Jul 2023
Board Meeting

▼Full Transcript Below

1. Public Comment
   ⏯️ 17:09

   • • Greg Wilson (Friends of AI) highlighted number of low-income and homeless students at AI; urged the district to utilize Title I funding for high school support. 

2. Presentation of AI Task Force Summary 

⏯1:07:08–1:45:10

• Mark Pruitt, Director of Secondary Education, presented a 6-month summary of the AI Task Force findings and recommendations to the Board.

3. Board Policy Review

⏯️1:50:45 

• The Board approved a recommendation to request that the Board Policy Review Committee review attendance zone feeder patterns every 10 years.

▼Transcript: Public Comment

⏯️ 17:09

Greg Wilson: It's Greg Wilson. I'm with friends of AI, an alumni group of concerned alumni. Last month Amy Norton, a former English teacher at AI, made a public comment and I thought they were very

heartfelt words. Her full statement was for more literature to be taught at AI high school and it rings true. I hope the School Board and the district and the new leadership of AI High School takes her public comments under consideration. Today I'm here to say once again that we want to thank the School Board for the creation of the AI task Force. For those of us that participated in

the activities for the last five months, we found them very edifying. We learned a lot and we want to thank the the school district and Dorrell Green, the Superintendent and Mark Pruitt for his efforts. 

The reason why AI alumni got involved in the first place was that we had the football season canceled for the second season in a row and a lot of alumni just didn't know the situation that AI was in. We also found out that the school band - the marching band - used to have 300 kids in the band - was down to 29. So thanks to the School Board, we had the Task Force. We learned a lot. One of the things that we really learned was that 42 percent of the kids that go to AI are low income. 40 are homeless. It technically qualifies for Title 1 funding. We understand the advantages that those Title One funds can bring to AI, as far as Specialists that can help out with reading or behavioral health issues or an Outreach officer to help out reaching out to parents to get the parents to come to PTA meetings. It just isn't AI that qualifies for Title One funding it's also McKean high school and for those who say, "Well look you get more bang for the buck at the elementary school level"  That's true according to some of the studies but our kids don't turn into middle class families all of a sudden in ninth grade. They still need help. They still need our resources and we urge the school district to apply them as such as they can. 

Just as a side note we've been engaged in a couple of fundraising golf tournaments these last couple years to raise money for the high school wrestling team. We've got a lot of kids who have never even been out of Wilmington, never been out of the city. We're sending them to wrestling camp so they can get better at wrestling but also get some life experience. One of the kids he was driving by he had never seen a cow out in a pasture. It was hilarious and it was heartwarming. The kids had done better this year when it comes to wrestling and that wouldn't have happened but for AI alumni, so if anybody likes to play golf or really bad golf because we play a lot of bad golf - our golf tournament is this Monday at Newark Country Club and we'll hopefully raise some more money for the kids and a tutoring program that helps the kids balance out school work and sports. We appreciate your time. We appreciate the School Board. We would like to see the Task Force continue moving forward. We think that the experience overall was really helpful for alumni. We want to help with, if it's mentoring - if it's tutoring - and we look forward to the new school year and the new leadership at AI high school. We thank you for your time and all the work that you put into helping AI and the school district have better schools. Thank you very much.

⏯1:07:08–1:45:10

Mark Pruitt: Good evening, President Matthews, Mr. Board Member, Superintendent Green. I am here to give a summary of the Red Clay AI Task Force's work over the past six months and they were able to come up with some recommendations to get started on going into next year. The committee was very collaborative, a lot of fact-finding, a lot of questions, a lot of education that went into it, that analysis, brainstorming potential initiatives, and again they were able to come to a consensus on some recommendations. I have been involved in and headed other committees for this Board and I can tell you that participation was not a problem here. You see 16 active members of the committee. The committee was made up of District administrators, School administrators, two from AI, but we also thought it was important to have a broader perspective so Mr. Damon Saunders joined us on the committee as a partnering school. Teachers were on the committee also, a teacher, McKean's Teacher of the Year Siobhan Carter was on the committee, but I would particularly like to thank the work of Dr. Marsha Richardson, parent at AI duPont High School, Mr. Greg Wilson, alumni member, Miss Peggy Strong, former parent at AI duPont High School, and Mr. Vashaun Turner, alumni member at AI duPont High School, who were community participants on the committee. 

