Apr 15 2025
AZ Committee Meeting

▼Full Transcript Below

1. Public Comment
   ⏯ 6:20: - 26:30

   • • Ariana Li (CSW Student) Advocated for a dedicated CSW building, noting it would support student growth, resolve scheduling conflicts from shared spaces, and provide "third spaces" for after-school gathering.

     • Kate Terranova (CSW Parent and PTSO President) Advocated for a new CSW facility, citing morning traffic hazards, inadequate parking, entrance accessibility issues, and classroom space limitations for teachers.

     • Elaine Guo (CSW Student) Advocated for a separate CSW facility to improve cleanliness, eliminate distractions from shared spaces, update STEM equipment, give mobile teachers permanent classrooms, and support clubs.

     • Chonnie Blair (CSW Parent and CSW Board Member) Suggested partnering for a flagship STEM school that can be shared by Red Clay students, noting she discussed workforce preparation and high achievement goals with Dr. B in order to seek equity for all students. 

     • Val Gould (AZ Committee Member) Expressed concern that a vo-tech hub is being prematurely forced on the committee, urging members to focus independently on fixing inequitable attendance zones and prioritizing district resources for Red Clay students rather than accommodating facility requests from CSW.

     • Amy Reynoso (Community member) Agreed with a previous speaker and criticized CSW representatives for requesting district facilities, urging the committee to focus on supporting students and teachers within the comprehensive schools.

     • Jose Matthews (RCCSD Board President and AZ Committee Member) Clarified that CSW is officially authorized by Red Clay and its students are Red Clay students, correcting a previous speaker's assertion that it is a non-district school.

⏯ 2:03:47-2:07:34

• • • Jason Gleber (CSW Board) Clarified that CSW is not a financial drain on Red Clay and they are trying to be a better partner to Red Clay; suggested that if CSW is allocated a building, they could absorb more Red Clay students and help ease pressure on other schools.

    • Maddie Reitemeyer (AZ Committee Member) Urged the committee to consider the need for virtual learning opportunities based on requests from students and parents. 

2. Group Discussion on clarification of Committee's purpose and timeline
    ⏯ 33:08-58:37

• Committee members expressed concerns that the July deadline is too condensed for long-term decisions taking effect in the 2027–28 school year. Members discussed the need for community input and to clearly define the committee's core problem.

3.  CTE Facilities Audit  
    ⏯ 58:38-1:01:48

• • • Mark Pruitt referenced a 2022 CTE audit of attendance-zone high school facilities, noting that McKean is a flagship for CTE programming and facilities, built up by the district over 15 years. He emphasized the importance of understanding facility capacities when considering the relocation of attendance zones and the placement of an Innovation Center, or potential relocation recommendations for CSW.

4. Presentation on Delaware high school sizes and performance
    ⏯ 1:02:29-1:19:58

• Dr. Corey Heacock, Red Clay Teaching and Learning, presented research and state-level data on school size and configuration, which was followed by a committee discussion on the role of demographics and student engagement.

5. Group Discussion on programming options, straw poll and vote to add an additional                 meeting
    ⏯ 1:20:00-2:01:29

• The committee divided into 3 small groups to assess relevance, feasibility, and impact on nine programming options and agreed to email the top four options in a straw poll. 

    ⏯ 2:08:25-2:20:32

• Committee Members discussed and voted (9 to 5 in favor) to add an additional meeting on Thursday, May 1st to keep the committee ahead of schedule.

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⏯️3:46 Mark Pruitt: ...Allow those that are busy today to come in late and join us, but we do want to get started here at our fourth meeting, our April meeting for the Attendance Zone and Programming School Board Committee. If I can have a motion to bring the meeting to order? 

⏯️3:55 Jose Matthews: So moved, Jose Matthews. 

⏯️3:56 Mark Pruitt: Matthews. Can I get a second?

⏯️3:58 Vic Leonard: Second.

⏯️3:59 Mark Pruitt: Seconded by Mr. Leonard. All in favor? 

⏯️4:01 Group: Aye. 

⏯️4:02 Mark Pruitt: Unanimous. Thank you very much, and welcome to everyone, those on the committee and also those in the public here to see the meeting. Let's see...technical difficulties. There we go.

⏯️4:49 Mark Pruitt: All right, so the agenda. The agenda is just as it was posted in public a week ago, as well as sent to the committee members five days ago. You can see it again up here, and there are hard copies up in front of the room, as well as copies of the draft minutes from last meeting.

If I seem to have a pace here today, maybe a little different than previous meetings, it's because I think it's really important that we get some analysis done in some small groups, and hopefully take a straw poll and kind of see where we stand on some of the work we've done so far. I would ask you to keep that in mind as we're going through some of the early slides. I think it's very important that somewhere around 7:15, we're able to take a straw poll and kind of get a sense of where the committee members stand at this point.

At this time, we will move to public comment. To work with everyone here that may be late getting here, we do allow for public comment both in person and online at the beginning of the meeting, or at the end of the meeting in person or online, but not both. You cannot give public comment at 6:00 and at 7:45. So, we allow for public comment one time. We'll start with those in person. Would anyone like to give public comment from the in-person audience here today? All right, thank you. We'll start in the back corner there. Please stand and state your name.

⏯️6:20 Ariana Li (CSW Student): Hello, I'm Ariana. I'm a student here at the Charter School of Wilmington, Class of 2025. Yay.  I've never moved in my entire life; I was born and raised in Delaware. I live in Hockessin. I went to North Star Elementary School, I went to Independence for middle school, and now I'm at Charter. Both my siblings have graduated from Charter School of Wilmington, Class of 2011 and 2014, so I'm quite the baby of the family, but they both went to Charter too.

I guess I'm just here to share a little bit about why Charter means so much to me and how an expansion would really mean a lot to our community. Freshman year to senior year Ariana are two completely different people. Freshman year Ariana would have never been able to stand up here and talk to a room full of adults staring at her. I really do credit Charter with a lot of the development of my character, my confidence, both academically and personality-wise.

I'm now serving as the co-president of our student government. I just actually came from Dover to give our executive report on the Youth and Government program because I serve as the youth governor over there too. So Charter is just an amazing community. I think we hear a lot about the academics, how we have great test scores and stuff like that, but as co-president, one of the huge things that we've been working on is building school spirit. The student government plans events like pep rallies, homecoming, field day, and stuff, and we have like 900-some students. Especially in an environment where Charter is really competitive and there are a lot of high achievers, student government has been really focused on how we can bring the community together outside of the classroom.

Something that we've struggled with is definitely finding space and sort of that ownership of the building. Because we share a space with Cab, which is amazing. We love our Cab friends, but it's definitely, it's not ours, per se, it's not our building; we still have to share.

When it comes to planning for events like pep rallies and field day—this year we had a Fall Festival—we always have to coordinate with the other school and see what's going on. Tomorrow, actually, we're having a pep rally in the morning, Culture Day, and then field day right after. Just because of the facilities and the way it is, the way we have to schedule it, we have to jam-pack everything together. It's definitely quite a struggle, I guess, to fit all of our school spirit, all of our community into that wonderful square building that we get to be a part of. But yeah, Charter has meant so much to develop me and develop a lot of my friends. What else do I have... anyway...

⏯️9:29 Mark Pruitt: I'm going to ask you to just wrap it up in the next 20 or 30 seconds. We give three minutes for public comment, but you're doing a great job, so I'm going to give you a little bit of extra time to wrap it up.

⏯️9:40 Ariana Li (CSW Student): Well, Charter just means a lot, and being able to see the school spirit grow, it would just mean a lot to have more room for those sort of "third spaces." I think that's something a lot of youth are craving for today because there's so much digital space, but there aren't that many physical spaces to go to after school or on the weekends where you don't have to pay money to do something, if that makes sense. A lot of teens aren't hanging out at the library anymore, and after school at Charter, you don't see many kids hanging out anywhere either, just because we're not really allowed to. So, having our own building would mean a lot. Thank you for your consideration and letting me have some time today.

⏯️10:20 Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much. Do we have other members of the public who would like to speak? Sure. What we'll do going forward is at the 2-minute and 30-second mark, we'll just gently tell you that you've got 30 seconds. 

⏯️10:41 Kate Terranova (CSW Parent and PTSO President: Hi, my name is Kate Terranova. I am a Colonial School District graduate; I went all the way through public school. I have been on the PTA or the PTSO at Red Clay schools for 16 years. I'm currently president of the PTSO at the Charter School of Wilmington. This is my last year. I have a senior there who's getting ready to graduate, and also two Charter graduates who are now in college. They're excelling thanks to the Charter School of Wilmington education they received for high school and college. I'm very, very thankful for that, so thank you.

I want to let you know that I love the state of Delaware. I love public school education, like I said, I'm a product of it and I believe in it. I left Delaware for a few years for a job, but I came back because I love Delaware.

I wanted to say that in my time as the PTSO president, there have been many times when I have wished that the building situation with the Charter School of Wilmington was different. Taking this from a purely logistical standpoint, the traffic that occurs in the morning with all of the students trying to filter into the building is really not safe. There have been accidents on Dupont Road. There have been kids that have been hit, there are kids that have had near-misses, and there have been times when things could have been much worse. There are just so many people flooding into that building, and the way things go in the morning is hectic, crazy, and quite frankly, not safe.

In addition, with parking, there's just not enough parking for the number of students and for the events that we want to do. We were really excited years ago to try to do a Grandparents Day to get grandparents and students into the building to see what their students are doing. We think it's important for our community, for not only our parents but also our grandparents, to be involved in what's happening in education. Quite frankly, we just can't park their cars. In the daytime, we can't really bring people into the building to do events like that because there's just nowhere to park, and it's so far away.

If you've been to the building, Cab Calloway is usually the front entrance and Charter is using a side entrance. I went to school today to deliver a thousand pretzels for an event that we were having for the students in school, and I had to carry those boxes up two flights of stairs. I had to park my car on the sidewalk. Suzanne, who works at the front desk, honestly, I don't know if she can continue to lose weight because she's going up and down the steps for quite many trips during the day. The door entrance is just really not good and unacceptable.

We've got teachers on carts where we really need teachers to have a classroom. We're being asked at the PTSO to provide more for certain things that we really shouldn't have to provide if we just simply had space for these teachers to have their own classrooms. I think that, in general, the bathrooms and things like that could really use to be improved. We have a great group of students, and I think that considering putting them in a different building would be wonderful. Thank you for listening.

⏯️13:46 Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much. Go Gamecocks! We do have students at the University of South Carolina, so go Gamecocks! Any other members from the public for public comment?

⏯️14:10 Elaine Guo (CSW Student):  Hello. I am a current student at Charter School of Wilmington.  My name is Elaine Guo and I'm a sophomore there. So, I'll speak more on the, I guess, student aspect of the Charter School of Wilmington's expansion situation. I wrote a little bit here, but I am pretty involved with Charter community. I would say I'm on the student council, I work with Ariana here. I'm also in BPA, which is Business Professionals of America, and I actually represent Charter in the state as the state secretary. But that's all about me; but more about Charter.

I think that a separate and expanded space for Charter would create a significant positive impact on everyone, including the students and the teachers. First and foremost, the most prominent or most obvious reason for the public to see is kind of the environment. Everybody wants to walk into a fresh environment. Me, personally, I'm only a sophomore, but within those two years I've been at Charter, I've definitely seen dirty hallways, staircases, whether it's in classrooms, sort of dust and things, I've actually seen mice as well, which can be distracting, I would say, as a student.

