Jan 21 2025
AZ Committee Meeting

1. Public Comment
   ⏯ 0:15:51-17:12

   • • Public comment could not be transcribed due to poor audio quality.

⏯ 1:55:29-17:12

• • • Jenny Howard (parent): Suggested this is a good opportunity to consider rebranding the secondary schools.

    • Brenda Steffon (Friends of AI): Commended the committee and Board for exploring possibilities beyond initial data.

2. Discussion on Building Capacity Imbalances

⏯ 0:54:58

• Committee members engage in a candid conversation about building imbalances, school choice trends, historical boundary shifts, white/middle-class flight, and overall community perceptions. 

⏯ 2:00 Mark Pruitt: Okay, we have 6:01. We talk about giving a flex minute, but we do want to value everyone's time, particularly the committee members' time, so we will bring this meeting to order. I will start off. My name is Mark Pruitt. I am the Director of Secondary Education for Red Clay. You've got some emails from me and are going to continue to see some emails from me. I'll take us through this first meeting. I can assure you that there will be more "sit and get" or "talk at you" at this meeting with some housekeeping items and some data than the next five meetings combined. That's not to say that you can't stop me, ask questions; we can have discussion along the way. I want to bring everyone up to speed. If you have not put your name on your name tag, there are some markers in front of you or somewhere along the table here. We are live on Zoom. The Zoom will be recorded and posted on a website we have for this committee, so just so that you know, we are live on Zoom at this time. 

We will jump right in by introducing ourselves as members of the committee. This is a 19-person committee. We do have a couple of folks that are under the weather tonight and won't be joining us, but they'll be back with us next meeting. I will start off. My name again is Mark Pruitt, Director of Secondary Education. I've worked as a teacher in Red Clay, a building-level administrator, and now work over here at the district office. I'll move to my left first and then we'll loop around the room.

⏯ 3:45 Beth Jefferson: My name is Beth Jefferson. I work in School Operations. I support Mr. Pruitt, and I'm here in an administrative capacity just to support you all in the work.

⏯ 3:54 Jose Matthews: My name is Jose Matthews. I am the Board President.

⏯ 3:59 Jodi Muffley: I am Dr. Jodi Muffley, and I am an instructor at AI High School.

⏯ 4:04 Vic Leonard: Victor Leonard, a School Board member.

⏯ 4:08 Kecia Nesmith: Hi everyone, I'm Dr. Kecia Nesmith. I'm a School Board member and also an educator in Pennsylvania as an administrator. I have a daughter who graduated from a quasi-district - Charter School of Wilmington, and I have a son who's at Conrad High School and [inaudible.]

⏯ 4:29 Kendra Todd-Dixon: Good evening everyone. I'm Kendra Todd-Dixon, proud principal of Conrad Schools of Science.

⏯ 4:34 Emily Carroll: I'm Emily Carroll. I'm a science teacher at McKean High School, and I'm here as one of the people on behalf of our RCEA.

⏯ 4:42 Tom Brucker: Hi, Tom Brucker. I teach at onrad Schools of Science, Social Studies.

⏯ 4:46 Jay Bastianelli: My name is Jay Bastianelli, and I'm the principal of H.B. duPont Middle School.

⏯ 4:51 Caitlin Merto: I'm Caitlin Merto. I'm a parent of an H.B. student who will be going to high school next year. I'm an educator in Pennsylvania in the Chester Upland School District, and I'm also the teaching union president in Chester.

⏯ 5:07 Dorrell Green: Dr. Green, Superintendent of Red Clay, parent of two Red Clay students. My wife is also a high school educator in New Castle County Votech. I'm happy and thankful for each and every one of you for giving up your time to this very important committee that will ultimately benefit Red Clay Consolidated School District as a whole. Thank you for giving us the time and braving the elements to join us this evening.

⏯ 5:30 Maddie Reitemeyer: Hi, I'm Maddie Reitemeyer. I have three children; two of them are former Red Clay students, and I'm also the school counselor at AI High School.

⏯ 5:42 Tawanda Bond: Good evening everyone. My name is Dr. Tawanda Bond. I am the Senior Director of Teaching and Learning here in Red Clay. Two large departments that I have my hand in are School Operations as well as Teaching and Learning. I have come up through the ranks in the state; I was a secondary special education teacher. I was the very first Equity Officer in the state of Delaware before people were talking DEI in Delaware. I've been an assistant principal in Red Clay Consolidated School District as well as a principal in Red Clay Consolidated School District. I'm happy to be here and bring my myriad of lenses.

⏯ 6:19 Amin Farooqui: Hi everyone, nice meeting you all. I'm Amin Farooqui. I'm a parent of four kids; two of them are former students at Red Clay, and two are still in high school. Work-wise, I work for Vanguard and am the head of marketing for the endowment program.

⏯ 6:35 Val Gould: Hi, my name is Val Gould, a former Red Clay educator. I taught in various public schools in Pennsylvania and here in Delaware for over 20 years. I am now working for the state doing policy work, and I'm really excited to be here.

⏯ 6:53 Shawn Snyder: Shawn Snyder. I'm the Director of Technology. I worked downstate as a principal. My wife is a current educator; she's an English teacher for over 20 years in the state, and my son attends a charter school downstate. I'm probably the newest guy in the district on this team; I've been here about five years. I love Red Clay; it's the best school district in the state. I've worked in a few of them; this is the best.

⏯ Mark Pruitt: All right, well thank you very much. Just a great group of people here representing various constituencies in the state, and I cannot thank you enough for your willingness to serve on this important committee and the work we are going to do here. We certainly have a couple of folks that were under the weather; we will allow them to introduce themselves at the next meeting.

Having said that, we've gone through introductions. Dr. Green has joined us here for the meeting, and I thought it would be important for him to be able to set the stage for our work here and welcome all of us officially.

⏯7:54 Dorrell Green: Again, thank you everyone. This is truly important work. I think outwardly facing, the community may see this as a committee to just simply look at enrollment, but it's bigger than that. Again, Red Clay is the most dynamic school district in the state, and we're dynamic for a whole host of reasons: the programs that we offer, the students, the communities that we serve, and the geography that we serve. Over the past two weeks, I've been able to drive the 37 square miles of our district to make sure that our schools and grounds are ready to open as it’s related to the inclement weather.

What we see is the opportunity for students to really thrive and grow. Historically, whenever we've had challenges, we focused on schools in isolation. This committee, as you serve on this committee, gives us an opportunity actually to look at the district as a whole—looking at it through the lens of attendance, looking at it through the lens of enrollment, but more importantly and specifically looking at it through the lens of programming so that we can hold true to our current strategic plan and the vision of the district, which is to provide equitable experiences and meaningful opportunities for tomorrow's leaders.

Tomorrow's leaders are in our schools today, and the only way that we could actually do that—and we started to do some of that work at our secondary schools—is looking at some of the course offerings that we have that are consistent across all of our secondary buildings, things such as AP Seminar being an anchor course for all 10th graders across the district. But we also know some of our schools aren't on equal footing as it relates to some of those equitable services. Oftentimes, a lot of the programs that we offer are tied to a staff member. If that staff member chooses to look at other options or retire, sometimes those programs unfortunately go with that staff.

As we go through this committee, it is: how do we balance those programs out to ensure that all of our secondary schools across Red Clay—particularly those that are not necessarily struggling but not really reaching or living up to their fullest potential—how can we help support them and balance that out and also be innovative? Regardless of political affiliation or ideation or beliefs, we have an opportunity to leverage new opportunities for innovation similarly to what the district has always done, primarily maybe looking at it through the lens of singular schools, but how do we look at this through the scope and the lens of the district as a whole? Again, ensuring that we live out the vision of the district, which is to provide equitable experiences for our students.

