Mar 20 2025
AZ Committee Meeting

▼Full Transcript Below

1. Public Comment
   ⏯ 5:20 - 10:11:

   • • Hadrian Cissel (parent): shared comments from the previous meeting on behalf of Jason Gleber (Charter School of Wilmington), who expressed interest in the Charter School of Wilmington potentially expanding into the McKean High School.  Audio was not recorded. 

     • Jenny Howard (parent): raised concerns about whether 6-12 schools were developmentally appropriate; suggested removing middle school from magnet program; cautioned CSW expansion would harm enrollment in district. 

⏯ 1:52:32

• • • Brenda Steffon (Friends of AI): highlighted lack of AIHS PTA and boosters and the need for alumni support in the community. Reiterated timeline for implementation is 26-27, not 27-28.

2. Superintendent's Report on Redding Consortium and its impact on Red Clay & Committee Discussion

     ⏯ 14:15 - 31:35

• Superintendent Dorrell Green provided an update on the Redding Consortium's efforts regarding Wilmington redistricting

3. Brainstorming and Programming Models

⏯ 32:28 - 1:06:15

• Committee Discussion regarding 12 ideas from previous meeting.

4. Presentation on CTE Innovation Campus models from Colorado and Maryland.

⏯ 1:08:08 - 1:23:34 

• Superintendent Dorrell Green discussed his vision for district wide equity and credentialing; explained competition with VoTech. 

• Mark Pruitt and the committee discussed two specific Innovation campus models and ways Red Clay can adapt ideas.

5. Presentation on Finances, Facilities, HR, Transportation

⏯ 1:25:36 - 1:48:19

• Chief Operating Officer, Ted Ammann, provided an impact assessment of the committee's ideas.

⏯ 2:47 Mark Pruitt: We’ve got Dr. Ammann working for us as a doorman; we're set. We are going to get started here. If you don't have - we've got hard copies of minutes, agenda and our brainstorming ideas from last meeting, you're welcome to a copy of those as we move along here. We'll wait just a few more seconds for folks. If you don't have the three documents up front here you can grab those and at this point, if I could have someone on the committee make a motion to bring the meeting to order. Mr. Leonard. Seconded by Shawn Snyder.  All in favor? Unanimous and we are moving along here. 

I’d like to welcome everyone to our third meeting. This is a school board Programming and Attendance Zone Committee meeting.  Our agenda for this evening. I sent this out about - it's been posted for a week. Also sent it to you all vía email a week ago. We'll start with public comment, approve the minutes, review some key documents. That keeps us on target. We will get a Redding update. Some folks had asked about a Redding update and implications. Take a look at our brainstorming results and take a look at some models from around the country. We have a guest speaker here, Chief of Operations, Dr. Ted Ammann, who is here to maybe go through some of the implications of some of our ideas. Also we'll be here to answer questions, some analysis and discussion, take a quick straw poll to see where we stand  hopefully if we have enough time. 

Public comment. You can't give public comment twice, but we will allow anyone who was unable to be here at the beginning to also give it at the end in case they arrived late. So we are up for public comment. Does anyone in person, would they like to give public comment at this time? Hadrian, I know you would - would you like to do it now? 

⏯ 5:08 Hadrian Cissel: Good evening. My name is Hadrian Cissel. Before I start, I just want to make could those on zoom actually hear what I'm saying?

Mark Pruitt: You could certainly step forward if you'd like.

⏯ 5:20 Hadrian Cissel: Okay. I was just making sure I could be heard. Okay, great. I asked to double check because of the last meeting of the attendance zone programming committee on February 19th, the in-person public comment that was given was not broadcast. As a member of the public, who was present in person at the last meeting, I didn't hear that public comment and feel it's important that the wider Red Clay community hear it, so I will quote that public commenter now for the public's benefit.  “Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Jason Gleber. I'm one of the two parent representatives on the Charter School of Wilmington’s board and I'm also the head of our Advancement committee. I'd like to start by thanking the committee here for your time and efforts you're putting into this project. I know this is a labor of love and not an easy task so thank you very much for what you're doing. I would like it to be known that the charter is eager to receive the results of the reasoning as we believe that the outcome will greatly benefit the CSW community and moving forward with our expansion efforts. CSW hopes to be able to take advantage of whatever school building this community needs to be not needed or available, so that we're able to offer our amazing programs that impact more kids in the Red Clay school district at the high school level. Regardless of which school that may be, we are preparing behind the scenes to be in the best position to grow and advance our position within this great community. If we had our choice, McKean would probably be an amazing location for us to expand into and if we were to embrace that decision, we were to make that campus the best possible location for our school. I appreciate all of you for allowing me to speak this evening.” And that was his public comment. Thank you for giving me the time to speak and put that public comment on the record.

Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much. Anyone else in person would like to give? Ms. Howard? 

Jenny Howard: Do I stand?

Mark Pruitt: Whatever you're most comfortable.

⏯ 7:00 Jenny Howard: Okay. So I'm really sorry that I missed the last meeting. I listened to it online. I was definitely ill with the flu. So I had some ideas and I was really sad that I couldn't say them last time. I was so sick. But everyone, just please hear me out on some of the big ideas that I did not hear mentioned. So here we go. My first thought is that 6-12 schools are not developmentally appropriate for either set of grade spans. So the  schedule is not appropriate. Getting up earlier in the morning and then also just personal, as a personal note, I was hesitant too about sending my daughter to a school that had grades 6-12 because my daughter has a summer birthday and she's 11 still. So that would potentially put an 11 year old, who just turned 11, so just fresh 11, in 6th grade with, you know, a 12th grader. So that's just my own personal opinion about why I don't think the 6-12 grade spans are a good idea. The other thing I was thinking is perhaps - I know this is not going to be a popular comment or suggestion but just something to think about. When you have a fourth and fifth grade student and there's these two magnet options that are amazing, it puts a lot of pressure on these kids to figure out what they want to do for like quote unquote “the rest of their life” like if they're going to the science school or animal science or whatever it may be so I'm going to say it again - this is just a thought perhaps we take the sixth through eighth graders out of the magnet programs completely. Maybe condense the two magnet schools together, just making them high schools. So there's that thought too. The other thing that I looked at was I thought of it at a different standpoint too about the capacities of our buildings. So like we have so many seats right now and know we're not doing elementary, but there are seats in some of our buildings like for example like that Warner is only at 58% capacity. I mean, is there room to make a middle school in the city for those kids? Like right now they're going all the way to HB which is so far. So that's other thing I thought of. Like maybe we should be looking at the seats that are open. We're only at 54% capacity and then the last thing i wanted to say, thanks for letting me talk, and this is also going to probably make me a target. I think the public deserves to know that the comment that Hadrian just made from the last meeting which was from CSW, I have no problem with CSW. I have friends who send their kids there. However, we don't owe CSW anything. They actually lived rent free in our building for a while. Sorry I’ll wrap up. 

Mark Pruitt: It’s ok, go ahead. 

⏯ 10:11 Jenny Howard: They lived rent free in our building for a while. We just re-did their locker room. That's their sports, that we now have to pay them for. So I just hope that when we talk about possibly closing a building, we don't just give up one of our buildings to them because also, if they expand, that's going to harm us as well. So thank you for hearing me out. I know it was a lot and I didn't have it written down but thank you.

Mark Pruitt: Okay, anyone else in person would like to give public comment? Anyone anyone on zoom would like to give public comment?

Unknown Speaker: Not this time.

Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much. We’ll move on. Thank you very much. At this point everyone should have, I'm not going to open that link, but we have draft minutes from last month. I sent those out to you just after last month's meeting so if you did not get a chance to take a look at those, look at those now. It's also worth noting that it's not a transcript but we do have the audio and video from our meetings up on the website so we'll wait for a moment or two to let you take a look at those and then I’ll take a motion to accept or amend those meeting minutes. We have a motion to accept from Mr. Matthews. Do we have a second? Ms. Muffley?

Jodi Muffley: I second.

Mark Pruitt: Now take some time here. Does anybody see any changes that we need to make or discussion? Okay everyone in favor of accepting the minutes?

Group: Aye.

Mark Pruitt:  Minutes passed. Unanimous.  

⏯ 11:55 Mark Pruitt: Alright, we’ve seen these next couple of slides a couple of times, but we have our goals for the committee. There they are. We’re not going to read through those, as we’re now in our third meeting. We also have our norms, which we operate. Very important. We have our still the same tentative timeline up there. Okay, but I would mention that we could discuss this at the end, but I do not believe—I think we had a very aggressive goal to be able to have our April meeting be some sort of Town Hall. I do not believe we’re there yet, so I would would—we could discuss that at the end, but I would like to have the April date, if my recommendation was that our April date be another meeting in preparation, possibly for a slotted-in Town Hall time. But we can get to that. And it’s also worth noting that, you know, considerations will need to be given to our timeline at some point here along the process. You know, are we ready to move forward with recommendations to the school board in July, or will we have to make a request for additional time, or add additional meetings, those types of things. We’re not there yet, but, you know, those are things that we could certainly ask the school board—of course, which three members are here with us tonight. Questions about the timeline at this point?

⏯ 13:32 Unknown Speaker: So, you’re going to discuss that with the Board?

Mark Pruitt: We can discuss that. My goal is to discuss that at the end. Yep, the timeline, yeah. And let’s get—let’s see if we get through tonight, and then we can have that discussion. It’s on one of the final slides. Okay, there’s been a—there was a request last meeting. I spoke to Redding a bit. Dr. Green is back with us this evening and is prepared to give us updates and potential implications of decisions for upcoming decisions for the Redding Consortium. Dr. Green?

Dorrell Green: How much time do I have?

[Group laughter] 

Mark Pruitt: Three minutes and 30 seconds. 

⏯ 14:15 Dorrell Green: So, for those that are unfamiliar with Redding, I think maybe just some grounding of the Redding Consortium. So there have been several iterations of what is now known as the Redding Consortium. These were all efforts that have been established at the city to really look at education in the city of Wilmington. It actually started back in early 2000 with the Wilmington Schools Commission, which looked at the implications of the Neighborhood Schools Act, which basically meant that children had to go to school closest to home in the city of Wilmington, specifically those in grades K–8. And each of the districts serving the city of Wilmington—or three - Red Clay Consolidated School District being one, Brandywine School District, and the Christine School District—actually had to submit redistricting plans to the city to basically relocate those students who were traditionally being bused to suburban schools to go to school closest to home. Of the three districts, the Brandywine district [inaudible] segregation order in place. So as it stands now, Brandywine only has Harlan Elementary, which is really their only comprehensive city elementary school, which is actually one of 9 of the Wilmington Learning Collaborative schools, which is another state initiative. Then it went to the Wilmington Education Commission. So, yeah, we actually, which were two state initiatives, basically, to really look at the same thing: how do you look at education within the city of Wilmington?

