Henrico students, School Board members address variety of topics during online forums

Creativity and flexibility were the watchwords of the hour-and-a-half Henrico County Public Schools Student Town Halls Thursday morning and afternoon.

School Board members Micky Ogburn (Three Chopt District) and Marcie Shea (Tuckahoe District) answered student questions during the first forum, which began at 10 a.m. Board members Roscoe Cooper III (Fairfield District) and Kristi Kinsella (Brookland District) participated in the second forum, which started at 2 p.m.

Fall classes
Students asked varying questions about what their fall class time would entail, and Shea said it would look as close as possible to in-person school.

“The expectation for all of our levels is that the teacher will be engaging live with their students every day,” Shea said. At the secondary level, blocks are about two hours, so teachers might lecture but then have breakout groups or independent practice time, she said.

Mills E. Godwin High School Principal Leigh Dunavant said that her school is trying to make the schedule almost exactly like a normal, in-person bell schedule.

“You’ll have half of your classes one day and half of your classes the next day, and a first period every day,” she said.

Schools are trying to give students as much flexibility as possible with recorded lessons and playback, Shea told a participant who asked about students who needed to watch younger siblings or otherwise would not always be able to join a live class.

Attendance will be documented, Godwin High School Principal Leigh Dunavant said, but teachers would be flexible with families whose circumstances make live attendance difficult.

“Accountability will be different in the fall than it was in the spring,” Kinsella said when a student voiced a similar question in the second forum. “It will be required in the fall.”

Students who have circumstances that would prevent them from attending live class would have recorded assignments, she said.

Hermitage High School Principal Michael Jackson echoed Dunavant’s message in the afternoon meeting and added that students needed to communicate with their teachers, administrators and counselors.

One student expressed concern over the screen time that online school might require.

“We do not expect that you will start in the morning and be on-screen until early afternoon, all day, continuous,” Ogburn said, and that teachers might have breaks for activities like individual work.

Stacey Austin, a director of elementary education for the school system, said in the afternoon forum that elementary students would have timed breaks, recess, a longer lunch break and language, arts, music and P.E. time.

High school classes will be 90 minutes, Jackson told a student.

Pre-K through the second grade will run from 8 a.m. to 12:45 p.m., Chamberlayne Elementary School Principal Dwight VanRossum said, and third through fifth grade will run from 8 a.m. to 1:05 p.m. Middle school will run from 8:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m., said Director of Workforce and Career Development Mac Beaton.

The Board is working on how to provide in-person learning for Career and Technical Education students with required hands-on components and looking at how small groups of those students could go into buildings, Shea said.

Some competencies in the CTE curriculum can be done virtually, such as workplace readiness skills, Beaton said, while some require hands-on instruction, such as learning to turn a patient over in a bed.

“We will be doing small group instruction as we move forward based on the content that’s being covered at that time,” Beaton said.

Lab work could be in small groups, Dunavant said, emphasizing her use of “could.”

Policy changes
In response to a question about increasing punishments for racism and other discrimination in the code of conduct, Shea said the Board is looking at an adjustment to the code of conduct under the bullying policy and at adjusting the nondiscrimination policy.

Ogburn, who, along with Kinsella, is on the superintendent’s policy advisory committee, said the policy should come up in a School Board meeting in the next month or so.

“The policy committee will come up with wording that fits and covers everything we need it to cover, but then they make a suggestion to the School Board, and the School Board then gets a chance to update and change it, and then have to vote to approve it,” she said.

The committee is currently going through all of the policies for the schools, Kinsella said, and have added racial discrimination policy that board members have not seen yet.

Holly Doustout, a student from the Henrico Justice group that has held several protests, spoke to share a few of the group’s demands, which are listed online at https://demandequity.wixsite.com/website-3/what-we-want. Jack Lacy listed more of the group’s demands later in the first forum.

Shea, who said she and Alicia Atkins (the Varina District board member) had been on a call with Doustout before, and Ogburn, who said she had spoken with group organizer Natalie Christensen, said they would like to meet virtually with the group but would not be able to have more than two board members present at a time because that would legally become an official, public meeting. Doustout said she would contact them.

“All five of us on the School Board are very interested — as you can tell from what we’re doing today —  interested in hearing from students,” Ogburn said. “We don’t have, necessarily, all the answers all the time. We work for you guys. . . we will do our best to listen and be there to change the things that we can change and see what works, what we can all work together to accomplish.”