This is a both internal and external proposition. In public education, we go through these unenviable cycles every two to four years where there's policy change; we unfortunately have to change with certain policies. There are things afoot, such as the Redding Consortium, which we'll bring some information on. That is actually looking at primarily the City of Wilmington—what's happening with learning with children and families that are within the City of Wilmington and consolidating. Right now, the city is served by four traditional public school districts, which are Red Clay, Christina, Brandywine, and Colonial. On May 9th of 2024, the Consortium voted to remove Christina from the City of Wilmington, and now they're currently going through a landscape analysis to reduce the number of school districts yet to be identified to serve the city.

What we also need to do, again because Red Clay tends to be a microcosm—we have choice options, we're the only district that serves as the authorizer of a charter school—how do we go through this process to look at not only our magnet and our choice but our comprehensive schools? How do we really bring some level footing back? That will be the premise of this committee. So it's a heavy lift, but I'm excited about where we're going. I'm excited about our strategic plan and the opportunities that are ahead of us. We really want to be able to use your knowledge and your expertise as you sit at this table, as you hear and get the pulse of those within the community and bring it back to this committee so that we can make some informed decisions about what our secondary schools will be in the years to come, aligned to our strategic plan.

Again, I'm happy and thankful for each and every one of you. I truly am excited. I think each and every one of you serving on this committee should be excited because there are brighter days. We're doing some phenomenal work and really trying to anchor ourselves, focused on student outcomes, but we know that there has to be some big course shifts and adjustments in some of the structure of the district to be able to move that forward. Again, thank you each and every one of you for being here and looking forward to engaging and learning from you as we move forward.

Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much, Dr. Green. So the agenda for the evening: I could tell you that we're going to have public comment, if there are any. I can tell you that there were 110 public members interested, that expressed interest in this committee. I've been in this district a long time, and I think that says a lot about Red Clay. Red Clay is very important to me, and the idea that 110 people expressed interest... Certainly, if they engage with us on Zoom or in person, we want to give them the opportunity to participate in the meeting. I would also like, as when I've run district committees, to allow them to participate through public comment at the beginning of the meeting or at the end in case they had a work conflict and couldn't get here, but not both. No, that's the way that I traditionally have done meetings that are public.

If you look from "Strategic Plan Overview" down through "Resources Available," those are housekeeping items that we will not look at a second time. You're going to see rolling slides by if not tomorrow, certainly by Friday. I'll send you the rolling slides and simply add to that slide deck each meeting. The information, the agendas, the minutes will be on that. I'll send you all that information by the end of the week. We will not waste our time, but we do need to get through those items for the first time here today. Then meeting norms, the opening activity, a connection between enrollment and programming, and most importantly—and the bulk of our time—will be looking at recent history and data. I can say that there will be a lot of information given to you. Stop and ask questions. This will be to level the playing field. If you are a district administrator or a board member, you've seen this once before, maybe twice before, but if you're a public member or a teacher just working hard doing your job

Mark Pruitt: Maybe you're seeing this for the first time; we want to make sure that we level set here so that everyone has the same information as we move forward. We'll see time here as to whether or not we have the opportunity to begin some brainstorming; if not, that will make up talk piece two. Having said that, we will allow for public comment at this time. I see three members in the back, and we'll start with in-person and then online. Mr. Smallwood, by the way, is helping; not only his office job work, it's also going to help us with the Zoom tech side.

Public commenters: [Inaudible 15:51-17:23]

At the end, certainly by 8:00, we will be out of here. Meeting, certainly stops at 7:45 for any public comment.

Setting some baseline benchmarks for the district, then you're writing the plan to launch it. At the center of a lot of that work is Dr. Tawanda Bond, and she's just going to briefly take us through the plan. Thank you.

⏯18:03 Tawanda Bond: Thank you, Mr. Pruitt. A plan that has benchmarks along the way. So, we have three strategic priorities that we are looking to accomplish by the end of our iteration of this plan. So, the first one you see here is Student Growth, Success, and Equitable Outcomes. This is really where we're going to ground a lot of our work in this committee. The second priority is Family Engagement and Strategic Partnerships. I heard a parent reference that; that is one of our strategic priorities. And then Resources and Operations—we'll touch on that in a lot of our conversations also—but that is our third strategic priority.

As you'll see across the top are our four objectives. This is where we butter our bread. As Dr. Green referenced at the beginning, we are all about student outcomes. So, as we're having conversations, I challenge us all to keep in our mind the decisions we make and the brainstorming that we do: how does it affect students across our school district? In addition to that, I want to give you a quote from John Wooden: "Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." So, we want to be solutions-oriented also in this group.

With that, I'm going to turn it back over to Mr. Mark Pruitt, who's going to walk us through our charge for the committee. We are really going to be taking a good look at Objective Three, which is a space where Mr. Pruitt has done a lot of work in leading the charge for equitable College and Career programming for all secondary schools.

⏯19:42 Mark Pruitt: Thank you, Dr. Bond. Yeah, I could talk about equitable College and Career programming for all secondary schools for the next... I can take up the rest of our time telling us the work we've done, the great work that our schools do, and what we have planned over the next five years. But we've got some other work to do here. So, I will just say that the work we're doing here is actually an action step within that part of the plan.

Really, how are we going to evaluate our work in terms of College and Career programming for all secondary schools? One of our goals is Red Clay will increase the number of high school students participating in college-level coursework. There are several key performance indicators that will measure that. Take a look at that—subgroups, a lot of different ways—just getting started in year one with that work. Goal two: Red Clay will increase the number of graduates who are prepared for future workforce opportunities through Career and Technical Education, new and exciting pathways, industry standard certifications, and work-based learning standards. That will drive a lot of that work; several key performance indicators are involved with that as well. And then also, we're trying to develop Red Clay's Portrait of a Graduate. What are the skills and soft skills that every graduate needs to be successful in our community and in what is an ever-increasing global community, and really try to embed those skills from K through 12th grade?

Having said that, the action step that sits within this part of the plan: Analyze secondary campuses' programming and enrollment as they relate to equitable opportunities across all schools. This is the action step that we are starting right here, right now. All right, questions? If I don't say “questions” enough, just raise your hand.

⏯21:36 Committee Member: I have a really silly question. What is a secondary campus?

Mark Pruitt: Good question. A secondary campus is 6th through 12th grade. It could be a middle school, could be a high school, or it could be one of our 6-12 campuses. It's one half of the district, and then we're more traditional in our elementary schools, K-5. We do have a K-2 and a 3-5, but both of those are K-5.

⏯22:04 Dorrell Green: I think it's worth noting that three out of our five that used to be traditional secondary high schools are now 6th through 12th grade. Right? So, The John Dickinson School is 6-12, Conrad Schools of Science is 6-12, and obviously Cab Calloway is 6-12. Traditional 9-12 are McKean and AI duPont High School. And again, disproportionately that enrollment... that is part of how we talk about the portion of how we look at that beyond. So that's the notion. Thank you.

Mark Pruitt: All right, here's our goal for the committee. This committee was presented to the School Board. They asked us to move forward with this committee, and here's really our goal over the next six months.

To evaluate the enrollment, programming, and attendance zones of Red Clay secondary schools and make recommendations to the School Board at the July board meeting. In doing so, the committee should consider a strong and balanced enrollment across all of our secondary schools, the impact of attendance, and any attendance zone changes that we may make. This includes an alignment of our boundaries with our K-8 attendance zones when possible—that will make sense to you very shortly when we get to that. Consider geography and neighborhood schools when possible, equitable access to quality education for all students, and the advantages and challenges of those recommended options through analysis, community feedback, and research.

Again, these rolling slides—we're going to need this information. You're going to need this information between the meetings that we're holding monthly, potentially at a meeting if we need to. But this basically is the Neighborhood Schools Act from 2001. I am not going to read that. It makes sense. We have a responsibility to have attendance zones based on geography and neighborhoods.

