Thread by @socialistdogmom

a five hour meeting on the last day of school so no employees or parents could possibly attend? very on brand for the albemarle county school board.

but molly, it’s a retreat - they don’t do business at those! except... they’re presenting the equity report. this is a school district that kicked off this school year by collaborating with the county commonwealth’s attorney’s office to arrest parents asking for racial justice.

this is a school district in which a student posted a racially motivated shooting threat to 4chan during study hall.

dailyprogress.com/news/local/alb…

this is a school district in which a teacher traumatized a black student with a martin luther king jr day lesson plan that used literal segregation to teach 6 year olds a lesson.
richmond.com/news/virginia/…

this is a school district whose school board couldn’t even ban racist hate symbols from their classrooms. superintendent matt haas had to do it for them.
all of these things happened THIS YEAR. this semester. i hope they’re all in this equity report.

after wandering around this confusing industrial building for a while, i found the meeting. if you want to hear the equity report, it’s on the agenda for 4:25pm.

the facilitator asked if they want to go into closed session for their self evaluations. that sounds... less than legal. koleszar raises that issue. no one agrees with him.

any open meeting experts care to weigh in on whether that’s legal?

they didn’t officially move for a closed session but observers were cleared from the room anyway?

i’m not a lawyer but i can’t find any provision of this statute that would allow an elected school board to reflect on their work over the last year in a closed session

law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/2.2-371…

aha, they used the illusion of a closed session to clear the room. i just walked back in, was asked to leave because it’s a closed session, told the man it isn’t because no vote was taken, and was allowed to stay.

it’s really frustrating that you have to have a working understanding of roberts rules and the state code to be afforded a minimum level of access to a public meeting. not to mention the fact that i could only FIND the meeting because i have a contact who works for the district.

the pretend closed session is over and all the other audience members are back.

koleszar interrupts to say he objects to making the priorities ‘smart goals.’ “i think priorities should be visions.”
(i have no idea what any of this jargon is supposed to mean!)

SMART is: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. it makes sense to set priorities that are measurable & attainable... whenever i hear a politician talking about VISION, it just means they don’t have a plan.

one of their past priorities as a board was to identify and remove practices that perpetuate the achievement gap. it’s weird that they didn’t think overt racial intimidation of students might be contributing to their school achievement.

if anyone knows the wifi password for the guest network at albemarle tech, i would really like to have it.

they’re broken out into small groups to discuss the past priority of eliminating practices that perpetuate the achievement gap. i’m not sure a group consisting of acuff, buyaki, and koleszar is really equipped to have an honest conversation about this.

koleszar has in the past argued it is actually more racist to ban hate symbols than it is to wear them. buyaki wore a confederate flag tie to a meeting last august. acuff has community members arrested for speaking.

https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/1101278894538346497?s=21

katrina callsen and graham paige approached the task differently, asking what it would look like to have achieved this goal? callsen says one thing they’d like to see equal participation [by students of color] in all their academy programs & extracurriculars.

callsen says she’d also like to see a 10% increase in staff diversity. she wants a better list of specific metrics like what percentage of minority students are taking AP classes, etc, so they can set specific goals for improving those numbers.

the central conflict here seems to be koleszar wanting to set a big vision and oberg insisting on small, measurable, achievable steps that can be taken. it’s dominating the conversation.

adding sub-points under the priority of identifying & removing practices that perpetuate the achievement gap. i’m not sure if these are the smart goals.

proposed steps:
- by dec 31, identify five classroom practices that perpetuate the achievement gap
- by sept 30, staff will evaluate the equity dashboard and present target achievement goals

acuff points out that not all the practices perpetuating the achievement gap are classroom-based (like guidance counselor practices)

she says she’d be open to adding a third bullet point addressing that, but it didn’t seem to get any support? taking a ten minute break before moving on to the next goal (i thought these were priorities and the bullet points were the goals??)

never in the history of municipal government has a “ten minute recess” lasted less than 17 minutes.

going back into their small groups to discuss what it is they really mean by the priority “create a culture of high expectations for all”

i should’ve brought my meeting blanket

“the current culture that we have... kids get written off,” oberg says, explaining that “high expectations” means something different for every child.

people who have their own meeting in too-loud whispers in the audience at a meeting are 10000x more disruptive than hecklers, protesters, and intentional disrupters.

rather than taking oberg’s point about the importance of differentiating instruction to ensure all learners are held to a high expectation that works for them, the board is focusing on the semantic issue of “creating” vs “promoting” a culture of high expectations.

oberg wants to add a sub-goal of the board meeting every single teacher. katrina callsen says right now they don’t even visit every SCHOOL every year and suggests making that the goal. (that is... discouraging and alarming)

acuff reiterates that she doesn’t think having high expectations is a meaningful, operational goal. it’s a philosophy.

oberg says they need to promote a culture where every child is encouraged to dream big & that means something different for every learner. (i’m kind of surprised this line of thinking isn’t being met with encouragement & agreement. it’s no more vague than the current goal.)

koleszar, who objected to defining or making actionable goals for priority #1 (eliminating the achievement gap) just said this conversation about priority #2 cannot continue without a definition of “high expectations.”

sub goals for this priority:
- by sept 30, create a definition of high expectations or revise/strike the priority

more or less on schedule, hearing about the child nutrition program now.

lot of employee turnover at the extended day program... is 30-40% turnover rate normal?

food service associates and extended day program employees are both part time, ten month employees that make around $10/hour. (i believe city schools just significantly increased pay for all these positions - i wonder if that will worsen the turnover in the county?)

current enrollment in the extended day program is 989, with 261 on the waitlist. they are not even close to meeting the demand.