The committee met five times, pretty much monthly. We did skip a month while we did some work by going back to get feedback from students and staff, but otherwise met monthly January through June. Excellent. We're not going to click on those slots, we'll be here all night, but there is a rolling slides of the five meetings. There are 90 slides in there, minutes are linked to it if you wanted to look at that in more detail. Of course they've been posted monthly on the school district's website. 

Your charge statement given to us, we took seriously, really reflected on it at our first meeting. The purpose of the AI Task Force was to assist the district and school personnel in identifying resources and programs that satisfy the needs of the current students and families at AI duPont High School and attract and would also attract future students and families through new and innovative courses and programs while suggesting ideas on a rebranding of the AI duPont High School campus. Committee also thought when looking at that that it was important to set the stage for our work, what would our work produce? So they came out up with a more measurable goal which was assist the school district to increase the enrollment from not a current 691 at the time and hopefully get us to 800 or more students by September of 2026. This was a very importantness of members of the committee and so we word submit that and came up with that even if only for ourselves. The Task Force wanted to accomplish that by working with stakeholder groups to assess the needs of the current students and implement high-level initiatives. Next slot. A lot of data, a lot of questions, a lot of things we brought to the committee, when I say we I mean school level Mr. Palinetti and his team, myself, Sam Golder, Tawanda Bond would say, "Hey well could you get us this now?" and it really was an enriching experience, it was a rewarding experience I thought of a collaboration between multiple stakeholder groups. 

But this slide you have seen before if you're on the school board in the fall. This was a slide that we brought to you so I will touch on it quickly. This is when we talked I believe in October of a population decline of 52 percent over 12 years. Out of district choice spiked at AI in 2016. In district choice declining by 66 percent and then also some possible reasons for that. Conrad High School's enrollment growing by 209 during that same period. Odyssey's Charter School opening in 2015 having zero students 73 in 2021. I believe now 2023 that number is triple. Increased preference 73 were in the high school at the time but it only had like ninth graders at that point. Increased preference for Red Clay students at Charter School of Wilmington and DMA. CSW is a 48 percent increase, 600 to 891 during a similar period. Choice busing was significantly decreased in 2018 and then added to this slide for the committee was the DMA's number of Red Clay residents of 235 students in 2009 to 341 in 2021. 

There was a lot of discussion about enrollment attendance zones and this slide really I think was at the center of a couple of our meetings and I just to quickly make sense of it across the top, the John Dickinson School, AI duPont High School, and McKean. They are where students live. So if you look at the column in lighter blue, that is the John Dickinson School. 268 students go to Conrad and live in the John Dickinson School's attendance zone. 77 go to Conrad and live in the AI duPont High attendant zone and so on and so forth. You see if you go to Dickinson down the left hand column 651 students live in Dickinson's feeder. Makes sense, they're an attendance zone school, a comprehensive attendance on school. AI duPont High 434 in the middle on the next line and then McKean's number stands out. What you see is of all of our students that attend all of our Red Clay high schools, not our chartered schools, 1000 over 1100 at Dickinson, 640 live in the AI feeder and 1247 live in McKean feeder. This asks the question, well then the AI students must be going to the students in that feeder pattern must be going to CSW or DMA. 

So we brought that data to the next meeting. You see of those combined schools 411 live in the John Dickinson attendance zone, 306 at AI, 368 at McKean. We dug further. Newcastle County Vo-Tech over 400 live in Dickinson and McKean's attendance zone, only 138 in the AI attendance zone. Other charters not chartered by Red Clay, you see those numbers, and we also got DOE to give us private schools that, being some of the more affluent neighborhoods in the Red Clay School District, it makes sense that in fact AI duPont High does have a larger population of students attending. The total number of possible students that could attend schools according to attendant zones at the bottom there: 2295 for Dickinson, 1745 for AI, 2408 from McKean. That was a significant number. We spent a lot of time on that and I went through that one carefully because I think anyone that was on that committee there was a lot of discussion surrounding that, a lot of trying to understand what that meant. Next slide. Some questions about when and whether the feeder patterns have been changed. They have not. Those, you light blue Dickinson, McKean in green, AI in yellow, they've been the same since 2003 at a Wilmington High closure and then the Wilmington High feeder was carved up and then it was redistributed a couple years later so they've been the same for 20 years. Brought some speakers in, well Mr. Palladinetti was on the committee, he was asked to present, the committee wanted him to present the current makeup and needs of the school. He took us through the demographics, the strengths, the needs, the obstacles and I thought when you get into this type of discussion there is a real tendency to say, "Well how can we attract new students?" and I thought Kevin did an outstanding job of saying, "We've got 700 students right here right now," and I thought that that was really important in grounding the committee. 