Scope of the work as charged by the School Board: We'll take a look at data analysis, review current enrollment data, optimal capacity of schools, and geography of schools and students. Legal and policy review: ensure recommendations comply with all applicable local, state, and federal regulations. 

⏯24:47 Mark Pruitt: Stakeholder engagement: we'll have a responsibility to collect feedback from stakeholders, including parents, students, teachers, and community members, to inform recommendations. We'll provide... while I'll take the lead, you'll certainly see it and approve it before we move forward with a recommendation report, which will present a final report to the School Board outlining the rationale for the order of options, supporting data for these decisions, and a community feedback summary—the advantages and challenges of any option we present. Questions?

We have a... again, you'll see when I send out, we now have a web page. It's already posted. It has tonight's agenda on it; it will have draft minutes by the end of the week. We'll also have these slides—not only for the committee, but anybody from the public that would like to look at these slides. The committee will maintain open communication with the School Board, district leadership, and key stakeholders. We will provide monthly progress updates to the School Board upon request. The committee will engage with community members through town halls and surveys, and again, we'll have this public-facing web page which you'll see when I send these slides within the next 48 hours. Questions?

These are housekeeping items; we won't see these slides again, but you will have access to them. Expectations as charged by the committee: Commitment—we're expected to attend all scheduled meetings and actively participate in discussions and tasks. Objectivity—members will approach the task with an open mind, focusing on the overall needs of the district and community rather than their individual interests. Collaboration—members will work collaboratively, respecting diverse perspectives and expertise. And communication—if you serve as an RCEA liaison, those types of things, you obviously have a responsibility to serve in some way. In many ways, you're representing all of our...

This is what I would call a rough draft at best. This was very challenging when you start this typically. What are we going to tackle over the next six meetings? This could change based on our work tonight; this could change based on a town hall. But I think you have to start with an end in mind as to the kind of work we're going to do.

So, tonight we're really going to look at history and data throughout that history. I think next month, some small group work, come back together, start the brainstorm, put some things on some whiteboards. What are some possibilities? What could we consider, with nothing being off the table in that regard? In March, review additional data, any additional data requests we have. Talk to some guest speakers—when I talk of guest speakers, I'm talking about potentially our legal, our finance office, our facilities office—impact on any changes we may make. They can come in as experts in that area. And also prep survey questions that we hope to get out by the beginning of April.

In April, we could potentially replace this meeting with a town hall meeting, or we may have the town hall separately; that's a decision that we can make together. In May, an analysis of the town hall and survey data. Also, start to bring in UD and their demographics office to help us with that. You'll see that in more detail shortly. And then in June, make a final determination of recommendations to the School Board, understanding that that is just a draft at this point. Questions, comments, ideas about that?

So we only gave you one meeting at this point, but the more that our Communications and I thought about it, trying to get 19 people to agree to some Google survey would have been impossible. So I think we're going to go with this, in the hope that we can make all or... everybody may have something that they just can't adjust to. We tried to go with Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, so that if somebody had a Tuesday problem, it didn't prohibit them. If that makes sense. But those are the dates that work for us. Again, by the end of the week, I will invite you via Outlook to all of these meetings. I will always send a recap of our meeting with any links to more information that you may need, as well as the website. But writing those down is fine, but I'm going to send you those by this Friday. Any questions or concerns about that meeting schedule?

When I talked about resources available, we're talking about data specialists. I introduced you to Phil Smallwood; he can get that data, put it together, maybe we had some questions as to how we came up with that data. Legal counsel and the transportation office will be a big part of any attendance zone or programming changes. District facilities—you know, how do the facilities look? How might we utilize those facilities? Obviously, Finance is a big part of that. Dr. Amman is in the back of the room tonight. And Student Services—special populations and how might they be impacted by the work.

I'll pause here for questions. I promise you, this meeting I'll talk at you more tonight than I will the next five combined.

All right, we are going to contract with the University of Delaware Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research. This is what the University of Delaware does when a school district wants to consider or is in the process of changing its attendance zones. Their services include—I'm not going to read you all of that, but I will allow you a minute or two to look at that quickly.

Also note that part of that responsibility they have is to attend committee meetings. Part of the contract is that they can attend committee meetings when appropriate or when invited by us. So when it gets to be that time—which could be July or could be past July if we needed it for the details of that work—they're doing everything from: what have we done historically? Where have our families made decisions? Birth rate changes over time. A lot of that information the University has access to, and typically one of the flagship universities in a state has that information for the state.

Questions?

[Poor audio quality 31:53-45:03 due to break-out groups]  

Mark Pruitt: Always let set take... here we go. We're going to move here, so we're not moving a lot tonight. I said that, but... two and I will be a four. Perfect. All right, so when I say "one," you're going to go right here. Group two is going to create some space and go somewhere right around here. Group three, right around here. And group four is going to create some space and work right around here.

All right, now, don't open it yet. When I say go, we're going to go. We are going to have some fun, make it a little bit competitive. You can do something like that—that's a great idea—if you want to grab a table that doesn't have stuff. But here we go, let's listen carefully. In the essence of time, and because I'm a somewhat competitive guy, when I say go, we're going to have some competition and see who can work together and get the 48-piece jigsaw puzzle put together as quickly as possible.

The winners—each member of the winning team—gets a $5 gift card to Dunkin' Donuts. All right? The winning team gets a $5 gift card to Dunkin' Donuts. So here we go. Three, two, one, go!

Committee Member: Picture tops here, bottom here.

Committee Member: This is going to be right over here. Corner right there.

Mark Pruitt: That we have any more... the Red Clay secondary anchor points. If anyone has...

Committee Member: I got a corner! One more!

Mark Pruitt: That's when they think they have a winner. You've got to confirm when they raise their hand who the winner is.

Committee Member: I think we...

Committee Member: That's...

Mark Pruitt: Right, we did it! Right? I think the winners... yes. Don't sign yet. Get a black marker, a dark marker. All right, we will reconvene in three minutes. Three minutes to bask in your victory or wallow in your sorrows.

Committee Member: Listen, I told him I don't drink coffee, I need to stop eating donuts.

Mark Pruitt: Oh, great. Great. Once your signatures are on it, we'll get a picture.

Hopefully folks enjoyed that—a way to get up, get moving a little bit, and build some camaraderie. But you know, this really is going to be about collaboration, teamwork, and problem-solving. That's a small example of that, but a way to start thinking about it.

So, what we're going to see now is a lot of information. And Sean tells me

Mark Pruitt: Dr. Green has told me, Dr. Bond has told me, you know, "You've seen this like a million times now." I know this information, so at any point, go, "Hold on, I don't get that." Also understand, however, that you're going to be able to digest this potentially on a Friday—you'll be able to look at it more—but please ask questions as we go along here. It's very important. Those out also at this point, thank you, Shawn. Also at this point, I have made hard copies of these slides for you all. Because to look up here, I think it would be important to maybe be able to manipulate them, look, and take a couple of notes as we move along here.

Whenever on this data, all of the information is basically going to be broken up; you're either going to be looking primarily at high school slides and some middle school slides. Because we have a number of multi-grade band schools—6-12—and Brandywine Springs is a K-8. When you look at enrollment, when we're looking at a middle school slide and we say Dickinson's middle, Dickinson has 270 kids, we're talking about the middle schoolers at Dickinson. When we're talking about Conrad Schools of Science high school 10 years ago and we see 650, we're talking about high school students. So we're always looking at this in terms of grade bands, not an entire population. That's important.

And also, I'm going to provide some analysis as we go through here, but if I'm providing all of my analysis or interpretation of the data, it's really going to limit your ability to do your own work. So there are a few things I'm going to put out, but there are some things where I think it's really important that, as a member of the committee, we come to our own conclusions on it. Mr. Snyder's done a lot of the work here along the way, so he may jump in with some analysis as we go through as well.

What you're looking at first is the slide; it is a map of our district with elementary attendance zones and middle school attendance zones. The elementary are denoted by color, and the middle schools are noted by a thick black line that goes around them.

