Though the Williamsburg-James City County School Board agreed with most of the language regarding the proposed legislative priorities list, the request to repeal the Opportunity Education Institution proved a point of contention at Tuesday’s work session.
The institution is a recently created state-level school board that takes control of low performing schools. Virginia schools that lose accreditation or are accredited with warning three consecutive years leave the control of their local school division and enter the control of OEI.
Each year the school board puts together a legislative priorities list — a list of state laws the school would like to see changed, created or better implemented. On the list for 2014, now before the school board for approval, is a push to do away with the law that created the OEI.
At Tuesday’s school board meeting, Heather Cordasco (Roberts) and Ruth Larson (Berkeley) had opposing views on the subject: Larson wants the repeal and Cordasco believes the law should stay in place. Board Member Jim Kelly was unsure about the OEI law and Board Member James Nickols said he didn’t think it would work.
Larson said she believed the OEI taking control of schools is off-target, saying sometimes low scores aren’t just a school problem but instead a reflection of a community problem, like poverty. Cordasco, on the other hand, disagreed and said she supports OEI because she believes some schools have been given adequate time for reform.
“With all due respect to what you say, some of these school districts that we’re talking about have had the chance to change things for years,” she said.
Larson said OEI takes too narrow of a view of a school district’s problems.
“I don’t doubt that, but what I’m saying … is you have to take a full-picture look at what’s going on in those communities and what’s going on in those school divisions,” Larson said. “There’s only so much a school division controls.”
Cordasco likened the situation to losing power during a hurricane. When the power goes off, she said, no one cares who the workers are that get it running, how they get gas in their trucks or how many trees have to be cut.
“We just want to know: when’s it going to be back on,” Cordasco said.
It’s the same situation, she said, with the OEI board – children’s lives are being directly affected by low performing schools so people want to know when it’s going to be fixed – not how. Some schools in the state have graduation rates of 30 to 35 percent, she said.
“And for that to go on for one, two, five, 10 years,” she said, hitting the table with each number. “It’s too long. So I say we take of our business in our system and we make sure we’re doing what we’re supposed to do.
Larson said she understood Cordasco’s point, but she thought the OEI discussion was just a symptom of needed SOL reform. She said it was the same case for a new state grading system for schools approved by legislators in February.
It works like this: each year students across the state take the Standards of Learning tests that have questions related to math, science, English and history. How well students do on the tests is meant to show how individual schools and teachers are performing.
Many parents, teachers, administrators, students and state organizations in Virginia have banded together against the SOL system. They claim there are too many tests (36 by the time a student graduates high school), there isn’t enough flexibility in testing dates, the tests encourage meaningless memorization and a list of other grievances.
From SOL scores, a school receives a grade on a scale of “A” through “F.” An “A” means a school is fully accredited, but an “F” can mean the loss of state accreditation for a school or a warning from the Virginia Board of Education. The General Assembly passed legislation for this grading system earlier this year.
If a school receives a warning three consecutive years or loses their accreditation at any time, the OEI board takes control of the school and its funding for up to five years. Administrators have lamented that there is nothing written into the law that guarantees a school’s funding will be released once the school is returned to a local school board’s control.
Larson’s argument was that there should not be an OEI board or an “A” through “F” grading system until the SOL testing system is changed.
“To me it’s the cart leading the horse,” Larson said.
Larson also reminded board members they had already passed a resolution to join a lawsuit against the state — spearheaded by the Virginia School Boards Association — that calls the OEI law unconstitutional.
The WJCC legislative priorities list will return before the board Nov. 19 with one change: language included about the SOL tests. An item on the list that asks state legislators to re-examine “High Stakes Standardized Testing” — similar to resolutions passed by both York County schools and WJCC — will now specify that what the board is asking is for more flexibility for SOL testing dates and retakes.
