May 1 2025
AZ Committee Meeting

▼Full Transcript Below

1. Public Comment

⏯ 1:47:48-1:55:59

• • • Dr. Maura Triebenbacher (President of CSW) stated desire for more space is due to logistics and safety concerns; emphasized that Charter School of Wilmington is both a separate entity and a Red Clay school chartered by Red Clay serving 744 Red Clay students. Expressed a strong desire to collaborate and co-invest with the district. 

    • Nate Bird (CSW parent and CSW Board Member) shared that listening to passionate teachers changed his perspective to support a school move, emphasizing CSW board's desire to collaborate with the Red Clay on a mutually beneficial solution.

    • Jenny Howard (Red Clay parent) commented that Red Clay authorizes the charter but is not responsible for CSW students, urging the district to prioritize its own district students and resources over a separate charter entity; highlighted inequities over district choice bussing. 

2. Committee Discussion about Virtual/online option
    ⏯ 12:56-21:36

• • • Online/Virtual Options: The committee discussed the value of virtual learning and competition from out-of-state online charters, ultimately agreeing to recommend that the school board pursue virtual programming as a separate topic rather than including it in attendance zone considerations. 

3. Committee Discussion about Capping enrollment at Conrad and Cab
    ⏯ 21:36

• The committee unanimously agreed to remove this option from further consideration after it received zero votes of interest in the straw poll.

4. Committee Discussion about Committee Discussion about Merging AI Middle & AI High
  ⏯ 21:50-24:07

• Removed from further consideration after receiving only two votes in the straw poll, as Committee Chair Mark Pruitt noted it would permanently restrict enrollment at AIHS. 

5. Committee Discussion about Reducing to Two Attendance Zone High Schools & Relocating CSW
    ⏯ 24:07-43:05

• Removed from further consideration via committee vote (11–0, with 2 abstentions) after committee members weighed the potential benefit of generating revenue from CSW against clarification from the  Superintendent regarding state control over vacant district buildings,  the lack of governance authority over CSW facility. Additionally the option did not align with the committee's charge. 

6. Committee Discussion about Equitable Choice Busing
    ⏯ 43:05–1:01:26

• The committee voted (11–2) to remove district-wide choice busing from further consideration after acknowledging that while it promotes equity, the district lacks the local funding, fleet, and bus drivers.  

7.Committee Discussion about Dickinson 6–12 IB Magnet school
    ⏯1:01:26-1:12:51

• The committee discussed converting Dickinson into an all choice IB magnet school but expressed concern it would drain enrollment from other schools.

    ⏯1:34:28-1:37:13The committee agreed to remove the Dickinson all choice magnet option because they would not be able to recommend both IB magnet school and a CTE Innovation Center.

8. CTE Innovation Center Model
    ⏯1:08:53–1:27:50

• The committee discussed establishing a CTE Innovation center based on models in MD and CO to compete with VoTech using shuttle transportation while maintaining students' attendance schools, Sussex and NCC VoTechs were discussed. 

     ⏯1:23:38–1:47:40

• The committee discussed sharing implementation feasibility, synchronizing schedules, union MOUs, state transportation/shuttle and which courses would remain at home schools, McKean's existing high quality CTE opportunities and CTE flagship status, overlapping pathways across multiple schools.

9. Middle School reduction/MYP relocation

    ⏯1:04:28

• Mark Pruitt proposed moving Dickinson MYP for high school expansion. "We've got to move the IB middle school at Dickinson somewhere. You have to do it because you need those seats for an expanded high school." 

     ⏯1:05:41

• Mark Pruitt explained the need for moving MYP to Skyline: "If we were to just go with an Innovation Center as our recommendation to expand, you would need to move this school, you would move this program over to Skyline. So you put 300 seats, so to speak, at Skyline."

⏯1:36:21

• Mark Pruitt explained reducing middle schools from 8 to 7. "So the question is: Look at IB as a program and not a school. If you look at it as a program and not a school, the expansion has to come at the expense of where you looked at the reduction of going from eight to seven middle schools, right?"

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⏯05:10 Mark Pruitt: We will get started here. Thank you very much for this, our committee meeting. We added this meeting, and we have good attendance here. We did have four people who let me know that they couldn't make it on the committee, but that's fine—we're able to move forward. I appreciate everyone being here.

If we could have a motion to open the meeting.

⏯05:35 Tawanda Bond [Inaudible/Motion made]

⏯05:36 Reggie Worlds: [Inaudible/Motion made]

⏯05:39 Mark Pruitt: Second by Reggie. Got it. All right.

The agenda for the meeting is as I sent out last week. While we deal with the freeze, we will move to public comment. So we will have public comment at the beginning of the meeting and at the end of the meeting, but you cannot give public comment twice. At this time, I would defer to anyone in person—would you like to give public comment?

Anyone online like to give public comment? 

⏯06:46 Unknown Speaker: Not at this time. 

⏯06:47 Mark Pruitt: Not at this time. Okay, having no public comment on the front end, we will move to the 4/15 last meeting minutes. Okay, everybody should have a copy of those minutes. I'll give everyone a moment to take a look, then I'll take a motion to either edit or approve those minutes.

⏯07:25 Shawn Snyder: I'll make a motion to approve.

⏯07:28 Mark Pruitt: Have a second?

⏯07:29 Eric Sanford: Second. 

⏯07:33 Mark Pruitt: All in favor? Opposed?

⏯07:34 Group: Aye

⏯07:35 Mark Pruitt: Opposed? All right, minutes from 4/15 are approved.

You know, we're going to slow down on two slides today: one is the goals, because we're really going to start to dig in tonight, and also the norms. We've glazed over them the last two meetings, but I think it's important to slow down and understand what our goals are.

The goal of the committee is to evaluate the enrollment, programming, and attendance zones of Red Clay Secondary Schools and make recommendations to the school board at the July board meeting. In doing so, the committee should consider:

1. A strong and balanced enrollment across schools.

2. The impact of attendance zone changes, and in that respect, alignment of boundaries to K-8 attendance zones when possible. For high schools, alignment with the K-8 boundaries that were redone in 2015–16, and consider geography and neighborhood schools that align with the Neighborhood Schools Act from 2000.

3. Equitable access to quality education for all schools. We spent quite a bit of time talking about the impact of enrollment as it relates to quality programming and access for all students.

4. Advantages and challenges: The recommendation should include advantages and challenges of each recommended option through data analysis, community feedback, and research.

All right. And the norms: no question as we start to dig in here to our straw poll and where we stood on varying ideas that we had discussed, we're bound to have some disagreement tonight. We've been a tremendous group working together thus far, and I totally expect that to continue. But speak your truth, respect various points of view. Very important—assume positive intent. I believe we're all in here for the betterment of students and the betterment of the school district; why else would we spend all this time regardless of our role on the committee? And be solution-oriented. 

Where we've been thus far. I apologize, oh, I got it right. It looked like a typo, but I’m still thinking it’s April 30th but I saw May. But it's May 1st. So we've gone through four meetings. Tonight, this is just sort of an overview—tonight we're refining those ideas. We got some good data back from our straw poll. May 21st, we'll look to begin developing a recommendation. In June, take a look at some focus group data and survey data, analyze that, see how that may impact our recommendation, and hopefully be able to make a final determination.

Also, tonight at the end, I'd like to discuss—as we said we would—is there going to be a need to push back the timeline of a July recommendation to the board? We spent quite a bit of time discussing that at the last meeting.

Questions about that timeline?

Okay. All right, we've reviewed this. We all agreed, I think two meetings ago, that part of our recommendation would include the following—some broad pillars, I would say:

1. This committee does believe we should align high school attendance zone boundaries with middle schools. Straight-line feeders whenever possible.

2. Distribute students equally to each attendance zone school.

3. Have a commitment to all of our graduates, to all of our students—we're talking about high school specifically here—of equity of programs across each school.

Right, so we've already made that decision. So we sort of have that piece of the recommendation to the school district in place.

I sent this out earlier in the week, I believe. I appreciate everyone's willingness to participate in the survey. Everyone had an opportunity to choose 4 of the 10 options, and this is where the data shook out. At this time, everyone has a hard copy of this data in front of them, and at this time I'll allow people to let that soak in a little bit. Any general questions about—and again, this was not a vote. We're not taking the top, you know we’re going to use this data to inform our work going forward tonight. Does anyone have any broad comments or questions?

⏯12:27 Jose Matthews: Can I get a hard copy?

⏯12:29 Mark Pruitt: Yeah, they're right back there.

⏯12:56 Mark Pruitt: Anyone want to make any comments or questions broadly about the straw poll or the results as they show on the page. Everyone understands what we did and how we got here?

Okay, we will move on to the next slide.

All right, and I thought what we'd do here is start at the bottom. Where was there the least support, to help us narrow down what it is we're working with? I think this is an easy opportunity to get a win with the first one. Not one person had create a—I’m sorry—I'm backing out of that... I would contend, and again this is just a starting point, that creating an online school of which I had in my top four, can be accomplished regardless of what we do with attendance zone changes.

So that could be a part—now, 9 of the 18 people chose it in their top four. That is not to say that the other 9 were against it; There may be multiple people. It just means that this was important to those 9. I would contend that part of our recommendation to the board could be to pursue this as an option regardless of what our configuration looks like in our recommendation.

Would anybody like to comment on that? Is there anyone that feels strongly against an online school, or would like—is willing to say online courses, online coursework opportunities for students?

⏯14:45 Dorrell Green: Well, that's what I would say. One, you've got to define an "online school" versus a "virtual program"—they are two different things. We would have to clearly define and articulate what that recommendation would be to the board respective to an online school versus a virtual program. Those are— maybe some want to use that interchangeably, but that's in my opinion.

⏯15:09 Committee Member: So I would assume an online school is like just homeschooling a program. Is that what you're saying? I mean, is that like—

⏯15:20 Dorrell Green: Well, an online school is in essence what it's saying. Students part—

⏯15:22 Committee Member: [inaudible] Right. Okay.