Also, sharing public spaces with Cab Calloway. I was actually in study hall in the auditorium, and usually it's fine to study, but they were actually having dance performances or singing performances on the stage in the auditorium while I'm trying to study. I think personally, as a student, a separate space for Charter would definitely be a lot less distracting and therefore will lead to more better performances on work.

Furthermore, I think more improved equipment, whether it's labs or technology, as a STEM school it would definitely help us out. Again, more updated Chromebooks, for example. We have like 30 people standing around one Chromebook and it's often very slow. Or updated Smart Boards, for example; sometimes they can also be slow and are always bugging out. I think with all these things being said, if it was possible to get an extra building for Charter, it would definitely be helpful for us students especially.

Again, I know she did mention there are teachers on carts. I actually have a teacher that is on a cart, and it's really hard to find him, especially if he's always hopping around in classrooms. If I miss a day or I need to pick up work, it's just a lot of hassle, especially when I'm trying to make use of my time.

⏯️16:37 Mark Pruitt: Thirty seconds left. 

⏯️16:38 Elaine Guo (CSW Student): Ok. Then lastly, I think it can be really helpful for the expansion of clubs and student involvement at Charter. I think if there is more space, students will definitely want to be more involved, whether it's competition, whether it's volunteering, or whether it's just like helping out the community. Charter has supported me a lot in the two years I've been there, and I want to give back by speaking about this to you guys. This will give the opportunity for all Charter students to have the ability. 

⏯️17:05 Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much. Great job public speaking. Any other members of the public that would like to give comment?

⏯️17:15 Chonnie Blair (CSW parent and CSW Board Member): Thank you. My name is Chonnie Blair, and I serve on the board of the Charter School of Wilmington. I am also a Charter parent. It's been a lot of years. I will just say my daughter is 30, and she's out in the job market, doing really greatly.

One of the things that I always hear about Charter is the demographics for Charter. We did not convince them of that; we were right over here. Actually, she began going here at the time it was Wilmington High, so ironically enough, that's where she went. She's done exceptionally well, far beyond what I've ever imagined, because she had the extremely professional Charter school team. Today, my child is building network security in structural organizations so that they are not hacked by people like her or her friends, and that's because of her experience at the Charter School of Wilmington.

We've already heard about all the reasons why Charter needs space, right? We've heard this; we heard from parents. One of the things I really want to speak to you about is really about the value that Charter would bring to the district in the work that you're trying to do as part of this process. I've read through all of your slides more than once, judging by them. One of the things that I noticed was this idea of high achievement. I've had the privilege of talking to Dr. B about the flagship school, and I am in my role because I actually seek equity and access to resources for all communities.

The flagship school actually excites them. Well, what is the flagship school without STEM? If we're trying to prepare students for the workforce, we need to understand the work of our school society. The top 25 jobs according to U.S. News are really STEM-heavy—16 out of 25 are STEM, which is literally 64%. So when you're thinking about a flagship school that's going to prepare students for the workforce, you can't consider that without STEM. Who has done STEM well in this state for the past almost 30 years? The Charter School of Wilmington.

I did read that we're looking at a new building, but I actually would challenge your thinking to consider a campus that would use our flagship and Charter school together, so that we can actually really think about our district and how we're going to use all of our facilities within the district. We could re-target the goals to create a shared space in a learning environment for all Charter schools and all Red Clay Consolidated School District students. Believe it or not, 90% of their students now are Red Clay Consolidated School District students. Okay, so I can talk real fast.

How can we really be collaborative in designing something and creating something that's going to benefit every single student? This is not about ego, it's not about positioning, it's not about inside learning, it's not about any of those things. It's truly about benefiting the students. That's why I serve in my capacity, because I don't have any children at the school or any coming through. That's why I support the chair and the students, that's why I tutor, and that's why I'm here. Thank you.

⏯️20:29 Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much. Other members who would like to give a comment? Okay, we are finished at this point with in-person public comment, and we are going to move to online public comment. Anyone online?

Okay, Val Gould, by the way, is going to give comments. She's a member of our committee. She had to be sent to a conference out of town suddenly but would like to give a quick comment here. So, this is not public comment; this is a member of our committee.

⏯️21:11 Val Gould (AZ Committee Member): Yeah, hi everyone. Thank you, Mark and Shawn, for being flexible. I apologize I can't be with you today. My supervisor had a procedure just a couple of days ago and is unable to travel, so I am being sent out of town.

I just wanted to make a couple of quick observations that I hope will help inform tonight's discussions. During our last two meetings, it seems I've gotten the impression that the district is very interested in heading towards a vocational-technical type hub and setting up one of those in the district. While a vo-tech hub may very well be a great idea—I mean, I think it's a great idea, and it may be what students in the district really, really need and what teachers really need—it also feels as though it's being a bit forced on us just from folks in the district. It seems like there have been conversations had ahead of time.

Those of us who are on the committee, I know that our charge was to try to navigate the challenges facing the district in as unbiased a way as possible. So, I'm really hoping that moving forward, we can have more conversations that skew more unbiased and allow the committee—which, you know, we're all very intelligent, very invested individuals—I would like to see the committee be allowed to make more of their own decisions on what path they think is best, since that's why we were selected to serve.

Additionally, we have spent very little time talking about attendance zones over the past two meetings in comparison to the time that we've talked about the vo-tech hub idea. There are some really glaring issues, which we all know based on the data that we've seen, there's some really glaring issues regarding the attendance zones and feeder patterns. It looks like the agenda tonight will be addressing some of those things. Since I can't be there, I just wanted to urge everyone to keep that front of mind—that the vo-tech hub and what we do with one building or don't do with one building, there are other things that we need to address that are very equity-related.

Speaking of equity, that dovetails into my final comment, which is related to the comments that we've heard from folks associated with the Charter School of Wilmington. I honestly believe that the comments made by the Charter folks highlight a lot of the exact issues so many of us on this committee are concerned about, and all those issues revolve around equity. There are numerous district students—Red Clay district students—not receiving equitable educational opportunities. There are numerous Red Clay teachers in situations where they struggle to adequately educate their students due to insufficient classroom space, materials, and dilapidated facilities.

Meanwhile, a non-district school—and Charter, again, is a great institution and a great school, I have had students who have gone there, and I was a music teacher for over 20 years, so I know Charter has a great reputation—but to come into our committee repeatedly asking for one of our buildings when our focus is to serve Red Clay students is very concerning to me.

Quite frankly, I've spent a lot of time in Charter because a lot of music professional development sessions are held there for the district. There are better conditions there than many of their peers in other Red Clay schools are experiencing. So again, I would just like to put at the front of everyone's mind that we need to concern ourselves with creating an equitable environment for Red Clay students, and that the Charter School of Wilmington students are not our responsibility. Every student should be given an opportunity to grow and thrive the way the Charter students who have commented have had, and I believe that we should be laser-focused on creating the best learning environments for Red Clay students and the best teaching environments for all of our great educators. Again, thank you for allowing me to comment. I really appreciate it. I hope you guys all have a great evening.

⏯️26:02 Mark Pruitt: Thanks, Val. Have a safe trip. Thank you. We did not hold her to three minutes as she is a committee member. But now we will move to online members. We have one online public member who's going to give comment, and that is Ms. Amy Reynoso. Amy, whenever you're ready, can you unmute?

⏯️26:30 Amy Reynoso (Community Member): Can you hear me okay? I don't know if you can hear me. Can you guys hear me? Yeah? Okay, sorry. I had put my hand up earlier because I couldn't hear the audio; it was not to make public comment. 

But since I'm here, I might as well just use up a couple of minutes.

I would like to just thank the previous speaker who's on the committee, Ms. Gould, for what she said. When the other public comments were happening, I was completely blown away. I'm sorry, I'm gonna say it. The audacity of coming into a committee that is literally designed to support the public school students with attendance zones and equitable programming - to come in and say, "We have mice and our cars aren't safe in the city." I was just like, oh my god, go get your own building. I am so sorry, I'm just letting it out right now because I can't hold back. It made me furious.

I feel like we also have high achievers in our comprehensive high schools. We also have student government, and there are a lot of amazing students and teachers. Can we please figure out how to support them? And let the Charter School of Wilmington's Board, PTSO, and Student Council figure out a fundraiser. You guys can go buy a building instead of coming in and poaching. I mean, come on.

Thank you. I'm done. Sorry everyone, I just had to let it out.

⏯️28:06 Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much. Do we have any other members of the public who would like to give public comment at this time? Okay, and anyone who did not give public comment can give that comment at the end. So, thank you.

⏯️28:19 Jose Matthews (RCCSD Board President and AZ Committee Member): I appreciate your recognition. So, I just wanted to correct just a couple of things for you, just for the record. I just want to make sure that as we go through this process, there isn't any misinformation.

⏯️28:30 Committee Member: Can you speak up a little bit? Sorry to interrupt you.

⏯️28:34 Jose Matthews (RCCSD Board President and AZ Committee Member): So, I'm not necessarily giving any opinion or any comment per se, but I think it's important for us to deal with the facts of the information, just because it needs to be disseminated against, amongst the committee. I just want to share that regarding the Charter School of Wilmington, they are a Red Clay-authorized charter, authorized by the district in the state. They are Red Clay students. The speaker mentioned that they are not Red Clay students and they are a non-district school; I just want to make sure you have the accurate information. Their renewal was approved unanimously for a five-year renewal that they have been part of the district and is a district high school. So that is a fact and not an opinion. 

⏯️29:30 Mark Pruitt: Thank you, Mr. Matthews. At this point, we will move on to the approval of the March 20th minutes. Hopefully, the members of the committee have those minutes in front of them. You also had an opportunity to read the draft minutes last week, but I will allow for a few minutes here in case you didn't have the opportunity to read them in advance, and then I will accept a motion to accept or amend the minutes.

⏯️29:58 Jose Matthews: So moved, Matthews. 

⏯️30:00 Mark Pruitt: Mr. Matthews makes a motion to accept the minutes. Do I have a second?

⏯️30:06 Reggie Worlds: Second.

⏯️30:07 Mark Pruitt: Second comes from Mr. Worlds, Reggie Worlds second. Any discussion or need to amend? Okay, all in favor? 

⏯️30:16 Group: Aye.

⏯️30:17 Mark Pruitt: Any opposed? Passes unanimously.

⏯️30:21 Mark Pruitt: Okay, we've seen these now for the fourth time. This is the goals for the committee. Again, these running slides are on our website. Tonight's meeting begins at slide 83. Next slide.

Meeting norms for the committee as to how we do our work. We've seen them now over four times. Okay.

Tentative timeline and topics. I have adjusted this a bit. What's in yellow is behind us, and what is not highlighted is in front of us. We're here in April, where our goal is to hopefully analyze the ideas that we brainstormed a couple of meetings ago and hopefully take a straw poll as to where we stand right now. We are not a school board as constructed there; we can certainly have, you know, the straw polls just to get an idea of where our support sort of lies at this point. We're not going to do anything that we can't discuss or make an adjustment to going forward, but it is important to kind of see where the committee members stand at this point. So, that's the goal, and I really do want to get through that straw poll by 7:45 tonight.

Moving forward, you know, we'll have that data. Looking at the slides, though, we're looking to refine the ideas where there was support and start to develop a recommendation to the school board. By the June meeting, we would hope to make adjustments to the plan based on focus group data and survey data analysis when we reach out to our public constituencies, and hopefully make a final determination of recommendations that could be presented to the full Board in May.