We actually got to the point where it was a pseudo-agreement between Red Clay and Christina, but it fell apart because the General Assembly didn’t necessarily fund the transition of the capital buildings to have Red Clay take over schools within the Christina school district. The Redding Consortium was then formed by Senator Tizzy Lockman and Representative Nnamdi Chukwuocha to really go back to look at the redistricting of the city of Wilmington.

So, the Carney administration had reauthorized or repurposed what was the Redding, and then Covid happened. And so the redistricting efforts to look at redistricting kind of stalled. Redding went on to support other initiatives, things such as early childhood educator development and supports, a whole host of other things. And now they’ve gotten back to focusing on what they were established to do, which is redistricting.

We just had a most recent meeting, which was Saturday, where we partnered—and I say “we” because I’m a part of the Redding Consortium as a member. Each of the superintendents serving the city of Wilmington, including New Castle County Vo-Tech, are all members of it. Partnered with American Institute for Research. Most often when we look at schools, we look at the conditions of schools. We do what’s called a school needs assessment. As a Consortium member, I personally felt that if any district were to have to reconstitute or take on any additional portion of the city, because the Redding Consortium did vote May 19th of 2024 to remove Christina from the city of Wilmington and begin, basically, an 18-month process to provide an interim plan to the Delaware State Board of Education for their approval. And that plan is written in Delaware Code Title 14, where there are basically 13 stipulations that that plan has to have in place.

And so now the Consortium is in the process of having a series of meetings. There are three subcommittees that have been formed: a financial impact subcommittee, operational impact subcommittee, and a community engagement subcommittee. Each of those subcommittees have various representatives, not only from school districts, but from communities, community partners that serve on there. And there was just a retreat on Saturday where the American Institute for Research, they’re actually conducting a landscape analysis. One of the recommendations that I felt was important, because just moving boundaries and lines won’t fix the problem. I mean, in essence, right now there are 11 governing bodies that oversee 11,000 school-aged children, and it’s actually—there are over 20 governing bodies that govern over 11,000 school-aged children between traditional districts, charters, and vocational technical. So, within the city of Wilmington, physically, there are 11. When you look at school districts and you look at charters, so there are 11 governing bodies within the geographic boundaries of the city of Wilmington.

And so they're now discussing there were 9 options that were elevated for discussion at the retreat that range from - and i'll make sure that you get documentation just to follow up for homework if you want some quiet reading - so look at each of the singleton school districts including Colonial taking on all of the City of Wilmington, whether Red Clay takes on all the City of Wilmington, Christina takes on the City of Wilmington. Excuse me, Brandywine takes all of the City of Wilmington. 

All of those options were removed from the table. And so remaining options are yet to be clearly defined. Metropolitan school district. What does a Northern New Castle County district look like? What does the Wilmington school district look like or what does a combination of two or fewer school districts, whether that's a Red Clay/Colonial combination, a Red Clay/Brandywine or Brandywine/Colonial or you know vice versa to really look at how do you take and recapitalize the Christina portion and look at redistricting. 

Again but the caution is looking at this landscape analysis really looking at the social drivers of health. Not social determinants because there's a difference between a determinant and a driver. Drivers are things that we truly have the ability to change. So when we look at most of the city, it’s segregated based on housing and if you're talking about a neighborhood school, your school is going to look - based on feeder pattern that’s established. So how do you look at equity and balance in that regard. Access to health care, access to programming. 

And so the first phase of the AIR landscape analysis was presented. They basically did community interviews. So they looked at community-based organizations folks who also serve and partner with schools. I want to say that they were maybe 13, and now they're going to move into phase two. But there's also what is known as participatory action research that will actually involve students in this as the researchers to actually help. Because again when we're talking about the lived conditions, who knows best those who are actually experiencing those conditions to help inform the work. 

So that's kind of where Redding sits now. I literally just tried to give you 30 years of history in three minutes and 30 seconds and I may have went over my time a little bit but i will make sure that you get documentation but if it pricked anything in anyone's mind that I can answer right now I'm happy to clarify anything that might be swirling in your mind.

⏯ 22:00 Maddie Reitemeyer: Sorry I tried really hard to follow and I just want to make sure I heard it and then I might have a follow up question. So if I heard it right, Christina not being in the city, and then Colonial, Red Clay and Brandywine absorbing them in some capacity that's off?

Dorrell Green: No because the [inaudible] that's off the table, well that's not off. A single district taking on all the city is off the table, right, and then Red Clay’s part, because then you're really looking at Red Clay going from 15,000 to 20,000 and what we also looked at is the current number of students, who, so for Colonial, for example, of their city’s portion of which is predominantly the east side of Wilmington, there are really only about 260 students within the city that actually currently attend Colonial schools. That doesn't mean that Colonial isn’t their feeder, but they're likely in a charter, right. They're likely at East Side Charter. They're likely attending Thomas Edison Charter, but yet they're in Colonial’s feeder pattern. 

Christina is the only non-contiguous school district, which basically means they have a 16-mile barrier between Newark and the City of Wilmington. So those options for a sole, single school district being Colonial, Red Clay or Brandywine as a singular district taking on the City of Wilmington will remove this option. 

⏯ 23:28 Maddie Reitemeyer:  And whatever the Consortium and we decide for - 

Dorrell Green: Just the Consortium. Just the Redding Consortium. We used to -  what was it was a state-run initiative that were similar to the Redding Consortium.

Unknown Speaker: Okay. Once they put their recommendation out - is the State Board of Ed that certifies it?

Dorrell Green: It's the State Board that approves it and then so in essence what they've changed and that was the difference between WEIC and Redding is that the local boards had to vote on the option. Redding - now it goes to the interim plan to the State Board in the General Assembly.

Unknown Speaker: Thank you.

Dorrell Green: You’re welcome.  

⏯ 24:08 Mark Pruitt: There is no time frame. We're not short of time or we're not over on time. So anyone that has any questions, this is important. 

⏯ 24:16 Kecia Nesmith: Well this is new information to me, so I'm still processing. But, and I said this before - how does that, how might that impact some of the work that we're doing now? For example, now we know acquire the entire Christina School district city portion. Right, we know that. 

Dorrell Green: No. So we may still take on Christina’s portion. Also, when there was a single district taking on the City of Wilmington, that meant that Red Clay's portion of the City of Wilmington could have went to Colonial or Brandywine. So an option could still be for two or fewer yet to be defined, a combination of Red Clay/Brandywine, Colonial/Brandywine, Colonial/Red Clay, would then potentially take on. The challenge with, again, is in essence we're solely just looking at the traditional schools. There's still several governing bodies. So really in essence you're going from 11 to 10. Or potentially 11 to 9 because you're only looking at it through the lens of the traditional school district. When - if you actually look at the percentage of students - and I'll share again some reports with you -  of students who are actually attending charter schools that live and reside in the City of Wilmington - it's a hefty note. 

⏯ 25:47 Kecia Nesmith: Okay. So I think they're talking about a metro mindset?

Dorrell Green: A metropolitan school district that would constitute the city but again, what I pose for the Consortium to think about is how far outside of the City of Wilmington would determine to be that metro school district? While I don't live in the City of Wilmington, well many of us don't, you still have what was designated as a Wilmington address. 

Kecia Nesmith: Address. 

Dorrell Green: Right. Exactly. When you’re talking metro, in terms of balance or tax revenue or all of those various things, when you look at the financial - how far out does that catchment area so to speak actually extend beyond the city?

Kecia Nesmith:  My final comment part is: it's my knowledge there's not really any building, school building, that would be comparable with a high school outside of where Cab/CSW is. Potentially Warner because of what it used to be, but I wouldn't think, that wouldn't be a high school at this point. Are there any other buildings that would have a high school?

Val Gould: PS DuPont. 

Dorrell Green: So PS DuPont used to be a high school.

Kecia Nesmith: PS DuPont, yes. But that's not in our district.

Dorrell Green: It's in the City of Wilmington. 

⏯ 27:02 Kecia Nesmith: Yeah, but I'm just thinking in terms of if we were to acquire Christina, PS DuPont wouldn’t be part of it. 

Dorrell Green:  So you’re saying, so your question is relative to the high school and we could be looking at part of this impetus of why we actually established this committee was the fact that we have under-enrolled high schools. So -

Kecia Nesmith:  I'm talking about in this closer vicinity to the city. But there has been also conversations that we’re busing all the way to Greenville, you know what I mean?

Dorrell Green: Yeah, and typically for a high school, and again, the reason why Christina’s being removed because they're going 16 miles out as opposed to AI or Dickinson being you know or McKean being the furthest distance from the city, but part of that plan is to look at within the Wilmington Learning Collaborative, again which i'm not going to spend another 30 minutes and 30 seconds at this point, stipulation is to [inaudible] within the city. A high school within the city. 

Unknown Speaker: Wonder if it’s going to be Bayard? I had seen it. 

Dorrell Green: The Maurice Pritchett Academy in terms of size, but it wasn’t necessarily designed for a high school, no. There’s a lot of flex space in there. You get a lot of architects [inaudible.] They have a gym that will actually fit in a high school but you talk about fields and those different things. You also have Howard High School which is a high school. There used to be, again, PS used to be but when it was retrofitted it was retrofitted to be more of a middle school so they're you know logistics around hallways, capacity, lockers, different things that get into that, but I don't necessarily - and one of the things that I don't necessarily think that the high school is really a detriment to it as much as it is really looking at the broader numbers and what receiving district and or districts for a reconfiguration plan as a whole. 

Funding is a major mechanism that people would have to consider just in terms of historically through various laws like the city doesn’t really have the ability to generate its own tax revenue. There were things around city wage tax and decisions that were made decades ago that really impacts things. 

Wilmington is actually one of a few, if not the only one in the nation, in terms of they mention a city that doesn't have any governing authority over its education. That was also stripped from the city.

⏯ 29:42 Kecia Nesmith: But they just instituted the Office of Educational Advocacy as of like last week or something, right. 

Dorrell Green: Well it was authorized a month ago that you have to hire anyone, and again that's under the Wilmington city council, which really has that direct authority.

Unknown Speaker: So we are starting phase 2 of the negotiation with research.