⏯15:25 Mark Pruitt: I believe at meeting two when we brainstormed and this was brought up, the reason that is in—students would have an attendance zone home school, is that they would be assigned to a home school and—I don't remember how that came up, but they would be assigned to a home school, but would be able potentially to take courses virtually. I think that was the intent of the idea. It's not to say—you know, there's a lot to unpack with this from a curricular standpoint, from support from teachers, a lot of good models.

I was at a training in March and went to a virtual school session about how they do it. North Carolina does it very well, in the state of North Carolina, and learned a bit about it. But I'm certainly no expert in that regard. But I felt comfortable with this—well, I felt comfortable enough to put this out that we could move forward with pursuing this further as a school district. Okay? Because it doesn't really impact our attendance zones, and it doesn't really impact, you know, what we're trying to accomplish here.

⏯16:38 Antonio Gomes: I'll say in my opinion, students the age of 11 to 18, I think they need to be in person. I think that is best for that age group. I also feel like one of the missions of this committee is to make more powerful, not water anything down. I think one of the things across the board, there's only so many kids, right, in the 14 to 18 age group. I think we do something like this, it just waters things down more, gives them more options where we're looking to make things less options and more powerful. 

⏯17:18 Reggie Worlds: I would just disagree with you. We've been using it for years, and we evolved it to support some of our behavior challenges years ago. But now what we found is that it's more support for students that have transitional issues to come to school in person and still have the opportunity to build part of the school community. It still allows students to participate in sports and activities. And some students, often as the year goes on, they transition into the school. So it is a useful tool, but I agree with Dr. Green's assessment—we use it as a program. It's part of our curriculum, we incorporate it into our everyday operations. So you kind of have to define what you're looking for, but I do support that process.

⏯17:59 Dorrell Green:  Again. And like I said, you have twilight programs, you have online, IXL credit recovery, there's a whole host of things that we can do. So I would say parking lot, table it, look at it more from a programmatic standpoint versus—you don't need to adjust, to Mr. Pruitt's point, attendance zones or boundaries to create a virtual programming option for our secondary students.

⏯18:24 Mark Pruitt: Which is, and I think a recommendation might be: the committee recommends further pursuing alternatives of virtual options. You know, programming like—this committee is not going to hash out what a virtual program is going to look like. That might be some district-level committee, right, where we're going out and getting trained. But I will say this: I did ultimately put a choice there, but I could be easily convinced that it would be more effective for a 9-12. 

⏯18:55 Dorrell Green: —it could, again, higher-level students may need access to AP, more advanced courses. I mean, there's a whole host of things, again, I think we can really research and act as a part of it.

⏯19:04 Mark Pruitt: Yup. Yup. 

⏯19:05 Shawn Snyder: Yeah, I think the other thing to consider just to that: it's better that we start to learn about this and come up with plans before outside entities determine that we must do this, because many other states offer this already and Delaware is kind of one of the last. It doesn't have like a whole online charter program. Pennsylvania's got a ton of these. I would rather us have something we thought through, that we built, that we researched, that's high quality, and then everybody's trying to catch up, and being ahead of that curve.

⏯19:33 Maddie Reitemeyer: So can we recommend to the board that they consider it and then push it back to the district with their parameters?

⏯19:40 Mark Pruitt: Yeah, I don't think this committee is going to be in the weeds, right? So I think it's perfectly fine to say—and again, we'll draft something and let all of you edit it, right, and [inaudible]—but I think we'd say further pursuance of online programming.

⏯20:01 Caitlin Merto: Just to the point with Pennsylvania: I do teach in Pennsylvania, and there are an ungodly number of online charters. And so my district did create an online program. I think we're in year three or four of it to, kind of to your point, combat the fact that we were losing so many kids to the online charter school. So I think getting ahead of that conversation and kind of carving that out... And there have been situations—I mean, I had a student, following COVID, that developed such major anxiety that she could not physically come to the school building anymore. She just got so worried after the pandemic. And so she became an attendance concern and she wasn't going to graduate. It became a whole thing, and the online program actually provided her with an opportunity to continue to do the work in a way that she actually felt safe and comfortable to do it. So there definitely are other reasons.

⏯21:03 Jennifer Recchiuti: And some of the other things that we heard was like, some immigrant children are scared to go to school because of the new administration, fearful of ICE. So that would also be including other people in thinking broadly of inclusiveness for everybody. And then I see a lot online, you know, parents wanting homeschooling options and wish that they had better access to districts for that type of support.

⏯21:36 Mark Pruitt: All right, I think there's some consensus there. All right, the next one. This was the one I said we'll start off with an easy one, right? This is the slide I meant, I apologize. One of the options was capping Conrad and Cab at smaller enrollments; that had zero out of 18 straw poll votes. So I would recommend, without much discussion, that we remove that as an option. That's an easy one. Okay, we can move on, we can save our time.

All right, the next one is move AI Middle to AI High to create one 6–12 attendance zone program. That had 2 out of 18, 2 out of 72 really, but 2 out of 18. And this was the one that I spoke at the last meeting about how I felt as though it actually conflicted with our need to increase enrollments and programs. Like, you sort of are permanently restricting AI High School to a small school at that point, and we know the importance of enrollment. So two people were interested in furthering that. At this point, I would allow either of those people—and I think only one of them is here—

⏯23:03 Committee Member: It will be me.

⏯23:05 Mark Pruitt: You don't have to, but—

⏯23:07 Jodi Muffley: I'm actually gonna.

⏯23:09 Mark Pruitt: Convince us as to why we should keep something like this. If you want.

⏯23:14 Jodi Muffley: I am not going to convince you because A) I figured that out at the first meeting before all of these other ideas. Yep, so it made it to the board, which is great, but after hearing—I wasn't at the meeting, but I watched it—and I do agree it would shoot us... it would not serve this purpose. So I'm not going to. Independently, I thought it was a great idea to begin with, but upon further resource-looking and what we're actually moving to do, it is not a good idea. 

⏯23:48 Maddie Reitemeyer: I think it’s a good idea.

⏯23:50 Jodi Muffley: Aw, thanks Maddie. 

⏯23:52 Maddie Reitemeyer: I liked it.

⏯24:01 Mark Pruitt: All right, so without a vote, I think we can agree to remove that as an option? 

⏯24:06 Committee Member: Yes.

⏯24:07 Mark Pruitt: All right, now we'll move on to the next, which is reduce to two attendance zone high schools and relocate the Charter School of Wilmington to the open site. And we will do the same thing here and allow the four supporters, or anyone else who would potentially change their mind between last week and this week, you know, to try to change some minds here in the room. And then I think when you start getting up to four or five or six out of 18, we probably need to take a vote after the person has an opportunity to explain why we should continue.

⏯25:01 Antonio Gomes: So I know that two attendance zone high schools was one of the things we were talking about, right? So that was one piece why I looked at this. The other piece is when I was looking at the poll, I think it was during the last meeting—and again, if I'm incorrect, please let me know—but it sounds like Charter is paying what, a lease for the property? Did I misunderstand that? Like 80% or something like that?

⏯25:26 Dorrell Green: They rent space out, yes.

⏯25:31 Antonio Gomes: Okay. So to me, if we're potentially reducing to two zone high schools and there is an open spot, I could see a benefit of two things: One, you have an open spot that you can now get revenue out of, which is what—like again, I'm thinking economically at this point—that could be invested into our CI or the innovation center piece that I liked. So that's additional funds that we wouldn't potentially have. The other thing I thought about that might be a good option is because, opposite to that, reduce enrollment at Cab and CS because right now they share with Cab, right? 

⏯26:10 Mark Pruitt: Yes. 

⏯26:11 Antonio Gomes: I was wondering: does that then potentially expand the capability for Cab to take more people as well? So that was the double... again, I'm thinking more economical because, again, more money coming in. And two, it adds the benefit of expanding Cab, which is a good school too, and I thought that they don't have to share that with Charter and allow them to grow that program as well. That is the reason I picked that. To do that. Now, if you guys don't agree, that's fine.

⏯26:43 Mark Pruitt: We're just getting started. I think it's really important—thank you very much for your comments. I think it's really important.  I'm not going to call anyone out by name who made that straw poll vote, but if you'd like, would anyone else like to give their rationale as to why?

⏯26:56 Jennifer Recchiuti: I can go. So I chose this as one of mine as well, on kind of the same scenario as what he said, is that I think there's a couple options in our list that, you know, if we do one, it might also open opportunities for other things as well. So I also thought if we relocate the Charter School of Wilmington... One, I've heard what the students came and were saying about wanting more space and opportunities. But if we relocate them—so say if we went from moving a school or getting rid of a school—that could open up a building where potentially it might or may not work in favor for the charter school, but that's an option. So I'm okay with removing it, but that was some of the reasons why I chose it was, you know, there could be other opportunities.

⏯27:47 Antonio Gomes: And to piggyback, I mean, good point. Like when you think of this one, I think this is dependent on some other ideas going through.

⏯27:55 Mark Pruitt: No question. 

⏯27:56 Antonio Gomes: So my point is, if there's an open site, to me it becomes a no-brainer: give them an open site. That means it's more money for us. That's honestly—I mean, that's literally why I picked this. If there's an open site that comes out of this idea, instead of being something that we're paying taxes on or just for space or not making revenue, let's make revenue on it.

⏯28:17 Dorrell Green: Well, and I think what—to be frank, I actually looked at it. Typically what happens is, if we decided or determined that we were closing a school, that building then becomes a state property. It's a Red Clay holding. It becomes, okay, state, and the state would determine how to go about that process. So don't quote me on it, but I'm almost 98% sure—

⏯28:44 Shawn Snyder: No, you're right.

⏯28:45 Dorrell Green: The fact that when we, in essence, would close a facility or reduce our footprint, because in essence the district doesn't own it, technically the state does.

⏯28:55 Antonio Gomes: So are they paying the district, or are they paying the state today?

⏯28:58 Dorrell Green: They're leasing our facility because it's currently a Red Clay holding. But if we determine one of our other high schools or locations were to close, that then becomes excess that then the state would then take.

⏯29:13 Antonio Gomes: So would we say that—

⏯29:14 Shawn Snyder: It’s the same as—

⏯29:16 Antonio Gomes: So would we say that we’re—

⏯29:17 Dorrell Green: The state would determine if that property went to another state agency as opposed to Charter.