It's worth noting that we have had the opportunity to engage with the Hanover Research group, who is going to put together a draft of a survey that this committee can edit at our next meeting, and then we'll go live with that a couple of days after our next meeting. Also, the Rodel Foundation—Dr. Green has partnered with the Rodel Foundation, and they are willing to support us and fund us in having looking at having some focus groups, which we'll talk more about at the end of the meeting. That would include a student group, a parent community group, a teacher group, and a business partner group in that focus group. Questions about the tentative timeline and topics of that timeline?

⏯️33:08 Committee Member: Are we still thinking about... because I know the last session we talked about adding another potential meeting?

⏯️33:16 Mark Pruitt: I'm open to the committee's thoughts on this. I would say at any point we could say, "You know what? We're going to need more time to give a thorough recommendation to the school board. Mark, could you ask the school board to push it back a month or two months?" But I don't know that we need to do that until we run out of time, which may be May, but I'm open to suggestions regarding that. Yep, Mr. Matthews?

⏯️33:42 Jose Matthews: I know that initially in our time when we had a town hall, I really was on board with that idea. I think opening up the town hall to the greater community is really vital and important. And so, I mean, I would put it right between—thinking out loud—between May and June. So somewhere in between that meeting date, after spring break but before the end of the school year, is vital, and so I want to get that back.

⏯️34:52 Kecia Nesmith: I agree with that. I think you should have a town hall. I think we're rushing this, personally, . We're trying to make a big decision and come up with a solution after what, six months of one meeting? I hope that we could get there... like, we'll get there, we'll see where we are, but I certainly don't want to rush the decision if we're not there. There are a lot of factors from either public comment or other things that you think about that might influence the difficulty of making a sound recommendation. Unless it's going to be a broad recommendation.

⏯️34:59 Committee Member:  I want to second that. She said it well, and I even have a concern about a broad recommendation because a broad recommendation doesn't guarantee that there's equity in the process, or that what we were brought to do concerning what has happened is a lot of leeway to district. They made a lot of decisions that we may agree, but if we don't flush out a lot of it. I'm even nervous to do a straw poll. We'll see what happens tonight, but I don't feel like I have a good sense of how these ideas would look in practice. So to vote for one while not knowing exactly what it looks like makes me nervous.

⏯️35:45 Amin Farooqui: And I kind of—I'm sorry, absolutely go ahead and agree with it. I can't see your name, sorry. Oh, at the end, after hearing your comments, Ms. Gould's comments, and the comments from the public, I think that we are rushing it because it seems like even on the problem statement there's some confusion. So I think we will need, from my perspective simply, more time because when you hear these comments, it's like people are not exactly clear about what that problem is, right?

⏯️36:16 Kecia Nesmith:  And yeah, I think the final determination of recommendations could be too extended. That could be... and add a town hall, another town hall, a bilingual town hall, okay? Like those kinds of things because, again, from the first meeting, we do not have representation of our district on this committee in terms of the demographics and socioeconomic scene. That's not anybody's fault, it's just the way we chose it and the people who volunteered. I have been pleased with all groups, but we should at least, in my opinion, get that pulse from the community before we make such a big decision. I say that because I've been here my whole adult life—I'm not originally from here—and Delaware is all about the high school that they went to.

⏯37:09 Committee Member: So true.

⏯️37:11 Committee Member: So I want to make sure we do this carefully and that we do it with enough data and information.

⏯️37:22 Committee Member: To their point, this is a big decision, right? There are obviously people from the commentary that have very strong thoughts, and you have an opportunity here to make a difference. I think during our last session we talked about ideas that have worked across the country, right? Trying to look at that, I think we need to just make sure that we're taking the time to analyze the data. We talked about these different potential ideas that we can incorporate; let's make sure that we're vetting it out. I think it's hard to do it in this very short period of time and just be able to come up with a recommendation that can impact the district for at least a decade or so, right? So that's just my thought, that's why I was asking about the timeline.

⏯️38:14 Committee Member: The timeframe is definitely too tight for us.

⏯️38:17 Mark Pruitt: I could say, as a member of the committee, the timeframe is very condensed. I was the person that brought a timeframe forward, and then the Board asked to get it done by July. So now, as the chairperson of the committee, I'm trying to meet that timeline. But I am open to a motion to move it back a month or to move it back three months. We just simply need a second and we go vote on that.

We could also do that at the end of this meeting or we could do it at the beginning of the next meeting. But keep in mind that I am open to motions. A motion like that doesn't have to be posted a month in advance or anything like that since it's not a school board meeting. So I am open to a consensus or majority vote to take it to the Board and ask the Board if they would consider pushing back the deadline.

⏯️39:20 Committee Member: I would like to propose that we use this forum today to discuss and see how far we get. I think this has been in the back of our minds, then we can probably have a more realistic thought process of whether we need an extension, or whether we need to have additional meetings, or whatever the case may be. It probably is best to kind of see how far we get today together, make a right decision, or at least a closer decision that might work. 

⏯️39:49 Mark Pruitt: Let's carve out a little time to have a discussion on this at the end. Does that sound good?

⏯️39:55 Vic Leonard: Can we, first, I know there's a, why don't we do now it'll take it back to 2028 [inaudible].

⏯️40:03 Mark Pruitt: Whatever we do, there is no way to change anyone's—any student's programming before August of 2027, the SY 28 school year. That really doesn't change whether this work is done by July or this work is done by next July, right? 

⏯️40:32 Vic Leonard: So we're talking [inaudible] Anything we do—

⏯️40:35 Mark Pruitt: Because simply there's—

⏯️40:39 Jose Matthews: It's a planning year. This upcoming year was supposed to be a planning year from what the board had discussed, and then we would go to implementation. 

⏯️40:47 Mark Pruitt: So you have a planning year this coming 25-26 would be a planning year, but then you have to post those things for school choice the following year.

⏯️40:58 Committee Member: What do you mean by planning year?

⏯️41:02 Kecia Nesmith: I remember that meeting we had. I understood a little bit about what everybody was talking about, but I thought this was the planning, not the specific planning for the transition. At this meeting, I thought this group was to determine what we would do with the information we had around distributing student enrollment—where kids are going, enrollment programming, and attendance zones. That's what I'm saying; it's only six meetings worth of information, and I'm saying that is the plan. What's next year? Implementation. But it would be partial, creating an implementation plan. That's not, planning is broad, so implementation plan - that means we're going to come up with the answer in June. For what we're going to do with the whole district after six meetings.

⏯️42:01 Mark Pruitt: When I looked at the July ask and adjusted the plan with Dr. Green and our team over here, we adjusted the plan to, "All right, let's get an idea of programming by July." But Ms. Gould still made a good point: we haven't even discussed attendance zones, right? If we were to, and we're not going to by the time we come up with a programming plan, at which point it's going to take significant work to turn attendance zones equitably, which is a lot of that program—from a three-school division to a two-school division, from a five-middle-school to maybe four. Who knows where we're going with this? 

⏯️42:46 Kecia Nesmith: It's a three plan. 

⏯️42:47 Jose Matthews: I'll say, I mean, I'm glad to keep AI where it is. I'm glad to keep students at a good school. I'm glad to keep them in a concentration of property and unequitable access to resources in the district and continue to delay the process. Is that what you want, that's [inaudible]. 

⏯️43:06 Kecia Nesmith: What is the strategic implementation this wide, this vast, that's a three to five year plan. If anybody has ever done an implementation plan that's at least a three year plan. At least. It's probably, or five, because you have to look at funding, you have to look at transitions, you have to determine how many kids are— and we talked about a landscape analysis that I don't think we got yet from UD, right? Didn't Dr. Green say we're going to get a landscape analysis? So all of those pieces. There are multiple factors that we have to look at. So yes, we can come up with a quick idea of what we think we want it to look like, but then it might not end up being that after this. And it's not going to happen the following year that we're going to implement this plan and move all these kids into different places; it's not going to work that way. 

⏯️43:58 Jose Matthews: So when is the ball gonna drop.

⏯️44:00 Kecia Nesmith: The ball is not being dropped. I think we gave unrealistic expectations for the timeline. I said that from the beginning.

⏯️44:05 Jose Matthews: [inaudible]

⏯️44:07 Kecia Nesmith: No, it wasn't. I raised questions about it, and from what I understood was that we would start to plan, not that we would have this and the following year implement it. It doesn't work that way. Realistically—and this is no shade on anybody—but realistically, thinking about it and having been on this committee and seeing, like, getting our hands dirty... when we're up there talking about stuff, we're just talking. We don't really have the ability to talk the way we're talking here and consider things because of time. But after being on this committee, I could, this is definitely—first of all I didn't [inaudible]—this is definitely way more than what I think our Board expected.

⏯️44:49 Jose Matthews: So I'm glad to introduce a motion and have it seconded, my question is how much time do we need and what's the plan that's going that's gonna hold over AI and the students we are failing throughout the year.

⏯️45:01 Kecia Nesmith: So that's, I think those are two separate—

⏯️45:03 Jose Matthews: It doesn't have to be answered. I can't express a motion for what extension to grant. 

⏯️45:06 Kecia Nesmith: Would it be helpful to have an expert come and explain how this process works and maybe look at what other districts and what their implementation plans were and how long they took? Would it be helpful to gather that information for the committee to show, like, let's say a school in Georgia, they decided to change programming, what did their—just the gist like how many years did it take for them to implement a plan? Because anytime you implement any type of strategic plan, it doesn't happen overnight. This is strategy. There are so many moving pieces. Even if we had all the money in the world.

⏯️45:53 Mark Pruitt: I think I can contribute to what you just said, Mr. Matthews, is that if we were to back up this programming decision that we present to the Board by one, two, or three, it's not going to impact when the change would take place, right? The change of when students at the earliest could attend a new building, a new programming, a new attendance zone configuration is August of 27, the 2027-2028 school year. So I don't think it harms us to back this decision up. I agree with you, we don't just want to start punting, but—

⏯️46:37 Jose Matthews: But this is what we've done for the last 10 years, I mean nothing has changed. This is what Red Clay does. This is what we do.

⏯️46:43 Mark Pruitt: I'm, we're going to get you something. If the Board does not—

⏯️46:46 Jose Matthews: I think maybe the idea of executing and making decisions and realizing that they're not going to be perfect, but we can't just continue to deal with it. That just can't be our answer. It can't be our outcome.

⏯️46:58 Mark Pruitt: I totally agree.

⏯️46:59 Jose Matthews: We have to—now I'm getting all [inaudible]

⏯️47:02 Mark Pruitt: I couldn't agree more—

⏯️47:03 Jose Matthews: Boarding meetings and meetings. We have to meet every two weeks. We've got to start. We need to see plans, we need to see the attendance zones. We need to get the consultants on board, whatever it is we need to do to get it done. We can't just continue to let our children fail. 

⏯️47:20 Committee Member: So my point was I don't think these three meetings are not sufficient, right? I think everybody would probably realizing that.

⏯️47:30 Committee Member: I'm with you, I get it. We need to get it done. 

⏯️47:33 Committee Member: But that's why I'm asking, hey, do we need other meetings? Can we extend? Can we do both? Ultimately, what do we need to do? We have a timeline; maybe we need to look at extending maybe a little bit to a few months, but let's determine what do we need. How much time do we need to be realistic? Do we need to meet twice a week? If that's what we need to do, let's talk about it and let's do it. Because if that's what we need to get done to make this go through, that's fine. And I think that's kind of the question about hey how long did it take other school districts—we talked about like these great plans that were implemented across the country—how long did it take them? That probably could be a good starting point too, I agree.

⏯️48:11 Committee Member: I agree with that, but I think talking about it right now is not getting us there. That's why I was saying let's see how far we can get today, and that should give us a hint of how much more we need to meet, and then make it happen.