Dorrell Green: So American Institute of Research is starting phase 2. Initially what they did was a document analysis, they looked at previous plans, they did structured interviews with key stakeholders, really getting that historical context. One of the things that were flagged in phase 1 for example, were really looking at a lot of community-based organizations, the CBOs and their inability to really coordinate supports and services because of how they're siloed across the city but then also competing for the same level of funds and so whether it's grant in aid or different funding, while they want to partner, they're also competitors. Then that may limit access to constituents, residents within the city, to access certain services because of where they're [inaudible.] So phase 2 of that part is actually starting now and then we had the first retreat.

Unknown Speaker: Is there a timeline on the phase?

⏯ 31:11 Dorrell Green:  So the next phase runs between now and probably about June, which would be the next retreat and that work. But I'll make sure that, through the meeting minutes and updates, get the latest documents from specifically from the Saturday retreat to give you the most up to date.

Unknown Speaker: So the next phase [inaudible.]

⏯ 31:35 Dorrell Green: So the next phase, in terms of once the Consortium narrows down, what they determine is the option, will but I would say, and I've again elevated this - we're already ahead of the game as a district because we're actually doing our due diligence to even analyze our existing footprint where we would be able to actually come and inform the nature of that work by elevating, again, where we may have capacity what levels of funding or additional funding do we actually need to realize any plan in the city puts forward. Yeah that's [inaudible.]

Mark Pruitt:  Any other questions, comments?

Unknown Speakers: Thank you. Thank you very much.

⏯ 32:28 Mark Pruitt: All right so I sent a document to you all which was a summary of our brainstorming ideas. We're going to go through those very quickly now because we're going to spend some time doing an impact analysis in these two groups here tonight. Before I do that there are two things: one we did remove the Setting D. It was like someone threw - and again I was writing anything down on the board okay - but there was a “Add a Setting D at one of our high schools.” For those of you that don't know, a Setting D is created by an IEP team for a special education student who needs that level of support, okay. It's our legal, our legal advice says that a committee like this should stick to programming where students are either attending via their attendance zone where they live or via school choice. No one would attend that school based on either of those factors. Okay so you know a school district, or a school can choose, based on student need and team decisions, to place a student into a more restrictive environment but a committee like this would not be able to open up a D Setting in a school. Okay, so I did remove that since initially I sent out those 12 or 13. The 13 is now 12. Questions about that? Thank you.

Alright, so I'm very quickly going to do this because we're going to spend a lot of time discussing these tonight but hopefully, they are also up here, hopefully get an opportunity to give you a few stickers, take a little straw poll just to take our pulse. These are not votes. This is not final. We're gonna have an opportunity to do some analysis today. We're going to, I'm going to show you a couple of models of the one thing that we don't do. Again, Dr. Ammann is here to talk about operational considerations of these ideas. We're then going to discuss it in some small groups and hopefully if time allows be able to take a straw poll with some stickers next to what we have up here. 

⏯ 34:53 Mark Pruitt: Okay so the first one. Oh I apologize. The first one, is I do believe that when we make these recommendations to the Board, that we should move forward with these. Is there in many ways in the goals that the Board charged us with and so we absolutely should turn around and say that we should align high school boundaries with middle school boundaries which we know we do not do right now. So wherever we land from a programming standpoint, the boundaries, when possible, should align so we have some vertical articulation where students attend. Okay? So we're not going to decide where we stand on that because I believe that that should be, you know, core in our recommendation. Any questions, concerns, comments about that for discussion? Okay.

⏯ 35:48 Mark Pruitt:  The second one is wherever we land, you know, it makes sense that any change should then a consideration being given within that boundary-driven decision to distribute students equally to our high schools. We also saw that Dickinson and McKean have an opportunity in their attendance zone for nearly twice as many students as AI.  So if we landed at three schools, if we landed at two. They should be divided somewhat equally. That's never going to be perfect. That was the second one that came up. I think that's sort of a driving pillar that we can move forward with, without making decisions. They're not program-specific here. Program change is specific. Questions about number two? Comments, discussion?

The final one was about a commitment to graduates and there should be equity of programs you know across all of our schools. Certainly I’d anticipate that we'll still have a magnet school for performing arts and a magnet school - but core programming. There’s a certain core programming of college readiness, career readiness that all of our students should have access to. And I think that that should be sort of a driving, you know, message that we give to the School Board. 

So, you know, when I sent this out a few days afterwards I pulled those. Any discussions,  questions, comments about that? Dr. Nesmith?

⏯ 37:31 Kecia Nesmith:  How do we ensure - and this may be a thought question, not necessarily you wanted to answer right now - but how do we ensure equity in programs when we have the competition for the magnet and/or the Charter Schools of Wilmington types? Like even like how we have the Dickinson has the IB program and McKean has kind of their CTE program, you know. So each school kind of right now has some sort of difference positively, but how do we control for equity in that?

⏯ 38:14 Mark Pruitt: I'll take a shot. Our current strategic plan, which we're in the middle of year one a 5-year plan and I can say that part of our plan is to create a commitment to high school students in our school district, okay, where we have equitable college and career opportunities. Everyone will have a - every student will have an opportunity to get a Capstone type college-ready program. Not the same one. But at Conrad a student could be an AP Capstone diploma student through the college board where they take two research type courses, four other AP courses and they get a Capstone diploma at graduation. As we currently exist, AI and McKean would have a college sophomore distinction diploma through the Early - through the partnership with Goldey-Beacom. Dickinson would have students sit for the IB diploma.  That's where we currently exist in creating equity, but not necessarily the same. It's just one example of a difference between equal programming and equitable programming.

Also within that commitment we are looking to create a core set of AP courses and a core set of dual enrollment courses that all of our high school students have access to. I think a change, you know, while yes these, somebody's always going to have environmental or calc 3 or some one off that makes them unique, we offer these core set of courses for dual enrollment and for AP at any of our schools. On the college and career side, we're looking to as we currently sit have a Core 4 as we work through the plan of CTE programming. Certainly schools may have something unique, that makes them unique, we are, you know, whether we like it or not, we are a choice - newcastle county it's a choice area - and so you know I think, you know, we need to make a decision. So I think while they can't be, you know, it won't be the same. I think we can create some standards and that's the plan that we're doing a lot of work there with our team here in Red Clay and our principles, two of which are here tonight. Dr. Green?

Unknown Speaker: Jodi has a question.

⏯ 40:47 Jodi Muffley: I'm gonna say something and it may not be the…It's the elephant in the room. It is my truth.  This is great and it's a lot of words, but no one's addressing the elephant in the room. Why kids, why parents are not sending their kids to AI High school.  And I feel like we're saying, “We're gonna do this and we're gonna do this,” but we're not addressing - you can put all those programs and I know I've talked to Dr. Green about it. My program's amazing.  Amazing. But, it's not going - people are not putting their children in that school and that's what I feel. Like we're shuffling. We're playing whack-a-mole and we're doing everything and we're not - like all of this programming. I mean, you know, Mark, I love it there. I believe in it and I just feel like all of this - they're just not sending their kids there and we don't address that.  I think putting these programs everywhere, yes, but I had said to Dr. Green, “Put my program at Dickinson. Guess what? They'll all go to Dickinson.” They're not putting their children in this building and I feel like we're talking around it, but why? Like have we gotten to that?

Kecia Nesmith:  Yes. I said it the first meeting.

Jodi Muffley: I didn’t want to go there, but thank you. That's why I didn't want to bring up my comment, but that's the truth. 

⏯ 42:15 Kecia Nesmith: So here's the thing right now. We're not going to change that. So I think what Dr. Pruitt is talking about is how do we make - we're also looking at the boundary. So maybe we shift to the right, to the left, to have more racial and cultural equity. Just shifting a little here, shifting over there for all of the schools. People aren't gonna like that no matter. Somebody's going to have a problem whatever we decide. And if people are not want their kids in certain, around certain demographics they're not going to want their kids - Delaware is one of the highest states of students in private school in the United States of America. So we have some historical issues from the start that I don't know that we can come back, but I do believe that we do name the elephant every time but we keep on moving forward.

Jodi Muffley: Thank you. That's what I wanted.

Unknown Speaker: So I think that at some point [inaudible] as it relates to Al right and so now we're back at the wheels with navigation and within any program whether, it doesn't matter how great it is, it takes time. We know that it takes longer than a year. It takes two. To have programming, to have it be branded out, to rebuild. That's going to take three or five years. 

⏯ 43:45 Jodi Muffley: I guess my fear is that -

Unknown Speaker: So we've got to pour into that branding. To say, “We are rebranded.”  Because we are. So the patience has to exist with the proper program. 

Jodi Muffley: Yeah I guess I just am fearful and I have a child aging out and no other ones. I just fear that we are going to segregate when we keep talking about boundaries and moving kids. I am an AI feeder pattern in my house but I feel like we're, you know what I mean, we're going back to black and brown schools, white schools, that we're doing with neighborhood schools.

Kecia Nesmith: But we do segregate by choice.

Jodi Muffley: So, yeah.

⏯ 44:24 Kecia Nesmith: That's not anything we can control. So let's work it within our focus of control. Our focus of control is that we can provide the best programs at every school for any student. Maybe look at some of the boundaries in terms of, for example, some areas have aged-out homeowners, like my community. So now we get we're having a lot more young families coming in. That's going to change the numbers of school students when going to Linden Hill, where Linden Hill is going to be - it's already probably at capacity or close to it - if you take my neighborhood alone you're adding hundreds and hundreds of elementary school children. So when Dr. Green talks about the landscape analysis, that is important to understand where people are living now and what are the age groups of kids for the next 10-20 years. So to your point, there's no way to get away from segregation because of how Delaware's laws are made.  And if you go into another state, like where I work, you're going to have segregation by economic stability.  So segregation is something that I think that we're aware of but I also think and I'll say this again, Red Clay does an excellent job of trying to make things equitable, more so than any other school district I've ever worked in. I’ve worked in two states and lived in another one. So I hear you and I think we should keep that at the forefront because it is a thing. It is a thing and if we don't talk about that thing, that thing will never change. So I think we have some good plans in place and some ideas to put plans in place. I know that we're going to present to us, the Board, I don't know how we're going to get there, if I do, but I'm going to trust the process.

⏯ 46:14 Mark Pruitt: We'll discuss that at the end.  Other folks who would like this great conversation? Maddie?