This work was done in 2015, so our kindergarten through eighth grade attendance zones were established, edited, and changed with the addition of Cooke Elementary in 2015. If you look at elementary schools, they are all contiguous, meaning they are all within one boundary, except for Cooke Elementary, which has... which is up in the northeast corner to the east of North Star, but also has an area right on the west side of the city right next to what would be Cab Calloway School of the Arts—across the street from Cab Calloway. The rest of them are all contiguous; relatively easy to understand.

Our middle schools are made up, for the last 10 years, of four attendance zones. They are H.B. duPont, Skyline, AI duPont Middle, and Stanton. Two of which are contiguous—AI duPont Middle School and Stanton—and two of which are non-contiguous: H.B. duPont and Skyline. Skyline has the westernmost portion of the district, which you see outlined there with three schools, but also includes a large part of Red Clay's portion of the City of Wilmington. H.B. duPont is inclusive of the northwest corner of the school district, but also what we'll call the Cooke Elementary cutout where it's marked with H.B. duPont, and a sort of an L-shaped version of the west side of Wilmington. 

⏯50:08 Dorrell Green: And just for a frame of reference geography-wise, obviously, it's Lancaster Avenue, Lancaster Court... that's the L, that's the portion of the cutout. So if you're thinking of it geography-wise to orient yourself: Lancaster Avenue, Lancaster Court.

Mark Pruitt: Every elementary school feeds directly to a middle school except two. Brandywine Springs has a split feeder to Skyline and AI duPont Middle, and Warner has a split feeder to H.B. duPont and Skyline.

And here's where it gets one, right? This was the slide I think that made us go, "You know what? Let's put this in front of them here," because this is a little... This is a lot to look at. Now we've transitioned from K-5 and 6-8 feeders to 6-8 feeders and 9-12 feeders. Okay? So now the middle schools are in color and the high schools are in a green bold line.

That high school feeder pattern was established in 2002, and the new middle school feeder patterns in 2015 were established without any regard for the high schools. And so what you see there, if you look at the McKean feeder sort of in the center, there's three schools: Dickinson, McKean, and AI duPont High School. If you could see that green boundary for McKean, you'll note that it runs through every middle school attendance zone in the school district, which means if you are McKean, you are a receiving school from four different middle schools. That's not to say that Dickinson and AI duPont don't have the same; they just don't have all four. The other two have three of the four. You'll see that momentarily.

I just showed in two slides questions about those first two slots—the elementary schools and middle schools. Those attendance zones were established in 2015. The high school attendance zones were last revised in 2002.

Jose Matthews: Can you repeat the elementary schools that have the split feeders to middle?

Mark Pruitt: Brandywine Springs and Warner. Brandywine Springs goes to Skyline and AI duPont Middle School. Warner is split between H.B. duPont and Skyline. Any other questions about these first two slots?

We use attendance zones when we're talking about geographic boundaries; we talk about feeder patterns when we're talking about this. I think this sort of outlines the question that Jose just asked. This tells you where our elementary schools go to middle school if they do not complete the choice application. You'll see that every elementary school is a single line to a middle school, but Brandywine Springs is AI duPont Middle and Skyline, and Warner is Skyline and H.B. duPont. The rest are what we call straight-line feeders on the top.

Because there were no changes to the high school at the time we did this work, you see that those same students, once completing eighth grade, if they do not complete a choice application, go all over the place. Dickinson gets three of the four—all except AI duPont Middle. AI duPont High School gets all except Stanton, and McKean pulls from all four.

⏯54:58 Vic Leonard: Why is it we have - Skyline has four feeders, look like three for H.B. duPont, and there's such a discrepancy in capacities right now? 

Mark Pruitt: Why does H.B. duPont have more students even though they only have two and a half schools that feed into it? 

Vic Leonard: Yeah, it looks like 58% capacity of Skyline versus H.B. duPont 89% capacity.

Mark Pruitt: The answer to that question would be that the students that attend Heritage, Linden Hill, Lewis, and that part of Warner attend their attendance zone middle school at a far lesser rate, then the student participate in choice at a far higher rate than do the students that attend Cooke, North Star, and the other and that half of Warner.

Vic Leondard: Is there any reason for that? 

Dorrell Green: Because they’re going to their feeder schools.

⏯55:56 Kecia Nesmith: I can tell you that Linden Hill... fewer students go to Skyline than 10 years ago.

Vic Leonard: I see that. 

Dorrell Green: So the families who are in those schools who feed into their traditional middle school aren't going to their traditional middle schools, and then you have families who are at Cooke and North Star who are going to H.B. duPont.

Vic Leonard: You’re telling me what, but why? 

Kecia Nesmith: White flight.

Dorrell Green: Why is it happening?

Vic Leonard: Yes.

Kecia Nesmith: White flight.

Dorrell Green: Well again, I mean, one, we would have to... that's part of this process. When we talk to families and survey families, you've got to ask. But typically, perceptions of what they think those schools to be, decisions that have been made to change feeder patterns... I know Skyline prior to, maybe I guess 10 years ago now, went through a process where the feeder patterns were changed, and families ended up not going to that feeder school. And then they established the MYP program to retain them because there weren't enough choice options.

Kecia Nesmith: My daughter was in school at that time of shift. Her eighth-grade year was the year that they shifted students from the city that were attending H.B. duPont to Skyline, and it was a total culture shift. It was a lot of white flight. Simply put. I watched it. 

Dorrell Green: Mr. Bastianelli, go ahead. 

Jay Bastianelli: I mean, I'll jump in. I think Pete is doing a lot of wonderful things at Skyline. I think a huge aspect too is people say this, people say that; go visit, go see what it's all about. And I think right now, Mr. Metrinko is doing a fantastic job with inviting people in—"Hey, this is with Principal Brady at Linden Hill"—and really working with PTA so that families can see actually what their feeder option is actually offering. So, I mean, again, for me to hypothesize why individual families are making a decision, but I could just generally say it's based on feeder patterns that are making a choice.

Committee member: But I also think it's busing. I think that for some of these people to get a bus right outside your development versus... I have kids at AI duPont that drive 10-15 minutes and choice to AI duPont, and I have one girl that stands outside 15 minutes waiting for the bus because her dad has to go to work. How convenient is that? And she choices to AI duPont. So I think also shifting those buses...

Dorrell Green: Relative to middle school, and again, I think when we go into the data, what we'll also see is the choice busing misnomer. We were busing students from suburban McKean and Dickinson to AI duPont. Now, granted, some out-of-district families were able to take advantage of that, but for the majority of that moment when it was at its peak, analyze the data: it was suburban McKean and Dickinson families who were actually going to AI duPont. So it was still an in-district proposition, although out-of-district families—those who were going for Christina—could find themselves access to that closest stop to get there. But the numbers bear out again; the majority of those families were McKean and Dickinson suburban families attending AI duPont.

⏯59:31 Shawn Snyder: I'm glad we're all... I've had a chance to wrestle with this data quite a bit because I'm a data nerd and I really like data. And what I can say is I actually went through the thought process that everybody's had so far, and I was looking for one reason why this happened. What I came to the conclusion of is that you're going to find a bunch of reasons. So it's... my first instinct was, "Let's find the one thing that's going on here and fix it," and the more I dug in, the more I realized it's more complicated than that. There are a couple of underlying things that I think you'll see in the data sets as we go into the slide deck more, but keep an open mind. I thought I had this figured out before I started. I dug into the data even, and I might even know a little less now than I did in the start off, but I feel a little wiser. 

Committee Member: Why would we start a middle school program with what we knew? We didn’t need one. 

Shawn Snyder: It’s tough to go back in time and legislate that; it was before anybody even was here.

Vic Leonard: It doesn’t make sense.