⏯29:22 Antonio Gomes: Okay. 

⏯29:23 Maddie Reitemeyer: I would imagine it's because it's attached to Cab currently. So like, Cab is an open school, right? And so that is revenue that then the school district is bringing in. I actually look at it under that understanding as revenue that the district would then lose. It would be going to the state. 

⏯29:38 Committee Member: No, no, that's fair. I mean, to me, if that's the case, then it's first, reduce one high school. Then second, Charter would have space. But what you're saying is those two [inaudible] to each other, otherwise it's off the table?

⏯29:56 Dorrell Green: No, I'm not saying that. I mean, I'm just saying...It's not necessarily our determination. 

⏯30:05 Shawn Snyder: It’s possible it isn’t an option at all. 

⏯30:07 Jodi Muffley: Okay, so—I'm just... because I voted for it as well, and I just want to make sure that I'm clear on it. So we don't even have the ability to move Charter? That's not our decision? Is that... that's what I'm confused about.

⏯30:22 Dorrell Green: Well, the nuance is we can't determine what—unless we told Charter, again, in this instance, they're no longer leasing space out of Cab and they have to find their own space. Charter is their own entity.

⏯30:36 Jodi Muffley: Okay. 

⏯30:39 Dorrell Green: So we approve or authorize their charter. There is no governance; they have their own board, okay? They get their own funding through choice and the charter process. So that's not anything... just like DMA is in essence authorized by the district as a charter. And it really just looks at the priority process that Red Clay students, as a Red Clay charter, get preferenced into those two charter schools. But our board—I as superintendent, Red Clay—has no direct authority outside of the authorization process for them to go through to secure their spot. 

⏯31:18 Jodi Muffley: So is that even worth being on this, because we can't do it.

⏯31:21 Mark Pruitt: I'll look at it from another direction, because I believe two folks that included it, that just spoke, also—I know you just spoke of liking the innovation center, you voted for both the innovation center. So I'll sort of pivot and say that board over there, which is create a CTE innovation center and reduce from three to two, move CSW—not move, see if they want to move, and we know there's been some interest in their community then, and go from three to two—expand The John Dickinson School IB program to all magnet and essentially go to two attendance zone schools. The other one's already out. But we're only doing one of those three, right? Those are major, those are huge, and you cannot do... you know, we could not move the Charter School of Wilmington to one site and then open an innovation center at one site. That would leave us with only one attendance zone school. And, you know, so I think that's important to note here in this regard.

⏯32:28 Antonio Gomes: Would there be an option—and I'm just thinking outside the box here, because I'm trying to think how, if we're losing money then no, that doesn't make sense at all. But if the rule is we have to keep usage of the site in order to be able to lease it to them, then is there an option to somehow like not completely vacate it, whether it's maybe the innovation center is kind of used with CSW or something to, again, fund it, help fund the whole thing together? Because they have an interest to develop their site, too, right? So they're going to have to invest in whatever their equipment is and things like that, that would help promote potential options for the innovation center. So to your point, I'm wondering if then we merge part of it just to help with from a funding perspective. And again, we would—there's a couple things we would have to iron out: one, CSW would have to be on board, and they would have to kind of be willing to and work in a lot of funds we would need, and two, we would have to make sure that the space would allow for both institutions there to promote... Because I think, wasn't that the best... yeah, the innovation center I think is the one that got the most hits for us, right?

So I think one of the concerns there is going to be making sure we have the funding to do what's necessary to truly make that happen. I definitely want to make sure we maximize the resources there. The fact that they were here asking for it is a plus, because obviously they really want to do this, and this would be the option to say, "Hey, either stay where you are, or you can help us make this happen and, you know, help fund the gap that we have." I'm just thinking like, again, outside the box, so you guys can say no.

⏯34:24 Mark Pruitt: This is why we're here. 

⏯34:25 Dorrell Green: The six years that I've been in this seat, and I think the unique nature of—we are the only district that serves as a charter authorizer of, [inaudible] our board and two charters that we authorize to have—and come to the table to have some discussion as to what does the evolution of those relationships look like, rather than sitting outside of the independence that they're granted as their own entity, but to assure that there is better alignment in terms of program articulation. Because I think even if you look at the nature of Cab, or 6th through 12th grade options... So when we had the AI 6th through 12th grade option, first thing in my mind was: okay, you're there for 6th through 8th grade, and then you don't stay for high school. So how do you even guarantee that you're staying in that particular enrollment? You know, even at Conrad, a portion of those middle schoolers go to Delcastle. So this idea that, you know, a 6th through 12th grade option, because there are a lot of choices and a lot of opportunities within a small geographic area...

So to your point, it is a valid point of really looking at, even outside of space, how does that integration around programming and make sure we're maximizing... Because they are Red Clay-chartered. So if you're that student who wants that military experience, I think it behooves us as the district who serves as the authorizer to look at students who want that experience to actually steer them in that direction, because it does benefit, rather than looking at it as it's a regular charter, but yet they're competition within Red Clay. So it definitely warrants some conversation, I think, to really look at what's the nature of those relationships going forward.

⏯36:15 Mark Pruitt: Would anyone else like to speak up as to why they supported Charter School of Wilmington, the movement of Charter School of Wilmington, as one of their options?

At this point, I think that there was... you know, we've had a couple people speak about it, and I think we probably should get, you know, some sort of vote or where we stand on whether to remove it or whether to continue to move on, move forward with it as a possible option here. 

Okay. So I would make a motion that we remove the option of the Charter School of Wilmington to an open site, right? I would like to remove that because there's not enough support to move forward.

⏯37:11 Maddie Reitemeyer: So I'm still confused. Do we have any say of where they go if that's not—if they’re not—If their home base isn't at the Cab/CSW building? So really all we could do is vote to ask them to leave, but we can't assign them a place.

⏯37:28 Dorrell Green: This committee doesn't really... We could terminate, and that's a whole 'nother leasing process that our board—

⏯37:35 Maddie Reitemeyer: I just don't know what we're voting on.

⏯37:36 Jodi Muffley: I know, that's why I kind of feel like, why is that even part of this? 

⏯37:41 Kendra Todd Dixon: But move them where, if we're not allowed to give them—

⏯37:43 Mark Pruitt: I'm asking to remove—let me be clear as to what I'm asking. I’m asking for people's thoughts on: removing this as an option.

⏯37:49 Jodi Muffley: I just don’t know how this fits in our votes.

⏯37:54 Jennifer Recchiuti: I think the clarity is, you know, even if we were to have an open building, it doesn't look like we could say like, "Hey, go have this building," because the state has the final say to it. So it's kind of like dead in the water. It's a great idea for them, but it doesn't look like that's something that we can absolutely accomplish for them.

⏯38:13 Antonio Gomes: So can I propose something different then?

⏯38:16 Mark Pruitt: Sure.

⏯38:17 Antonio Gomes: Because to everyone's point, this doesn't look like it's necessarily an option for us to discuss because we can't influence it besides kicking them out—sounds like that's the only thing we can do for certain. Now, there can be discussion and things like that, but I think it is really tied to other ideas. So like, going back to what I was saying, when we talk about CTE and how to make that happen, maybe we bring it back as an option to make that happen, right? So I think we don't discuss this exclusively. I think it sounds like this is not something that we can discuss further, but we can kind of keep that in the back burner as something to help make some of these other things work, right?

⏯39:01 Reggie Worlds: How does it help? I'm confused. It doesn't help anything. Dr. Green said a couple of times, we don't control that process. If we vacate the building, there is no guarantee that they will be allowed, but we don't control that process.

⏯39:14 Antonia Gomes: Well, I'm not saying as it is. As it stands right now—

⏯39:18 Reggie Worlds: Even if we play it out, we vacate, but we still would not have any input in that decision. That's what Shawn has said a couple times as well. He's kind of lived it as well. So we don't have that. Even outside this committee, the district would not have... 

⏯39:30 Shawn Snyder: It'll be offered to every agency in the state. They may decline to take over the building, but then there are other factors associated with, like, sharing the space of an innovation center with another school in that building. I find the idea of that very challenging. I don't know that they would fit together in that building, particularly with that building structure. It's a very unique physical space. I mean, has everybody been in McKean before? It would be tough to kind of wall off a thing and have it operate over here with separate things over here without major construction. 

⏯40:06 Jennifer Recchiuti: But I also think that it just puts them in the same situation they’re in  now where they're still sharing a space. They want their own home, their own presence, and that's not something, learning that today, that we're able to provide to them.

⏯40:21 Caitlin Merto: I also don't feel like—and I get the idea like, yes, ideally like we'd all come together and be like, "Oh, let me make this building awesome for both parties." But like, if I were one of the people sitting on the board of Charter School of Wilmington, I don't know that I would be approving spending our money to make something that our students aren't going to utilize better. Like, if it's walled off, to me, like why would I make what's on the other side of the wall better when I can already just stay where I am and just kind of continue to build data? Like, I just don't know how you can justify the expenditure, even though I think it would be great if we all like lived in Kumbaya, like let's all help each other out.

⏯41:04 Antonio Gomes: And the only reason I'm even... I think it's almost every single meeting we have representation from Charter, so to me, it's like there's the best time to negotiate with someone to be able to do something is when there's a high... We didn't come up with that idea, so if they weren't interested, absolutely, there's no point talking about it. But if they're that highly interested, then to me it’s like why take it away in the sense that, you know, it's going to... if it helps us. But ultimately, it's on them then to provide us enough motivation and benefits that make sense for the Red Clay School District, right? As opposed to—they can also leave, and that funding we're talking about, during the build when their lease is up, if they're that upset about it, there's nothing stopping them, it sounds like, from leaving anyway, and then we have less funding in the first place.

⏯41:59 Shawn Snyder: They would lose a lot of advantages if they left the district.