⏯ 46:21 Maddie Reitemeyer: Something I just I want to say and l think I'm one of the ones who put up, you know, just redistrict and [inaudible], keeping three high schools, you know, all at 700. I'm just throwing a random number out rather than having 9, 9, and 5 but I grew up in the city in the 80s and the 90s. So I had, there was three of us. I talked about this a lot. My sister's two years older, my brother's two years younger. We were bused out 40 minutes and even despite my sister being two years older, my brother being two years younger, we went to different schools because, really, they were trying to keep families guessing where we’re redistricting, where we’re redistricting? So my sister's Red Clay experience looked nothing like mine. She went to a different elementary and then a different middle because they kept moving us and we just kept being redistricted. My sister was the one, who the judge made the order in I think April of her eighth grade year, to shut Wilmington High down. So she was in April of her eighth grade year and didn't know what high school she would go to.  To say all this, I'm worried about us redistricting only for Redding to come in and those families get moved one more time,  two years later. I did not like it as a kid. I feel like it affected my family and our community. I also did not like being on a bus for 40 minutes every day. I remember getting on the bus in the dark and coming home in the dark. So I do want us to think about the families if we move them once and then again just a few years later. We should definitely hear from the families that are in the city. My family doesn't live in the city anymore. But I just feel like we're not thinking about that if we just quickly put a redistricting plan together and then do it again because of what Redding Consortium decides.  So I want us to be careful while we're thinking about that.

⏯ 48:34 Dorrell Green: Just to know that one of the stipulations within redistricting for Redding is minimally disruptive. Basically means that families can still choose that they want to stay within their school and their grade band then they will have that ability to do so. Which again further complicates what that would mean right, because if things change then I'm currently in the Christina school district but I want to stay, although Brandywine is going to become my new district, but if I want to stay within that school, they have the option to stay until they get through that grade band. So if I'm in elementary and I'm a kindergartner when that transition happens I will have the ability to stay within that school. And what I can't caution that, I think you're bringing up a very valid point. People don't realize it requires what we're doing now, other districts are going to have to do that, and then some because it's like now you're, you have to account for the students who are zoned to you but then stay where they want because it's minimally disruptive. Families have that option but then programs for those who might be coming to Dr. Nesmith’s point, if you're not really looking at the landscape of where there is growth you may have a building that is under-enrolled in a five-year period of time when things are coming. So I think all valid points. One of the things that, again, and my advocacy in sitting at these tables is that we have a request to have some big data model. I think at this stage of Al and we have the star campus, all of this research stuff at the University of Delaware, I know we're working with John Laznik but to really employ some people to do some really broad data modeling not just for the current numbers and to really look at everything from birth rate where we're experiencing growth in New Castle County I think it would be remiss for us not to acknowledge and keep bringing up that growth is happening in the middle and southern part of our state. Appo is on the verge of building a support high school so there's a lot of mobility in Delaware. Folks generally live in Middletown but go to school at Concord high School because of you know maybe proximity where my parent works. People would be surprised about the amount of mobility. So, all valid points. So, again just keep adding that to the discourse so that we can capture that and as is it in both spaces know that this voice gets elevated in that space and I get it. I think we're ahead of it because we as a district are really taking that bonus of really analyzing our own current situation and it really helps inform I think some of the blind spots that are outside of this room, outside of our district. People are just thinking that redrawing the lines is going to be the change that we all see which we know is not the case. 

⏯ 51:32 Unknown Speaker: Just as a parent's perspective, specifically to your point about, I don't know what program it is that you were talking about today - AI? I don’t know if I learned that. But my daughters, when they approach high school age, I live literally across the street from [inaudible] so i know that that is an option for them. I drive past Conrad on my way to work so that's going to be an option. Choice is great for the people that are able to take advantage of transportation. If your program is perfect for them, it's still going to be a struggle for them to get there. 

Jodi Muffley: Yeah that's part of our -

Unknown Speaker: I remember that was brought up so I just want to mention it.

Jodi Muffley: Yes. I agree with that.

Unknown Speaker: It’s only as good as the people who are able to make it. 

⏯ 52:27 Mark Pruitt: Anyone else before we move on? Okay. Alright, so very quickly. You've had this,  you know, we talked about a technical high school / Innovation Center, all right, at one of our high schools. This resulted in two attendance zone high schools that used that third high school space. 

Second one was making that Innovation Center available to middle school students also. 

The third was moving The John Dickinson middle school program to Skyline to allow for increased high school enrollment at the two attendance zone schools, right. A little misleading I  would say this, there's a better example of Al High's low enrollment than AI and it was Dickinson in 2011. They were dangerously low. They ran a year with under 500 students, right, and they committed to IB and now they've got I think, a little misleading though, people think that building's full. It is full, but it's got 300 middle school kids in there. At 780 it’s not enough. It's not enough high school kids to be a comprehensive program, in my opinion, so I'm talking as a committee member. But moving those students out. 

There was a motion for an online school of some sort online programming, 6-12, to meet the needs of those students. 

There was a motion to move the Charter School of Wilmington to an existing high school to allow for potential additions of Redding students at the Wilmington campus. 

There was an expansion of the, this was leaning in as I remember it, you know, expand Dickinson as a 6-12 IB magnet program, and again go to two attendance zone high schools McKean and AI. I've got the ideas up here kind of spell that out a little more. 

I think generally, this is probably the biggest,  the least flushed out, but the consolidation of middle school programs from 8 to 7, right. We had gone from 5 middle school programs to 8, of which enrollment is low in multiple schools, but somehow condensing that from 8 to 7 schools.

A Warner-Shortlidge. The north side of Wilmington. We've got a relatively small geographic area with students up there that do a lot of traveling. Warner Shortlidge community school K-8, which might include a Support Center with services. Another idea connected to that is a K-12 program at Warner.

Shawn Snyder: Val has a question.

⏯ 55:22 Val Gould: It’s not so much a question. It’s more of a statement. Thank you, Shawn. As much as 6-12 is developmentally inappropriate, I've worked at a number of K-8 schools,  including Brandywine Springs. And the stuff those kindergartners hear those 7th and 8th graders say on the buses is atrocious. And that is also I don't think developmentally appropriate either. So just throwing that out there. I know we have K-8 schools in the district already. Well, sorry - one. [group conversation] So I'm just saying, you know, I think we need to be conscious of developmentally appropriate, possibly.

Mark Pruitt: We're going to have an opportunity to speak to that, discuss that, digest that amongst each other here. I'm going through these very quickly so that we can dig into these ideas. 

⏯ 56:33 Kecia Nesmith: I caution us about our opinions. Because people are saying things that are not true. They're opinions. Like, “Oh the research.” What does the research say? About K-8? 6-12? 6-8? 9-12? There's more current research out there and no model is one perfect. There's always going to be some drawbacks but what are the - if you could outweigh - if the positives can outweigh the negative then we need to look into that. You also need to look into the demographics of those models. They don’t fit the same for suburban versus urban. So I think that when we are bringing up our ideas, we should come prepared having at least done a little bit of research around what we think. 

⏯ 57:20 Dorrell Green: I would even elevate to begin the discourse that if there are things that get elevated in the conversation that need more research, we can do that fact-finding too between meetings to share [inaudible] to be able to give people adequate information again on what is a -  because we do, sometimes, we'll bring our own biases either through our own experiences, because I was at Redding and I told people, like, I don't recall ever having a white educator until I got to high school and that was Stan The Man Kowalski, who was my high school math teacher and he chose to wear Sonoco overalls to school every day, but I learned pre-calculus and calculus in his class as a student who never saw my place in those higher level advanced types courses and so when we sometimes we, again, and I think there has been, in my experience, in 25 plus years of being in education, working started out in Christina, being an administrator of Brandywine, working at the state and now leading Red Clay, that so much of what is experienced and decisions that are made are based on people’s personal experiences without actually putting research in to say what are some of the proven models across the nation? Because there are people who are doing innovative things. My niece graduated high school with an associate's degree and all of her high school experience was on Prince George's County Community College. She never was required to play a sport. She didn't have gym. They didn't have a prom but that was the right program for my niece. She got her Bachelor’s in 18 months from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and she just earned her master's from the University of Chicago online program and she's 21. My sister's a single mom so there are people who are doing things. I think sometimes we just gotta allow ourselves to really think outside of our personal boxes and I think the historical kind of context that's been Delaware and really allow ourselves to think about what is best for students. So one of the things that we did with even with our strategic plan, we did a labor market analysis because it’s wonderful to say we’re offering all these CTE programs, but I’m graduating high school with a diploma and a CTE program, with no certification and no clear path of a college that either is going to propel me that I can go straight into the workforce, we've told students a lie. Work hard and your dreams will come true when in actuality you worked hard and you ended up to the road to nowhere. And that’s one of the reasons why we actually need to be creative and think through this process so that when we talk about our portrait of a graduate, we're graduating students who are ready to go and are marketable and we're intentional about what we're setting them up whether they want to stay within the region or they want to move away. So I think every point that's being made, they’re all valid points and so if there are things that, again, are part of the conversation that the committee decides that they need more research between meetings, we will commit ourselves to making sure that we provide that research so that, again, it’s just, there is a level of being quote-unquote fact-based or research-based so we can wrestle with those ideas and also have the research component. And then maybe even have some places to go to look at proven models where it may actually be working for us I think being possible.

⏯ 1:01:03 Val Gould:  Oh and so, Kecia, to your point, I don't know what the research is.

Kecia Nesmith:  I'm sorry, I didn’t mean, I was coming to get you. 

Val Gould: No, it’s fine. I didn’t take it personally. I just want to be clear that I worked in a 6-12 school. It’s a private school, and saw a lot of inappropriate interactions between 6th and 12th graders. I worked at a school in DC that was K-8, saw a lot of inappropriate stuff there. I worked at Brandywine Springs. I mean, there’s always inappropriate stuff, right?  Like, it's kids. I get it. But like also there's stuff that 14 year olds do that 5-year olds probably shouldn't be exposed to and I mean, that's just my opinion. 

Kecia Nesmith: Yeah and I don't even -

Val Gould: And that's why I said “I don't think.” I wasn't trying to present and -

Kecia Nesmith: I wasn't trying to - I'm sorry it came out that way. I was just thinking, because I’m researching while we’re talking because I don’t know the answers and so I started to look up some research while we’re talking and I thought one thing, and the research was saying something different. So that’s why I brought it up. We’re taking personal professional research-based all of the above. Like lived experiences, it is research, right. That's phenomenology, so that is important that all the experiences the people who are from Delaware, the ones who weren't from Delaware, the ones who went to school here, the ones who didn't and we're never gonna go with the perfect thing but I do think that we need to hear these things and I think our timeline's pretty tight, Dr. Green [inaudible] look at models but as schools at least [inaudible] and again, we’re urban, suburban, mid, those all matter and economics all that impact how a school functions so I don't think it's a one [inaudible.] That was nothing. 

