FRANKLIN—The Virginia Department of Education has cited the Franklin City School District with six violations of standards of quality. These violations included failure to develop and implement programs of prevention, intervention or remediation for students who fail to achieve a passing Standards of Learning score; employing personnel who are not licensed in relevant subject areas; and failure to implement a plan to make achievement for students who are educationally at risk a division-wide priority. “We knew once the schools went into warning, we knew that an academic review was something they would do,” Superintendent Dr. Michelle Belle said. She said she did not think of the review as a bad thing. “We need assistance to correct some of the challenges in the division,” Belle said. The superintendent and School Board Chair Edna King received a document dated June 27 from the Virginia Department of Education. “As stated in my previous correspondence, Section 22.1-253.13:3 of the Code of Virginia, Standards of Quality (SOQ), requires local school boards to maintain Fully Accredited schools and to take the corrective actions for schools that are not Fully Accredited,” Dr. Patricia I. Wright, superintendent of public instruction, wrote in the June 27 letter. “Franklin City Public Schools has three schools rated Accredited with Warning. As demonstrated by the findings and recommendations indicated in the attached reports, the review revealed evidence that the failure of the schools within the division to achieve accreditation status is related to division-level failure to implement the SOQ… .” VDOE spokesperson Charles Pyle said the responsibility to meet these standards as part of Virginia law belongs to the local school board, which ultimately is responsible for holding a superintendent accountable. Belle said that the code was a huge, generic document. “This is a thing that will help us, and I am worried that people will twist it,” she said. “It is a diagnosis of the school division. “The problems started way before I got here. But we’ve got to get to the bottom of it. We can’t run from it.” When Belle took over as superintendent in March 2009, S.P. Morton Elementary School and Franklin High School were fully accredited, while J.P. King was accredited with warning in math, history and science, though the school was in its review year and was fully accredited the next year. Schools retain the warning label for an additional year, even if it received a passing grade. From fall 2009 to spring 2012, all of the schools were fully accredited, though there were declines in Standards of Learning scores every year in math and English for each school. In 2012-2013 all of the schools went into warning, and based on recently released SOL scores where Franklin schools fell in 22 of 32 categories from the previous year, it is anticipated that they will all be in warning again in 2013-2014. VDOE will release official results Friday, Sept. 20. While there may be a history of some problems in the district, Pyle said past problems have no bearing on this review being done, but rather it is based on the current failings in regards to the Standards of Learning scores. “Dr. Wright is not in the habit of bringing up matters that have already been addressed,” he said. “I think this letter is as straightforward as it can be. In the code, it says ‘Each local school board shall maintain schools that are fully accredited.’ That’s not in the past.” In the letter, Wright also wrote that she would use assessment data to make a decision regarding her “recommendation to the Virginia Board of Education to request that Franklin City Public Schools enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Virginia Board of Education and undergo a division-level academic review… .” Pyle said a Memorandum of Understanding is an agreement where a local school board agrees on a schedule of goals to be completed from year to year, and has a menu of actions that must take place to accomplish its goals. Belle said this June 27 report was the focus of her administrator retreat of late July. King said that this report was the frame of the Aug. 5 School Board Retreat. However, one school board member, Dawna Walton of Ward 6, said that she had not been made aware of this document. Nancy Godwin of Ward 2, stated that she could not confirm or deny whether these documents had been reviewed. Johnetta Nichols of Ward 3 declined to comment because her mother was ill and she was on her way to Norfolk. The other school board members could not be reached for comment despite repeated attempts. When confronted with some members not having heard of or immediately recalling the document, King said she would prefer to not say who was at the meeting and declined to comment any further. She also said she would not comment on the document itself for personnel reasons. Minutes from the Aug. 5 retreat were not available, though there was a school board meeting on Aug. 15. A central office record keeper confirmed that all school board members were at the retreat. Belle said to be fair to the new school board members, it was the first school board retreat. “It is an overwhelming day,” she said, also confirming that they were all at the meeting. To obtain the documents, The Tidewater News filed a Freedom of Information Act request with VDOE and received them on Aug. 28. The newspaper also received other documents relating to this report on Sept. 5.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 10:55:25 +0000
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