Next slide. Committee asked Director of Transportation Kelly Sheehan to join us. She did a great job of explaining to us choice hub stops and feeder pattern school hub stops where they go around the district. A lot of discussion around why hub stops would be all over the district for magnet schools like Conrad and Cab versus stopping at the edge of the attendance zone of our feeder pattern schools but again there was a much broader understanding from all of our committee members at the end of that presentation. Other data considerations, we really gave a close read to Board Policy 8013, that is the school choice policy. We took a look at AI's school choice data and we also, I'm not going to click on that link but you certainly can on your own time, we took a look at where our current 8th graders that just finished the eighth grade and they're now going into ninth grade. Brandywine Springs, where are those kids going to high school? AI Middle, where are those kids going to high school? That's at that link. 

One thing we did not get into that I did do a simple math calculation, our 8th graders that just finished. Everybody, even a kindergartner, lives in either the Dickinson, AI, or McKean feeder pattern, right? So we looked at our eighth graders: 472 live in the John Dickinson feeder pattern, 474 live in the McKean feeder pattern, and 253 live in the AI feeder pattern. Again a significant disparity there. School choice numbers last year compared to this year: AI was up by 30 applications, they invited in an additional 33 students but also there was an offset of that as they invited out an additional 14 students, an increase in 14 students. So that's pretty similar when you're looking at McKean and AI, schools without a magnet program in there but that those numbers were increased a little bit from last year to this year. 

⏯️1:18:47 Dorrell Green: And Mr. Pruitt, before you go on to the next one, I think it's also worth noting just a kind of quick analysis of our eighth graders who are moving on to high school across our eight middle school programs. When you look at three of our schools' magnet programs, the sixth to 12th grade, of the 1300 plus students they're slated to go to 24 different public or charter high schools, that excludes private enterprise. So again I just think for the total picture we have 8th graders through Newcastle County Vo-Tech, other public high schools or other charter schools that includes the seven within Red Clay. If you add DMA and CSW, or slated to go to 24 different high schools and that's not private. 

Mark Pruitt: We conducted, I worked with a team that conducted a CTE audit of our Comprehensive High Schools. Where are we in terms of CTE programming following the state model, best practices, work-based learning connections? We collected a lot of data on that, used a rubric, a national rubric that's used against those three schools and came up with a number of recommendations that will drive our work for CTE over the next five years and here are the recommendations that were connected to AI in some way:  AI duPont High School has a CTE or a career in technical education, those are three-year pathways preparing students for careers. We had a retirement in the foods program at AI duPont High, that kitchen is outdated and so we're going to pause on that pathway as we look to re-image AI duPont High School. We recommend adding a health science pathway at AI duPont High School, either a nurse assisting program, an Allied Health program or a public health program. The group that did this work thought that, "Hey this is an area where AI duPont High School has not kept up when compared to McKean, Conrad, Dickinson." In creating a streamlined course selection process which requires graduates to complete a three-year pathway and we do do that but most importantly encourages or incentivizes students to take approved pathways in almost every case. All right, the percentage of students that are in seats earning CTE funding for us at AI when compared to our other schools is much less and so that's something that we need to work on and are working on. Mr. Mattix is working on that with the administration at AI. We need to bolster the teacher academy pathway at AI. It is, the enrollment numbers in that pathway are not very high and we've got, we are a community of educators here and we employ a couple thousand educators, we ought to be able to have a pathway that produces some good teachers in our or aspiring teachers in our district. The recommendation to add a Cisco Networking Academy pathway at AI duPont High School. We all in our work environment as have had a technician come out, "Hey I need some help here, come out help me fix that problem." There is a Cisco, Cisco has partnered with DOE, our recommendation would be to add that pathway at AI duPont High School. Consider Human Services pathway at AI once DOE supports the cluster. Mr. Mattix is also working on a, earned a grant and is working with our middle schools on a student-centered career exploration model for middle grades that will better expose our middle schools and give them opportunities to learn about what our high school CTE programs have to offer. Started that work probably in April, are going to launch that to some degree in September when the school year starts but have a fully functional aligned program between middle, high, middle and high schools in the following year. 