⏯42:02 Dorrell Green: And what I will say again—and I think because we're talking a lot of hypotheticals, right, from a committee standpoint, as opposed to what I would recommend is, again, be engaged even in discussions around... And I think that's at the board level, right? Our board and charter representation to have a conversation as to what the evolution of the relationship looks like, and that conversation really extends beyond their current authorization, their current lease agreement, because there are things that are binding right now. I think to kind of mire this committee actually is steering the committee away from what the charge was given to us from our board, which is to look at attendance zones, enrollment, and current programming for all of Red Clay, and not weigh ourselves to charter CSW and the current building that they reside in, which I think is pulling us away from the charge of the board.

⏯43:05 Mark Pruitt: I would like to take a vote to see where we stand on whether to remove this as an option moving forward or not. Is there someone else that would like to sort of second for that? So we got a second.

Our motion here, what we're getting a vote on is: who would like to remove reducing to two attendance zone high schools and looking to move the Charter School of Wilmington over to that open high school? Who would like to remove that as an option for our further discussion?

That is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Okay.

Who is opposed to that—in a sense, would like to leave it on for further discussion?

Okay, a couple abstentions. The rest are abstentions.

The next one, and I believe our last one before we really jump up to what I consider to be viable: 5 of 18 voted in favor of providing equitable choice busing for all students to all schools. That's how it's written. Currently, there is some hub-stop busing for students that attend schools without attendance zones. Other than that, our buses pick you up at the edge of your attendance zone, okay? That's what we currently do.

Who would like to—there were five people here that had that in their top four. Would any of those folks like to convince us as to why we need to consider, continue to consider that?

⏯45:19 Caitlin Merto: So, we live in the city. Our daughter has gone and choiced both for elementary when we moved here when she was going into first grade, and then also she's at HB now, which is a choice. As a family, for us, that meant living in the city and bringing her to Linden Hill. It was 25 minutes to 30 minutes each direction, which thankfully my partner took on. That was two hours pretty much every day in the car just to get a child to elementary school and the school that she wanted to attend. We were fortunate that his schedule allowed that he could kind of make that work and that we had that availability. But I just look at families who don't have that option, so it doesn't really make choice a choice for all.

When she got into HB, one of my first things I did—and I actually just did the same for high school—was I called the transportation office and I said, "I understand you can't tell me guaranteed yes or no for next year, but is there a bus right now that runs from the city to HB?" And part of the reason why we were able to accept that, because our schedules were shifting and were going to be very different, was that there was a bus right out of the city to HB. So I just feel like, you know, we have all these choices, people have this option, but it's not really an option for families who don't have a car, who can't spend the time to be able to get to the schools that they're going to choice their children into. So I don't really feel like that's equitable in any way, shape, or form.

⏯47:02 Maddie Reitemeyer: I will just echo, without going too much into it: I feel like our charge was to create more equity in the district. I do not feel like the choice process, as it works on lots of levels, is equitable. Certainly I think when you don't provide transportation, it's hard to tell a family that they have choices. I also think Cab, Conrad, I believe Dickinson's middle—but that could be inaccurate information—they choice all of... you know, you can get much closer stops for them. So then to say, "but not to attend the school" doesn't seem that...

But the second reason is pretty much all the other options that are left are variations on the same theme. So Innovation Center is still going down to two attendance zones and then using the third school for something. JDS as a 6-12 magnet is going to two attendance zones and repurposing one building, and then the two middle schools. So if I'm remembering correctly, we're supposed to put more than one or two choices up, right? We're supposed to send groups to the board. We're supposed to make like more than one program.

⏯48:21 Mark Pruitt: The charge was what we read through—

⏯48:20 Maddie Reitemeyer: Just one. Just one. 

⏯48:22 Mark Pruitt: I don't think that there was any specificity as to whether it was one or two. Certainly we could say, "You can go to this option or this option," but I think we're going to come in for a landing here as to what we think our recommendation should be. And I think it's possible that our recommendation could have some variance, like where you're making a decision as to what route to go. 

⏯48:44 Maddie Reitemeyer: So I think that, the others all funnel into one kind of similar version. That is one that keeps all the high school attendance zones on the table.

⏯49:04 Mark Pruitt: I'll say this about this option: this option is entirely about resources, right? No one is sitting here thinking... Everyone, I think we have somebody in the room who maybe thought the other options were a good idea and not a good idea. No one doesn't think this is a good idea. This is solely based on resources and the fact that we follow state choice law, and states that are bound by attendance zones do not get reimbursed for transportation for going outside of their attendance zone. And there's a tremendous cost to it.

And if there are other factors, it involves the number of buses that you have to have on the road, the number of drivers that you have to have. We would have to revert back from a—we currently do a three-tier bus schedule, we would have to revert back to a two-tier bus schedule. We went to three because we simply did not have the resources to run two anymore. 

⏯50:10 Dorrell Green: We also limited the number of contractor bus services—reduced it down to one. There used to be multiple contractor bus services. [inaudible]

⏯50:25 Mark Pruitt: I'm not anti-choice busing for all, equitable, like... No, again, no one would be. This is totally dependent upon fiscal and resources, like because of the actual buses, drivers, human resources, and the cost that comes with that.

⏯50:44 Jennifer Recchiuti: Do we still—oh, sorry. Do we... I know that over the last couple years there's been like bus driver shortages. Is that still going on, or is that getting better? Because I think that’s also a contributor to it. There are shortages on drivers, and shortages on buses regardless of the situation.

⏯51:04 Reggie Worlds: Even in the best situation, living it day by day, when the driver calls out sick, it can throw transportation—like [inaudible] HB—can throw us into a... I mean, we're okay, but that changes day by day.

⏯51:20 Jennifer Recchiuti: Yeah. 

⏯51:21 Antonio Gomes: How much money does Red Clay save by not doing choice busing?

⏯51:24 Dorrell Green: So, and again, I think initially, and this came up as a result of AI—AI was providing choice busing, which again, in essence, was providing families that choice out of McKean and Dickinson, suburban communities to get choice, which cost the district around $400,000 a year. And that ended up being local expenses, again, because those aren't necessarily reimbursed routes.

⏯51:56 Mark Pruitt: That was very limited, like that was simply to get students to AI—maybe a couple of other people who knew to ask. And quite frankly, as someone who worked in the district many years ago, that was an effort.

⏯52:14 Committee Member: I was there.

⏯52:15 Mark Pruitt: and that was about $300,000—I think that is the number Dr. Ammann gave us, like even that small snippet cost us about $300,000 in local money.

⏯52:25 Dorrell Green: Well, and I think you gotta, the trick with buses: it's just not the route that's not getting reimbursed. You have fuel costs, you have employee costs, you know, so there's a lot of associated costs that goes to run that. And then the time of then leaving and going back to a two-tier system, which not only now impacts our secondary school, but impacts our elementary school. So again, I think generally speaking, it has to be part of the conversation because you talk about choice, but I also think you got to do a better job of communicating more broadly to the public in terms of—my grandfather would say, "bag in, bag out." So if you decide that choice busing is going to be something that the district wants to support, where does that cut come from locally to be able to provide that service?

⏯53:19 Shawn Snyder: I want to add a little—I'm the choice office director for this year, so I don't have like 10 years of experience seeing those numbers. But what I can say is, if we waved the magic wand and got all the money for this, AI will be the same size. We don't get anybody saying, "I'm not going to AI High because a bus is not coming." That won't change. That exact same idea won't change.

⏯53:38 Committee Member: Well, we definitely get that.

⏯53:39 Shawn Snyder: I'm telling you, I sit in that room like I'm—It's not going to... like, there won't be 500 more students there if you send a bus to their doorstep. It might increase a little bit. It would probably just maybe create more equity. And I actually, if this was free, we should definitely do it, because it would help. But it would not completely address the charge of the committee of creating balanced schools, because I'm going to go back to, as a kind of math/data guy: there are more seats than there are people. So that continues to be true with this choice. And if there are more seats than there are people, redistributing them, you still have the exact same problem. Maybe in a different space, but the problem is still there. So that's just... But I mean, like I said, as Mark said, nobody can be against this philosophically, absolutely.

⏯54:32 Jodi Muffley: So my question too—my question is, I think I can't vote for or against this if I don't have the data point. Is that why people would... Would people choice their kids more or utilize it more if they had busing? Like, we’d like to say, "Oh, well, people... you know, the hardships and people don't," but I just don't understand... We don't have the data point of: if there was increased choice busing, would you choice your child to a different school? Like, I don't know that I'd put the money in that and then, like you said, you get the same result. We don't have that data point. So would it have made a difference in her daughter if she didn't have that opportunity, but there was a choice bus? But like, you were very fortunate. So we like to say, "Well, more people would use it," but I just don't know how much it was used before. Like, was it... I just don't have the concept of it, like how impactful it was when we did away with it.

⏯55:36 Mark Pruitt: Well, the concept of it is, if we were to do it and do what we're saying, which is to get any student who lives anywhere in the school district to any school they wanted to go to... I mean, the cost to do that 15 years ago at AI High was $300,000, right? Think about the number of routes and the amount of... You know, again, I... it's a great idea, but—

⏯56:09 Jodi Muffley: But was that set up like that before we did away with choice busing? That's what I'm confused about—I don't know what choice busing looked like.

⏯56:19 Dorrell Green: Well, that's what people are... 

⏯56:20 Jodi Muffley: Is there an misconception? 

⏯56:21 Dorrell Green: I think partly, yes, because people are defaulting to: part of the decline in AI enrollment is because we did away with choice busing, right? So we stopped providing busing for students who live outside of AI's feeder pattern to get to AI, and when that happened, families decided they no longer wanted to go to AI. That's kind of the impetus of how we've now globally defined choice busing, when in actuality, choice busing is limited opportunities through hub stops, which we currently have right now, where it's not directly at your door within your feeder—it's within the feeder of that school, and it's the parents' responsibility to get them either to a hub or the closest stop for that school. So that's the kind of parameters around the choice law.

And then for our two magnets, I also think we need to be clear, for the record, the state really doesn't even have a defined or even recognized magnet schools. That's a Red Clay thing, right?

So in essence, when we talk about these issues, right, you can't even go to DOE and say, "How many magnet schools do you have in the state?" because the Department of Education is going to say we have, in essence, none, because they don't recognize magnets. 

