In June, the Albemarle County School Board retained the Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute (CEPI) at VCU to conduct a "resource management review" of our school operations. At our business meeting last week, the School Board received our first presentation about the findings and we have scheduled an in-depth work session to review the Institute's recommendations for this Thursday.
I can tell you that during the presentation by Dr. William Bosher, I was squirming in my seat frequently. It appears they have identified a number of key areas where we can make improvements in our school operations. He also had plenty of accolades for things Albemarle is doing really well. That's exactly what I was hoping for with this review, but it can be difficult to hear it all at once. Some things we have held sacred may need adjustments. The end result should be a better operating school division that makes the most efficient use of your tax dollars in pursuit of our community's goal for a world class school division.
I am still reviewing the final report, but I am making both the slides and the report available on my website for your review. The report includes 176 findings and observations, and 117 recommendations in eight focus areas. Here is a list of the chapters to give you some sense of the scope of the project:
- Part One: Fiscal Planning, Budgeting and Related Services
- Part Two: Facilities and Student Population Planning
- Part Three: Curriculum, Instruction and Student Services
- Part Four: Technology Planning, Systems, and Utilization (Instructional & Administrative)
- Part Five: Human Resources
- Part Six: Policy Development, Communications and Community Relations
- Part Seven: Support Operations: Building, Food Services and Transportation
- Part Eight: Organizational Development, Leadership, Central Administration
The school division has also created a website home for this study and here you will be able to track our next steps as well as the short-term and long-term decisions we make to address these findings.
Please let me know what you think about the report's conclusions. Now back to my reading...
Brian Wheeler
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