⏯️48:25 Jose Matthews: So right now, I'm willing to make a motion at the next Board meeting to extend the committee by three months, but I will not change the implementation date. Is there any feedback?

⏯️48:39 Mark Pruitt: That's up to this committee. Do we want to take that to the Board?

[inaudible group crosstalk]

⏯️48:49 Shawn Snyder: For choice for next year, I don't know off the top of my head. I'm sorry, we would just have to verify because I want to make sure I have all the facts. The choice opening for that year, I think, is the inflection point of when we have to have a plan because people need to know what they're choosing, right? So we'll have to look very specifically to make sure. I want to give you the right date of, like, this is the drop-dead date if we want to meet 2027, because I don't want you to extend it three months and then, oops, we put you in a bad spot. We can find that information online. We'll figure that out. I was struck by a comment that you made that I would like to expand upon. You said that the problem statement might not be incorrect. Could you expand upon that a little more? Because I actually might agree. Please, yes.

⏯️49:30 Amin Farooqui: I can. You know, I was not in the last meeting, so maybe I missed something last time, but it seems like if you look at these solutions, the solutions are usually going in two directions: either as a consolidation or a division. That generally happens when people actually are not aligned on what the problem statement is. Plus, the comments about whether the Charter school qualifies or not qualify, that also kind of reflects that people are not exactly clear what we are trying to do. And this is such an important transformation, it's such a critical task that impacts so many students, their lives, and families, you want to make sure we are actually clearly understanding. Usually, when you look at solutions, that's what you can see.

⏯️50:22 Shawn Snyder: So we have, like, three different ideas.

⏯️50:24 Amin Farooqui: Yeah, we have different directions, not different opinions. 

⏯️50:29 Shawn Snyder: Just to follow up with that, I actually agree with you. And I think that just as we think about what the purpose of the activity is, it's very important. We're going to move a lot of things, it's going to affect a lot of families, but it's not a panacea and a cure-all to all of our problems. So I think we need to be careful how much we think rearranging the buildings that students attend is going to impact outcomes. Of course, there's a lot of other work to do along with that that will definitely achieve that; this is just a piece of that. So I don't want to oversell it to the community at large, like, we're going to put you in this other building and suddenly 80% of kids are going to meet grade level for reading and math. There's a ton of other steps we're going to have to take to make that happen.

⏯️51:12 Kecia Nesmith: I have a question, and I don't know if anybody else is thinking about the same thing, but first I want to clarify [inaudible] What is the realistic timeline? I don't care what we decide, we could decide anything. What is the realistic time to do it in a way where, considering the resources, the teachers moves it would take, the union issues that might come up—this stuff adds time to implementation. And I think our Board would love to see things happen the next day. I'm not a company-particular person, but it doesn't work that way, and I just want us to be realistic. It's been difficult for the school district because the Board is in charge, right? So we say we want this, then you're going to work to get this, even if it's not feasible. I think that's probably why and I wasn't here for all the time you're talking about, but that's probably why when the Board would bring up an idea and they want it done, it wasn't done because of the timeline. I believe that this committee is very crucial in making the change, but we have to work smarter and think about all of it and maybe bringing some of those pieces into this team to understand what does it take to get to that point once you make a decision.

So I think, to your point, if we can come up with the idea for the programming and how it looks, the actual implementation of it is going to take a whole lot more work, and people who work in the district can probably speak to that a little bit more because that would be their task..

⏯️52:56 Mark Pruitt: We've started to have those discussions, right? Some of the decisions... but what do we want the programming to look like broadly? It is very important to know how much work we have to do to get that done. Great point with an MOU with RCEA, right? You're now moving people from what their primary building is. We discussed that. What physical plant changes need to be made? How quickly can they be made? 

⏯️53:30 Kecia Nesmith: Do we have the money for it?

⏯️53:32 Mark Pruitt: Do we have the money for it. Now to think that we have not had these discussions...as the folks in this building are the ones that have to execute any plan that the Board approves. I don't feel like there's anything up here at this point... I'm not afraid to take on a challenge, and I know Dr. Green's not. I don't think there's anything that could not be accomplished for students to begin in the 2027-2028 school year.

⏯️53:59 Kecia Nesmith: Okay.

⏯️54:00 Mark Pruitt: But we would have to let you know. We've got to be honest. You can be aggressive and be trusted and say, "You know what? This is going to be tight. How do you want to handle this?"

⏯️54:11 Kecia Nesmith: It will be done, it will be done well. 

⏯️54:13 Mark Pruitt: That's correct. I think it can be—But here's the deal: we can't get there until we have a broad plan of what we want to do, and I think that's what we're trying to accomplish by July. What do we broadly want it to look like? And then, once we've got a plan like that, then you start to put leaves on trees—all of the detail, all the back-mapping from August 20th, whether it's with DOE, whether it's with choice law, whether it's facilities, or whether it's MOUs with unions. All those things come into effect then, really working backwards from August 2027 back to today. 

⏯️55:01 Kecia Nesmith: And the public comments. And the influence that the public can have on the school board members and the decision.  

⏯️55:10 Mark Pruitt: That is correct. 

⏯️55:11 Shawn Snyder: One thing we do know is no matter what decision we make, someone will not like it. 

⏯️55:13 Kecia Nesmith: Oh, we know that. 

⏯️55:14 Shawn Snyder: It's 100% guaranteed.

[inaudible group conversation]

⏯️55:44 Jose Matthews: From my perspective, I think anything we do within the first year isn't going to be bad. Anything we do [inaudible] students struggling. Any steps towards progress is going to be better.

⏯️55:20 Kecia Nesmith: [inaudible] But with education there is multiple factors on why kids are achieving or not. And the people—I'm just gonna say it—it's the people who are teaching who are going to make a difference, not the programs. That enhances opportunity, but if we're talking about trying to solve all the problems of inequity and student learning and students of different backgrounds, that's a bigger issue than this programming, and I don't think this is going to solve it. It might help, but it's not going to solve the problem. This is more about, to me, opportunities for students versus student achievement. And that's what I think—what's the problem statement? What's the problem with practice that we're trying to solve? Because if it is to increase student achievement, I don't know that any of this will. What is the problem with practice? What is the problem?

⏯️57:27 Mark Pruitt: I think this is about equitable opportunities for all students. Equitable opportunities. We know at this point, and we've worked for 25 years, that we've always had, in terms of enrollment, a loser in that situation because we've got far more seats than we've had students, and that number hasn't changed, right? And that includes Delaware Military Academy and the Charter School of Wilmington. As we've added schools, there's been no change to the high school enrollment. In fact, we've added middle school programs and our middle school enrollment has decreased over those 25 years.

I will say this: I would encourage us to move forward here and try to get some things done, and then maybe I'm open to extending tonight by 10 minutes so we can maybe hash that out a little bit. But I think there's some good work to be done here. The collaboration amongst us through the first three meetings has been great, and I'm hoping we can get some of that done.

⏯️58:38 Mark Pruitt:  All right, so this next slide, which you have in front of you, is a look... there has been a lot of talk, and at the center of our strategic plan, it's college and career readiness at the secondary level. This shows you—we did an audit of our CTE programs in 2022—this simply looks at the facilities of our attendance zone high schools, what they offer, and what the facility was graded out at and we used a three-point scale. I'll give you an example. I may have one of our McKean members speak to this—if it is green, it is a three out of three, which means we thought when we did the audit it already met our standard at the end of our five-year strategic plan. If it was a two, it was close to where we wanted it to be but not there yet. And a one...

This work was done with our CTE supervisor, our director of facilities, Marcin Mikulski, myself, and Shawn. We went around and really went through a lot of things. This is only the facility aspect of career programming. What you see, and what we've said many times over the past few years, is that McKean is the flagship in this area both from a programming standpoint and also from a facility standpoint, and this is the facility only. 

I'll give you an example: the career clusters are the national career clusters for career and technical education, and then what we offer in each school. Early College—ECE is the preschool daycare program. They have a preschool on site where their seniors are working with kids, right? That is a three, you know, it's really phenomenal. You go into their culinary program, they got an industry kitchen, they've got a restaurant. Really is where we want to be here; we're looking to tweak that, absolutely. You go into the plant and animal science, they've got a barn, they've got a greenhouse, they've got classroom space, instructional space, lecture space, you know, it really is. And you can see that McKean is where we built a lot of that out as a district over the past 15 years.

I think that's important to understand if we're looking at potentially moving the two attendance zones where an Innovation Center might be, or if Wilmington Charter—if this committee were to recommend moving Wilmington Charter—where maybe it wouldn't be or where it might be. I think this is important information that we view after what we've discussed over the past three months. And it was also brought up a little bit; I said I bet we could put something together for that. Questions about career programming as it relates to this slide, facility-zone? 

⏯️1:01:47 Mark Pruitt: Next, I'd like to introduce Dr. Corey Heacock. She is our manager of teaching, learning, and assessment, and also handles a lot of our research requests in the school district. Actually, it's a collaboration with Sean Snyder and her, and she jumped in and did some work over the past month. There was a request from a couple of committee members about recent research as it relates to K-8 or 6-12 schools, those configurations, and also, you know, I'd like to share a couple of things that she thought might be helpful more broadly with the work we've done today. So, Corey.

⏯️1:02:29 Corey Heacock: So, hi, I'm Corey Heacock. You got my information. I'll also note I'm a district parent as well, so I'm very invested in the outcomes of this committee because I do have two students who are currently at their feeder elementary schools, a kindergartener and a fourth grader.

So taking a look at high school size: is there an ideal high school size? Really, the research doesn't show a consistent relationship between secondary schools and outcomes at a broad level. Some researchers, and especially when they've pulled a lot of different research studies and have looked at it holistically drilling down to student outcomes, there does seem to be a trend of increased outcomes talking about proficiency levels if we're looking at SAT or other state testing metrics, depending on what they use, where they see an increase in student achievement up to about a maximum of 1,500 students. So you see positive outcomes up to about 1,500. Once you kind of cross that 1,500 threshold, you actually see declining outcomes in student proficiency level.

In terms of student attendance, absences actually—students tend to attend more in smaller schools, but once you're over 1,400, attendance kind of falls off. You're not seeing as high of attendance rates on students. And then with large high schools defined in these research studies as being over 1,500 students, there are reports of lower feelings of engagement. Students don't feel as connected to school, they may not feel as inclined to participate in extracurricular activities. Once again, though, like that's only when you really drill down; there's no broad research that says there's a statistically significant benefit to a school having, you know, X number of students. On the flip side, economic outcomes: when you look at how much it costs per student, it is more efficient to educate students in larger configuration schools. It costs less. So that, that's information on high school size.

I'm a nerd, like a self-identified nerd, so I'm like, well, how does this play out in Delaware? So I just started pulling some information, and this is all publicly available information. I pulled it from Delaware report cards; this is current as of last school year, the 2023-24 school year. You do see that when you're looking solely at comprehensive feeder pattern high schools—so not looking at Charters, not looking at vocational-technical schools, just feeder pattern schools—that in Delaware, we see higher achievement in larger schools. However, the needs also tend to vary. We tend to educate students with a larger number of needs, talking about multilingual learners, students with IEPs, and low-income students. We have a larger percentage of those students in smaller schools.