But what was written into law... there are a few programs that actually provide the opportunity that the district's petition for programs that didn't have defined feeder patterns—to provide transportation or access. And that typically comes through hub stops, coordinated stops, you know, for families to have to get their child to that stop. Or if you're outside of that district and you make the choice... And in the case of HB, HB has a City of Wilmington feeder pattern, so for families who live in the City of Wilmington, they can access that existing stop based on that feeder pattern.

⏯58:12 Jodi Muffley: Okay, thank you.

⏯58:13 Emily Carroll: Is this like... kind of looking at it, do we even have the—as wonderful as it would be, like we obviously have said that a million times—do we even have the resources to even vote on it because of the bus driver shortage? And then I also think about, if we had to go back to the two-stop, or however we would have to do it, would we be able to get like early dismissal buses for sports teams and different clubs and stuff?

⏯58:37 Mark Pruitt: We cannot get—

⏯58:38 Dorrell Green: That's a challenge. 

⏯58:39 Mark Pruitt: We cannot get athletic buses now because of the bus shortage. So we put multiple teams on one bus, and sort of, you know, they drop tennis off at this school, and you got... And so the shortage, I would say the shortage has gotten a little bit better at Red Clay because of our relationships with the two vendors we use and the quality of our transportation office, but it's certainly —

⏯59:06 Emily Carroll: Like, aspects of like what could go away—because I know like we'll get to a school now an hour and 45 minutes before our game would even start, so it's kind of like kids aren’t warming up yet and that bus has to be back. And I totally understand that. So I wonder if it's even possible to vote on it because of the resources.

⏯59:23 Antonio Gomes: Well, we could put a motion just for consideration. 

⏯59:25 Mark Pruitt: Yeah, that's what we're doing. And I'm even open... I think when we give a recommendation, we can say that, we’re going to say that that was on... and we understand that that would improve equity of all families to get to the school they want, however, we did not move forward with it because we understood the finances, you know, and resources that involve it. Yes.

⏯59:49 Maddie Reitemeyer: So you might say table—we'll talk about it when we get there, but the Innovation Center would rely on buses and shuttles going back and forth between the schools all day, right?

⏯59:59 Mark Pruitt: Yeah.

⏯1:00:00 Maddie Reitemeyer: So what is that transportation cost?

⏯1:00:03 Mark Pruitt: Yep. Good question. Two things: One would be that we would be closing a school with 28 runs twice a day, okay? So that's money that we would have to consider. Dr. Ammann and I spoke before he came and met. And after. And we would look to get to Dover with Dr. Green to see what kind of changes would have to be made in order to do that. 

⏯1:00:33 Maddie Reitemeyer: But those buses wouldn't be running in the schedule with the before and after, like the to-school and from-school as well, you know? If you're shuttling kids during the day, you're not worried about getting that run done to get back and get this run to get kids to school. This would be during the school day when they're not...

⏯1:00:52 Mark Pruitt: Our request to the state would not be for more money for transportation—that's not going to happen. It would be: can we use this money that you're already giving us in this way? Okay, that's... It's obviously oversimplified, but...

⏯1:01:07 Maddie Reitemeyer: Yeah, okay, I get it now.

⏯1:01:10 Mark Pruitt: Now, I am going to make a motion to remove choice busing from further consideration.

⏯1:01:19 Antonio Gomes: I’ll second that.

⏯1:01:21 Mark Pruitt: Okay. All in favor of removing it? That's whatever number that was. Opposed? Two opposed. So it's whatever... There were no abstentions.

So what I'm going to do at this time is, with your help, to make sure I don't erase the wrong thing...

We're going to circle this because we know what we're doing with this, right? Like for further consideration, right? But we're not going to discuss that.

So this is where, when I was looking at how to set up this meeting and this lesson plan, so to speak, I was sort of at a crossroads here. I was talking to Shawn early this morning about it. You know, no matter how many we had removed, what would this look like? Okay. But really, I think we're looking at two boards now, right? And the reason why I put the lists on boards was: this was related to high school programming, this was related to middle school programming, okay? And this was sort of a miscellaneous group over here.

So I think—that now—it's we’re at the discussion about—and let me just start here: we can only do one of these things, okay? You cannot—in my opinion, I'll just go through, I guess not say that as a fact, but as somebody who works with this type of... these numbers and enrollment all the time—I do not believe that you can turn The John Dickinson School into a magnet school and lean into its IB programming, divide the feeders into two at AI High and McKean, and do this. I'm saying you can't do both. ... Let me say that in a lot of words: you can't do both these things.

So I'll start off with questions about that, and arguments about that.

⏯1:04:21 Jennifer Recchiuti: So I think that it goes for like both boards... Like, there's a lot of things that overlap.

⏯1:04:28 Mark Pruitt: No doubt there are. There is no question. But I feel like if we start here...So I'll give you another example: If we were to go with this, well, then we're erasing this, right? If we were to go with this, then—sorry—then, you know, we've got to move the IB middle school at Dickinson somewhere. You have to do it because you need those seats for an expanded high school. 

⏯1:05:15 Committee Member: Would moving, I just want to say, I mean, again, we know AI is failing and Skyline is failing as well.  Struggling.

⏯1:05:22 Mark Pruitt: Enrollment-wise.

⏯1:05:23 Committee Member: Enrollment-wise. Yes. But that would make your go from eight to seven, right? Moving that down. 

⏯1:05:34 Mark Pruitt: Yes.

⏯1:05:34 Committee Member: I was going to ask the same thing.

⏯1:05:36 Mark Pruitt: Yes.

⏯1:05:36 Committee Member: Right. So what's the disadvantage?

⏯1:05:41 Mark Pruitt:  Here's what I would say, and this is where I think we need to be…Let’s say this. If we were to just go with an Innovation Center, as our recommendation—expand—you would need to move this school, you would move this program over to Skyline. So you create 300 seats, so to speak, at Skyline. Okay. You run the risk of Skyline being too large, potentially, okay, not with its existing numbers. Well, it's close with its existing numbers, right? It would be fine. But what is the impact of the feeder pattern decisions based on the fact that you move that? Again, I think this is where we are. This is very deep, you know, it's in the weeds, but I think this is where we are.

⏯1:06:33 Dorrell Green: Let me ask you, what does the committee feel you need in terms of numbers and data to start modeling what you currently have? Because to get you out of the space of theory and possibility and start looking at concrete numbers in terms of what the shift will be. You said enrollment. 

⏯1:06:51 Committee Member: Yeah, like I'd like to see what does that look like at Skyline. Yeah, like what would that look like for Skyline.

⏯1:06:58 Dorrell Green: —I mean, I think that would make sense because I don't know the understanding of committee members based on I haven’t been at every meeting to really start looking at concrete numbers so that you can model and look at spots. Now, you may know it, Mr. Pruitt, obviously you do, because you know the numbers, but the rest of the committee, does the rest of the committee know?

⏯1:07:19 Mark Pruitt: No I totally— Yeah, I could give some ground numbers right now, and some of them were actually in our earlier slides. But I will say this: some discussion and a draft decision on this will inform this. That's the way I look at it. A discussion on this and a decision about what's best for all of our kids from an enrollment that impacts programming, that impacts great, equitable programs. With these two, it will lead us to this. 

⏯1:08:00 Committee Member: I also think it helps them talk about what one makes most sense as far as vertical alignment. I definitely think those decisions...

⏯1:08:12 Mark Pruitt: Yep. And so I would ask, I'll tell you, if you’d have asked me after, you know, "Will we get through those slides we did at 7:05?" I would have bet against it because it's important stuff. So we do have some time here. So I think it's worth a conversation broadly about those two options. What does this mean, right? If you're not, you know, I know exactly what I think. I could talk through the details of that, but I understand that a lot of folks may not understand what that means. So go ahead.

⏯1:08:53 Antonio Gomes: Like we talked about in our other meetings, we looked at the models that worked. Maryland—

⏯1:09:00 Mark Pruitt: Maryland and Colorado. 

⏯1:09:02 Antonio Gomes: So, and we know that was kind of similar to our, wasn't it something that fit to our demographics and issues? Talk about that a little bit, too.

⏯1:09:13 Mark Pruitt: Say that again?

⏯1:09:15 Antonio Gomes: Didn't one of those models fit a little bit better to our demographics and something? Because we talked about, "Hey, when we compare ourselves and where they are, and what worked, would that apply to us as well. 

⏯1:09:26 Mark Pruitt: Yes. 

⏯1:09:27 Antonio Gomes: So knowing that, what may work better? I guess the question is, is either of those options better aligned to what we know works? Can we tell that? Do we have enough data to make that determination to do a comparison? And which one would closer align to what we see works with other communities?

⏯1:09:50 Mark Pruitt: So I don't know that I have a lot of comparable examples, but here's what I would say about IB All Choice, which is what I believe was intended when the decision was made. That would be 800 high school seats at Dickinson and 300 middle school seats at A.I. That would very quickly—I think we've got enough history in this district to know that that would very quickly fill up, and then we would be left with the same problem at McKean and AI. That's my opinion.

In fact, in many ways, that's happened already, but it's happened with the feeder students at John Dickinson and the students who choose the International Baccalaureate program has put them at capacity. I think if we took those attendance zone students out, it would vacuum choice into that school and would leave us with two high schools that were really struggling—one or the other would be struggling with enrollment and struggling with programming because of that enrollment.

⏯1:11:16 Maddie Reitemeyer: So you don't think we have enough for two attendance zones, McKean and A.I., and then let's just say Dickinson fills to capacity through choice?

⏯1:11:26 Mark Pruitt: It's filled to capacity right now.

⏯1:11:30 Maddie Reitemeyer: Right, but so some of it would be rearranging, right? So there's 600 kids that are feeder and 200 that are IB in the high school. There's not just those 200. So then we feed those 600, I'm just going to use easy numbers, to A.I. High School, except then some McKean kids choiced, some A.I. kids choiced. So when all that's reconfiguring, I'm saying, you don't think the two feeder schools...

⏯1:11:59 Mark Pruitt: I think we've got enough history in Red Clay to know that eventually, choice schools fill up with Red Clay kids.