⏯ 1:03:13 Antonio Gomes:  Just a quick question. Honestly, thank you for your comments. I'm starting to wonder are we - we're going down this path and discussing different amounts of ideas. To your point, they're clearly ideas that other I guess districts, other states, whatever, are doing today and have we looked at potential places where there is some success stories because that sounds amazing by the way, and why like instead of reinventing the wheel look at that kind of fall similar parameters than us and see if that is the possibility that we can incorporate something similar here as well. I'm just throwing that out there and I apologize.

I just, to me, it's like “Oh this is terribly inefficient. If there's something that we know is gonna work, why not just do it?  So I don't know if we looked at that data outside of Delaware and it's great to get all this data research because I think that plays a part in it, but now once we know those data parameters let's look at those success stories where there's proven results and seeing do those parameters match. And if so can we procreate it here? I am sorry if that's not - 

[inaudible group conversation]

⏯ 1:04:41 Unknown Speaker: On number one, I don't know - you didn't highlight this, but Early Graduation and Innovation Center was one of the ideas was [inaudible]. Not keeping kids longer than we need to be [inaudible]. So that was an idea that was thrown out there.  

⏯ 1:04:54 Mark Pruitt: We’ve done some things. I think that, don’t let our timeline, or don’t let the condensed timeline, we can always ask for more time. We actually have, we wouldn't make any changes like this until September of 2027 at the earliest. That's as early as possible to even start any changes like that. The Board charged us with July of this year but I do think that we've got a great committee, we've got great people from representing different groups and if we decided, “Hey, you know what, we need to look at this a little bit further.” We're also not moving forward, we're just coming up, we're trying to flush out some ideas. I think it's one thing to throw an idea up there, then you kind of say you bring in someone like Dr. Ammann, you take a look at some questions about is it possible, is it feasible, is it high leverage in our opinion then you go out, you go let's look at some models, let's look at the research and you're going to see a little bit of that tonight. 

Reggie Worlds: What are your last two ideas, Mark?

[laughter]

Mark Pruitt: The last two ideas are capping Conrad and Cab at smaller - none of these are my ideas - 

Reggie Worlds: It seemed like we got a little stuck. 

⏯ 1:06:15 Mark Pruitt: We’re on tape here. Capping Conrad and Cab at smaller enrollments. Conrad has a 680-student high school.   So make that a little smaller. Middle school's at 490 or 500. Make that a little bit smaller and the same or similar situation with Cab. 

And then finally would be choice busing for all. Also the term “equitable choice bussing” for all to all of our, I think, for all of our students to all of our schools something like that. That's a very broad idea but then that was where we were when we brainstormed for the first time. Okay? Alright. 

Speaking about models from around the country, there are two that we've had some connection with. The first one is, I may let Dr. Green speak to quickly about his experience and then I'll show you a couple of things that they do there. Second one is much closer to us, Cecil County. Their School of Technology. I've spoken multiple times with their superintendent and the administrator at the school. To me, that’s the idea up here that’s come out so far. That is, we don’t do that at all. Like and that is something that might work and it might work for us. I think you're going to find, I think, you know, I think you're going to find data positive negative K-8, same with 6-12. I think all that is going to be who does the search last for the data, but this is something that I think we need to do some more homework on. So I'll let Dr. Green go. We'll go 3 minutes 45 seconds this time. 

⏯ 1:08:08 Dorrell Green: I'm doing it in 2 minutes and 30.  So, coming in, actually tomorrow will be my six year anniversary, my first official day when I started. And one of the things that you notice, in general, that I noticed, was that there are inequities throughout our district. And so a lot of the conversation, “How do you actually program to address inequity?” It's extremely hard and difficult to do as was just stated. Parents who can access choices and have the ability, will access those choices. And then you default to situations where families who don’t - can’t. And won’t. So they are relegated to their feeder option and AI is symptomatic of that. Because AI is now - and it's not just not here - it's in Brandywine for the most part, although Brandywine kept their deseg order, primarily Christina. Where you default, so you have suburban urban high schools because you have city students with feeder patterns or high schools outside and those families who have the ability to make the choice. So how do you plan for that? And again, going and seeing seniors graduate across the stage and always wondering if we are actually preparing them for the world that we claim we're preparing them after they just spent 13 years with us, they're leaving with a high school diploma, they spent time in a CTE pathway and they're not leaving with something as simple as - what we started to promote was the Seal of Multiliteracy. That’s the high school students graduating with a credential. They can make themselves marketable because they’re bilingual. Or looking at someone that has Cisco certification. That I can make myself marketable. But how do we program for equitability or  looking at providing and having anchor pathways situated. So let’s say I want a Safe Serve certification but I’m in a dance major academy. How can I - and I love cooking - how can I have access to programming? And so, an Innovation Center really gives us the opportunity to anchor ourselves as a district to have anchor pathways that everybody in the district can - and then Conrad can be Conrad. IB can be IB. So then when families know, and I’ll just use again, and I know we’re not supposed to bring our own situations into it, but when you select a program and you say it’s a choice, you made that choice. And sometimes you have to live with that choice. To a degree, I think what we, what’s happened in Red Clay is a simple or the broader microcosm of Delaware is we want our schools to be all things to all people, even through a choice process. So then, when you say you’re unique, you can only be unique to a certain extent because now, everybody should have, whereas what do we know through a labor market analysis, a study, what do we know through CTE programs and then as a comprehensive school district because the other elephant in their lives, or a herd of them in the room sometimes, we cannot compete with the vocational technical high schools, just from a funding standpoint. My wife works at Hodgsen’s VoTech. They’re gonna get a brand new, state-of-the-art school that they did not have to go to referendum to get and they can offer programs in a fashion that we can’t. And I’m not disparaging them, but if you want to be a plumber and you live in Red Clay, guess where I want you to go? I want you to go to DelCastle. Because when I call someone to fix my pipes, I want you to be a master plumber. I don’t want the kid, who came through, who just learned how to solder a pipe because he had a pseudo-CTE program and it made it sound good so that we can keep enrollment up, and that’s kind of the business, so from my perspective, that’s when we start to really look at something like what does the whole and then we look at our Adult Ed program because we're 1 of 6 adult Groves Adult Education sites, then you could actually anchor that in one location so that students, families, community as a whole can actually benefit from it. It becomes more than just a place where children go, but it actually can be part of a community hub.  But, you know as I started to look at models - early on when I came to Red Clay - but I dealt with it when I was in Brandywine as an assistant superintendent, we can either build a brand new Claymouth elementary school for 28 million or we can renovate it from 32. Guess what the decision was? To renovate it for 32. Because sometimes nostalgia and tradition and familiarity helps the adults in the room because we feel good about it. No one wants their schools - we're not talking about closing schools - we're talking about reimagining Red Clay and the beauty of it is, and if you haven't noticed, we don't refer to it as Red Clay School District. If you see our branding, it's Red Clay Consolidated School District for a reason because whether you're at Conrad, whether you're at McKean, whether you're at AI, whether you're at Linden Hill,  whether you're at Warner, whether you're at Shortlidge or William C. Lewis, but you see that, that should represent the comprehensive nature of who we are as a community and once we get to high school, and Mark, I know I’m probably at 4 minutes and 30 seconds because you put me on my soapbox. This is just a model or an example that would benefit everybody and so you don’t have winners and losers. We just have to be intentional about how we drive and give people access to those pathways and our traditional high schools can be stable, but we can really look at how do we align our middle school feeder patterns so that our comprehensive high schools have that balance that we deny. But that's one of, again, many examples that are throughout. 

⏯ 1:14:14 Mark Pruitt: Cherry Creek is in Colorado. I'm not going to - I could, we could go through this for the rest of the time, but you, this link is on our website right now. I'm going to send you these slides. Go to it, take a look, but this is their main page. These are the three-year pathways that they offer for students from 6 different high schools. Shuttle buses, okay. Getting students, they spend a half a day. They're on an A/B block schedule, it's a lot of detail that we're not anywhere near that yet, but they've got 6 schools that run on the same A/B block schedule throughout the year. Shuttle buses getting these students to these programs and there are the pathways but they also have early college coursework. So on and so forth. They also have a great FAQ on the website. I will open that up. What is the Cherry Creek Innovation Campus?   It's a standalone college and career preparedness facility. Gives you their umbrella pathways and then there's pathways within each of those umbrellas. It's a high school, yes, but it's not a comprehensive high school. It's a program where students attend from their other high schools. Is there an application process, yes. I will say this about both these programs I’m showing you. They’re both applications and there are the pathways.  i'm showing you they're both applications and there is not enough space for everyone. So they are somewhat competitive. Okay, I do not, Mark Pruitt, the member of this committee, does not subscribe to that and I do believe that we need to shuttle any student - do I think there's gonna be, there could be some students at our schools that may choose not to participate, but I think we need to have enough seats and that it'd be a part of their regular programming so that's what I believe. Okay so I will say these are great programs. But they’re a little a la carte choice, a little competition. A little disappointment in spring of your 10th grade year -

⏯ 1:16:26 Dorrell Green: But to Antonio’s point though, right, though, that's the adopt, adapt not adopt model, right. 

⏯ 1:16:34 Mark Pruitt: Right. Yeah so the program is great but they're trying to do it for a larger school district, with a, in a smaller building. I think we've got an opportunity here. Go to Cecil County. All right so Cecil County. Obviously most of us are familiar with Cecil County. It's actually the closest school building to Red Clay. If you're familiar with the University of Delaware you go out at what I still call I don't call it South Main Street, I call it Elkton Road,  you start down Elkton Road, you go about a quarter mile into Maryland, you make a right on I believe Appleton Road, go back about a mile. They bought a building about 12 years ago, re-outfitted as a School of Technology, very similarly, you know, turned it into various pathways. Now what they do is students apply midway through their junior - their sophomore year, and they get 3 credits and a pathway. And again, I think we need to be able to use some of these ideas now, yes, without a presentation. So I’ll let you take a look at it on your own here over the next month. But their model is restrictive in that the schools are so far away, that you got a school taking a 20 it's a 25 minute shuttle ride, so what they do is an A day in your home school, a B day you're there for 1 period and then you gotta go for 3 periods because you've got a half an hour bus ride then you're at the school but you gotta leave 40 minutes before the end of the day so that you can either catch a regular bus home or go to field hockey practice, stay after school for your club, whatever the case may be. We would have a little more flexibility with the proximity of our high schools to be able to offer probably more flexible programming than that. 