Taylor White spoke for the group in the afternoon meeting and said they would be interested in meeting with the board privately. Only two Board members can meet the group at a time, Kinsella said, unless the group presents at a board meeting.

The group wants the promotion of IB programs and specialty centers to be across the county, with elementary schools touring IB schools at the same rate, White said. One of their demands is “a quota of spots in specialty centers for students of different districts in order to promote a balance of West End and East End students in all the centers,” she said.

Discussions are being held on the School Board-level and with administration about equally exposing students to the opportunities of AP and IB courses from the earliest age possible, Cooper said.

The group also wants a uniform, county-wide definition of racial discrimination and uniform consequence for cases of it, White said.

The student code of conduct and its language are under review, Cooper said.

“One thing that we as a county and as a division have tried to ensure through our Department of Equity, Diversity and Opportunity as well as our Family Engagement: that we are listening, that we are engaging in the conversations, and we will make the necessary changes to ensure that all of our staff, all of our students, all of our families and the community feel respected, feel appreciated, have environments that are safe, that are inclusive, and are culturally responsive,” he said.

Another demand, White said, is for all booster programs to have a fundraising cap, and any funding over the cap to be taxed a percentage that would go into a high school community pool, and then be equitably funded throughout the county based on who needs it most.

“As to your funding, I understand exactly how you would perceive that the funding across our Henrico County Public Schools is not equitable. I do,” Kinsella said. “Our PTAs, however, are independent 501(c)3s. . . when you donate money or when you raise money to a 501(c)3, there are certain rules and restrictions that go with that, as to disclosing exactly what you’re raising the funds for. But when we meet with you, we’ll be happy to go over the funding and your concerns and maybe how we can work more with some of our community partners to ensure that all of our schools are getting the resources that they need.”

Two students in the second hall asked about the plan for monitoring cheating.

Students are expected to maintain integrity by following the student code of conduct, Jackson said.

“We are counting on every student to be a good citizen, and we are counting on them to do the right thing,” Austin said.

Elementary school students will not take Measure of Academic Progress tests, Austin said, but will have some sort of learning assessments.

Extracurricular activities
Students asked about how multiple extracurricular activities, from choir to robotics, might work.

Sports will run per the Virginia High School League’s tentative schedule, with the winter season beginning in December, the fall in February, and the spring in April. Other activities will depend on how the health situation evolves and how many children can safely be in a building, Shea said.

Band and choir will require creativity, but “our teachers are up to the task,” Ogburn said, giving an example of the Godwin choir learning a song by meeting with their instructor individually before recording it.

Students will be able to pick up materials for electives in a similar setup as laptop distribution, said Holman Middle School Principal Susan Proffitt, replying to a student who asked about woodworking. Ogburn said that they are looking at asking bus drivers to take materials to neighborhoods.

The Godwin robotics team has virtually met weekly since the school closure, Dunavant said, and are putting out a publication on STEM activities that younger students could do.

Helping families
One submitted question in the second forum asked how working parents could help their children during virtual learning.

The hope is that students are working intentionally on becoming life-ready, Cooper said, by honing in on the school system’s six C’s.

“We look at it as a collaborative partnership,” he said “between the individual schools, the virtual school team, teachers, support staff, administrators, as well as assisting the parents and the students to be successful, one, with the environment that’s at home, as well as giving our students the necessary supports that they need to be successful.”

The Board will be sharing tips with parents in the near future, Cooper said.

The system is working on childcare help, Cole said.

“We are exploring those supports,” Cole said. “While we don’t have concrete details now, we are feverishly working on that.”

In-person return
To decide on going back to school, the School Board will listen to advice from doctors, the Health Department and the Department of Education, Ogburn said.

“We will hope to and our plan is to ease in with our youngest kids first. . . because they have the hardest time with this format that we’re using right now,” Ogburn said.

They will look at overall health and the status of the virus as well as how to keep students safe in school, she said.

“Because there are so many parts of the country right now that are having really large outbreaks of the coronavirus, we are having a hard time getting some of those things that we might need,” like face masks and cleaning supplies, Ogburn said.

When a student asked what measures students would have to follow in a return to in-person instruction, Cooper said the schools will monitor expectations from the Centers for Disease Control and community health organizations. Kinsella said that the phase that Virginia is in according to Gov. Ralph Northam’s guidelines will also affect protocols.