⏯1:12:10 Tawanda Bond: One thing, one thing too, to also think about, not just the numbers, when you go back to our charge of equitable access, so essentially, if we create another magnet school 6 through 12, you will, inadvertently over time, be decreasing the equitable access. Because like Mark said, just historically, this will get filled with kids from other schools, that will then leave the other schools with potentially declining enrollment. So thinking about having three magnet schools in our district that are choice in some way, shape, or form may be problematic in the long run.

⏯1:12:50 Committee Member: I also think another thing to kind of consider, away from numbers, is one of the main points of Red Clay's mission is getting students graduation-ready, and that means to be ready for the workforce and college. I think arguably an IB program prepares students more for just college, whereas an Innovation Center does college, workforce, military, wherever they go, which is very real-world.

⏯1:13:19 Dorrell Green: Believe it or not, there is a certificate program for IB, so it's not just a diploma track. But again, I think when you look more broadly at who has access to those programs is what we don't want inadvertently. And so the more that we can think holistically about, especially in this day and age where you talk about job-ready, career-ready, college-ready, economy, so how can we look at credentialing? How can we look at management? How can we look at certifications to allow students to be marketable upon graduation?

So we're about to have commencement ceremonies, and a lot of our students, fortunately or through no fault of their own, have spent three years in a career pathway. They're going to be walking across the stage with a high school diploma, not with additional certifications, while others will. Because they were in a CTE career pathway that actually gave them a leg up to actually get into a viable career. 

Then to be quite frank and honest, we have a vocational-technical high school that literally sits in the heart of our district. I had a plumber come fix a pipe leak in my house yesterday, and he was a 2023 graduate of Delcastle Technical High School. We've also got to understand that level of competition, how we're differentiating ourselves with the fact that we can't put certain CTE career pathways in without it being an exorbitant amount of cost to the district because we have to go for various shops.

Vo-tech actually operates a little different, right? They can go to the bond committee and get resources in a different way than what we have to. So I think that's also a part of when we talk about programming. That's why I said looking at data, looking at what programs we will offer based on these options might be helpful for this committee to kind of iron out: What does equitable opportunity access look like based on what we're currently offering, based on where our strategic plan, where we say we want to head?

With the—I guess for lack of a better analogy—the "six-pack," making sure that we offer the core six at each of our high schools, so that as much as we want to stand up a program to make ourselves innovative, we also limit who has access to that. So how can the consolidation of Red Clay as a whole ensure that any student, regardless of what zip code or what part of the community they live in—let’s say I'm in, I want to get a certificate in SafeServe, or ServSafe excuse me, but I'm a dance major at Cab, I have access, right?

So really looking at different opportunities to—and for us to look at what work-based learning opportunities [exist]. A lot of their struggle is students can't get credible work-based learning opportunities because we're in so many different spaces and resources are spread so thin across the district, which limits opportunity. So I think that's why I asked the question: Does the committee need—what additional information— now that you've kind of flushed this out? We need to do our due diligence to make sure that you have…

⏯1:16:42 Shawn Snyder: I want to give another data point to kind of get...

⏯1:16:46 Maddie Reitemeyer: Well, I just want to answer concretely, like what I have been wondering since the beginning. We keep talking about what this Innovation Center could do, but I want to understand the concrete way in which this is going to play out. So if we have a plumbing program, and all our students right now in ninth grade are going to a year one. Are ninth-grade students still doing their Level 1 CTE in their home though? Then they're only going to the Innovation Center if they get to Level 3?

Are all dual enrollments going there? And, if we offer Delaware Tech Criminal Justice, and 40 Cab kids sign up, but three AI kids sign up, who does that count for? Are you counting that totally against AI, or is it two units from Cab and one from AI? That's the nitty-gritty that doesn't feel good. 

If a kid refuses to get on the shuttle to go to the Innovation Campus, is the district's response going to be, "That's for the home school to deal with and figure out," which, in reality, the student advisor counselor gets stuck having to sit with them? Like, that's the stuff that I want to hear when we talk about it.

⏯1:17:59 Mark Pruitt: I think those are great questions for somebody who's worked in schools and whose unit is it. But if we're making a) we won't know that in the next month or two. But secondly, you can't do anything—it's difficult to move forward with something great, you know that. Like, we know there's models around the country that do this and it is a real...so

⏯1:18:34 Maddie Reitemeyer: But a lot of them have applications to get into it, so still pulling access, you know what I mean? Like, not...

⏯1:18:42 Mark Pruitt: I would say this: We would offer, I think we would have to—we talked about this a little bit as this idea has come—obviously, you would have to have a couple of CTE options on campus for students who did not want to travel.

⏯1:18:56 Caitlin Merto: So really quickly, and I'm sorry, I've been a Pennsylvania educator, and so I feel like so much of my focus is on, as a union president, everything that happens in Pennsylvania. So I'm just curious, the CTE options that we have right now, are they career-technical centers or are they comprehensive high schools? That would be the first question.

⏯1:19:20 Mark Pruitt: They're all in comprehensive high schools. Well, they're also at Conrad, and one at Cab Calloway.

⏯1:19:30 Caitlin Merto: But I'm talking about like Delcastle. Do they take English and math at Delcastle? Okay, so they're comprehensive. They're not just a standalone, because in Delaware County, we have our comprehensive programs. Like, that's what I do. I am a CTE teacher in a regular high school, the kids come to me. You understand, Jodi, right? But then we also have programs we don't have in-district that then we send the kids out too.

So I guess my questions would then be: Is this a career-technical center where we're taking morning classes, to Maddie's point, and then sending kids there for half the day, part of the day?

And then I guess the other part would be—I don't know if it works the same way here in Delaware, and I think it's not so much of law as it is just decency—our school district wouldn't create, like, the Health Occupations program is one of the biggest ones that we send kids out for. We wouldn't then try to start a Health Occupations program in the district because they have one there, and it would kind of look like, "Oh, we're trying to take back the kids." But then we have a Cosmetology program that has always existed, so we just don't see that as competition. I'm not sure also what the feeling would be like if we're—are we creating competing programs? Are we creating different programs?

⏯1:21:10 Mark Pruitt: I think that the New Castle County Vo-Tech schools, they have a niche, right? Like I don’t know from a standpoint of HVAC and plumbing, I'm not sure that that's what we would be doing in those schools. From a facility standpoint, that's a major undertaking, and I don't know that we would be supported at the state level. But Dr. Green, do you agree with that? 

⏯1:21:35 Dorrell Green: We have the New Castle County Vocational school system for a reason and then—

⏯1:21:40 Caitlin Merto: So what would be in that Innovation Center?

⏯1:21:42 Committee Member: Yeah, I guess that's what I want to know.

⏯1:21:43 Mark Pruitt: I can go back probably 50 slides. (laughter)

⏯1:21:50 Committee Member: Okay.

⏯1:21:52 Shawn Snyder: Mark, while you're going back, my wife teaches at Sussex Tech—so I know a lot about tech schools—and I'm Director of School Choice as well. The longest choice waiting lists in the state are for tech schools, right? That's just like the public's already kind of—they want to go there. The one for Sussex Tech is so big, they're currently building what will be the largest high school in the state. She teaches seniors and juniors. Almost all of her seniors right now have a job and don't even go to her English class much anymore, right? They're only there a couple of days a week. They're in full employment, some of them making more money than she makes currently as the teacher.

That's the power of having one of these things where you could stand up these careers in welding and some of these other areas. Because we'd have the economy of two feeder patterns feeding in, you could really build CTE pathways that are kind of beyond what a single school could build, and then they would share that resource. You could build one of the best professional kitchens in the state if you were going to run that culinary program, which improves the ability for us to train kids and get them ready for industry-standard stuff. We'd have to do an evaluation of the market and see what's available.

I know he's done that right up there: what we offer and then what our tech schools offer. We obviously don't want to be a bad neighbor, but our kids can't access those programs, either. Not everybody gets into Delcastle. I want to know if you can't get into Delcastle, then there's still hope for you to pursue what you want to do in Red Clay, and this would create that kind of opportunity, I believe.

⏯1:23:22 Emily Carroll: I think kind of going off that, too, it'd be really good for our students coming from the two feeder patterns to work together. You see students from different schools because that's what real life is like. You don't get to—you just get assigned to work with people, so that's always pretty good. You're not used to just McKean, just AI, just Dickinson, whatever it is.

⏯1:23:38 Jodi Muffley: Well, and I also think from an educator's standpoint, collaboration would be great there because—I mean, my brother's not in another school, but you don't hear, "Oh, well, so-and-so does it like that way," especially with CTE where it's kind of a different bird. But collaborating with educators, you'd be able to work together closely, aside from being in separate buildings and just emailing.

[inaudible]

⏯1:24:16 Jodi Muffley: Correct, and that would benefit the students because, yes, I mean, working as a school nurse you’re on an island by yourself. So if I needed someone or want to bump an idea, I've got to shoot an email, I've got to pick up the phone. I can't run down the hallway and be like, "Hey, on your planning, can you look this over?" So I think from an educator's standpoint, that would be beneficial to be in one building, and in return, that would benefit students, is how I feel.

⏯1:24:43 Committee Member: So then we would move all of these programs to that building and take them out of the schools that they're currently in? Is that the thought?

⏯1:24:52 Mark Pruitt: I think that was the idea.

⏯1:24:55 Maddie Reitemeyer: So it would kind of become like a career-technical center.

⏯1:24:57 Mark Pruitt: It would be what I think you were speaking of, but not in terms of—I don't know what the term is—Delcastle and Howard, certainly—

⏯1:25:08 Dorrell Green: not so much skilled trades as much as it is CTE career-technical. One of the other things I think that kind of put us in a position as a district: because we created a lot of local pathways, there's other ways of creating career-technical pathways. 

One, they're state-approved, where you actually earn funding, Perkins brings additional funding and resources. And then there's opportunity where we're saying, like, the architecture and construction where Dickinson used to have a program that was a local pathway that was in existence for maybe two years. If you hire an educator, the educator gets an opportunity that now DelTech recruits them or they go somewhere else, and guess what happens to the pathway? It goes away. So then you're limited in what you can offer.

