-year pilot program launched in 2008 with the goal of rehabilitating middle school students who might otherwise fail classes or Standards of Learning tests. RTI classifies students in three tiers: tier 1 students take general education classes taught by general education teachers; tier 2 students are identified as reading below their grade level; and tier 3 students are working significantly below their grade level.

At a June meeting, the board received an RTI report that indicated students’ scores weren’t improving, especially in the sixth grade, where the average reading SOL score of 398.8 was a failing score. The average score for sixth grade RTI students on the math SOL was 368.2. To learn more about RTI, click here).

The board will next meet on Feb. 1 in the Stryker Building in Williamsburg.