Kecia Nesmith: Just for data purposes, I know we have a lot of numbers; we have a lot of historical data here. But I want to emphasize the importance of the underground stories and the actual visual representation, and to not say it’s hearsay. I was specifically in this case with Skyline. I was part of that community; I live in that community and I talk to parents in that community. If you go back and you look at who left, who was supposed to go, and who did not come—who was there, who left—I know it’s a controversial topic, but we cannot ignore white flight. We cannot. Because again, that’s my community. The people who live in my community tell me that, "Oh, the school was bad." They don’t say, "All the black kids are here," right?

But what happened was there was a difference in culture that stemmed from urban to more suburban. Students from the urban area who happen to be Black or Latino came into a suburban area, and the culture of the teachers, the students—all of it—it was not done well. I know you guys weren't here, but it was not done well. It was a shocker to the system. And so when you think about elementary to middle, think about who your parents are. Your parents want to say, "What’s the best school?" People told me all the time: North Star, Linden Hill. Why? North Star was not the best school for my child for different reasons. So I think it's the community chatter and talk that is way more important than some of the numbers that we have, because it’s how people feel. It's those social, societal differences that make up the changes that you're asking about.

Dorrell Green: And I think that that’s the point where Linden Hill and Skyline have reconnected to try to attract some of those families now. When you buy a home in certain communities, that becomes the general narrative. Now that they actually see it—the SSA, which is the Association of parents at Skyline, is working with the PTA at Linden Hill. They hosted events and people are pleasantly surprised about the number of opportunities. Kudos to Mr. Metrinko and Principal Brady for doing that. Thankfully, the parents are actually saying what I was told in the community—that this wasn't an option for my child—isn't necessarily indicative. 

Shawn Snyder: I was at that event where they were together.

Val Gould: Yeah, so I just want to piggyback on what you're saying. I don't know a parent that doesn't want their kid to get a good education, to go to a good school. I was an outsider at Red Clay for most of my time teaching, but the two and a half years that I did spend helped me to see that what Red Clay did—instead of making all their existing schools great—they created new schools for predominantly white, top-tier students to get into. That has led the rest of the schools into a precipitous decline.

When we are focusing so many resources on a handful of schools—not even a handful of schools, three or four—the other schools are not going to get those opportunities. This is a big reason why I really wanted to serve on this committee, and I was really honored and humbled to be chosen, because all of our schools should be great. They can have different programs that make them great, that make them attractive, but they should all be great. It should not just be about the magnets; it should not just be about charter. All of our schools should be good, and no one should have to say, "I don't want my kid to go there because it's not a good school."

Kecia Nesmith: But how we can we operationalize "great"? Maybe later, not today, because we all want to rail on how you operationalize what "great" is. And I want to correct something I said: it was "white and Indian flight" in my home study, because my daughter had lots of Indian friends and lots of white friends, and then they were no longer there after they graduated the eighth-grade year.

Val Gould: In the interest of full disclosure, I taught at Brandywine Springs and I saw the flight that I was just talking about—the flight that happens out of that feeder pattern. It's because of the trend that I just described. So personally, I'm not coming in with an agenda; I'm coming in with a voice. But I hope that everyone considers the fact that every single child deserves to go to what their version of a great school is, and that’s going to be different based on communities.

Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much, great comments. I would add this: we will have an opportunity to determine some root causes and obviously brainstorm paths forward for us. But what I think Vic and Jodi—we're three slides in and we've identified two things that potentially we could tackle here. One: is feeder patterns don't align in any way; that was slide one or two. And now we're on the next slide and Skyline is about 50% capacity, and we opened up an additional middle school less than a mile away. Then that sort of compounded that problem. We're three slides in and we've identified two problems as very powerful. I think we'll have the opportunity to consider some causes for that, but more importantly, some potential solutions for that. I really appreciate the candid conversation. I just wanted to note that I'm trying to capture this as best as possible; there will be some official minutes, but also just capturing things to sort of guide our work.

Shawn Snyder: Mark, did you identify when the MYP program at Dickinson started? I think somebody had asked that question.

Mark Pruitt: I'm going to be able to answer that question for you as we move through these slides. Eight, nine years ago?

Shawn Snyder: I thought so too.

Mark Pruitt: That sounds right. It sort of went right in line with a spiking of Skyline's enrollment due to some attendance zone changes. Then, whether that school opened to relieve pressure or allow for some other factors of flight... then as things balanced out, it left a hole at Skyline.

Next slide. This takes the middle school out of this, and now you see: where do our elementary schools go to high school? What is our community that someone would participate in from elementary to middle to high school? A set of neighborhoods that went to Warner would then go to two middle schools and then go to three high schools.

I'll add some analysis here: it's very difficult to build a sense of community in an environment like this. It is very challenging to vertically articulate your work amongst school counselors as we transition from one program to the next. I try to minimize my analysis, but that just stands out when I look at that slide there. I see Warner—a group of every year about 150 to 160 fifth graders at Warner Elementary School get split twice and then get split again into thirds for high school if they choose not to participate in the Delaware school choice program.

Jose Matthews: Mark, I just have a correction that was pointed out. She's at North Star; she goes to AI duPont. I think there is a small portion of North Star that does go to AI duPont too.

Committee Member: Yeah, my feeder patterns... AI duPont. I'm North Star.

Mark Pruitt: I know, yes, that is a mistake.

Committee Member: Well, I'm one of them. I know I'm AI duPont.

Dorrell Green: Yeah, they don't go to AI duPont Middle, they go to AI duPont. 

Committee Member: That's the high school. 

Mark Pruitt: North Star should go over there, yes. It should actually go from Dickinson—they do not have McKean. That should go from Dickinson to AI duPont. They have two from Dickinson to AI duPont. Just North Star. Sorry. Some talented folks doing a lot of this work. That’s not to say there won’t be some mistakes.

[cross talk; inaudible]

Mark Pruitt: Okay, this slide goes back to 2001 to 2009—the first decade of the 21st century. It gives you a snapshot of enrollment at the five schools that were fully developed in capacity during that decade. I did not include DMA as it opened in 2004 with a very small population initially and then a primarily out-of-district population towards the end of the decade. Certainly, Conrad opened in the school year '07-'08, and I can tell you from experience that we opened with 36 kids in the first year and then another 44 the second year, so no data that would impact the decade of information.

What you see is AI duPont High increasing during that time from about 1,100 to 1,400—I think 1,440-something was the peak. Additionally, Cab Calloway had an increase during that time. But that increase at AI duPont was almost exclusively... those students came from McKean and Dickinson. Meaning the total number stayed the same. In 2001, there were 4,700 students that attended our schools, and there were 4,900—so 200 more—10 years later. Really, there was a shift there and an explosion at AI duPont High School, but then some pretty significant declines at McKean and Dickinson during that time.

Vic Leonard: Lots of trailers. 

Mark Pruitt: Lots of trailers at AI duPont High. I could tell you, as somebody that taught at McKean from 1994 to 2005, McKean in the late 1990s had 1,400 kids. Trailers, packing them in. And then that sort of shifted over to AI duPont High School. We're renting trailers wherever kids wanted to go to school.

Questions about this? I totally understand; I cannot emphasize this enough. I've seen these slides—I can talk about these slides in my sleep—and I understand that people have either seen them three times, two times, or one.

Kecia Nesmith: Mark, can you provide next time the capacity of the buildings? I know some are 6-12, but the total capacity?

Mark Pruitt: Yes, for everybody. I would say this about instructional capacity: instructional capacities are based on our utilization of the buildings. So the capacity at a school—if a school has a night school program using five classrooms—will reduce the capacity of that program. That's not to say that the capacity couldn't be more. It’s not a fire capacity; it's an instructional capacity based on the number of classroom instructional spaces that we allot to that school. But yes, I can provide that information for the next meeting. 

Kecia Nesmith: And possibly the physical capacity, because what I heard was trailers, and trailers are no longer safe unless they're embedded in the school building.