⏯️ 1:23:23 Dorrell Green: Mr. Pruitt again, for the edification of the community and the Board Members, those programs for that middle years program will be slated for the grant at AI Middle and Stanton Middle, order two schools that have been identified.

Mark Pruitt: Yep, and then hoping to replicate that at the other schools but that's where the grant money is going. Invested in the facilities at AI duPont High first. I think McKean is our flagship in terms of CTE programming and facilities when you're talking about comprehensive schools. Dickinson holding its own has some work to do but AI has, looks a little outdated in how we educate students in terms of career and technical education and where the state model exists we need to follow the state model. We've got some pathways that get some federal and state funds but because they're not aligned with the most recent and up-to-date state model, we're not maximizing the funding at some of our programs at AI. 

A lot of discussion about Title One funding. But Mr. Michael Simmonds and his team, his Title One department, came over and talked to the committee about Title One funding, where we utilize that money currently. Currently this year and plans for next year. Some discussion about, you know, a few members had some as you've heard during public comment, the possibility of expanding those funds to the high school level but currently the Title One and then the team in Red Clay keep those funds in Title One K-5 schools and Title One middle schools. 

After a lot of information and a lot of education and we then we knew we had some thing some irons in the fire currently. So there was a presentation from the district level in it, possible initiatives, that was me. School level, possible initiatives, that was Mr. Palladinetti, and then Friends of AI also gave a presentation about the work that they've done as alumni and what they might be able to do to support AI going forward. We came up with an exhaustive list of potential high leverage initiatives, got into small groups, discussed those possibilities, what made them high level initiatives, what were possible obstacles, so on so forth. After that we got together and individuals on the committee placed up to five tally marks next to the initiatives they believed would be the most beneficial to the Board's charge statement. Excellent. And that is what we came up with. We had nine members of the committee at that meeting. It's not to say the other five or six, well I think were generally supportive of those numbers there and I'll go through this in a little more detail when we get to our recommendations. But that is sort of how we we started to build consensus among multiple stakeholder groups. Okay, at that point we paused on our meetings for a month. We gave those, we knew what we thought, but then we took those, went back to the school level, we asked the teachers on the committee, I really appreciate Mr. Zeb Blom, Mr. John Barr who took the lead, went back, got feedback from the AI students and faculty and staff through surveys on what they thought they needed and what they thought in terms of our initiatives. 

And then they brought that back, they presented that to the committee and generally it aligned with what we had thought, so there was no significant disagreement in that regard which brings us to the recommendations that we thought we'd start with at least for this summer. There was on that chart if you go back a slide, two slides, there was some discussion of the like, "Is this a one-year deal? Is this going to take three years?" And then, "Is this a school level initiative? Does this take District support or does this take School Board level support?" You'll see up there feeder pattern considerations, the committee was interested in that but that would take three years and that's obviously a Board level decision. But then you look at the Esports elective coding courses and possible pathway, everyone was on board with that, they had already piloted that this year, that would take one year and that that would obviously be a school level initiative. So that's what that data meant. You can go forward two slides.

All right, so the Task Force recommends the following school level level programming at AI duPont High: an Esports curriculum, a current next year they they had the lab this year, they did some really cool things to pilot it. Mr. Green's been at the center of that, has really been a proponent of getting that going and I know AI duPont High School appreciates it. But also develop a curriculum coursework that's in the works and possibly a three-year pathway in collaboration with Wilmington University down the road. 

Aligning with the CTE audit that we conducted, we recommend writing two additional CTE pathways, those applications are due in November to kick in in school year 25, that's not this September but next September, and invest in the programming, it's the facilities for those two programs. 