⏯1:18:38 Shawn Snyder: Okay just to get back on this, Mark, a shuttle bus system for students in Delaware exists - in Sussex County. My son participates in it. He goes to DelTech and takes college courses as an eighth grader. They call it Academic Challenge; it's been down there since the 70s. All those students ride a bus you know, 20-30 minutes from the DelTech campus to whatever high school they go to in Sussex County. It’s kind of the reverse idea of this. It works great. It’s been great for my kid. It gives him, I mean, he’ll have calculus as a sophomore, differential equations, you know, finances. I never took, which for him is great but it's very doable. I think as Delawareans we’re like, “Oh my god, 15 minutes on a bus!” which is like the rest of earth. It is a 15-minute bus ride. Like, it's a Delaware thing. And I rode like an hour to school on a bus in Pennsylvania because that's how Pennsylvania is. In the middle of it is 8 people and a whole bunch of space.

⏯ 1:19:32 Caitlin Merto: Yeah and I was just gonna say that the transportation piece like that was gonna be my question was kind of how they handle that because we do like in my district in Pennsylvania we have some CTE programs in our high school that's what I teach and then we also send them out to Delaware DCTS which is if we don't offer your program in district they have to go and I went and observed there one day and it was just like insane to watch the kids kind of roll in and then have a -

Mark Pruitt: Let me pause you there for a second. I had you down as absent, so join either one. Somewhere you have a seat. It’s not a big deal. 

Unknown Speaker: Sorry to interrupt. 

Mark Pruitt: Go ahead, I apologize. 

⏯1:20:09 Caitlin Merto: DCTS because I teach in Pennyslvania and then I was like this one small portion of time and then need to watch the kids roll out because they’re all from different setting school districts is one piece, the other piece is if we’re going to explore any of these models would be that we would need to also have a discussion about what we do with students whether that's at the middle school level or at the high school level to make sure that they have opportunities to explore what their options are and that way they can make informed decisions because I think, you know, otherwise we're just saying to kid oh yeah I like cooking but they've never had an opportunity to engage with it and then they're making a choice but that might push them into a different pathway and then it might be more disruptive to them when they realize that they're actually more interested in a teacher's academy. You know what I mean? Like or some other kind of pathway and that's something I feel like my district could really improve upon where I teach and so I just think it's important if we're going to have like a more like a pathway approach to work.

⏯ 1:21:13 Dorrell Green: And we’re actually investigating that now with a middle grade’s grant  because I’m thinking is that you have to start a little sooner with pathways, just, not that you’re locked in, but that you have an idea that four years of high school goes by fast. And most students think, “Oh, I got my freshman year to get it right.” and your freshman year 

actually is your most important year and so if you're going to get in the pathway and you're looking at exploratory. Then by the time, I'm spending my junior and, having a senior right now is in a pathway but as of March 20th 2025 is getting ready to check out. She's probably starting to check out mentally, yeah but she's engaged, she's ready to go to college. But her pathway worked and now she knows what she wants to be, but for every student that's not the case. So we have two grants that we're working so AI Middle and Stanton are those two schools that have that grant so that we look at middle grades expansion or CTE Exploratory.  

⏯ 1:22:11 Unknown Speaker: Going off of like that, and then what you said, I went to, I grew up in PA, went to Avon Grove School District, and we had the TCHS,  and that was pretty [inaudible] because I had my brother's two years older so he went, started I think his sophomore on junior year - carpentry. Didn’t [inaudible] he’s working for PACA now; he's a welder. So he figured out carpentry like wasn't for him but he's still very happy he did it because it shows him it taught him skills that like he wouldn't have learned at Avon Grove and told him like oh I don't want to do this and similarly, I did the Allied Health program there my senior year. I'm clearly not working in the health field but it showed me, I learned a lot of valuable stuff there, but it showed me I didn't want to do that. So I think like going down the wrong pathway isn't the worst thing in the world regardless - 

[inaudible group conversation]

Dorrell Green: And those are transferrable skills. And to bring it full circle to what we are looking to do in equity of programming. Advanced Placement and making sure, you know, like AP Seminar, and one of the courses that we’re gonna, every sophomore in Red Clay regardless of where you could [inaudible] because it’s transferrable skills. We know that, again, if he didn't have carpentry and now he's welding he probably wouldn't have the ability to kind of navigate and work with [inaudible].

⏯ 1:23:34 Mark Pruitt: We are grappling with that issue now of getting into a pathway without enough information, making decisions. We have a couple of schools that start the three-year path in 9th grade and a couple that started in 10th grade. I do believe that we have to, and our strategic plan addresses this, I will to tell you this, but we are going to move on, but Ms. Todd-Dixon has started a program at Conrad where they do the pathway in 10, 11 and 12, and they offer like these 6-week sequences so you get a taste of them all and can make a more informed choice. We'd like to build that out district-wide over the next five years and whether it includes something like this or not. Okay. All right. So I do believe we've got a firm remainder of our agenda because it's 7:23 and I am going to let Ted, did Ted leave? Ted probably got tired of waiting. So I'm going to bring Dr. Ammann up. He is our chief operating officer in the school district. He can introduce himself and his role a little further. What he did was take a look at - we are eventually going to get to 3 questions when we, that makes, to have some discussions next Relevance to the problem, right. Does this idea - is it relevant? Does it solve our problem potentially? Feasibility. He's going to talk a little bit about feasibility right now. If the price tag is unreasonable, if the human resources are not possible, if our buildings are not outfitted in such, you know, well which building, where might it be, those kinds of things, okay. And then the last one which we'll get to next month is the impact. Is this idea high leverage?  You know it will make a difference towards a problem and for our kids? So at this point, we will advance one slide and Ted, if you want to kind of go through some of the ideas and then we'll ask you some questions. 

⏯ 1:25:36 Ted Ammann: Yeah, when I walked in, Mark told me I could sit at the grown up table. When I was looking, there was like a group on the left and a group on the right and now you switched. [inaudible] Yeah, so Mark asked me to kind of come up with a way to share some thoughts about these. Keep in mind, these are really, really big projects that are summarized in like a 3-word sentence. There are obviously much more discussion as we go forward, but the way I decided to do that at just a first high level was that in terms of HR, transportation, tech, nutrition, facilities and costs all areas that I work with every day. Each of these ideas could be a high, a medium, or a low impact. High doesn't mean good and low doesn't mean bad. It could be in difficulty. So what I'm gonna really try not to share any opinion about any of these ideas because that's not - you all have opinions.  I'm just trying to give you some things that came to me that you all want to talk about. We can certainly talk about more. 

So as I mentioned, an idea could have a positive high impact or a positive, uh excuse me, or a negative high impact High doesn't mean good - well you know, that makes sense to you? I just reiterated that because I really make sure that as we go through this when you see high, that doesn't mean good necessarily. It just means a lot of thought needs to go into it. Low doesn’t means it doesn’t take a lot of thought and low doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. It might be easy to do but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good thing to do.  So if we move on here and they’re in no particular order other than I think the order of the original slides that Mark shared with me. 

⏯ 1:27:14 Ted Ammann: Innovation Center which certainly hearing Dorrell talk about it and I was all in, ready to vote for that one but I don’t know if I’m getting dots later. From an HR impact, certainly high impact. Looking at Reggie, because he’s here, let's say and again I’m just hypothetically. Don't [inaudible]. If McKean were to become an Innovation Center and AI and Dickinson were going to become the comprehensive high schools, there certainly is an impact because you might have an English teacher at McKean that would need to go to Dickinson or AI. Or you might need a CTE teacher at Dickinson that's going to move to McKean. So those are certainly, you know, anytime even if you're talking about one educator having to think about going to a different building, that would have a high impact. When you have lots of educators, that would be double high. I guess if that's an option but again not to say it's a bad idea It's certainly something we've worked through with new schools in the past and there's you know mechanisms to try and do that.

⏯ 1:28:07 Ted Ammann: Transportation, another super high one. You know, we touched on earlier shuttles. I have a niece who went to school outside of DC. When she was freshman, they had a program where she wanted to be a vet. She’s about to graduate as a vet. She had to take a bus to another school. The whole first week she missed lunch because her bus didn't get back. She didn't know what to do or who to tell. I'm like, well, find a guidance counselor.  She, again, freshman, didn't want to talk to anyone about it, so but it worked out. Like you know the kids are, we always say,  kids are quick to adapt. It's more adults that struggle with “how are we going to do that,” but certainly lots to think about. Cost wise there could be costs from a transportation perspective because the state model would not, as it is now, cover transportation between McKean/Dickinson or McKean and AI, and so forth, but on the flip side there could be savings because you then have two attendance zones so you only have to run buses from every neighborhood to one or the other, or both if we get to the last one on the list, but that's that's one we'll get to in a minute. So transportation certainly would be a high, you know, an area that we have to put a lot of thought and analysis into. 

Technology and nutrition, I merged together so they'd fit on the chart, no other reason, but in all these, pretty low impact. The technology that we need in any of those tools we would have it or could move it. Shawn’s giving the thumbs up and he’s got it under control. 

Facilities, medium and again this isn't really super scientific. My high, medium, low but certainly from a facilities perspective there's some real advantages, in my opinion, in the Innovation Center because right now we try and replicate three automotive labs and if one gets renovated because it's time to be renovated, if we renovate McKean’s, the next day I get a call from Dickinson saying when are you renovating mine, then I get a call from AI when are you renovating mine. So if we were to, as I understand this Innovation Center, we could really focus on having the best darn automotive lab, or the best, you know, I don't want to presuppose what those labs are, but call on any of those labs, you have some good ones now. So there's some advantages, medium. It's all doable. Cost, medium. Again we still, you know, a lot of analysis to be done. 

⏯ 1:30:20 Ted Ammann: Innovation Center, of all of them, is one that would really take the effort of the General Assembly and the Department of Ed because all of our funding is structured based on a traditional high school, where you go to the high school, you spend your day and then you go home and what we're saying is we're gonna kind of throw that up in the air and change it around.  So it doesn't mean we can't do it, but it just means that we would certainly be having to have some discussions with legislators to explain why this is a good idea, what the impact is and how they need to change the law so that we can do these things.

⏯ 1:30:50 Ted Ammann: The second one, MYP movement to Skyline. I feel like a lot of these, when we do our negotiated agreements with our bargaining groups, we string together these different ideas and I feel like like that one to me, went right along with the first one because if you're going to have an Innovation Center and have all the students assigned to one of two high schools, one of those two high schools wouldn't have enough room if the MYP program is there. So that, and again, going through HR impact, well again, if one teacher needs to move, I don't know that we can say it's a low impact but certainly it would be fewer teachers having to move just if we were to move that MYP program to Skyline. From an efficiency perspective, there's also maybe some advantages because your MYP programs, if they moved to Skyline, a teacher could teach in both the more traditional middle school program, and they could teach in the MYP program. 

