WJCC Parents Share Ideas for Strategic Plan; Forum Scheduled for Thursday

By Amber Lester Kennedy Wednesday, November 30, 2011

A small but passionate group of parents and citizens gathered in the James River Elementary School cafeteria Tuesday to share ideas for the future of Williamsburg-James City County Schools.

Fewer than 20 people came to the second community forum led by the Public Consulting Group, contracted by the division to help gather input for a strategic plan. The strategic planning process is being led by a steering committee, which will use data and opinions gathered by PCG to write the strategic plan. The division hopes to begin implementation of the plan in fall 2012.

A previous community forum held on Nov. 7 drew criticism from participants who felt the process wasn’t inclusive, and also felt stifled by the format. At that meeting, PCG project director Steve Kutno asked participants to respond to prompts, such as, “Name three skills students will need in the future.” In response, more community forums and focus groups were scheduled for this week.

Tuesday’s meeting was free-flowing, with Kutno allowing the participants to have a dialogue about what they’d like to see, what’s bothered them in the past and what best practices already exist in the division. He also shared one video, an animated lecture by education expert Ken Robinson, that focused on how to change education paradigms (watch the video here ).

Some parents advocated for the expansion of the International Baccalaureate program beyond the elementary program at James River Elementary. Aaron DeGroft, whose children attended James River, said he’d like to see an IB program at the middle schools, along with a magnet program at one of the high schools. Penny Pulley shared that she paid tuition for her children, who attended WJCC elementary and middle schools, to graduate from the IB program at York High School.

Other parents said they want to see more creativity in classrooms, an innovative teacher evaluation structure and less focus on making sure children are passing standardized tests. Beth Haw, a member of the Special Education Advisory Committee, said she would like to see education more customized to different learning styles and abilities; she also advocated for a new approach to discipline that moved away from forcing students out of classrooms.

Vaughn Poller emphasized the need for a forward-thinking curriculum that prepares students for new technologies. “I desire an education system that is a platform for my children to launch from,” he said. “I’m not interested in right answers … I’m interested in processes.”

He said he’s noticed that, due to large growth in the past decade, the sense of a tight-knit community has been lost, and thought that might be key to getting families engaged in education again. Several parents offered Matoaka Elementary School as an example of a school where the parents are engaged, the leadership is strong and traditions are cherished. Identifying that school’s best practices might help, they said.

Collaboration as a community is the only way the strategic plan will work, Kutno said. Although the No Child Left Behind Act has been blamed for many of the current problems in education, Kutno said the infrastructure itself has been outdated since the 1970s. Education professionals have compared the performance of American students against the performance of students in China and Singapore with little acknowledgement of the differences between the societies. “We’re looking at data with the assumption it’s telling us something,” he said.

The strategic plan is meant to create a master vision for the school system, with detailed goals for the next three-to-five years, he said. So far, PCG has met with about 30 groups of stakeholders, and will meet with groups of teachers, the Special Education Advisory Committee, members of the African-American community and hourly employees this week.

A community forum will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday at Toano Middle School. An online survey is expected to be released to the public, pending steering committee approval.