Mark Pruitt: We could put something together. I could either do it a month out or two months out: current capacity, ideal capacity, max capacity—something like that.

Mark Pruitt: All right, this next slide is the most recent 15 years. A lot of information on these slides, and I will take you through it again. It's 2010 to this current school year, 2024-2025.

It's important to note that each bar is made up of three different groups of students if you are an attendance zone school, and of course, two different groups of students if you're not an attendance zone school. If you are an attendance zone school: Blue is the students that live in your attendance zone. The goldish-orange are students that live in Red Clay but they're not in your attendance zone. And the gray are out-of-district students. 

Dorrell Green: So in layman's terms, the blue are your feeder pattern students who are attending their feeder pattern school. The orange color are students from other attendance zones within Red Clay who have choiced into that school. The gray are students from outside the Red Clay district.

Mark Pruitt: Choice in-district to that school there, right? In-district choice. And then the gray is the out-of-district choice to that school. I'm looking at this bar right here—this is AI duPont High School. These students live in the AI duPont feeder pattern attendance zone. These students live in McKean and Dickinson but attend AI duPont, and these students live out-of-district.

What you'll see here is a precipitous decline at AI duPont High School: over 1,400 students in 2010 and less than 600 today. That is a minus 800 students at AI duPont High School.

Kecia Nesmith: Over 15 years? 

Mark Pruitt: Over a 15-year period. The number went from 1,400 students to 600; it's actually probably more like an 850-student decline.

Kecia Nesmith: A lot of that was choice? More than half?

Mark Pruitt: Yes, that is important to note. In 2010, they had more students in their building that were McKean and Dickinson attendance zone kids than they did their own kids. I worked there then; it was crowded. What I would say is this: these students did not evaporate. During that same 15-year period, there was an increase of 150 students at McKean, 200 students at The John Dickinson School, 50 students at Cab Calloway, and 400 students at Conrad. Those numbers equal plus 800. So, there has been no loss in the number of high school students over that time period. And by the way, CSW and DMA remained constant during that 15-year period.

Vic Leonard: You had Odyssey in like 2018-19.

Mark Pruitt: There was Odyssey. Odyssey has, since their high school opened in '17, I want to say, they now currently have I think 110 Red Clay students. That's not to say they were in our schools, but they live in the Red Clay attendance zone. They could have been in Odyssey since kindergarten, but they're high school kids that were in the high school program at Odyssey.

Committee Member: I have a question that might need to go back to another data point. So in this 15 years, if I'm understanding it correctly, essentially we've had the same number of students in our high school but shifting where they are. But in that 15-year period, if you look at just Red Clay New Castle County residents, have we increased the number of high school students living in the district? Meaning, if our population went up 15%, are we actually still losing more students?

Mark Pruitt: I think there has been... we're going to get that information from the University of Delaware in the coming month. However, we have reason to believe that that is negligible. For every new parcel that's out, there’s been a closure. This is not Smyrna or Middletown where they're adding schools. Good question.

Obviously, for Cab Calloway, Conrad, CSW, and DMA, they don't have an attendance zone, so they would only have in-district students and out-of-district students. Questions before we move on to the next slide? A lot of information to digest, I get that. You can email me questions along the way during the month.

The next six slides come in sets of two. This slide here shows you Dickinson's current attendance zone. Think of the jigsaw we just put together—this one has a lot more pieces, a complicated puzzle. It has Dickinson's attendance zone in green with the darker blue shaded in, and every one of those circles is a current Dickinson High School student. Not the middle, not the MYP program, but the high school only. That's where they live right now. No specificity to this, but visually it gives you an idea. You also see that they have a part of their feeder up on the north side of Wilmington, near a little bit north of Warner Elementary School. You see a high volume of students that go to Dickinson from about a six-block area. The next slide will put on top of that, with the Dickinson kids, the students that go to Wilmington Charter, DMA, Conrad, and Cab Calloway.

You see an area there in the south of their attendance zone; obviously, if there's nothing, that is forest land or a golf course. You'll see things on there where there's nothing, and that obviously is not residential. Questions? Comments? To me, when I look at this, I look... again, I'm not sure what it says, but it says something.

Next slide will be McKean's. Same thing: green outline, shaded blue is McKean's attendance zone. You see McKean has a lot of students along the Kirkwood Highway corridor. They have two sections of Wilmington: a small section on the west side of Wilmington and a section just south of where the Dickinson students are on the north side of Wilmington. The next slide will put in the four choice schools. Again, you'll see an area there in sort of the middle of their attendance zone—that is the Delcastle Golf Course. Up in the northernmost area would be like Sanford School with a lot of land up there, so why no one would be in that area.

The next slide, same pattern here: this is the AI duPont attendance zone. A lot of in-district choice—well, not a lot, but in-district choice in what would have been the McKean and Dickinson attendance zones. A high number of students in the west side of Wilmington and a small smattering of students in their suburban feeder zone. I'm now going to put the other four schools on it.

Now, what I will say is this: if you maybe were expecting to see the same thing as you did at Dickinson and McKean and you're like, "Well, there's still not a lot of kids there," well, that's because there are a lot of large properties. And also a significant number of students and families that do not use our schools. Particularly if you look up in this area—and again, this is all four: two magnets, two charters, and AI duPont. This would be 41 that runs right up through the center of Hockessin. So this would be like sort of a Hockessin proper area. Not many kids at AI duPont, but I do think a sort of a moment for me when I looked at this for the first time was: "Oh, well, it's not like it fills up when you put a bunch of other schools on there either."

We've gone through six of those slides now; we really are coming down the stretch here. Questions? Comments?

Committee Member: So I noticed that we're looking at specific schools, but there's clearly other schools that we're not including in the data, especially looking at AI duPont High School. Like other private schools? Unless I'm looking at this incorrectly, does this mean that a lot more of these families are maybe choosing a school that we're not listing?

Mark Pruitt: You will see... you're talking about in the northeast corner. In that whole big area that looks like no one lives there, they live on multi-acre properties and are much more likely to use a private school. But I will have some data on, if not the next slide, one of the next two slides, which kind of takes you through Vo-Tech, other charters, and privates.

What this shows here is our high school enrollment over time between 2010 and 2024. Really, this holds true even back 10 years before that. We had about a 250-student increase from 2000 to 2010, but we've held steady from 2009 through 2025. Actually, we ticked back up a little bit in 2025, which is a little more than 5,000 students that we educate in our high schools, of which a little more than 4,000 are Red Clay residents. What we've done in that time is go from educating 5,000 students in five schools to educating 5,000 students in seven schools. That's some analysis with that. While it's a simple slide, I believe it to be a very important slide. Questions? Comments?

Here is the... these next ones are not maps. If you're looking at The John Dickinson School, AI duPont High, and McKean, what that subtotal number is up top is the number of students that are in Red Clay and where they go to school if they are in the Dickinson feeder. Dickinson has 268 kids...

Mark Pruitt: High school students that attend Conrad—they got 87 out of 10... 651, which makes sense, right? The highest number that attend Dickinson: 56 and 51. Right, same thing would play out for AI duPont and McKean. I'll stick with Dickinson.

The Dickinson attendance zone has 292 kids—this is 2023 data, there was some lag on this—that attend The Charter School of Wilmington. 119 attend DMA. 414 students live in the Dickinson attendance zone and attend New Castle County Vo-Tech. 53 attend other charters like Odyssey, and 34 attend private schools, for a total of 2,295 students that live in the Dickinson attendance zone.

⏯1:31:27 Shawn Snyder: Can you explain what those totals mean one more time? To make sure it's clear, the bottom total?