To implement Delaware Technical and Community College dual enrollment courses to support the current but relatively new construction pathway to offer a sophomore distinction diploma program offered with in a partnership with Goldey-Beacom College to possibly attract the new students through dual enrollment opportunities. This would allow the students to make a decision as eighth graders to get into this program. There's a preparation course in ninth grade that we're looking to develop, taking two courses with AI staff in 10th grade and then shuttle bus for four courses over the course of a year on campus at Goldey-Beacom during their junior and senior years. Really investing in marketing and revamp branding efforts and working with the district team on this to take a look at everything from the logo, the model, the motto, the clarity, but also these new programs, hard copy tri-folds, video so on and so forth to really sell the school when we sort of relaunch AI duPont High School so to speak.

And then additional student services staffing. There was a part of the charge statement that talked about supporting current students and there is always a need for student services staffing whether that is school counselors. We talked about in level of detail I think needs to be determined but we talked about, there were some discussion about math coaches, reading specialists, counselors, psychologists, those kinds of folks and maybe readjusting the staff in that regard. Okay, so those are school level programming, relatively low lifts, right? 

Okay, the one thing that just came up over and over again and drove our conversation is that the Task Force also recommends the school board consider High School attendance zones and the importance of enrollment as it relates to programming in our Comprehensive High Schools. Okay, well you see the data, certainly there's not as many kids that could even could attend AI duPont High School when compared to Dickinson or McKean. But because of that AI actually retains more of its attendance zone students than does McKean or Dickinson, but the number is so much smaller that it's resulted in the number deteriorating even as McKean and Dickinson have stabilized to a certain degree. But make no mistake, there's 690 this year, they're slated to be down another 20 or 30 potentially last year of course we haven't started any of this. But I think we really need to look at what the impact on of enrollment on Comprehensive High Schools. It's a chicken and egg situation where you need enrollment to have these programs but you also need these programs to have to get the enrollment, right, to get the new students at this point. We're a school district that has four choice schools, we have more choice schools in our school district than we do come than we do attendance zone schools or two charters, two magnets, only three attended zones. 

⏯️ 1:32:01 Mark Pruitt: It would sure would be great if attendant zone schools had thousands to 1200 students so the equity piece could be met. They could get all of the AP courses, they could get all of the extracurricular activities in athletics that they are due if they choose to attend one of those schools or in fact the 10 one of those schools because of where they live. Questions?

Jose Matthews : Thank you so much Mr. Pruitt, certainly appreciate all of your due diligence in that presentation, all the work that you guys did throughout the committee. 

Vic: Leonard: If I could say something real quick, Mr. Pruitt did an excellent job running this committee and organizing all the meetings and I'm very appreciative for that and I'm sure everybody is at AI and on the school board. Thank you again for all your hard work and making it happen. 

Jose Matthews: Excellent. Thank you Mr. Leonard. Kecia Nesmith?