So if you look real quick at the next slide, I'm not going to go into a deep level on it. On the left are the six largest comprehensive high schools in Delaware. Caesar Rodney is the biggest with 2,254 students, and of the big high schools, Appoquinimink clocked in at 1,357 students. You can see the average when you account for school size is 1,857 students per building, and their proficiency levels in ELA are at 43% and in math are at 18% in our large comprehensive high schools in Delaware. On the right-hand side, I looked at the smallest high schools in Delaware, which ranged from 550 students to 960 students, and then looked at the outcomes there. And it is covered by the Zoom screen, but for ELA proficiency in our smaller high schools, that average accounting for school size is 26%, and the math proficiency is just shy of 7%. So you're seeing in the larger high schools we're at 43% for ELA, we're at 26% for ELA in our smaller high schools. And for math, we're at 18% in the larger high schools, we're at just shy of 7% for our smaller high schools. When you look at the breakdowns, however, you do have more ML students, low-income students, and students with disabilities in our smaller schools. So this is just... this isn't like, I mean if somebody wants to go get, you know, a dissertation, this could be a study in Delaware. I already have done mine, so it's not going to be mine. This is an interesting thing to note, but just wanted to put that out there so people have a point of reference.

⏯️1:07:18 Committee Member: Question, did you use any like national data? I would think this would just be... okay, I mean, could just be demographics by chance, right? I mean, AI is one of the smallest schools, but we also have one of the largest special ed populations, that's one of the largest MLL populations. So, I mean, you know, even if you're including Charter, they have some of the lowest of all those populations. The size really doesn't matter except there's a lot that there's a lottery in the screening property. I just don't... I feel like you have to be careful if you're saying size makes a difference—

⏯️1:07:56 Corey Heacock: And I put that qualifying statement on the previous slide. The demographics are different. And the reason I dug into this is because there really isn't an answer coming from like broad research studies when you're looking, you know, at schools nationally. There are people who have looked at large swaths of schools across the nation. There have been a ton of studies done in some of the larger urban districts like New York City and a couple in the Midwest—I can't remember the exact cities off the top of my head. And depending on what they're looking at, you kind of get differing answers. Like an original study in New York City that was like a flagship study, they had originally said 600 to 900 students is ideal, but then later on, other researchers looked into that, and those smaller schools they were looking at were really focus-area schools. They were magnet schools, essentially. So I would think like if you have a school for art or for science or for, you know, whatever focus that school is going to have, that you tend to have higher outcomes because generally the kids in that school want to be in that school. You know, so that, that's, you know, that was held up as a "this is awesome," and then other people are like, "well, you're not really looking at the broad population here."

⏯️1:09:10 Kecia Nesmith: What are the measures for ELA and math in that data?

⏯️1:09:13 Corey Heacock: So for Delaware, that's going to be coming from SAT data. So College Board has a threshold of what they say is a college-ready score in ELA and for math. And I do want to note, it's interesting, the college-ready score for math is higher than the college-ready score for ELA, and in Red Clay and pretty much everywhere else in Delaware, students perform better in the ELA side than they do in math. But that is the metric that's consistently used for accountability for proficiency across Delaware. 

⏯️1:09:46 Amin Farooqui: The outlier here [inaudible]—

⏯️1:09:47 Corey Heacock: Delmar is a fascinating outlier, and actually, when I did my dissertation, I was in Sussex County, and there's a lot of reasons that Delmar is an outlier, you know? And then looking at it like, you know, it's kind of looking at William Penn because their demographics are a little bit closer to Red Clay demographics, and then when you look at like some of their outcomes, they're, you know, similar to Red Clay outcomes. So I do think that's some information that says, you know, the students you have in your building do matter. When you have a higher level of need, you need to be more strategic in how you serve those students. Now, those students with a higher level of need absolutely deserve an amazing education, but it is, you know, when you have a large number of students who don't, you know, who are still mastering English, who have different identified learning needs, who are coming from low-income backgrounds, there are additional challenges that need to be addressed.

⏯️1:10:48 Shawn Snyder: Delmar is super weird, like it is... their elementary schools are in Maryland, and their middle school and high school... that's the only city in the United States that has two mayors for the same city. It's a Jeopardy question.  

⏯️1:11:02 Corey Heacock: Yeah, and actually, four out of six schools on both sides are the only high school for the district. So for Caesar Rodney, William Penn, Cape Henlopen, and Dover, those are the high schools that every student in that school district goes to. And on the right-hand side, Delmar, Woodbridge, Laurel, and Seaford are the only high school that students in those districts go to. Now, those—what I affectionately call the western Sussex districts—they're tiny districts, they don't cover a large population, so that's why their schools are small. 

⏯️1:11:31 Shawn Snyder: Woodbridge is like three schools. But also, and these are all... there's no choice down there, either, something else. You go to Woodbridge. There's no charter schools or any other school to go to.

⏯️1:11:44 Committee Member: I have a questions. So we're looking at large schools versus small schools. Are we looking at the number of kids per class per student.

⏯️1:11:53 Corey Heacock: I did not look at class size. This is just school-size data.

⏯️1:11:58 Committee Member: I think that's super important, to look at something like that.

⏯️1:12:03 Corey Heacock: Yeah, it is... that information is a lot harder to gather because, yes, on like the Delaware report card site, they'll give you like a ratio of like student per staff, but you don't know exactly like is that student per teacher, is that student per school counselor, student per nurse, because all of those like in Delaware they're called units. So all of those like personnel people are units, and depending on how they're leveraged in a school, it's going to impact class size. 

⏯️1:12:30 Kecia Nesmith: Class size... the research on class size is that there's a low effect size of a correlation between student achievement and class size. It's a fallacy. The only issue that comes up is when you have other mitigating factors like behavior, but class size in and of itself doesn't even matter.

⏯️1:12:50 Committee Member: I'm just wondering since you are familiar with some of the data nationally too, and maybe you know it's here as well, but I feel like it's kickstarter school... so definitely don't want to hear me say that I don't think often the data is really important online at any given moment. But do they talk about activities and involvement and opportunities to mentoring, like any bigger school, that impact whether it's just students' reported levels of happiness?

⏯️1:13:26 Corey Heacock: There's not broad data that's collected on that type of information in the state of Delaware. Now, I did look in the conversation earlier because I live in data all day long, it's what I do. I know there's been like a concern about our students at AI DuPont. Just for the information, the outcomes at McKean are almost identical to AI High School when you're actually looking at how schools are measured. And like, I pulled up their overall accountability ratings from last year—I can't make this up—they are literally identical to the 100th decimal point between McKean and AI. Yes, McKean has more students in the building, but in terms of the outcomes that are being measured—and that's broader than just achievement; yes, SAT is part of that—but you're also looking at attendance, you're looking at graduation rate, you're looking at progress towards english language proficiency for MLL students. So it's a comprehensive school rating, and like I said, the outcomes for our students at McKean and AI, I kid you not, are identical for the 2023-24 school year.

⏯️1:14:28 Jose Matthews: I have a question. When you look at this data, we look at the correlation of the larger schools versus the smaller schools, particularly for disadvantaged populations. I look at enrichment—enrichment opportunities. So, you know, I think public school is supposed to be this equalizer and just to give you all this access to enrichment and life and educational opportunities. So we look at AI, for example, when they had, you know, the only football team and band, they had a well-rounded education for students to be engaged and excited about learning, excited about having a bonus there. Sometimes a coach could be a helpful mentor. What is your take on that?

⏯️1:15:19 Corey Heacock: So, I mean, student engagement is huge. I didn't research that specifically for this, but it's something I researched. 

⏯️1:15:25 Jose Matthews: But is there less enrichment opportunities in smaller schools versus a larger school?

⏯️1:15:32 Corey Heacock: It depends on the metrics. The enrichment activities and the extracurricular activities have to meet the interests of the students that you're serving. So that's why like those studies in New York City schools, for example, though their populations were small, they had higher instances of reported engagement, higher achievement outcomes, but that is because those schools had a focus, and that focus captured the interest of the students. The students wanted to be there. Now, you know, I'm not to say like who needs to have a football team, who doesn't need to have a football team. We need to ask our students that—like what type of... do you want a football team? You know, is this an activity that is important to you, and if not, like what is? You know, and that's kind of my thought.

⏯️1:16:22 Amin Farooqui: So when... in case I need some guidance here, so we don't have a baseline to compare that, we don't have the medians here, and basically we don't have a lot of context here, right? How do you advise we use this data during discrimination?

⏯️1:16:36 Corey Heacock: Like I said, this was just a snapshot, like how things look in Delaware. If this is something that the committee feels like we want to know more about Delaware, I'm happy to do like a deeper dig, go back to more school years, and get more information if that's something you really want to look at. But what I was trying to do is just show like this is kind of what we're seeing in the state.

But I would argue—and, you know, I was an administrator at Stanton Middle School for seven years, I had a population with a lot of needs at Stanton—student needs, the characteristics of your school are definitely going to drive a lot of your metrics. You know, when you have students that are coming into middle school multiple grade levels behind, and that, you know, are learning the english language, who may have documented learning needs, it's going to be a lot harder to get that student to have a college-ready score on the SAT down the line than a student who is starting sixth grade on or above grade level.

All right, and then school configuration: once again, this is an area where research is inconclusive. The research that was out there tended to be more on K through 8 schools. 6 through 12 seems to be a little bit more of an anomaly. So if anyone is looking for a dissertation, that might be something. We've got a couple of those schools in Red Clay. And configuration typically is based on enrollment, building space, cost, and community influence. This doesn't seem to be a decision that's based in research when you look at the literature for studies that have been done on grade span. When it does have an effect, it's due to school transitions. Transitions are hard. 

A lot of research has been done looking at that transition from 5th to 6th and from 8th to 9th, and there can be struggles those years. We see it in Red Clay; our achievement dips in sixth grade. It doesn't matter if you're at Stanton or if you're at Conrad, achievement dips in sixth grade. 

Something called "top dog, bottom dog" status—the less frequently a student is a bottom dog, this actually came from a study, I'm not making it up, the more successful they tend to be. And then school and student characteristics, something like school cohort, class size, student motivation, student self-concept... so how students feel within that building plays a role in that. And like I said, these are some references if you'd like to click the links and read them, you're welcome to do that. And once again, I love diving into things and answering questions, so if the committee does have any other areas that they would like some research looked into, I'm happy to support in that way.

⏯️1:19:28 Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much. Any other questions? 

⏯️1:19:30 Jose Matthews: Can we disseminate your contact information to the committee so that they can.

⏯️1:19:34 Corey Heacok: Yup, if you have any questions, Corey is C-O-R-E-Y—

⏯️1:19:40 Jose Matthews: No, they'll email it.

⏯️1:19:41 Mark Pruitt: I'll put it in the email. I always email you guys.

⏯️1:19:44 Corey Heacok: It's not Peacock. It's Heacock. I get that all the time. People will be like, "I tried emailing you." And they tried Peacock because it rhymes. 

⏯️1:19:58 Mark Pruitt: Gotcha, Gotcha. Okay. So, we are now to only what we brainstormed two meetings ago. These slides—and we agreed last meeting— these—and we agreed this was going to be part of our recommendation to the school board. We already agreed that our recommendation is going to be to align high school attendance zone boundaries with middle school boundaries whenever possible. What we called straight-line feeders. Seemed like a long time ago we were looking at lines and how screwy that was, okay?

We also agreed that regardless of the number of school attendance zone schools in any configuration, we were going to distribute those students equally to each attendance zone school. We realized that—I think the best example of that is that McKean and Dickinson have about, you know, almost double the number of students to pull from that AI High School does. So whether we remain at three, reduce to two, expand to four, that has to be done equally and strategically with our partners at the University of Delaware demographic information, but also keeping in mind straight-line feeders with middle schools. And we also agreed that part of our idea would be a commitment to our graduates, our secondary school students, on equity of programs across schools. There were some discussions about what that looks like, okay? And so those things we don't need to put a tally mark because that's not programming, right? Like, that's not an idea of programming; those are things that I think that we all committed to. We brainstormed them and then all committed to last meeting. Maddie?

