SchoolMatters Blog

Our school board retreat and 21st century learning

The Albemarle County School Board will hold its annual retreat tomorrow from Noon to 5PM.  The meeting is at VSBA's headquarters on Pantops and is open to the public and media (BTW - I think it is important for government retreats to be held where people can easily come and observe).

In our preparation materials, I found these three readings the most interesting:

• How to Get Started with Project Based Learning by David Andrade
• Framework for 21st Century Learning
  
• Weymouth High School curriculum redesign project

On the last item for Weymouth HS, I was really impressed with the video put together by the faculty. 

While their wiki appears to be in its early stages, I am impressed by their objectives (below) and it's a site I will be checking on in the future.

Design 21 is a faculty run redesign of the Weymouth High School curriculum. Our goal is to embed core 21st century skills across the curriculum to prepare students for post‐secondary education, career, and active citizenship. This site exists to create complete transparency in the process and maximize input for every stakeholder. At WHSDeisgn21.wikispaces.com you will be able to view the minutes from every Design Team meeting, check the calendar for upcoming meetings, and publicly post your feedback. The site is faculty run and operated to allow for timely updates and a full democratization of the redesign.

Brian Wheeler

Schools host teleforum meeting on operation of small elementary schools

I moderated our fourth "teleforum" last night with the community.  We have done three of these in the past on budget matters, but this was the first on one specific topic--the operation of small elementary schools. Albemarle County Public Schools is considering whether to close three very small elementary schools (< 200 students) and build one new school near the existing Walton Middle School.  No decision has been made, and this was the next step in soliciting input from the community.  Superintendent Pam Moran will make a recommendation to the School Board this summer.

Our telephone forum vendor, Broadnet, called our list of about 28,000 households (community members, parents, and staff).  At the peak of the call we had about 325 people on the line participating.  This was a smaller participation rate than our budget forums, but school consolidation is a topic that I recognize will only be of interest to a smaller group.

We broke the 90 minute call into four segments related to small schools: background information; achievement; community; and operational matters.

A podcast of the call will be posted later today and you can learn all about the school division's master planning process on our website.  Thanks to everyone that participated!

Brian Wheeler

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5/19/09 * Daily Progress [full story]

Town hall participants tepid on closing 3 county schools

Hundreds of Albemarle County residents took part in a telephone town hall Monday night that weighed the fate of three small elementary schools, with the vast majority of callers opposed to the possibility of the schools’ closure.

“The small schools are very important to our community,” said a caller identifying himself as Michael. “They’re important to our fabric and I think we should keep them.”

Take our survey for parents and community members

A survey has been put online for all community members and parents. The purpose of this survey is to determine how well our schools are meeting Albemarle County students' needs for quality education. Your assistance in completing this survey is deeply appreciated as the data we receive will be used to help Albemarle County Schools continue to improve.

We're asking for your feedback through short customer surveys.  There are two surveys, one for Community Members who do NOT have children in our school system, and one for parents of students in Albemarle County Public Schools. 

Brian Wheeler