⏯️ 1:33:12 Kecia Nesmith: Yes, thank you for the detailed report. When I looked at it the other day I was like, "This is interesting." I just have a couple of observations. A lot of times when you look at data it's like, "What do I notice? What I noticed," and you you did highlight some of those things. The feeder pattern geographically for AI it seems at least according to the map much bigger but we know that the homes in that feeder, most of the homes are single family detached homes, they're spread apart more, they're fewer homes I'm guessing in that feeder pattern. I don't know the facts but I'm I would have to guess there's fewer homes in that feeder pattern that might be in a neighborhood where the houses might be smaller or closer together so I think that is a factor. That's one thing, the other thing I noticed was there are twice as many students in the AI feeder pattern almost, almost twice as many that attend private schools. So this, you know we think about the enrollment and we think about the demographics of our very big district, there are differences in the communities that these schools are housed in and I mean you could expand the feeder pattern, I don't know if that would help because then traveling would even be longer for some children to get to school. And you know in Delaware we have so much choice and so many options, it does limit the number of resources that we can put into schools to host these additional pathways and programs. So this is like a 10 year out kind of thing and I don't know if I'll be here but we really need to think about how we're leveraging the resources and the spaces that we have for our students because choice is a good thing in my opinion but too much choice can be problematic. And it looks like in this area we have our students have so many choices that it limits the resources. We're about to go to referendum, we need more money, how can we be smarter about providing choices, providing options, and I'm saying we, the collective, not just Red Clay, but this whole community around us about providing choices, provided making sure there's equity, making sure students are thriving and having those options. Because as we know we just talked about our budget and we don't we didn't get the capital referendum last year, like the certificate necessity, so there's a lot of things I think our state legislators, Governor need to consider when they're looking at the future of 2025. It was a lot of what school leaders are talking about - What does 2025 or 2030 look like? We really need to start thinking about not just what can we add or change to these buildings but look at what are the, doing a study in terms of how many homes are still being built. There are still homes being built in this space. What what are the age groups like? Do a study, there's a word for it but I can't think of the top of my head but doing a study and seeing who is living in this community because communities change, demographics change. So those these are just something that I notice and I'm thinking about a couple more things and I'll then end. A lot of talk about Title One money and that our students at the AI duPont High School might qualify by the demographics but when I think about new things I'm wondering how our Title One for money is being allocated. We don't have as much but how for new and innovative ideas can be used with Title Four because I know you can't just use that, there's very there's a lot of stipulations around Title Four. So maybe that would be something to consider and then finally this is just a thought I have. We have some really great schools and really great programs, my son goes to Conrad, the only fully STEM school and correct me if I'm wrong anyone that we have a CSW and so we have it. I love Conrad so it's a life sciences kind of school. What if we expanded programs for more STEM opportunities outside of, and this is not about AI this is about things in general outside of CSW because so many kids are trying to get into STEM and they're really only option for what's being marketed as STEM is as a program, not another STEM classes at each building and things like that. But I wonder because that's where the market is going, that's where kids are going to school. So I think we really need to look at not just AI but I do appreciate this study because it gives us a lot of information in this collaboration but looking at all of our schools and looking at the future for where are these careers going to be, what are the jobs the kids are going to be doing, what practice - I was talking with a couple of administrators before the meeting - what practices are we using in education because we are going to be AI, chat GPT all this stuff matters and we keep talking about it but we have education always moves slower than the rest of the world but we have opportunity to be really creative. So I appreciate even though I wasn't necessarily seeing the vision with this Task Force, I think a lot more came out of it than just about AI so I appreciate the the details that you shared with us today and I look forward to continuing conversations around what we're going to do with our high schools. Thank you.

Jose Matthews: Thank you. Cathy Thompson?

⏯️ 1:38:43 Cathy Thompson: Thank you. I just have a couple of questions Mr. Pruitt. So in the John Dickinson School. When we look at the numbers are they all just High School numbers? Because I think the high school enrollment at John Dickinson is like 724. Is that right?

Mark Pruitt: It's gonna be 800 next year.

Cathy Thompson: 800. That's for the high school? Because the middle school is in there too. When you go on the report cards online there's it says there's 1058 at John Dickinson but it's a 6 through 12 school.

Mark Pruitt: About 1100, maybe a tick over 1100 next year, of which 280 to 300 will be middle school.  

Cathy Thompson: So 800 is a good number to use for high schools. Okay so we have 800 at Dickinson and that McKean we have low nines yeah and at AI we have six something 690.

Mark Pruitt: Yes last year okay.

Cathy Thompson: So we have these students are going to our comprehensive schools. I agree we have to look at everything holistically, but if we were, I mean it's because it's real clear we have more High School seats than we have high school students. People seem to be filling up our magnets and our charters and that leaves less students for our comprehensive schools and we keep talking about a comprehensive school - but do we have comprehensive high schools? And what is needed for a comprehensive high school? And do we need to look at our three Comprehensive High Schools to see if we need three or do we need two or do we need some other kind of configuration to have true Comprehensive High Schools so that this kids can have sports and music and musicals and plays and all that kind of stuff that they have.

⏯️ 1:40:29 Dorrell Green: So Ms. Thompson if I could just add this. This is going into my fifth year in Red Clay and I've had the opportunity to work in Christina previously, as you know I've worked in Brandywine and I've worked at the state level, and when we look at approximately 1300 students going to 24 different High School options that also excludes private and parochial right and as Mr. Pruitt indicated we offer more choice programs than comprehensive schools. We've done labor market analysis that was also one of the fundamental basis of the CTE Audit. 