⏯️1:21:40 Maddie Reitemeyer: Who is going to be doing the new boundary?

⏯️1:21:46 Mark Pruitt: I think the school board would charge the district, possibly this committee, another committee that they could join, to do that work. But that would be the work that... the details of that would be done immediately after we make the recommendation.

⏯️1:22:01 Committee Member: University of Delaware.

⏯️1:22:02 Mark Pruitt: Oh yeah, yeah, we've already set up the partner. But we can't have the... the University of Delaware needs to know what's our programming going to look like, you know? How many attendance zone schools do we have in each configuration.

⏯️1:22:15 Maddie Reitemeyer: I was [inaudible] input, not just district admin. 

⏯️1:22:20 Mark Pruitt: No. I can't—I don't envision... as a matter of fact, the original recommendation to the Board included a programming committee and then an attendance zone committee. So, and I don't envision the Board moving forward with those decisions without community input.

Okay, next slide. All right, we've also seen these slides here, and so I'm going to go through them carefully because they're also up here, and then we're going to get the work into some groups here. But before we do that, when we talk about, you know, feasibility and what's realistic, we had tremendous enthusiasm when we were brainstorming two meetings ago, but our team at the district office did identify some things that potentially we might want to remove if the committee is up for it. If the committee does not agree and we want to leave these things on, we certainly will leave these things on, and so I'd like to point those out.

First, the first one was a K-12 program. I remember when people were coming out with ideas and they're going to discuss a kindergarten through 12th grade program at Warner. They don't have the facility to deal with a high school, they don't have the grounds to deal with a high school, and they don't have the space to absorb 13 grades of kids in that school. I was not in a situation to blunt the momentum, right? That's what it was about, was getting people to come up with ideas, and so, you know, our recommendation is not to spend time taking a look at relevance, feasibility, and impact on something that really is not possible, right? So, but is there any concern with removing that from our analysis discussion?

The second one was we talked about the Innovation CTE Center. That got a lot of momentum as well. I think when I think back to those meetings, it was Warner and doing better by that community, and it was the Innovation Center. People started packing on ideas, okay? Make the Innovation Center available to middle school students. While we certainly use that for field trips and experiences for middle school students, we are not in a situation to put an 11, 12, or 13-year-old on a shuttle bus to an Innovation Center, okay? That's, our cabinet team's believe that as we went through these things. However, if this committee would like to leave them, certainly open to leaving them on.

⏯️1:25:09 Vic Leonard: You would introduce—

⏯️1:25:11 Mark Pruitt: No, I think what we're talking about in terms of like them getting on every other day and going to this first class, right? So I think we can remove that because, yes, we're absolutely going to expose those kids to those CTE opportunities, right? Through field trips, other ways to utilize that space, but they won't take classes there, the middle school. Does anyone disagree with removing that as an option?

The third one, again, this is our recommendation, okay? We believe that moving AI Middle School to AI High School, and having a 6-12 attendance zone school actually works in opposition to the goals of this committee. You're taking a 500-student middle school, putting it in a high school, and then you're permanently restricting the size of that high school to 700 or 800 students max, okay? So we believe that you're actually restricting opportunities for both of those schools by having them in one building.

⏯️1:26:29 Kecia Nesmith: I like the idea and the reason why, and maybe not the same tendencies... I love the Conrad model, just watching my child go from 6th grade to 10th grade. The relationships, the community, and the lack of transition... has to immediately said that in the data, the lack of transition... like there's not a lot of research out there, but personally, and personal experience... I would say feeder patterns because I think there's lots of issues with that. But the concept I'd like to explore a little bit with all the opinions... I mean, your resources may be deficient, but you have matching students. So it's kind of... so that middle school model of innovation, those programs people across 6 to 12 versus just 9 to 12.

⏯️1:27:32 Mark Pruitt: We could leave it up there. I would say—

⏯️1:27:36 Jose Matthews: I disagree. Kindly. 

⏯️1:27:38 Mark Pruitt: You agree with Dr. Nesmith.

⏯️1:27:40 Jose Matthews: I disagree.

⏯️1:27:42 Mark Pruitt: You disagree with her.  

⏯️1:27:52 Jennifer Recchiuti: I want to say, personally, I have a child at Brandywine Springs. The reason why I chose Brandywine Springs is because it's the only K-8 school.  I went to, private school, I went from K through 8, and for me, that created sustainability for kids. They create, you know, relationships with teachers, they know them, they don't have to go... like a lot of kids these days have anxiety starting a new school, new kids, new teachers. And I think that, you know, more [inaudible] in programs for different grades, I think that's a great idea.

⏯️1:28:21 Jose Matthews: Okay, I have a question then. So then what do you think we should do about [inaudible]  are not at capacity and [inaudible] well above capacity. So while making that transition, what's the solution in terms of [inaudible]? We close that. She said close something. So which—

⏯️1:28:43 Committee Member: Well we don't have to because you have this other option that might impact that option because the 6 to 12 is still there.

⏯️1:28:55 Committee Member: I want to say that I like the idea of keeping the grades together.

⏯️1:28:58 Jose Matthews: It's already an option. It's already an option. You have that option at Cab, you have that option at Conrad.

⏯️1:29:04 Kecia Nesmith: Only if you get in. 

⏯️1:29:06 Jose Matthews: But it's an option.

⏯️1:29:08 Kecia Nesmith: It's not an option for everybody if they don't get in. If this is their feeder pattern for the school choice situation, that's different than a magnet school. Magnet schools are working totally differently than feeder schools.  

⏯️1:29:23 Mark Pruitt: Our issue, our rationale—we can leave it—our rationale was that this issue and this committee derived from lack of access to opportunity, whether it's canceling a football season, not having enough students in a band, only offering 7 Advanced Placement courses when other schools offer 20, okay? And that now we are actually capping that opportunity. 

⏯️1:29:47 Jose Matthews: So keep it small. Don't provide enrichment, don't give them a football team, don't give them any access to opportunities, keep them to be the small—  

⏯️1:29:55 Mark Pruitt: I think we're on the same page, right— 

⏯️1:29:58 Jose Matthews: —that's the solution—

⏯️1:29:59 Kecia Nesmith: —No, It's just an option— 

⏯️1:30:00 Jose Matthews: What is it, Jennifer?

⏯️1:30:02 Jennifer Recchiuti: Well, I like... I personally like the idea of having, you know, consistency— 

⏯️1:30:06 Jose Matthews:—But that's an option and that's great. 

⏯️1:30:09 Jennifer Recchiuti: But so like, you know, I'm not saying like to close it off, but as a parent, as a mother, have we done an analysis on why are parents choosing certain schools more so than others? 

⏯️1:30:20 Jose Matthews: We said it in the very first meeting. 

⏯️1:30:26 Committee Member: Yes, we have a question over here, I think.

⏯️1:30:29 Committee Member: I would just say more of a statement. I think I agree with Jose for the purpose of this committee's... things are a little watered down, like we want it to be strong. We've added another 6-12 just waters it down a bit.

⏯️1:30:41 Kecia Nesmith: Might I suggest because there's too many— 

⏯️1:30:43 Mark Pruitt: Our recommendation is with what Mr. Matthews... I want to make sure—his recommendation is to remove that.  

⏯️1:30:50 Kecia Nesmith: Right, but my—what I'm going to suggest to move on is leave it there and people don't have to vote for it. 

⏯️1:30:57 Mark Pruitt: Clearly there's at least two.

⏯️1:30:59 Kecia Nesmith: At least two.

⏯️1:31:00 Mark Pruitt: We leave it up and it's simply a straw poll can help us inform, you know, where we are.

⏯️1:31:03 Kecia Nesmith: It might eliminate itself. 

⏯️1:31:04 Mark Pruitt: Okay, that's a great idea. All right, now you're in your groups, okay? And we are now going to... each group is going to take a look at... there are now 10 items up on there. And so if your group includes the AI Middle School to AI High School to create one, you have four items to consider in terms of relevance, feasibility, and impact, okay? If you don't have that one, you now have three, okay? 

And what we'd like to do is go move on to the next slide is... is take a look, keeping our goals in mind, take a look at those three things. I would ask for this, that someone has some legible handwriting, kind of act as a secretary for the group, and we can produce an artifact for this committee from each group and answer those three questions in regard to each of your three or four items. Again, we're not voting at the end of this or next meeting, but we're just taking a straw poll to take our pulse at the end of this, after this. But before we do that, we'd like each group to take a look at three or four of the ideas and then report that out to the other two groups. 

All right, Mr. Matthews, would you like to be group one, two, or three? 

⏯️1:32:37 Jose Matthews: One.

⏯️1:32:38 Mark Pruitt: Okay, group one, which means you only have three because the one in red would be one. [inaudible group discussion]

You have four because yours remain. You have the one that didn't remain, but you've got all four of the work. There's probably not for everyone. I would just ask that someone, you know, keeps collectible notes and that someone will be ready to [in audible group discussion].

I am going to... I am going to see where we are in 15 minutes, understanding that you might need more time. I'm also open to extending this meeting a bit because at this point we've already started to talk about two meetings a month, that's pushing me back. So what's a few more minutes?

[inaudible group discussion]

⏯️1:41:43 Mark Pruitt: Just for note, because you're working together to answer these questions, that does not mean that these five have to tally a straw poll the same way, right? Again, you come to a consensus on, okay, this is kind of where we are, but you could... the folks within each group can still go tally in the straw poll in different directions. I just want to make sure that the work here is not the same. You're not committing that the five of you are going to go up with the same tally mark.

[inaudible group discussion]

⏯️1:46:39 Mark Pruitt: All right just pause momentarily. How much more time with the show of one person's hand... do you need to get through all three or four of you? Five more minutes? All right, all right. We're going to press on then.

[inaudible group discussion]

⏯️1:52:00 Mark Pruitt: So here's, here's what I'm hoping that... we've talked about a couple more months of meetings or going twice a month, so I'm hoping the group is at least willing to go another 10 minutes tonight, right, to get through this? So each group is going to have a spokesperson briefly share out their thoughts from their three or four ideas, okay? Then we're gonna pause the meeting, allow for public comment, okay? We were going to... what we were going to do is give four stickers to put up here on the board, right? So you come up and you can put four next to ideas just to get a pulse of where we are, okay? It's not a vote, it's not anything like that. 

What I'd like to do is allow you as members who are in attendance tonigh to do that via email reply to me. Having said that, we do have to make public what your four were at the next meeting. I think it was, you know, this is a public meeting, I'm comfortable with doing that so we can start off next meeting with compiled information. We know if no one gave a tally mark, then hey, as the committee you might go, "how much more time we're going to talk about this if there's no interest in..." 

Okay, having said that, we can also start off the meeting with some great discussion because if two of our... if two of our most tallied ideas in the straw poll are any two of these three, we can't do that, right? So then we gotta come back and have a discussion about that, and so I think it will allow us more time for discussion, to start to hone in on what our recommendation might be if we, if we've got some data from the straw poll tallies when the meeting begins next week, next month. Question?

⏯1:53:58 Committee Member: Maybe you want to wait, but I admit that [inaudible]. So with moving Dickinson 6-8 program over to Skyline, that's completely independent of whether we then do or don't go down to—

⏯1:54:18 Mark Pruitt: I think that can be independent. I wouldn't want... because we're not... we're going to piece together a plan once we get a pulse on where people's head, you know, our headbox. And I think that will allow us to have a discussion that this, this does not make sense, right? Like that, you know, they can't do both of these things, or wait a minute, but we will... if we're not doing... we're leaving Dickinson, we really want to move, you know, we can start to have those kinds of discussions. I think that's the purpose of straw polls. They're not votes, they're just to give an idea for a professional committee for where we stand right now.