So a lot of this, too, is really looking at: What are some of those anchor things? We looked at labor market analysis. What are the industries in 2031? Where does the job market come? Where do we actually have public-private partnerships that can actually come into the district that say, "Here's students in Red Clay that are marketable and ready"? Because that's what we oftentimes hear, too. It could be a professional development center. I mean, I think there's a lot that could go into it.

And again, I want to just raise the question to the committee: really thinking through what information do you feel you need so that we can model this out? 

It could be a revenue generator because now you have athletic fields and spaces that could be leased. Who knows? I mean, there's a whole host of things that we can think through as it relates to that. But I don't want to persuade anyone; I just want you to have the information that you have based on what you've synthesized as a committee to go through the goal.

⏯1:27:05 Antonio Gomes: Is there a way—we talked a little bit about this, but we need to kind of see what it takes to happen, right? What is it going to take? So say we go down the pathway of CTE Innovation Center: What does that look like? What do we need to consider? Like, we know it's going to impact here, but I don't know what that is yet. And, kind of, if you want to do that, then tell us, "Okay, these are the pros, these are the cons, we're going to need more funding for this, this, and this." Is it feasible to even achieve it? Because we dismissed a bunch of stuff today because it's really not feasible, right? Can we make that happen? I mean, everything I'm hearing right now sounds great, but can we make it happen is ultimately what it comes down to. I don't know what data we have to show...

⏯1:27:50 Mark Pruitt: There's no question that once the school board charges and moves it forward, there's a lot to do, right? I'll give you a couple. You speak about the Innovation Center, so I'll say that involves an MOU with our teachers because there would be some movement as to what buildings they worked in, right? The CTE teachers moving over to the CTE station, and you have English teachers moving over to one of two other schools, right? You've got to work through something like that.

There would be funding. You're talking about taking daily transportation and now it's going to be used for shuttle buses, right? There would have to be some sort of agreement at the state level that we could do that, right? And what that's going to look like. 

There's a lot of work to do in that regard, but I think that none of that should prohibit us, in my opinion. I think we could have something bold and out front, whatever it is—something bold and out front—and then there is a lot of work to do in front of it.

⏯1:28:59 Jodi Muffley: Well, Mark, would everybody need to be on the same schedule? Like all the schools, like I don't know...

⏯1:29:03 Mark Pruitt: Yes. Two schools would have to be on the same schedule. 

⏯1:29:07 Committee Member: What about Cab? 

⏯1:29:10 Committee Member: What about Cab? They’re tied with Charter.

⏯1:29:13 Mark Pruitt: I mean, that's funny what you say about that. I’m not—I didn't look at it from a standpoint of Cab or Conrad because those students have chosen to go to a performing arts magnet school or a bioscience magnet school, right? They sort of already told us their career and technical education interest. 

⏯1:29:38 Committee Member: Okay. So, then it would just be—

⏯1:29:40 Committee Member: I think it would depend on what programs got added, right? Like, I think that's an important question, too. I mean, if you are adding some type of science program, you know, I'm trying to think, like the health sciences, or it's a little hard to read it, but there are science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. I could see maybe a kid who's really interested in science making the choice maybe to make a different choice than going to Conrad.

⏯1:30:16 Dorrell Green: That would be a part on the front end. I think in terms of those students who decided that they're going to a performing arts school, to Mr. Pruitt’s point, they made their decision about where they're going. Now going back to maybe your original conversation around virtual programming, that is an opportunity. Is there an online course that someone could take that's out of there that wouldn't require them to physically be there? Is that where you kind of situate that?

⏯1:30:50 Jennifer Recchiuti: Well, and then I also look at it like this: I see a lot of interest from kids and parents, say, about Conrad. There's a small amount of availability to go there. So if there's some type of program at the CTE center, that could be another option where they didn't get into their first choice, which is Conrad, but this is a great second choice, and it still favors them and their interests. Not necessarily like, "Oh, this is Conrad kids," or any of the other specialty types of schools, but this is additional options for kids that didn't get the privilege to get into their first choice, where they still get those experiences that they enjoy.

⏯1:31:29 Shawn Snyder: We would love the Choice Office to be able to tell folks when, because Conrad has a healthy waitlist, when they're not able to get into Conrad, "Don't worry, super high-quality CTE programs exist over here." It's a pretty easy discussion then to have with a parent: "Don't worry, you still have access to this biomedical program or whatever is over there that you were looking for that's sort of like this one over here," It that creates that opportunity.

⏯1:31:50 Mark Pruitt: I really think we've got, on a smaller scale, this model for what a New Castle County school can be. McKean and Reggie, they are the flagships of CTE programming. If you look here at these three sites, they've got a plant science and an animal science program. If you've never been up behind that building, they've got a barn, animals, kids working independently, a greenhouse, a flower sale in the fall, Level 1, 2, and 3 electives that go along with that, certification courses.

⏯1:32:30 Emily Carroll: Yeah the plant sale’s right now.

⏯1:32:34 Committee Member: Flower sale right now. 

⏯1:32:36 Mark Pruitt: Wait, is that you? 

⏯1:32:37 Emily Carroll: Wait, what?

⏯1:32:37 Mark Pruitt: What do you teach?

⏯1:32:38 Emily Carroll: Biology. No, I'm not plant science. 

⏯1:32:40 Mark Pruitt: I knew you were bio…

⏯1:32:41 Emily Carroll: No, I'm not plant science. 

⏯1:32:42 Committee Member: The plant sale going on now is plant science. 

⏯1:32:47 Mark Pruitt: Okay, so my point is, if you feed into McKean, you can have that program. But if you feed into AI High or Dickinson, you cannot. And so the answer might be, "Well, why don't you add that program in?" Well, we don't have enough kids, there's not enough enrollment. Enrollment drives programming, programming—enrollment drives staffing, staffing drives programming.

And so, you see, McKean's done a great job of leaning into it, and so they are the flagship in that regard. They've got a greenhouse and a barn. Audio—so these are clusters. We've got red, yellow, and green. At McKean, you go, you've got an audio, radio, TV studio in there that could potentially—

⏯1:33:37 Dorrell Green: Out and About magazine, by the way.

⏯1:33:40 Mark Pruitt: They've got a radio station. The marketing program—the space they've got for the marketing program is tremendous. Early Childhood Education—they've got a childhood center where they actually take care of kids a couple days a week. Culinary Management—they've got an industry-standard kitchen and a restaurant in that building.

⏯1:34:09 Shawn Snyder: A good restaurant. They have smoked salmon.

⏯1:34:13 Mark Pruitt: Shawn, you might know. What do they call it? 

⏯1:34:16 Shawn Snyder: Cafe.

⏯1:34:18 Jennifer Recchiuti: So would the idea be to take all of these out of the schools where they already exist and put them all into one center, or are we still leaving, say the stuff at McKean?

⏯1:34:31 Mark Pruitt: Well, I think our next step would be a decision as to what is the school, right? But I think we have one step at a time here. And so before we end for tonight, I'm going to give data in a different way. There were 15 tallies for the Innovation Center; not all of those tallies shows the expansion of John Dickinson IB, okay? There were eight tallies for the expansion of John Dickinson IB programming; all of them had the Innovation Center as well.

So my question would be: Where do we stand? 

Are we in agreement that we could not put a recommendation up to do both of those things? 

⏯1:35:23 Committee Member: Correct.

⏯1:35:24 Mark Pruitt: Does anybody disagree with that? So where we stand—

⏯1:35:32 Antonio Gomes: No, explain that. So you’re saying if we do the CTE innovation, you can't do the IB. It would leave only one attendance—

⏯1:35:42 Shawn Snyder: You'd have one comprehensive school, you'd have another magnet school. 

⏯1:35:45 Dorrell Green: So you couldn't turn Dickinson into an IB magnet choice school; you could expand IB program-wise. Yeah, so I think that's the difference. You can't create an entity where what we've kind of already done, right? Where we've reduced—increased the number of high school options, not increased the number of students, and then by default increased the number of middle school options, which then waters down the number of students. 

So we can't perpetuate the very issue that brought this committee together. So the question is: Look at IB as a program and not a school. If you look at it as a program and not a school, the expansion has to come at the expense of where you looked at the reduction of going from eight to seven middle schools, right? Because right now, they're capped at the John Dickinson School because the middle school and the high school are located in one building, and they can't expand it. If you further make that a choice opportunity, now you're running into the fact that families who can access it as an opportunity will be the ones who do it at the expense of equity and the students who we would in essence want to go. So those two things can’t coexist within the parameter of identifying that as a magnet school versus expanding the program. If that makes sense.

⏯1:37:13 Antonio Gomes: That makes sense. So the CTE one, at least—please tell me if I'm wrong here—it sounds like that would be closer to our goal here of more of an equitable environment, based on our past historical experience. That's what you were saying earlier with the IB piece, right? So to me— 

⏯1:37:37 Mark Pruitt: That’s my thoughts on it as a committee member.

⏯1:37:40 Antonio Gomes: Everything I'm hearing about this CTE, at least and again just based on what I'm hearing, I feel like that makes sense because one thing I’m gonna say that made the comment about Cab pop in my head is: You're probably going to increase your enrollment because you're providing an environment to promote excitement behind something, right? Behind a career path. If anything, you might balance out that waitlist—everybody going to Cab, or Conrad, or CW—more interest in, "Okay, I want to do this because this sounds like an exciting opportunity," which again would balance things out a little bit better. That's what it's sounding like, maybe I'm wrong.

⏯1:38:19 Mark Pruitt: I would say this: You're increasing enrollment hopefully by drawing students to their attendance zone schools or choice decisions to those attendance schools. But you're also doing it by the fact that you're dividing 2,300 students by two instead of by three.

⏯1:38:40 Caitlin Merto: I did have a quick question, though, kind of looking back at the programs—and maybe this is data that we need—like I noticed that there's a marketing program at AI High and then there's a marketing program at McKean. The data question would be: I would be very curious to see what the enrollments are like in each one of these CTE programs. And then I think that we would need to figure out, are we collapsing marketing together? Because that would obviously be in the same building. So then does that mean that we're losing one of those marketing teachers, or would we—So I guess what I'm looking at is: If we have two marketing programs and they each have 30 kids in each—let's just use that—so then that's 60 marketing kids. Does it then mean that at the Innovation Center, there's only 30 marketing seats available, so then that creates the issue again of equity, where now we're reducing? Or would it be that we would expand the marketing program, bring both of those instructors over, and have them work through it where you could still service those 60 kids, just in one spot versus two schools? There’s quite a few that overlap.

