On Thursday, September 22, 2011 at Whiteford Elementary, Board of Education member Cecily Harsh-Kinnane hosted a district 3 community meeting featuring a question and answer session with superintendent Erroll Davis.
Below is the first in a series of questions and answers addressed at that meeting.
- 1. Regarding leveling, are teachers still going to be moved from some schools to other schools? Will the standards on class sizes be the same everywhere? And where are we with the redistricting study?
Mr. Davis: Yes, we are using the same ratios at every school. We staff schools based on projected enrollment. After four weeks of school, as student enrollment becomes more stable, we begin the leveling process. Regarding your redistricting question, we have not used the word “redistricting.” Rather, we have undertaken a demographic study. To discuss the results of the study, we will be holding focus groups in each region. There has been some unease because we said we would do the focus groups in August. We postponed them until September, but those dates conflicted with the dates of the SACS visit. The new timeframe for the focus groups is October 17–20. In addition, we have allowed for community input through our demographic opinion survey, which is currently running online. And we have community meetings scheduled for November 7–10. We will not be having a second round of focus groups as originally planned. But after preliminary recommendations are presented to the board, there will be additional opportunities for public input. We will post the revised timeline on our website. To suggest redistricting is not accurate. We just do not know yet.