Mark Pruitt: That was the leading indicator in the audit.

Dorrell Green: So this is work that we've been doing but the reality of it is - whose school? Because a feeder pattern analysis is ultimately going to tell us what you just said - we have more available seats than we have students in our schools and than we offer options. So you know we're going to have to take a comprehensive look at what does it mean to be the Red Clay Consolidated School District and how are we innovative because we in essence can't compete let's say with the Vo-Tech. When you look at capital funding, when you look at needs around infrastructure and what they're able to do just in terms of operating because those programs as you know cost a lot of money. When you're putting an automotive shop in a school you have to outfit that school and it's hard to say you're going to outfit that school and know that you don't have sustainability in that program. So we do, as we continue to go through this CTE audit, as we continue and I do want to thank because I think a lot of good did come out of this process right there's just not to highlight what the needs are at AI duPont High School but I think it gave the public a general or broader understanding of the complexity that's our school district. When you look at again Dr. Celestine's presentation a month or so ago when we're serving over 3500 or so students with disabilities when you look at our preschool or Pre-K programming so we have to take a comprehensive look and again I think that's what we've been doing over the past year through our strategic planning efforts but more importantly I think this Task Force has fleshed out the need for us to look at where are we innovative and how can we consolidate resources so that students across the district can benefit for those inability programs and we'll continue that work moving forward.

⏯️ 1:42:53 Cathy Thompson: Right because it seems to me that we need to look at the comprehensive plan before we decide feeder patterns because we're not just trying to steal students from one school and put them at another right? We don't have enough students to have three Comprehensive High Schools as it is right now.

Dorrell Green: Well I think all of our districts, when you look at it historically, where multiple High School school districts continue to have that right issue it's just not a Red Clay issue right. Just as much as I know it's our focus in Red Clay but if you look going back to the majority of a comprehensive high schools in New Castle County everyone's enrollment to a degree over the past 10 years or the past decade or so those numbers have shifted correct. You know looking at extracurricular co-curricular programming, sports teams, which again it's just not isolated to Red Clay. Our challenge is we do offer a lot more innovative programs within the district that just pull from within the district and then we also have the external pressures of students having those external options as well. So we'll continue to stay the course, we'll continue to stay focused but again we have to look at as much as we're offering innovative programs to attract sustainability has to be key because that's oftentimes what ends up happening you introduce a program that's wedded to an instructor an educator who's leading that program the educator leaves the district in the program ultimately falls under that the educator leaving. So a lot of good work came out of it. So thank you to Mr. Pruitt, thank you to the Task Force members who spent their time you know Mr. Leonard. Mr. Wilson who's here who's been passionate and faithful coming before the Board each month in the AI and we again later on in the obviously in the agenda there's a recommendation before you so that we can turn a page and and move things forward as a school district and supporting not only AI but all of our high schools and comprehensive schools in Red Clay.

Cathy Thompson: Yeah it just seems Mr. Green that we need to come up with a plan in order to be able to figure out- 

Dorrell Green: and Mr. Pruitt just outlined that plan. And we'll continue that work as a Board and as a district to continue with engagement as we move forward. 

Jose Matthews: Any other questions or comments discussion? All right thank you so much Mr. Pruitt.

⏯️1:50:45 Dorrell Green:  It is a recommendation that the Red Clay Board of Education requests the draft policy from the Board Policy Review Committee to review the attendance zone feeder patterns every 10 years.
Jose Matthews: Do we have a motion to approve the recommendation?

Vic Leonard: So moved.

Jose Matthews: Thank you, Mr Leonard. Do we have a second?

Kecia Nesmith: Second, Nesmith.

Jose Matthews: Thank you, Dr. Nesmith. We've properly moved and seconded the motion. Do we have any discussion?

Vic Leonard: Yes. I'd just like to say that this is just a review - it's not changing these zones - but reviewing them every 10 years.

Jose Matthews: Thank you, Mr Leonard. Do we have any other remarks or comments, questions? Hearing none - all in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries.

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