Mark Pruitt: Yeah, this is the number of students that attend school—basically 9th through 12th graders—that could attend Dickinson and did attend to your lag here. This is pretty much all; there may be some homeschoolers in there. Now, I would contend, if you look at this, you have to say there are more students that are currently in the Dickinson attendance zone, and then even more so McKean, when compared to AI duPont. I also think you need to consider the fact that AI duPont has twice as many kids that attend private schools. I feel comfortable in saying if they lived in the McKean or Dickinson feeder, they wouldn't then attend Dickinson, right? They’re private school kids. There is a long history of private school attendance in New Castle County that goes back many, many years prior to DMA. I think that answered... I think a couple of people had questions about where else might they be. I think Caitlin had a question about that. Does this help at all?

Caitlin Merto: It does. I'm also curious—and I don't know if we'll see it in tonight's data—but I was just looking at private schools. You have some people that are lifers there, you know, who start out as Pre-K or Kindergarten and continue all the way up. I'm just kind of curious how many of these students who are in private, how long they attended private school. Will we see that type of data?

Mark Pruitt: I'll see what we could do. That was challenging to get. 

Shawn Snyder: The private schools don't share the data sets out the way the public systems do because they don't have to. Since they're not funded, if the DOE asks, they can be like, "Well, no." There's no funding mechanism to force them. A lot of this was calling the actual schools and trying to get somebody on the phone to get the number.

Mark Pruitt: Well, yeah. What we ended up being able to get is the Department of Education had a listing of private school kids. But our office—by our office I mean Beth and a couple of folks that did a lot of work—had to literally type in the address and check it as to whether or not they were in Red Clay, and if so, which of the three. It was a labor-intensive activity.

Committee Member: How many of these private schools are 501(c)(3)?

Mark Pruitt: I couldn't tell you. When I talk private, I'm talking about private, parochial, religious-based, but I wouldn't know as to their status.

Dorrell Green: Traditionally, we have I want to say 17 private, parochial, or independent schools in our geographic boundaries. But I know our Office of Federal Programs, through federal programming like Title II and Title IV, have consultations because they may serve Red Clay students in those schools and they get access to that federal funding. So we could probably get a more definitive number, but overall enrollment is something that they capture from—like you said—if they have 501(c)(3) status, that may be publicly available data. Probably not worth trying to track them K through 12 because of the in and out.

Vic Leonard: What was the bottom line on that last slide on the attendance shortfall?

Mark Pruitt: Total feeder kids? Do they have less kids in their attendance zone? Yep, no question. I made a note of that as the big-picture item.

Dorrell Green: They have a general lower number in their attendance zone and then less students in that overall from the macro level actually attending.

All right, here is our current enrollment. For the sake of time, I am going to do a hard stop in 10 minutes, and I do want to get through a couple of other slides. But here is the current enrollment of our schools, whether they’re an attendance zone school or a choice program. In the case of Cab Calloway, Conrad, and Dickinson, you’ll see they have both sides populated because they’re 6-12. This can be important as we start to look at aligning. You go back to that first slide and go, "Well, that makes sense what these attendance zones look like."

Here is the enrollment of attendance zone high schools by their middle school attendance zone. Sounds confusing, but I'll say this: The John Dickinson School has 30 kids that live in the AI duPont Middle feeder, 28 that live in the H.B. duPont feeder, 238 at Skyline, and 473 at Stanton, for an in-district subtotal of 769. Dickinson's high school also has 70 out-of-district students for a total of 839 students.

Just as importantly is the bottom total. High school students that live in the AI duPont Middle attendance zone: there are 488 of them. H.B. duPont: 297. A lot of things to pull from this. AI duPont Middle only has three grades, so they would have about 600 possible students, of which 488 attend our attendance zone schools. H.B. duPont would have about 1,000 possible students in this population, of which only 297 attend our attendance zone schools.

Committee Member: And the number you're saying, 1,000—you know that just from the data?

Mark Pruitt: Well, I know H.B. duPont has 750 students, but I know we’re looking at four grades instead of three, so I’m adding an additional 33% to that number. Where this could become helpful is you could go, "Well, if we wanted to align and make more straight-line feeder patterns..." Maddie, we know there's 784 students that go to these three schools. That’s about a school. Not really what we want—we’d like to have 1,000—but that’s a number. So you can just say, "Well, Stanton feeds to this school." That could be helpful information.

The other thing that I think is important to note is that the in-district subtotal of these three schools is 2,086 students, when all three of these schools had more than 1,000 in-district students 15 years ago. So there’s 2,086 students in our district that attend our three attendance zone high schools, and we're able to support them to a certain degree to keep their programming up by adding an additional 255 out-of-district students for a total of 2,341 at those three schools.

Committee Member: So 2,341 is the total high school students at Dickinson, McKean, and AI duPont?

Mark Pruitt: Yes. Now, questions? Comments?

Which brings us to the last couple of slides here, which is the impact of enrollment—or lack thereof—on any high school, but particularly on comprehensive attendance zone high schools that need a strong and vibrant enrollment to offer everything to everyone. An attendance zone school is meant to meet the needs of a diverse student population, and when your enrollment declines, it impacts advanced coursework opportunities, elective and CTE programming opportunities, extracurricular opportunities, and athletic opportunities, just to name a few.

Without getting into the detail, I'm glad to talk about how we earn teachers in this school district. Simply put, if it's a regular education student in secondary schools, every 20 students earns us an educator. If a student has disabilities but is basic/simplistic in their needs, it is 8.4, 6, and 2.6 depending on their level of need. But let's take the IEPs out for the simplicity of the math: if there were 100 students in a school, that would earn you five teachers. Some students with some special needs, let’s call it six. If you had 100 students in high school, it would be very difficult to meet the needs of courses for every one of those 100 students.

If there's 2,000 students in a high school—William Penn, for example, has been around 2,000 students for many, many years—I don’t even know what 2,000 divided by 20 is. Then you add a... probably 150... I don’t know.

Committee Member: 100?

Mark Pruitt: 100. Press you know... I feel like I was behind. High-order thinking, now you’re struggling with basic adding. So with some of the advisors for special education, you get 140 or 240. The level of program that you can provide curricularly and extracurricularly has a lot more flexibility the larger the number. 

Dorrell Green: An example of that would be Colonial or William Penn; one of their better things is the number of programs they’re able to offer. When you have 2,300 students being the single high school, you generate those units and you can have diverse programming. Again, the larger number, because of what you earn, goes back to Mark's original point. With less numbers, although you want to be innovative with programs, a lot of times those programs are anchored to an educator. Let’s say that educator decides to leave; then it's hard to replace or backfill that educator. Then the program goes away, which then becomes to the detriment of the high school. You’re constantly trying to innovate your way to draw programming. That’s the important thing when we have this conversation and why we're looking at attendance zones and enrollment in programs. When we look at it holistically, we can establish a program, but then most often when you have lower enrollment, that comes at the expense of whomever that educator is ultimately teaching.

Mark Pruitt: I'll use two examples here, very simple, pulled from some data we have over the last couple of weeks. College access course offerings for this school year: this creates some inequity. Val talked about how every student should be able to go to a great school. I can tell you the work that the folks do at McKean and AI duPont is yeoman's work. They're doing more with less. They’re teaching two or three AP courses to try to keep it alive, but in some ways, it's simply not possible. You look at the number of dual enrollment courses at a magnet school with lesser students: 29 and 30. But the number of dual enrollment, Advanced Placement, and IB courses at AI duPont, McKean, and Dickinson? Those numbers have fallen to 12, 12, and 15.

I gave you four options. I'll go to extracurricular now, or athletic. We look at athletics; we look at developmental programs. Having a JV program where you can learn the sport just to be involved and build your skills: AI duPont High School has 5 JV programs out of 13 possible. McKean: 3. Dickinson: 3. Conrad, CSW, and DMA: 9, 11, and 12.

Dorrell Green: I also want to highlight two things as it relates to this. One, I think the staff across all of our buildings are obviously worth their weight in gold and they live with the conditions that have been established. We also want to be mindful that we don’t shame schools that do the work because we’re addressing the system and not necessarily the people that are in it to do the work.