⏯ 1:31:42 Unknown Speaker: I just i want to clarify just because was part of IB before. If you move MYP to Skyline, the whole school has to become IB. You can't have a - IB has the rule - you can't have a cohort. Every person has to be. So you'd have to train every teacher that stayed at Skyline to be IB. Every kid that went into Skyline would have to -

Unknown Speaker: I thought that was true of high school but not at middle. 

⏯ 1:32:08 Mark Pruitt: It - I believe she's correct, but that is much more common than what we do as a magnet program. I mean this school's, we visited a school in Brandywine School District where yes, they've got everyone trained in this in the teaching strategies and skills while also having a more focused program within the program. So I do think it's possible, but yeah, you, we're gonna find many issues, right, that we have, you know, things that we have to hurdle if we choose to move forward.

Unknown Speaker: I love IB. I love talking with kids that got access to it. So I don't even know that would be a problem, I'm just saying that it wouldn't just be shifting the kids or even -  

Mark Pruitt: Yup, that is correct. Everybody needs to be trained in the building. Yep.

⏯ 1:33:02 Ted Ammann: So where was I? Tech, nutrition would be pretty low with MYP moving to Skyline. Facilities. When you look at facilities it's the age of the kids. If you have middle school kids moving to school with middle schoolers, everything's the same. You know the rooms, come down to the bathrooms are designed for middle school kids, so that would be low impact. Cost, again, low impact from that. 

⏯ 1:33:24 Ted Ammann: Online school is something that, my personal belief, is Delaware's very behind in terms of that.  There are other states, Florida actually, has a whole school district that's online and anyone in the state can take part of it. So HR impact could be very low. It would depend, you know a lot of this depends on how it gets developed. If your online school would be something where you're using permanent, full-time teachers, you would have to earn them through the unit count and the state would have to adjust that and acknowledge that you're going to be having online students generating units. On the flip side, it could be that online teaching is being taught by teachers who want extra assignments, what we call that EPER. You know, if a teacher wants to teach an online class at the end of the day or something, they could do that or you can go with third parties to do the teaching, in which case the HR impact would not be large because you're not having - I see someone saying No, we wouldn't do it that way. Maybe not, but the HR impact in that type of program would would be low.  Online school, really in terms of all these, as I looked through them were fairly low. Costs would be a little higher because it would depend on how whether we're purchasing content from a third party or whether we're developing our own content for those types of things and again doesn't mean just because it's low across the board that's something that would say you should not do. It may just be a bad idea even though it's low impact.

⏯ 1:34:41 Ted Ammann: Charter School of Wilmington to a Red Clay high school. HR impact, it depends. It really depends on what happens to that charter school if it moves. If it moves and it's the same size, we can assume the staffing impact is fairly low. But if it were to move and grow, and again I'm not suggesting we do any of those things, I'm just saying if Charter School of Wilmington were to move from where it is to another building, and have room for additional students and our board changed their charter to allow additional students, it could take more students which could - I see someone shaking their head again - but those are just from a from an HR perspective that could have an impact depending on how that got implemented. Transportation would be low in terms of that it's definitely charter school's issue not Red Clay's issue,  but I would share that right now Charter School of Wilmington and Cab Calloway share buses. We worked with the state to allow that because we used to have a bus follow their bus and our bus would drive through the same neighborhood which is just absurd. It took years to get the state to change it, but obviously if the Charter School of Wilmington was not co-existing with a Red Clay school they would have to buy their own busing or they would have to pay us to provide busing for them. Tech, Nutrition,  again, I want to skip Tech Nutrition they're pretty much low in all these areas, my opinion. Facilities that really would not have a huge impact in terms of we would not be retrofitting a building if they were to move in to another building. That would be on them and they would start paying the operating costs of that building just like they do for their share of Cab Calloway. Cost, again, medium. It really would depend if they were to grow and that meant we had fewer students in our remaining schools, we kind of would get right back to the problem we're talking about where we have a high school that doesn't have students to generate the teachers you need so that could have a cost if we're not earning teachers.

⏯ 1:36:37 Ted Ammann: Expand Dickinson magnet 6 to 12. HR impact, again, medium. Transportation medium. The thing about the Dickinson magnet 6-12 that I was sort of thinking about, is it really would depend on how large that 6 to 12 program came because if all the students leave Dickinson and it's only the IB program but there's not enough students to fully fund the teachers that are needed at the school,  there could be an HR impact to that. Transportation would be fairly inconsequential in terms of we already have buses that run to Dickinson. They would just have high school kids and middle school kids that are part of that IB program going on those buses. 

⏯ 1:37:18 Ted Ammann: Moving AI Middle school to AI High School for 6 to 12 was one of the options. From HR impact medium if we're closing that middle school,  teachers who were working at AI Middle School would move to AI High School so there'd be some impact there. Transportation probably be low because if would actually not only be low, it might save some money because we have a bus that's picking up middle school and high school kids from the same neighborhood taking them to one school. First that gets into whether the middle school and high school kids should be on the same bus, that i think someone brought up earlier, but from a impact perspective, I consider that a fairly low one. Facilities would be high for that one because we're taking a bunch of middle school students putting them in a high school and to figure out what renovations do we maybe need to do in that high school so that the middle school students, if the middle school students are in a certain area of the high school, you know, getting that issue of middle school and high school students are somewhat separate in the school, there might be some renovation costs related to that.

⏯ 1:38:17 Ted Ammann:  Consolidated 6 to 8 programs. From a high perspective,  what happens if we consolidate those programs and it's a full middle school program? That would mean that there's a building that we're not using, what would happen to that building? By state law, if we give up a building for a surplus and a building becomes available for charter schools to use if they need to move space. So that obviously could have some impact. 

⏯ 1:38:43 Unknown Speaker: So if we just shut down a middle, and we're not moving anything over there [inaudible] do we have to put it up to the state? 

⏯ 1:38:56 Ted Ammann:  Every year we get a list from the state saying, "Are you still using all of the existing facilities?" I guess if it's no, then it goes into the inventory of state buildings and be offered to charter schools or other state agencies as an example we built a cell phone tower at Dickinson a few years ago. We were gonna rent, lease a piece of the property before we did that we had to tell the state we were surplussing that small area and there was a ton of interest. People assumed it was all Dickinson High School property and they realized it was only that small little piece in the middle and that's something you don't want. So there is a process in state code that we would have to go -

⏯ 1:39:33 Shawn Snyder: The worst case scenario is that nobody wants it. That happened to a couple of issues down state. There was like a weird abandoned school [inaudible]

⏯ 1:39:41 Ted Ammann: If you play that out if nobody wants it, you can sell it. And the cost of that goes to the state. Ultimately, it's a state asset. So in terms of cost it really would depend on what that consolidation was. 

⏯ 1:39:56 Ted Ammann: Warner Shortlidge K-8. You know we currently look at that Warner Shortlidge model as one campus from K-5. If we expanded K-8, the HR impact again would be medium because we would need additional staff members to teach the middle school classes. They may be coming from other high schools. And that translates into cost. I put medium there because one of the things that might happen is that would not be enough students going to the Warner Middle School to decrease the staff needs of the other middle schools. So it wouldn't be as simple as saying hey we have extra teachers at this other middle school, let's move them to Warner. We would have to hire extra teachers whether or not there'd be enough students to earn those units. Kind of goes back to the initial issue we've talked about at AI High School. If you don't have enough students in a school to generate the teachers that you need for a comprehensive program, it creates a problem. 

⏯ 1:40:47 Ted Ammann: Warner K-12. Obviously a high impact because you need not only middle school teachers but you also have to figure out how to jam, uh I shouldn't have said jam. Yeah, you have to figure out how to place high school students into that building. The one other high there obviously is facilities cost. Middle school is also, but high schools need sporting facilities. There are no sporting facilities at Warner other than the park across the street and Sally's football stadiums. So that would be our, that would be an expense to that. Not to mention retrofitting a high school building to hold high school students.  

⏯ 1:41:24 Ted Ammann: Capping Cab and Conrad. Medium Low. There was nothing really sticking out in terms of that, other than it kind of gets into the, again, the same issue I feel like some of these could end up creating the same issue that you've been talking about with AI high school. If you have fewer students at Cab or Conrad, you would generate fewer units for teachers to be in those schools and then we've been saying that Kendra, you have fewer kids, fewer units, which teachers are you going to give up and she'd be saying well I can't give up any of these teachers because I offer a full program here. I need a biology teacher, I need an animal science teacher, I need whatever the other topics are. So I felt like that one could actually be creating the same problem that you all are looking to resolve in terms of that.

⏯ 1:42:13 Ted Ammann: Choice busing is one that comes up quite a bit. There is no way around it. Choice in the State of Delaware is absolutely not an equitable program. You cannot get to a school unless your parent, guardian or family member is able to get you there. The HR impact for Choice busing would be very low. There would be no staff impact. Transportation would be extremely high.  We used to do limited choice busing. I did not look to see when it was. It was quite a while ago. The cost to us, at that point, was about 400 and some odd thousand dollars. Meaning every year we had to give that money back to the state because state will not pay for that choice busing.  The state could authorize choice busing. You kind of have to question why would the state authorize it in Red Clay and not authorize it in every district and if they authorize it in every district that cost just gets that much more.  But even if they authorized the funding so we're not having to send money back to the state we would then need to be - there was a slide I think you guys saw. I saw it on Mark's wall one day of our attendance zones with the middle and the lines. That would be choice busing. We'd be having to run bus routes from every neighborhood to every other possible school, which sounds great then you avoid the problem with students that can't get to a school. So from a transportation certainly a high impact. 

⏯ 1:43:41 Vic Leonard: I know in our AI Task Force, we talked about magnet school buses versus traditional. Is there a difference with the state?  

⏯ 1:43:50 Ted Ammann: The state has put enough log language in certain areas around the state that they will fund choice busing for magnet programs. So for instance, Conrad has a provision that we can because there is no attendance zone. The whole district is, in essence, the attendance zone. The problem with all of that though is even if they're funding, it doesn't mean you can do it reasonably.  What i mean by that is, if you have a district-wide busing and Conrad sees that, some of those bus rides are way too long for kids. Well there's only so many buses you can run. So if we were to do this choice busing that means, even if the state's paying their share, they only pay at most 90%, it's a debate about how the funding works out, but they're paying let's say 90% of it, the district would still be on the hook for the other 10% and we would have to add additional buses. So even if they're funding the driver, the fuel, the aid and all that it would mean purchasing additional buses, storing additional buses and all those things.