⏯1:54:54 Vic Leonard: So would that, the one above that, would be part of that eight? It would be part of the eight, right?

⏯1:55:00 Mark Pruitt: There is no... there are going to be nine. I'm going to give you nine that you can give four tally marks. You generally want to go one more than the third of the... of the topics when you're dealing with, with something like this, okay? 

So I'm going to say, hey, send me four. I'll clean all this up in an email, and I'm saying it'll allow us to start next meeting without having to go do this. This takes 20 minutes to come up and put stickers up because people start getting like real nervous in public, you know, about what's gonna do, and then we gotta tally it. It'll allow us to do that remotely. 

I'm comfortable doing that, just be mindful that I'm going to have a list of Vic Leonard and what your four were, right? Because I think in a public setting we have to do that. But as long as everyone's willing to do that in a timely manner, and I'll get this... that out to you tomorrow. I would like it back, you know... is anybody having a problem with responding by... by the end of the week to something like that via email? 

All right. And by the way, there's no... you can put it in any combination. At this point in the process, you can think that this and this are both good ideas. It doesn't prohibit you. No, you don't have to go one in each category, nothing like that. 

⏯1:56:23 Kecia Nesmith: We're trying to have four for each one.

⏯1:56:30 Mark Pruitt: You can have four votes. I'll call them votes, but that makes people... you know, you have four tally marks in this case, you're going to put a one next to the idea on a spreadsheet. Okay, I'll clean up... the directions will be pretty darn good because Sean and I will work on it together.

All right, quickly, we do need to get through Group 1. Can you briefly sort of have a spokesperson share out your discussions of each of your three ideas?

⏯1:57:01 Group 1 Spokesperson Tawanda Bond: Sure. So we had the repurposed one high school as a technical high school/Innovation Center. Relevance to the problem, we had a consensus on that, that was relevant. 

For feasibility, we talked about the fact that the CFO presented strong financial positions to be able to implement an idea such as this, and then we talked about new and expanded CTE offerings that we may be able to have more funding with an idea like this. Impact, it was... it's a step toward opening new learning opportunities for our students, and we may be able to offer more programs that are aligned to students also.

We also have the Warner/Shortlidge community school K-8, and we have... we had some, some discourse around that one. With relevance, we talked about there potentially may not be enough physical space, so students... the need for student physical space. We talked also about the needs for the community to stay together, with resources, and then we had some conversation about is this really relevant to the overall goal that we had given to us. 

Feasibility, it would need a strong resource hub, and then we talked about the complexity of implementation. And then we didn't get the high level, but both of those for us were still on the table.

And then we did choice-busing for all, and we had a consensus of that was not relevant. Thank you very much.

⏯1:58:24 Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much. We'll scan these and put these on the website. Group Two?

⏯1:58:34 Group 2 Spokesperson Shawn Snyder: Okay, our first one was moving Charter School of Wilmington to a discontinued high school.  We had some discussion about that, and we have a lot of respect for Wilmington Charter, it's a great school, great program. For our purposes in this discussion, though, we felt like it probably doesn't address the issue of equitable access for the entire Red Clay school district to make that move for student access. 

From a feasibility standpoint, depending on what decisions are made, it could be feasible. It would just depend on what other decisions are made. We ended up making a decision where a building was not being used, then that might be a natural solution to that. And in impact, we were... the impact could actually have a... it could almost exacerbate lack of access to some programming depending on how the decision went and what building was used, so we had concerns in that one.

Second one we had was consolidation of middle school programs from 8 to 7. We thought it was very relevant and, and seemed to make a lot of sense to put those in ideal sizes to increase programming in each one of those spaces. It certainly we thought was feasible from, from a standpoint of that, other than just what would you do if a building was empty? What do you do with an empty middle school? 

And then finally impact, we thought it would create additional access to programming because you'd have ideal size at the middle school level, and we actually use HB as an example of what you can get when you have about a thousand kids in the middle school, and that is amazing programming, lots of extracurriculars. A school... the kids, there's a waiting list like all those things, and size is a factor.

And then the last one that we had was create an online school. We talked about all from, from a relevant standpoint, we didn't think maybe that was relevant necessarily to this particular mission. 

And we, we thought it would be from a feasibility standpoint really easy to probably stand that up. It doesn't require space, it's probably not going to be very expensive, it's more of a software purchase, frankly. So it wouldn't be tough to, to really stand that up. 

And then finally, we thought the impact would be limited and probably not address all of our core concerns. There might be a small group of our student school population that would benefit from that, and it might lower, you know, dropout or leaving the district for other reasons, but we didn't think it addressed the core issues.

⏯2:00:54 Kecia Nesmith: A quick caveat, I'm going to be short. With the online part, it wasn't the school—this was my idea that's why I'm saying it—it was offering online courses for all students. 

⏯2:01:05 Shawn Snyder: Oh, I thought it was like—

⏯2:01:06 Kecia Nesmith: No, that's how it was written. But, so you would implement online learning within whatever school you wanted, and that's the... that's the program or school because it would be sharing—

⏯2:01:18 Shawn Snyder: So that everybody would be able to engage with—

⏯2:01:20 Kecia Nesmith:... engage with online classes as a way to be prepared for college. 

[inaudible group discussion]

⏯2:01:29 Group 3 Spokesperson Kecia Nesmith: All right, so Group 3. We had expand Dickinson as a 6-12 IB magnet school, not just a program but a school, and the relevance is that it would possibly increase enrollment at the other two comprehensive high schools because it would be a magnet school. We, I didn't say this but possibly I think there would be public backlash about that. 

And then there could provide transportation to the other comprehensive schools. [inaudible] the issue with feasability and transportation. Is this a high-leverage initiative? Possible, it's possible. But we, we talked about all of these programs as being contingent on other decisions, and so if we were to... each table were to make their ideal school districts with these options, we might come up with some more things. 

Cap Conrad and Cab? No. Period. That's not a good idea. They want those... those would need to expand if anything, but they would be potentially other building, more resources. So capping it just makes it more limiting.

And then move John Dickinson middle school program to Skyline in the event that there's only two attendance zones schools. We said, does this address the problem? It doesn't address enrollment in general, but it does increase the number of students at Skyline. But maybe... I don't think it really changed too much. 

The feasibility, pretty easy to do. There's about 15 teachers that would have to move to that building, and we said it's it's probably like a medium-level initiative.

And then move AI to AI High... this one was very contingent on what other decisions were made with the other schools, like because of 6-12 they said or not and all that. So we had the idea, okay, then if you did that, make it a STEM school, that's a magnet program, which you're not necessarily in agreement with, but... the issues would be with the current attendance zones regarding equity and student achievement, and like again, it depends on the other configuration, so it's not isolated. 

⏯2:03:51 Mark Pruitt: Very good, very good. Okay, so we have one in-person public comment, is that correct? Back here? Jason, are you ready?

⏯2:03:58 Jason Gleber (CSW Board): Good evening everybody, Jason Gleber. Starting out with me. Parent rep on the Charter Board. [inaudible] the public comments. First was, let's talk about...rent. We did start off initially with a very low rent, we currently no longer pay just one dollar, so. We do pay a pretty good chunk of that bill. Second, we're only 80% funded. That other 20% we get ourselves. So, when people talk about us being something that hurts Red Clay, I think financially we're one of the pieces that would not be considered a harm if we were given a school or a building, per se. We are not asking Red Clay for money, we want to sign a long-term lease. We'll be looking at raising our funds for any improvements that would be done to those facilities. I just want to make sure that everybody knows we're not going to be able to brand it, we'll create own money there.

I wanted to touch on our enrollment. Our enrollment has been at roughly 970 since our inception. So when we want to talk about us hurting the Red Clay attendance, since our inception we have been at 970, so we're not taking extra kids out. We don't need to expand, per se. There were two other schools that were started post-us; those would be probably the ones that have taken out some attendance from AI. 

Just so everyone knows, we are trying to be a better partner with Red Clay. Our charter is with Red Clay, we are all making efforts, our board, and we have been to try to be Red Clay official, to be more of a partner and just a chartered school within the Red Clay district.

And I guess lastly, I think one of the big things is is that attendance component. We're not asking to take on more kids, but we are building. So if you guys were to give us a building or recommend giving us a building, if that opportunity existed where you didn't want to put extra pressure on AI or on Dickinson and there were extra kids that needed to be taken in, we would take on more Red Clay students than we currently have. But initially, we're not trying to go to be one of these 1,400 kids schools, we're trying to just give our current students better... better building, better athletic fields, better opportunities and spaces. Thank you.

⏯2:06:33 Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much. Anyone online? Okay, all right. 

⏯2:06:39 Maddie Reitemeyer: Mark, can I just say something?

⏯2:06:40 Mark Pruitt: Yeah, sure.

⏯2:06:41 Maddie Reitemeyer: I just want to say one thing about the virtual because people are voting, I know you said it might be [inaudible] students, I just want to say as a counselor at AI and previous counselor at Dickinson, we have a lot of requests from parents and students for online schooling. I think probably more than a lot of people realize because we just say no. The other thing I'm just going to say is there's been a big increase in this year, especially with some of our families' concerns about getting on buses and with ICE enforcement and things like that. There's even more of a request than we've ever had, it's a high percentage of students that want to do it. I know that that might be outside of the bounds of this, but I just want to ask you about the families that have been asking for us because I feel like this is fourm when people can hear.

⏯2:07:32 Jennifer Recchiuti: I also see it online a lot from other parents, in parent groups, and that's a big thing. At least a couple times a month parents are asking about virtual classes or virtual schools. 

⏯2:07:42 Jose Matthews: Yeah, so Jennifer and Maddie's remarks, not just anecdotal, there was... Johns Hopkins University did a national study on the subject, and Delaware actually has had some of the highest growth and innovation, to do with families that switch to [inaudible]. 

Before we adjourn, I just wanted to make sure before, I knew if you were going to follow up. I did go back into the meeting minutes at the creation of this committee, looked at the timeline, it does say that implementation would start '27, but I... and it was unanimous vote. I know Dr.—  

⏯2:08:24 Kecia Nesmith: I corrected myself.

⏯2:08:25 Jose Matthews: No, no, no. You're fine. I just want to make sure before they vote it was a unanimous vote. I just want to make sure that I know at the next meeting whether or not to extend it. Are we looking to—

⏯2:08:39 Mark Pruitt: My recommendation would be, I believe with three board members here, if this committee asks for additional time, I'll get back to the amount of time. I believe that the board will support that.

⏯2:08:48 Jose Matthews: Sure. 

⏯2:08:49 Mark Pruitt: I don't think we need to make that motion now.

⏯2:08:50 Jose Matthews: Okay.

⏯2:08:51 Mark Pruitt: I do think we will allot time to finishing this timeline, and I'll tell you this: while I don't think anything's going to change if July becomes August or September, I think that's about it. I think if you go beyond that, now you've contracted our work which includes attendance zones, staffing concerns—not cutting staff, you know, reorganizing staff, all those kinds of things—you've really limited the work and the execution of such a plan. So, but I think we can have that discussion next meeting.

I will ask you via email to give me your best four ideas. You do not have to be linked as a group, because if your group said, "this is really feasible," you're like, "well, we kind of had to come to the consensus." I can totally agree with that, that's fine. You can choose two things at this point that, that can't coexist, right? We'll put the puzzle together when, when I bring that data to the next meeting. I'll tell you what we will know, if no one chose something, okay, then probably time to have to stop having that discussion. If one person chose it, we may ask that person to talk it into staying, right? You know, explain what you know, right?

