School Board member Margaret Lorber has apologized for comments she made last week over the cautious reopening of public schools in the city during the pandemic.
“I was just amazed at the level of venom that I received in some of the emails,” Lorber said in a school board retreat on Tuesday night. “Everything gets put on social media so whatever you have said, gets amplified and misinterpreted 50 different ways. ”
Alexandria City Public Schools has pushed back its planned partial reopening for young disabled students from Jan. 19 to Jan. 26.
Citing the increase in positive cases of COVID-19, the school system announced Monday (Jan. 11) that the students in kindergarten to second grade with disabilities instead go back to school on the date that is currently designated for special education students in grades 3-5, disabled students in grades K-5 and English learners in grades PreK-5.
It’s uncertain whether Alexandria City Public Schools will open for in-person schooling on Jan. 19, despite a phased reentry plan that will be sent out to parents on Monday.
Superintendent Gregory Hutchings, Jr. told the School Board Thursday night that it is difficult to say with certainty that schools will reopen on Jan. 19 for young students with disabilities.
In a report headed to the School Board tonight, staff at Alexandria City Public Schools have pinpointed racial disparities within the school division’s Talented and Gifted (TAG) program.
Overall, staff found that in 2019 while white students only account for 28% of the school population, they comprise 62% of the TAG programs. Black students, who make up 25% of the overall student population, represented only 15% of the TAG program. The highest disparity was Hispanic students, who comprise 38% of the student population but only 13% of the TAG program.
With COVID-19 cases on the rise and the holiday travel season upon us, the Alexandria School Board on Monday approved a recommendation by Superintendent Gregory Hutchings, Jr. to delay an in-person plan bringing students back to school until January 2021.
Specifically, the move delays bringing back kindergarten through fifth graders with disabilities who receive self-contained Language Arts and Math, which was planned for Nov. 30, and middle schoolers in the citywide special education program in December. No new set dates were presented, and Hutchings told the Board on Monday that he is following the advice of the Alexandria Health Department and does not want to act impulsively.
Families received a note from ACPS on Tuesday morning stating that school for students with disabilities in grades 3-5 and who are in the citywide Special Education program would need to stay home.
“Unfortunately, we were not able to return students in the (grades) 3-5 program as part of our targeted date of November 17, as the superintendent has said that all of our plans are contingent upon staffing and building capacity issues,” Terry Werner, the ACPS executive director of specialized instruction told parents in a Zoom call on Wednesday night. “We ran into some issues around staffing and we were not able to staff classes to bring students back from our next phase of students are scheduled to return on 30th.”
Heading into a School Board vote on Nov. 23, Superintendent Gregory Hutchings had thrown his support in with those supporting changing the names of T.C. Williams High School and Matthew Maury Elementary School.
Hutchings explained his support for the name change in an opinion piece in Tes, an educator trade magazine.
Alexandria City Public Schools Superintendent Gregory Hutchings, Jr. will present the school board with an update Thursday night on his continuity of learning plan to eventually bring back all elementary and middle school students to in-person classes.
All ACPS staff are also expected to complete an “Intent to Return” form by 3 p.m. on Wednesday, and the results of staff who plan to return will be made available by this Friday, according to ACPS. Students will also be required to fill out a form in late November or early December as to whether they plan on returning to in-person instruction.
Updated at 10 p.m. on Nov. 5: Alexandria City Public Schools partially reopened today (Nov. 5) for less than 10 students with disabilities, and Superintendent Gregory Hutchings, Jr. told parents that this is but the first step of the reopening process.
When asked on social media how many students attended, ACPS responded that it was fewer than 10 students.
As Alexandria City Public Schools prepares to partially reopen its elementary schools to special needs students on November 5, more than 400 parents are coordinating a new messaging campaign to fully reopen the school system.
Parents with the Facebook group OpenACPS! just printed 1,000 “OpenACPS” signs to be displayed in front yards around the city. More than 600 signs have already been given away, said group organizer Kirsten Dougherty.
What an intense week in Alexandria.
Our top story was on the massive power outages that affected tens of thousands of residents on Friday, October 23. Without providing specifics, Dominion Energy told City Council this week that outages in Alexandria and Arlington were “unique,” and caused by a piece of equipment that failed at its Glebe Road substation. City Councilors responded that there have been at least eight outages since May.