at a recent school board meeting, two teachers said they would potentially have to resign if they can’t get their kids into the program

https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/1126625412191334400?s=21

paige asks if they have any idea how many families would be interested in the EDEP but never applied because they can’t afford it. a staff member says they don’t know that information.

the school district’s extended day enrichment program is $255 per “cycle” (i’m not sure what that means), compared to $35 per YEAR to go to the boys & girls club after school program

“is it pay that makes it hard to hang onto people?” alcaro asks. (again, this is part time work at $10/hr and the hours are odd — it’s early-mid afternoon, making it hard to match up with other part time work)

a staff member says the issue really is the pay and the hours. she says “neighboring districts” offer a higher starting rate for this work

another staff member says his staff has a significant number of retired teachers or new grads looking to get teaching jobs.
$12.95/hr is not going to retain college educated employees, he says.

koleszar asks if they can use high school seniors to staff the after school program. he calls it a “tremendous opportunity” for students looking to get into education.

oberg says it would be great to have a CATEC course for students interested in education that would give them credit for working in the extended day enrichment program. acuff says this was proposed years ago but it seems it didn’t come to fruition.

sign up for the EDEP is first come, first serve. parents have to get up at 6am (and have internet access) to get their kid into the program by being the first to sign up online when registration opens.

acuff suggests making a pitch to the county board of supervisors to partner with them to make the EDEP accessible to more students. currently it’s a self-sustaining program, which means only families that can afford it are getting high quality after school care from the district.

oh a cycle is a MONTH. so families are paying $2500 per school year for this program.

https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/1137086942284263426?s=21

so no real conclusion on what they’re going to do to address what callsen calls a public relations problem re: who gets into the extended day program. moving right along to dr hairston’s presentation of the equity report.

fuck these chairs. my feet don’t quite reach the ground.

ben allen, assistant principal at cale elementary; joanna williams, chair of the equity & diversity advisory committee; and rusty carlock, an AHS teacher, will be giving what dr hairston says will be a 45 minute presentation

“our county is changing,” carlock says of a slide titled “shifting demographics.”
they are seeing & will continue to see increasing diversity as well as increasing economic inequality.

the number of students who are economically disadvantaged has increased from 20% to 30% in the past decade (much of that increase was 2008-2011, but it’s been steadily rising since then)

“how do we get more diverse representation” in the district’s accelerated programs and academies?

albemarle county students are attending institutions of higher ed at greater than the state average in aggregate... but at a lower rate than the state average for individual minority groups.

students color and students living in poverty are UNDER represented in advanced classes and academies and OVER represented in intervention programs, special education, and disciplinary action.

“sometimes teachers use [suspension] as a tool and they may not realize they are doing it in a way” that disproportionately affects minority students.

“we found that very little has changed. there was almost no change in the data” since the achievement gap was evaluated in 2016 vs this report (which superintendent haas points out does not include data from the 2018-19 school year)

haas keeps interrupting to add that this should all be in the past tense. with no data to support the claim, he says they’re doing better this year.

in 2017-18, albemarle county’s african american students placed 127th out of 137 in the state for math performance.

one of the recommendations is to explore alternatives to approaching intervention with pullout groups. students of color are disproportionately pulled from core instruction for intervention groups. (and it costs the district more)

board members are now applying stickers to poster sized printouts of the last few slides to identify the recommendations they see as the top two priorities.

“you can’t be successful if you don’t feel welcome,” oberg says, speaking to the importance of the recommendation to ensure all students feel welcome and able to participate in all aspects of school.

it is so uncomfortable when white people use a fictional race to have a conversation about race.
oberg says if he were a “purple student in a school with no purple staff,” he would be uncomfortable.

oberg relates an anecdote about a transgender student who didn’t even bother completing a survey about school culture because there was no option for marking her gender identity and she didn’t feel like her identity was being valued.

one of the presenters says they are prohibited (by IRB regulations? unclear. she’s from the curry school) from asking questions or even allowing a space for students to indicate that they are transgender. that seems... like a problem.

oberg suggests that instead of pulling kids out for intervention, just keep kids who need intervention for an extra hour after school (that sounds very expensive)

apparently albemarle county’s elementary schools have the shortest school days in the state.

joanna williams says she has seen some positive changes this year & thanks dr haas. “i felt like we were listened to back in 2016.”
haas says the recommendations are very good and is glad to see this as part of the retreat.

the meeting is actually not over but the presentation is over and literally everyone else has left.
board members are reeling at the news that their minority students are some of the lowest performing students in the state.

callsen says they need to be careful how they talk about the achievement gap. “what people are actually taking away” is that black students are failing. she doesn’t want to contribute to stigma & stereotypes.

oberg recounts an anecdote about a classroom visit he went on where a teacher asked how many students had internet access at home - many did not.

he says those kids can’t possibly access afterschool enrichment - you can only sign up online at 6am (a time of day when you can’t use the internet at the library)

https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/1137090116181221381?s=21

the conversation shouldn’t be “minority students are failing,” but that albemarle county schools are failing minority students. callsen is adamant about this & oberg agrees.

it’s a little alarming to me how surprised some members of the board seem to be about these test scores. we’re talking about 2017-18 school year data. they should already have known how bad that data looked.

oberg keeps referring to a concept he calls “charlottesville nice,” - “you’re not allowed to say things that aren’t nice!”

“we should be in the top ten! with budget we put in?!” board members are really struggling to come to terms with their statewide ranking.

“the tenor of the conversations has changed,” callsen says, and is happy with the actions dr haas has taken.

“we need to come out with a strategic plan for how we as a board are going to address this,” acuff says. i see more meetings in our future!

meeting adjourned.