⏯2:10:17 Jennifer Recchiuti: That's stressful. 

⏯2:10:18 Mark Pruitt: It is, but you know, you have 17 people, it wasn't in their top four, and one person... it was gonna be a pretty convincing argument as to why it wasn't... why it might stay. But it'll allow us to start doing those things, then we could start putting puzzle pieces together. We're maybe having some, you know, some discussions about if any two of those three are or have gotten more than 50, 60% of the straw poll talleys, right? And we can really start to, and then we can start to, you know, put some detail to it and then make a decision. The last half hour of next month's meeting is, what do we want that timeline to look like?

⏯2:10:55 Committee Member: So going back to the comment, and I know we have a potential option to extend, but I'm a bit concerned that we're gonna keep pushing this off, and then we're gonna be running at the end. And this is why I wanted to talk based on what was discussed today, I mean, do you... I feel like we are at least going to need at least one more meeting for sure. Does it make sense for us to just extend it, or maybe we should—because we talked about introducing a town hall, which we kind of haven't done that yet. 

I think it's important to kind of do that a little bit earlier. So I would like to suggest that, yeah, we can still look at an extension, but I really think adding an additional meeting, at least one at this point, is probably prudent so we can get ahead and not get to the end and find ourselves without time. So I want to make sure that we're making to the timeline that we have for the planning for next year, I think that's very important. I'm just really scared that we're saying, "hey, we'll like extend one, two, three months," and then push comes to shove, we have to present something, and then we can't just do weekly meetings, it's not feasible. Well, right now it's April. It's more feasible for us to say, "hey, let's at least add one additional meeting." We know you have to do a town hall—I think we talked about two—let's, let's just get that ahead of time, and then if we have to extend it, let's extend that too. 

⏯2:12:18 Kecia Nesmith: Can I get that worked out, what you just said? I'm concerned... this is like in retrospect, right? I'm concerned that we haven't been very good at informing the public of this committee and the work that we've been charged to do. To the point where, even if we had a town hall, that's it? In terms of making a recommendation to the school district without any of the general public's consent or survey or something? Like, so whatever we go to propose, let's say we come up, we get stuck with two ideas, like getting the input so that people can feel like they were part of the process, and something with them and not to them. 

And so just thinking about all the backlash from whatever decision we make, we know not everybody's gonna be happy, but people sometimes feel like, "well, how come I didn't know about this? I would have come to public comment, I would have done that." And I don't think that we have brought...what's the word I'm looking for? Broadcasted it out enough to parents, because I know I didn't get an email as a parent. Or that even the public community, that this is happening. I think that's something we need to do before people make any recommendations to the board.

⏯2:13:32 Mark Pruitt: We're going to put a survey out. I'm hope... we're going to... the goal is to bring you a draft the next meeting, let this group take a look at the draft, although I would defer to Hanover as to what the questions are. You know, they can... we start when we start... not, you know, they like something that researchers do, I think we have to, you know, use that, but just to use their expertise—

⏯2:13:52 Kecia Nesmith: Just communicating it each month, in some type of communication to parents that this committee is happening, because nobody... people don't do surveys. But we want to put it out there, they don't. Only people who are paying attention do surveys. "yeah..." And then there's, you know, it doesn't really affect the people who don't have students in the district, per se, but it could change traffic patterns, like there's a lot of different things you think about. So I just wanted to say that to be more forthright, sharing that this committee is happening, and I'm not saying we're trying not publicizing.

⏯2:14:28 Mark Pruitt: Yeah, and we definitely have to not... you know, we're definitely not... every slide is on the website, the members' names, contact information, I mean, you know, it's up there, it's posted publicly.

⏯2:14:42 Kendra Todd-Dixon: [inaudible] That's what every principal was instructed to do, but I do believe we could do a better job of being like, hey, just keeping—

⏯2:14:49 Shawn Snyder: [inaudible] and put together some stuff.

⏯2:14:50 Kecia Nesmith: Yeah, you know how, Ms. Mobley puts out like for a celebration. An email from her to say all families will be seen before it's read in a newsletter, before it's looked at on BoardDocs. I'm just that, I look at them and you know, I'm just scanning, I'm looking at that more than all the different information, and [inaudiile]. 

⏯2:15:20 Committee Member: Is that like two town halls? Like one like surrounding like early June and then potential like July?

⏯2:15:31 Mark Pruitt: When the district team, Dr. Green's cabinet team spoke, we had the opportunity to put in focus groups because he thought a town hall would be better when there was more of a finished product, right? Like allowing, an open town hall for—Sean was in that meeting. Like allowing an open town hall, like they come in when we're at this stage, right, they can come in and give public comment, we see that tonight, it's fantastic. But, but like inviting a group to come in before we have a close to finished product for a recommendation that they can actually give, you know? So these focus groups are more to help us inform our decisions on the work we're doing. You know, he would even, I think, say a town hall would be better between the reading and a board vote, that was what I believe Dr. Green would say—I'm not quoting him, but something to that effect. So that discussion can be had.

⏯2:16:34 Committee Member: And that's very reasonable, again. But I still think we need to—

⏯2:16:40 Committee Member: Raise awareness?

⏯2:16:41 Committee Member: Raise awareness, I guess but even internally I just want to get traction on it. I just don't want us to come close to the time when we're not close to it.

⏯2:16:53 Mark Pruitt: So I'm open to... I'm open to a motion right now. I mean, we can, we can vote to extend the presentation by a month and work out a couple of meetings at the beginning of next month. We can vote to say, "hey, let's do two meetings a month beginning in May," uh, whatever the... whatever the committee... huh? 

⏯2:17:15 Committee Member: [inaudible]

⏯2:17:16 Mark Pruitt: Well, that becomes an issue. I know what people do, you know. I know how busy a lot of people are. 

⏯2:17:25 Committee Member: If we pushed it to June? If we push this to the end and that's when summer break is, and we're gonna... that's less likely to get the people.

⏯2:17:35 Jose Matthews: So I'll make a motion, I move that we have a meeting the week of the 28th of, April 28th, the week we come back from spring break, that we've reconvened after break. Does that make sense?

⏯2:17:47 Committee Member: Does that give us enough time to notice the meeting? 

[inaudible group discussion]

⏯2:18:06 Committee Member: So, sorry. Secretary asking a question.  Jose, are you making your motion right now to add a meeting after spring break?

⏯2:18:12 Jose: Yeah, the week of the April 28th and it would have to be scheduled of course, but I think to occur that week.

⏯2:18:21 Antonio Gomes: I second that. 

⏯2:18:22 Mark Pruitt: How about we give ourselves two more days coming out, I'm away spring break, so like, I'd rather do Thursday of that week. The 30th.

⏯2:18:32 Committee Member: Oh, so the week. You said the week, right?

⏯2:18:34 Jose Matthews: The week. [inaudible] A little flexibility.

⏯2:18:43 Mark Pruitt: Thursday, May 1st, six o'clock here. I will send out an email, certainly we have to understand that attendance, you know, may not be... attendance for this committee's been phenomenal, by the way, but you know—[inaudible group discussion] Yeah, we could also, you know, we could also allow people to jump on. It's very difficult the way we do these groups and all to do that. 

⏯2:19:12 Committee Member: So Mark, can we have a vote since we had a motion and a second. 

⏯2:19:15 Mark Pruitt: We have a motion and a second. Alright. All in favor of adding a meeting Thursday, May 1st, Aye?

 ⏯2:19:24 Group: Aye. 

⏯2:19:27 Mark Pruitt: All—Okay, let's, let's see what we got here. I know this is a consensus committee, so I don't... we don't need... was one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Hands down. That's fine, nine. And opposed? One, two, three, four, five. Okay, nine to five, we will have a meeting. Um, I think that's fine to have a meeting. I think we gotta understand that, I mean, these principals that they—that it starts to get crowded. I've been there. You start calling me in May, you want my spring show or this committee? So, um, but, uh... and teachers as well. So, you know, but uh, I think, I think nine to five, and some people that aren't here that I think will be excited to get back, you know, Val, Jodi Muffley. Jodi Muffley took her daughter to see a college, I believe. So, and she'll be back. So I think we'll have enough to move forward. Okay, all right. Motion to adjourn?

⏯2:20:33 Committee Member: Motion to adjourn.

⏯2:20:34 Mark Pruitt: Seconded?

⏯2:20:35 Amin Farooqui: Second.

⏯2:20:36 Mark Pruitt: All in favor? Thank you very much, thank you. It's been a pleasure working with you guys, and even though, you know, even when we [inaudible group discussion.]

🌐Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee webpage 

April 15, 2025 Meeting Materials 

📁Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee Meeting Rolling Slides April 15, 2025

📹Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee April 15, 2025 Meeting Recording

Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee April 15, 2025 Meeting Minutes For convenience, the full meeting minutes are typed below. 

April 15, 2025 Meeting Materials

April 15, 2025 / 6:00 PM / RCCSD Board Rm, 1502 Spruce Ave, Wilmington, DE 19805 

Zoom Meeting (For public only. Committee members are in person.) 

Attendance/Welcome Jason Bastianelli, Tawanda Bond, Thomas Brucker, Emily Carroll, Amin Farooqui, Antonio Gomes, Val Gould(remote), Vic Leonard Sr, Jose Matthews, Kecia Nesmith, Mark Pruitt Jr , Jennifer Recchiuti, Madeleine Reitemeyer, Eric Sanford, Shawn Snyder, Kendra Todd-Dixon, Reggie Worlds, Dr. Corey Heacock - guest speaker 

Mr. Matthews made a motion to begin the meeting, seconded by Mr. Leonard. Motion passed. 6:01pm. 

Agenda Items 

Opening Items 

• Public Comment - Chonnie Blair, Elaine Guo, Arianna Li, Amy Reynoso(Zoom), Kate Terranova 

• Approve Minutes from March 20th. Mr. Matthews made a motion to approve the minutes from March 20th, seconded by Mr. Worlds. Motion passed. 

New Business 

• The Committee’s Charge/Goal - Mr. Pruitt 

• Meeting Norms - Mr. Pruitt 

• Tentative Timeline - Mr. Pruitt - Group discussed timeline of committee, possible adjustments, and goals for board presentation. 

• Mr. Pruitt shared a CTE Audit summary focusing on the facilities readiness of CTE pathways across Red Clay’s 3 A-Z high schools. 

• Dr. Heacock shared limited research on optimal comprehensive high school sizes and grade configurations for K-12 schools. 

• Three groups completed a relevance, feasibility, and impact analysis of ideas presented to date. 

• The committee agreed that Mr. Pruitt will send out a straw poll allowing each Red Clay Consolidated School District 1 committee member to “tally” up to four ideas they support most at this point in the work. This information will be made available at the next meeting. 

• Public Comment - Jason Gleber 

• Mr. Matthews made a motion to add a meeting May 1st, seconded by Mr. Gomez. Motion passed with 9 yes votes and 5 no. 

Adjourn - Mr. Gomez made a motion to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Mr. Farooqui. Motion passed. Meeting adjourned at 8:20pm.

Action Items 

• Mr. Pruitt will email a straw poll for committee members' response. 

Next Meeting May 1, 2025@6pm at RCCSD Board Rm, 1502 Spruce Ave, Wilmington, DE 19805 May 21, 2025 @6pm at RCCSD Board Rm, 1502 Spruce Ave, Wilmington, DE 19805