⏯ 1:44:49 Vic Leonard: Do you know the reasoning behind that with the state?

⏯ 1:44:52 Ted Ammann: The reasoning behind?

⏯ 1:44:53 Vic Leonard: Why they will they would pay for magnets versus not for traditionals? 

⏯ 1:44:58 Ted Ammann: I would only be guessing. I do not know. The choice law from the beginning has always been you have to get to the attendance zone of the school. And over time there's been a handful of places where they've put epilogue language in that says they will provide the busing, And that's why I had, the only very high in all of these was transportation and the cost. But the other thing I would think this committee wants to be really careful about if this is going to be something you want to explore, we don't know that would change the initial problem that you're looking to solve. Because there absolutely are kids who can't get to their first choice school because of transportation. Are there enough students that would suddenly go to any one of our schools based on this new busing opportunity. That might be something, if you're going to be doing surveys. We don't know how many people don't choice to a school because of transportation. Anecdotally, we've all heard of a student. But we don't know that magically doing this at whatever that cost would be, probably to the tune of a million dollars a year. Forever. Would we have any students or enough students to really make a difference to what this committee is looking? And not to, certainly it'd be great, if a student could get the school they want to go to if they can't currently get there. The other thing is related to that is we used to do choice busing but not what this option is about. When I look at this, and it's only 4 words, but when I look at it, it says any student can get to any school that they want to go to. That's not what Red Clay did. Red Clay had choice busing from some neighborhoods to some schools. That's not equitable choice busing. So the choice busing, the way this word would be much more expensive than it was in 15 or 20 years ago. Again I'm not saying it's a bad idea or a good idea. I'm saying there's a lot of impact from the cost perspective and I don't know that we have data showing that it would avoid the problems that you're all trying to resolve. 

⏯ 1:46:56 Unknown Speaker:  Can you expand that like how did they choose which neighborhoods got to - so remember they used to definitely bus Pike Creek, AI [inaudible], but I don't actually, I don't know how you guys picked - 

⏯ 1:47:12 Ted Ammann: A lot of it, from what, I wasn't here, certainly wasn't working with transportation, it came down to if parents thought to call and ask for a bus stop. It was, so right off the bat that means the parent had to know that was an option. Then again I don't want to make it sound like it was nefarious. I think it stemmed from there was a lot of redistricting, someone over this table mentioned earlier, so I think some of it started because we said hey if this student used to go to the school let's let them keep going to that school and then it grew from there. And when we started phasing it out, it was the pause and it was not - and I feel like it's people look back at it as it was a very equitable thing. I don't know that I would say it was as equitable as it was in certain neighborhoods.

⏯ 1:48:00 Unknown Speaker: Thank you. I thought it was well thought out the way you presented it. I just want to say thank you for that.

⏯ 1:48:19 Ted Ammann:  I feel like I went really, really quickly. You didn't tell me I only had 3 minutes. But also, as you get further on this, if you rule out one of these, then there's no point in giving any more thought to that. But if some of these sort of survive, like survivor, if they survive the next round, then we'd obviously go a little further into this and share some more detail. But I would say any of these can be done. Just a question of what this committee wants to bring to the top.   

⏯ 1:48:44 Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much, Dr. Ammann. So we did not get through the entire agenda. But I anticipated that as we started to dive into the issues there's going to be a lot more discussion. Meeting 1 was me give you information. Meeting 2 was an opportunity to throw some things at a wall. There was nothing that I didn't write down. But now we start to consider ideas. What are some models around the country of a couple of things? What is the feasibility of doing some things? And really, what's the impact? Is it going to be high? Is it going to be feasible? And is it going to be high impact? Is it going to change, is it going to fix the problem? Is it going to meet the goal. I think as far as the timeline goes, the only thing I would need is a consensus that we are not ready to have a town hall meeting replace our April meeting.

Jodi Muffley: No. 

Unknown Speaker: Of course not.

⏯ 1:49:43 Mark Pruitt:  Ok, so I'm gonna say that that's a consensus. We don't need to vote on that, that's not, you know, the committee does not involve, you know, a lot of Robert's Rules voting. So we'll plan on this being a regular meeting to finish the agenda from last month, alright, which is, you know, group work of relevance, of feasibility and impact. A straw poll - not a vote. Just sort of, take our temperature, right? What we'll learn from that is if no one used one of their 3 stickers, like, and something, an idea sits at zero, we may brainstorm, alright is there anything else out there now that, we chewed this, we batted this, is there anything else new? You know we want to add up here. Ok but then what the straw poll will do is allow us to maybe pull some things off, right. We learn more, it doesn't make, you know what that's not gonna work. Let's not even consider that one. You know, I'll do, I'll bring some research. Or at least some summary of some research that was in the plan all along. Seems like we need to move that forward a little bit. Have some folks on our team that do that work. Take a look at some of the research behind some of the ideas. Ok in relationship to urban, suburban, K-8, 6-12, obviously an Innovation Center. It's probably another meeting's work and I would also be ready for us to potentially, alright, what's a new timeline look like, right. What's a new timeline look like, what are we ready, you know, are we ready to present and say this is what we should do in July to the school board which is what the school board asked of us back in December. 3 of the 7 are here with us that are seeing how hard we're working. This is a great group. I'd really appreciate if you - if when I was tasked with - if they're, well, I'm gonna do - the last thing I'm gonna do is if I was, if I thought that this group was gonna be this productive, this thought-provoking, I would never have, you know, I knew it was gonna be good and it's better than that so I really appreciate it. The one thing we do have to finish with and I was told it looks like there might be someone behind us. Is there anyone that would like, that didn't already give public comment give public comment which leaves us with one person. Would you like to give any public comment?

Unknown Speaker: I'm fine. 

Mark Pruitt: Is there anyone online? It looks like we have someone online who would like to give public comment. 

Unknown Speaker: There's one person, Brenda Steffon.

Mark Pruitt: Alright, Ms. Steffon? If you can unmute yourself I believe?

Brenda Steffon: Yes. 

Mark Pruitt: And we welcome your public comment. Thank you. 

⏯ 1:52:32 Brenda Steffon: Thank you very much for allowing some public comment here. I am an alumni of AI High School. l am an active member of the really formulating Friends of AI. As we're coming together, there's a couple points that I'd like to highlight and also, excuse me, put out to the committee here. One Dr. Green's commitment and to the school board's commitment of the equitable, a program equity, equitability I'm not pretty saying that right, of programs across the schools and transportation. I think our key and what make this school district really stand out is that its ability to address the very real, raw situations that are the elephant in the room is there, right. But we're also very good as coming together as a community and that brings me to like building bridges is how you build community.  AI High School right now has really no PTA, no boosters that are active and the AI alumni has come together and has stepped in. I was just at a clean - spring cleanup this weekend and I'm impressed with the commitment of the staff. I talked to teachers there and also on the appearance of the school and it was very encouraging and think there's a lot of ways that community can bridge some of those issues that we talk about in Delaware and we can make something different. The other thing I wanted to bring up is the reminder from that, is that actually the November Board meeting, or December board meeting of last year, was the agreed upon timeline by the Board for this committee to be to be ready to present by July. So I'm going to put that out there as like that is something that us as a community are looking for and that that timeline was for the 26-27 school year as a place to have that initiated, not 27-28. And then the last thing, if i have time is that, you know, we want to make sure that we're providing that equity of programming across the district, including the charters, including the magnets, and especially specifically for the secondary comprehensive high schools and so having that conversation around those three schools is very important because it does provide access to a quality and programming that some kids may not have access to. So I think that that is a very big, big point that needs to constantly come back to that these three schools do need to have this weigh-in of their responsibility to their community. So thank you very much. I thank you all for participating in this. It is a great pleasure. Thank you.

⏯ 1:55:16 Mark Pruitt: Thank you very much, Ms. Steffon. Okay, at this point I will take a motion to bring the meeting to an end. Ms. Merto. Seconded by Ms. Muffley. All in favor? Alright, thank you very much.

🌐Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee Webpage

March 20, 2025 Meeting Materials

📁Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee Meeting Rolling Slides March 20, 2025

📹Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee March 20, 2025 Recording

📄Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee March 20, 2025 Meeting Minutes

Red Clay Consolidated School District Secondary Attendance-Zone & Programming Committee Meeting Minutes- (FINAL) 

March 20, 2025 / 6:00 PM / RCCSD Board Rm, 

1502 Spruce Ave, Wilmington, DE 19805 Zoom Meeting (For public only. Committee members are in person.) 

1 Attendance/Welcome Thomas Brucker, Emily Carroll, Dorrell Green, Antonio Gomes, Val Gould, Vic Leonard Sr, Jose Matthews, Caitlin Merto, Jodi Muffley, Kecia Nesmith, Mark Pruitt Jr , Madeleine Reitemeyer, Eric Sanford, Shawn Snyder, Kendra Todd-Dixon, Reggie Worlds 

Vic Leonard made a motion to start the meeting, seconded by Shawn Snyder. Motion passed. Meeting called to order at 6:05pm. 

Agenda Items 

Opening Items 

● Public Comment - Hadrian Cissell, Jenny Howard 

● Approve Minutes from February 19th. Jose Matthews made a motion to approve the minutes, seconded by Jodi Muffley. Motion passed. New Business 

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

● Meeting Norms - Mr. Pruitt 

● Tentative Timeline - Mr. Pruitt - discussion of changing April meeting to a committee workgroup instead of public town hall 

● Redding Update/Implications - Dr. Green 

● Brainstorming Results - Mr. Pruitt - setting D building removed as possible solution from results, not tied directly to committee charge due to special education considerations 

● Models from Around the Country - Dr. Green and Mr. Pruitt 

● Guest Speaker- Ted Ammann, Chief Operating Officer- discussed the feasibility of brainstormed ideas. 

● Motion made by Mark Pruitt to push back April public town hall and instead schedule April as regular meeting. Seconded by Shawn Snyder. Motion passed.  

● Public Comment - Brenda Steffon 

● Adjourn - Caitlin Merto made a motion to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Jodi Muffley. Motion passed. Meeting adjourned at 8pm. 

Action Items 

Moving analysis & discussion, straw poll to next meeting. Additional research on the following models K-8, k-12, 6-8 

Next Meeting April 15, 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.