But then the other point to make too is when you look at our magnet and the charter options, they’re also capped. They know they’re going to get a static enrollment each year, which also builds stability and their ability to offer those set programs. Our other schools are dealing with an influx of mobility coming in and out. You're kind of going with the ebbs and flows: "This year you can have this program because you have a cohort of students come through." Then that cohort of students leaves.

That’s just not indicative of Red Clay; we see that across New Castle County. But again, we're more of a microcosm of the system at play as it relates to choice and charter. It’s more impactful because we have those in-district offerings and you get preference in Red Clay if you’re a Red Clay resident. It comes at the expense of the kind of traditional programming because our choice for our magnet and charter options are for Red Clay students, prioritized before anyone else. There was a point in time they were open more broadly and could pull from... so just two points worth noting as we look at the numbers: not to shame the people, but also understand the context of how those magnet and charter programs have been established. DMA knows what they're going to get next year. Conrad, through the choice window, knows the number of students they're going to get next year. That also has an impact on the program, where our traditional schools don't know.

Vic Leonard: If I can add that at AI duPont High in 2010, when we had 1,400 students, then we went to 2015 and had 600 to 700 kids. We had the same teachers when I was there. Teachers didn't change, but the enrollment went down still. How do you put that together? It’s the same teachers teaching the same stuff.

Dorrell Green: Well, you also lose teachers when you're over the... that goes back to...

⏯1:48:45 Vic Leonard: But why did it go down? We had the same teachers there when we were third in the state in academics with 1,400 kids. Then you go to where we are now. They had the same teaching staff.

Dorrell Green: That's the point though. When you're losing the class, you're losing teachers. You can't keep the same number of teachers.

Vic Leonard: I understand. Something happened. Something else happened that we need to figure out.

Mark Pruitt: I can tell you what I believed happened because I was at both of these schools at this transition. Conrad Schools of Science opened right at the beginning.  

Vic Leonard: We went down to a thousand, we stayed there in 2015, then off the cliff. What happened?

Committee Member: But didn’t Charter School of Wilmington at some point jump in with more -

Dorrell Green: The policy then changed where you had to be an in-district student. In essence, through policy, you start to cannibalize in-district, giving those families who had the option the priority.

Jose Matthews: To make that clear, the Board... so it was almost like we were shooting ourselves in the foot for lack of a better word.

Committee Member: Kim Williams was very passionate about - 

Jose Matthews: I can understand the logic part: it’s a Red Clay school, we wanted Red Clay families to be prioritized. But when you have a set pool, you're limited in how much. 

Dorrell Green: That goes back to how I opened—the purpose of this committee is for us to not look at a singular school in a vacuum. That’s what happened prior to this; we looked at schools in a vacuum, not understanding what’s the broader implication on Red Clay as a whole. You didn't do 5-to-10-year projections. It was in the moment: "Let’s create this option in the moment to attract." And then it became, "Well, you're pulling more from the outside, so let’s give it to Red Clay students," without actually projecting what that looks like 5, 10, 15 years down the road.

If you look at the historical data, when decisions were made in isolation, it served a purpose during that period of time, but no one looked for forecasting. I think that’s an important part of this committee—a lot of this work also has to do some forecasting. Going back to that slide where AI duPont was at its peak with 1,400, you were also pulling from McKean and Dickinson. They still had more out-of-feeder students in those numbers than they had AI duPont feeder students. But no one projected.

Then we established: let's build Conrad, let's build CSW, let's look at DMA. All wonderful options because it makes us who we are, but we’ve got to understand and come to grips as to who we are. I've been in this role six years in March, and it's always perplexing to me how folks under the Red Clay Consolidated School District umbrella only have one unique perspective about how they see this district. That's even from an employee perspective. The number of folks who generally have not had the opportunity to actually engage across the district... The only time that it's really happened probably most recently is our Block Party, where you actually get to see this district in totality of who we are and how we're represented as the Red Clay Consolidated School District.

While we have some work cut out ahead of us, we also have some opportunities—opportunities to look at Career Technical at anchor pathways. How do we consolidate some things so that every student, regardless of where you live, you have access to it while also being true to what we've established? If you are that math/science focused student, Conrad should be your choice. If you are that student who wants to be performance-based and you want to specialize and master in the arts, Cab Calloway can be your choice. But we also can't do it at the expense of just elevating those schools as your only option or only choice in Red Clay at the expense of our traditional high schools who have rich history. The same can be said for McKean. When I coached at McKean as an elementary school teacher—actually, that’s where Mr. Pruitt and I met, we coached varsity football together—on my way from Lewis Elementary to McKean, I would figure out who the student athlete was that decided they were going to go home and not show up for practice and try to bring them with me.

We really have an opportunity. As demoralizing as some of this data can be, and while we can wrestle with why certain decisions were made, we do have an opportunity before us to really live out the essence of who we are and the vision for what this district is. Truly, I’m excited about this opportunity. As demoralizing and unequitable as the data bears out—and we weren’t here when certain decisions were made—we do have the opportunity to do some course corrections so that everyone in the community can benefit.

Mark Pruitt: There’s a couple of slides for middle school. We'll start with those middle school slides next meeting, but be thinking about the data. Reconsider it and take some time over the next month. I'll tell you the framework for how we're going to do this: we're going to get into some small groups—an administrator, a School Board member, an educator, a member of the public—and take a look. It has to be a safe environment for us; everything has to be on the table. There’s no such thing as a bad idea. We'll start to hone in on what we think collectively as we do this work. I appreciate everyone.

As we think of solutions, I think you need to think not in terms of who has gone to these schools, but an eight or nine-year-old who’s going to go to these schools over the next two or three years for middle school, or high school in six or seven years. What can we do to make what’s already a good experience at all of our schools an even better experience? I appreciate everyone’s willingness to serve. Hopefully you got a lot out of it.

We will go to the second half of public comment. We will start in-person. Jenny, do you have anything you'd like to add?

⏯1:55:29 Jenny Howard: No, I was just going to say I think this is a really good opportunity to maybe rebrand our secondary schools.

Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much. We do have one person remotely who is going to provide public comment: Brenda Steffon.

⏯1:55:58 Brenda Steffon: Yes, thank you. I want to just emulate some of the comments that were said here by the people attending. I think this is a great moment for this committee and the Board to really redefine what does it means to be in the Red Clay Consolidated School District, which has historically been very dynamic. We are looking at data here that first impressions can lead to a lot of gut responses, and I really applaud the efforts of this committee to really stretch the ideas of what is possible on top of what you're seeing as the data. Sometimes move out of the mindset of what you hear and actually approach it from a place of what it is within the school and within the community. I wish you all luck and I look forward to following along as a public person.

Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much for your comments. I could have a motion to adjourn the meeting?

Jose Matthews: Motion.

Mark Pruitt: Second?

Victor J. Leonard, Sr.: Second.

Mark Pruitt: All in favor?

Committee: Aye.

Mark Pruitt: Anyone not want to finish?

🌐Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee Webpage

January 21, 2025 Meeting Materials

📁Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee Meeting Rolling Slides January 21, 2025

📹Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee January 21, 2025 Recording

📄Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee January 21, 2025 Meeting Minutes For convenience, the full meeting minutes are typed below. 

Attendees were not included in the minutes.

January 21, 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 

Agenda Items 

Opening Items 

• Introductions 

• Welcome from Superintendent Green 

• Public Comment (If Requested) 

New Business 

• Strategic Plan Overview 

• The Committee’s Charge 

• Monthly Meetings 

• Resources Available 

• Meeting Norms 

• Opening Activity 

• The Connection Between Enrollment and Programming 

• History & Data 

• Requests for Additional Data 

• Homework- Begin Brainstorming 

• Adjourn 

Action Items 

Next Meeting TBD 

This meeting is open to the public. 

The draft meeting minutes will be posted on the district’s website, redclayschools.com, within 3 business days of the meeting