Mar 19 2025
Board Meeting

▼Full Transcript Below

1. Public Comment
   ⏯ 0:10:52

   • • Charles Lockerman (Friends of AI) Advocated for increased busing and redrawn attendance zones to boost enrollment and equity,

2. Board Committee Report
   ⏯ 1:12:16 -1:16:06

   • • Board Members Kecia Nesmith and Vic Leonard provided an update on the Secondary Attendance Zone and Secondary Programming Committee February 19 meeting. They emphasized the importance of diverse community input and praised the brainstorming of committee members.

⏯ 0:10:52

Charles Lockerman: Good evening and welcome. Thank you for your time tonight. My name is Charles Lockerman. I am speaking with Friends of AI as an advocate for AI. It's well known that this school is in need of help and changes the zone feeder patterns to strengthen the AI enrollment. I mean, you can't have Dickinson and McCain thriving at a thousand students and that's optimal numbers. But the disparity is right in front of you. And AI is only at a at 550 students. And like a house that has needs that need to be updated due to building code changes, the Red Clay feeder pattern zones are outdated and no longer reflect equal distribution of registered students within all district schools. So a consolidated district would have equal dispersion. And right now the numbers say we don't have that. There's also been rumblings in the past couple months of closing AI and I was wondering if you any of you could speak to that because that would be a travesty. The legacy of AI both as a historical school and also bearing the name DuPont who is you know you can't say Delaware history without DuPont being mentioned they need to be carried on and that's why I'm here today because there's a five-year plan to create a charter school Wilmington but how will that affect our middle schools how does that affect the other patterns So, like I said, the numbers tell the story here. The zone distribution, the feeder patterns outdated. It's not distributing equally to all the schools within the district. And to be consolidated, you need equal distribution. So, please, like I said, the numbers tell the story here. The zone distribution, the feeder patterns outdated. It's not apologies for the technical distributing equally to all the schools within the district. And to be consolidated, you need equal dist. We have a playback. No. Okay. I'm I'm not a ventriloquist. I'm not I'm not that skilled. I thought you were working some magic down there. The only magic I want to work is to get AI back to 700 to a,000 students and help those students in any way they need it. Thank you. 

⏯ 1:12:16 -1:16:06

Kecia Nesmith: I was there with Mr. Leonard. Yeah, I have a couple things to sum it up. So it was held we talked about a number of things. It was a really good meeting. I just have to say I think kudos to Mr. Pruitt and those who are supporting helping him put these together. I think they were very engaging. I liked that we were kind of assigned to certain tables because it gave us a chance to interact with people that we didn't know and share ideas respectfully and it was really a good chance to be able to brainstorm ideas and so I heard something in public comment about you know different things that came up. They're literally just ideas. And so I think it it's a safe place hopefully to be able to share thoughts and then come to consensus at some point. Some of the big pieces that we talked about were a review of the middle school and instructional capacity data. Then this helped inform our discussions on enrollment patterns and facility usage. We talked a little bit about that. We had again a brainstorming session on how to improve the attendance zones and the programming. And a key takeaway was the importance of gathering input from community stakeholders particularly ensuring that we have a diverse representation of Wilmington families in our discussion. And then uh we identify additional data needs which we'll we'll discuss when we have our meeting tomorrow. And then we also have tomorrow's meeting and we'll be looking at our charge and our goal and how the Redding Consortium for educational equity whatever their decisions are and the implications and we'll be focusing on improving educational opportunities for all of our schools in in current initiatives. Equitable school funding because this is a big piece of the work that we do that's not only within our school system but also this at the state level how we how we reconfigure schools how we expand access to highquality programs and so I really commend everyone for their work I know this is going to be long work it won't be a perfect solution in 10 months but I think engaging the community and our legislators because there are some areas that we do not have control over. So, I'm looking forward to tomorrow's meeting and I think Mr. Leonard has something to add. 

Vic Leonard: Yes, I do. Just a couple general comments about it. The group's very productive not only identifying and highlighting some of the inequities and inconsistencies in our attendance zones and programs across the secondary schools but also brainstorming possible solutions to some of these issues our schools may be subjected to. To make up the group is pretty pretty neat. We have educators, administrators, community members, Board Members, and district personnel that provide a wide range of experience and expertise with an atmosphere of varying opinions and ideas that enables a robust discussion. And it was robust. I enjoyed it tremendously. The work will help make the district, schools, institutions of opportunity for all students that enables them to be successful in education and life. A big shout out to Mr. Pruitt for doing a great job organizing these meetings with relative activities and information to help stimulate our thinking while we're in the meeting. Thank you, Mr. Pruitt. Appreciate it. And one other thing I'll add as one of the variables besides Redding and WLC is whether Wilmington Charter will expanded to 6 to 8 or not. I know that was in their five-year plan.So, thank you again, Mr. Pruitt. Great job. 

🌐Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee webpage

February 19, 2025 Meeting Materials

📁Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee Meeting Rolling Slides February 19, 2025

📹Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee February 19, 2025 Recording

📄Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee February 19, 2025 Meeting Minutes For convenience, the full meeting minutes are typed below. 

February 19, 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

Jay Bastianelli, Tawands Bond, Thomas Brucker, Emily Carroll, Amin Farooqui, Antonio Gomes, Val Gould, Vic Leonard, Jose Matthews, Caitlin Merto, Jodi Muffley, Kecia Nesmith, Mark Pruitt, Jennifer Recchiuti, Maddie Reitemeyer, Eric Sanford, Shawn Snyder, Kendra Todd-Dixon, Reggie Worlds. 

Jay Bastianelli made a motion to start the meeting at 6pm, seconded by Vic Leonard. Motion passed unanimously. 

Agenda Items 

Opening Items 

• Introductions 

• Public Comment - Jason Gleber 

• Approve Minutes from January 21st. Caitlin Merto made a motion to approve the minutes, seconded by Shawn Snyder. Motion passed unanimously. 

New Business 

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

• Meeting Norms - Mr. Pruitt 

• Middle School Data- Mr. Pruitt with committee discussion 

• Instructional Capacity Data - Mr. Pruitt with committee discussion 

• Brainstorming - All 

• Discussion & Analysis -All 

  • Committee members shared ideas and Mr. Pruitt captured these ideas. 

  • During the discussion it was decided that it is essential the committee brings in viewpoints from communities, stakeholders (city of Wilmington families) 

• Requests for Additional Data 

• Public Comment - Jared Obstfeld, Brenda Steffon 

• Adjourn - Jose Matthews made a motion to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Kecia Red Clay Consolidated School District 1 Nesmith. Motion passed unanimously. Meeting adjourned at 8pm. 

Action Items

• Mr. Pruitt will invite district guests to share information on related topics to the committee's work. 

• Mr. Pruitt will send out information from brainstorm activity to committee members for review and edits. 

Next Meeting March 20, 2025 @6pm at RCCSD Board Rm, 1502 Spruce Ave, Wilmington, DE 19805 

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.