⏯1:39:49 Mark Pruitt: We will bring some templates of what a schedule could look like. The answer is: You schedule students by student interest, right? Students select courses that they like, and we staff and provide programming to meet the needs, right? You can't be at Dickinson and say, "I want to be in animal science." But if there's interest year after year, that involves us moving from one teacher to two teachers in marketing. We generally do those, and we would do the same thing at an Innovation Center.

⏯1:40:26 Caitlin Merto: Yeah, I just want to make sure because a lot of these overlap. I haven't looked at your task list, but I teach communications technology in Pennsylvania, and if it is the same kind of task list, that's an overlap with the digital media program, with the graphic design program, with the audio, radio, and TV engineering programs. So I guess my question would be: Are we then condensing programs, or are we keeping them still separate?

⏯1:40:53 Dorrell Green: This will look different. 

⏯1:40:53 Reggie Worlds: Yeah, so what I would advise you to think about—Dr. Green asked a question, he talked about certifications. As a principal at McKean, one thing that I'm surprised about is that our ECE program (Early Childhood Education program) and our Educators Rising program have kind of taken off just because what the students recognize—the ones that want to work with kids—they tapped into a district resource which a lot of those students are now—for the last two or three years—working within our district as paras while attending DelTech and Wilmington University to get their teaching certificate. So it's kind of an easy way to ease into education, but they're district kids. We have a number of McKean graduates working within the district now, so those are two viable programs.

He talked about certification. Kids understand money, and they understand the ability to get a job. It's easy to say "college," but the idea of having money to have the opportunity to work, especially for our kids, it does make it purposeful for them to come to school. So I heard about choice, but the idea of having the opportunity to get a job as early as my senior year and work towards those goals has become a driving theme for a lot of those students, I should say.

⏯1:42:23 Jennifer Recchiuti:  Some kids just aren't cut out for college, and that's fine. So having those types of career pathways...

⏯1:42:32 Reggie Worlds: Well, they still go to college; they just don't go to college the way we think they go to college. Yeah, they're going to college and working at the same time.

⏯1:42:39 Emily Carroll: Which I think is what a lot of kids like to do nowadays. Like Mr. Worlds said, the kids hear money, and they're like, "Okay." 

⏯1:42:46 Reggie Worlds: But they are able to take classes and work, and kind of work their way through.

⏯1:42:52 Dorrell Green: For the work-based learning experience, I had the privilege today of hearing three young ladies from Dover High School through their Allied Health program speak about being in the CNA pathway. One of them indicated she works in a senior care facility, and now she just passed the test and wants to be an occupational therapist as a result of being able to work in that senior care facility. Two other young ladies are in homes where—one indicated mom's a nurse, so that kind of put her on her career pathway, and the other one also has family in healthcare.

My daughter, who will be graduating, was in the CTE pathway and decided she wants to be an occupational therapist. My son graduated from DMA, spent a semester at UD in mechanical engineering—smart—and now he's installing HVAC systems. He decided, "This is what I want." So I think the other thing, too, is we just want our graduates—and this notion of a "portrait of a graduate"—to leave whatever school, whatever program, with a skill set.

Your future doesn't have to be predetermined when you leave high school. I think that's the other thing, too: A lot of our CTE pathways set our students up unfortunately to fail sometimes, because they feel like, "I have to make this decision in eighth grade." There's a lot of pressure on our students to have to figure out what I'm going to be in life as an eighth grader going into ninth grade. So they compete with these choice programs and then get into the pathways and realize, "Like, this wasn't for me." Mom and dad—that was my son. He was like, "You guys want me to be an engineer, but that's what I like doing: working with my hands." He was so excited—well, it wasn't exciting, but man, you couldn't imagine this crawl space that I was in today! I'm sitting there having this conversation with our soon-to-be 21-year-old who wanted to be an engineer, having conversations about a crawl space. And to be quite honest, HVAC technicians can become millionaires, right?

So this idea of predetermining—I think regardless of what path we want to go, we want to create equitable opportunities so that when we offer these diverse programs, many students across the district and families have access to them. And we're doing it in a way that's sustainable, marketable, and drives economics, right? We want to keep as many of these student graduates within our community as we can, giving them a diverse skill set. For those who have this predetermined path that that's what they're going to do, we're providing those opportunities.

So please, again, think about what you need in terms of additional information, what we can provide to you, make sure Mr. Pruitt gets that information, and we'll do our due diligence behind the scenes. 

⏯1:45:48 Mark Pruitt: I've heard some things about sketching out what an Innovation Center might look like, right? Some enrollment data, what a combination of schools might look like, what it might look like with those two options here. But I will also go as far as modeling what it could look like next meeting. And by "I," I mean the big team over there working on that.

Then we'll also bring some questions for a survey that we're working on. Keep in mind, though, it's going to be very difficult to release a survey that doesn't have somewhat of a firm idea. I think once we're pretty far along with what we'd like to recommend, we'll get feedback on it, and do we need to make adjustments for, but certainly we'll have some sample questions for the survey.

I feel like we got a lot accomplished today, and so I feel like we can still, if it's okay with everyone on the committee, we can wait and request the board push back a month or two if needed—if and when we need to do that. But we've still got a meeting in 3 months May, and we've got a deadline in July.

⏯1:47:17 Committee Member: Three months?

⏯1:47:19 Mark Pruitt: What did I say? Three months? 

⏯1:47:21 Committee Member: You said three months.

⏯1:47:22 Shawn Snyder: A month feels three months long. 

⏯1:47:24 Mark Pruitt: You know? I'm thinking of the summer. No, three weeks. The 21st. So 20 days. We've got a meeting, and I feel comfortable now that we could ask to bump back. But let's keep moving along here because we've made such great strides today. 

⏯1:47:43 Shawn Snyder: Any other need email—I just want to make sure if I have homework to do...

⏯1:47:48 Mark Pruitt: Email.

⏯1:47:49 Shawn Snyder:  I love that, email me, yeah.

⏯1:47:51 Mark Pruitt: Yeah, let's stick on schedule today. We'll allow public comment and adjourn, but email me anything you need and we'll bring it next time. All right, we've got one... Would anyone in person like to provide public comment? Sure.

⏯1:48:11 Maura Triebenbacher (CSW President): My name is Dr. Maura Triebenbacher, interim president at the charter school. I just have a couple things to say, and I'll stay within the time limit. I want to reiterate what Matthew said at the last zoning meeting: that we are a Red Clay school. We are chartered by Red Clay, and as Dr. Green said, yes, we do have our own entity, but we serve 740 Red Clay students, so we are you.

Our desire for a new space is about participants. We need more space. Cab needs our space. We absolutely love Cab; we have a great relationship with them, working with their students. But there are space constraints, and I'm going to give you two quick examples. One is the cafeteria: Within a matter of three minutes every day, Monday through Friday, we have 450 students leaving the cafeteria while 500 students are entering the cafeteria. It is a lot; it's a logistical nightmare. We make it work because we have such great students and such great faculty and staff, but it's a safety concern.

Another thing is parking. Because of our two schools and the number of students we have, we do not have enough parking spots for all of our faculty and staff and for our students to park on campus. Just this year alone, two of the charter students' cars have been broken into. On Monday, one of our charter students' cars was stolen. We have students that get to school before 6:00 a.m. just to get a street parking spot, and we're parking all the way up by the golf course and beyond.

But as our board president shared with you at the last zoning meeting, we welcome the idea to partner with you on this Innovation Center. I hear you that we can't just take over a building because of the state rules, and as another board member shared, we're also very open to investing in whatever structure it is. But most importantly, what I want to share with you as an administrator—and I have the support of our board to say this—is that we want to work with you, and we also want to dispel the concept that’s out there, the misconception that's out there that charter does not work with Red Clay. Thank you.

⏯1:50:30 Nate Bird (CSW Parent and CSW Board): Thank you. My name is Nate Bird. I'm a parent of a freshman at the charter school, and I'm also a newer community director on the board. I'm a big fan of the Red Clay School District. My niece and nephew go to Mote, just around the corner; they love it. Great people in the district. Thank you for serving on this committee and for the time to offer a comment. I joined the board at charter to help the teachers who are passionate about students be resourced and supported, as teachers are critical to the success of a school. When I joined the board at charter, I couldn't understand why they would want to move and planned to be against it.

Then I listened to the teachers. They want to move; they feel very strongly about it, and so I want to support them. They're the most important resource in all the schools that we support. I know you took the CSW option off the table tonight, and I want you to hear, though, that the CSW board is very open to options, and we want to figure out a win for both CSW and the rest of the Red Clay schools. I appreciate Dr. Green's openness to dialogue, and please know that we look forward to that dialogue so we can help each other. Thank you.

⏯1:51:46 Mark Pruitt: Anyone on the line? Got one so far. Okay. Jenny Howard. Ms. Howard, whenever you're ready.

⏯1:52:00 Jenny Howard (Red Clay parent): Hi, can you hear me?

⏯1:52:02 Mark Pruitt: Yes, we can.

⏯1:52:05 Jenny Howard (Red Clay parent): Okay. I just want to say first, I agree with Dr. Green about there's a ton of pressure on the kids to decide what they want to be. My daughter's already talking about high school, and our feeder is AI, and I'd love for her to go there, but unfortunately, like the one thing or the two things that she's thinking about, they don't offer.

So while initially my personal thoughts was Innovation Center—riding the shuttle bus, that kind of scares me a little—I mean, perhaps that would be an option for her to have access.

Also, there's been a lot of talk about CSW, and I heard those public comments that just happened again tonight. I just want to continue to reiterate that while Red Clay authorizes CSW's charter, CSW is a separate, independently operated school run by a private board. Its students are not Red Clay students, and Red Clay has no role in CSW's daily management or governance.

Remember, Red Clay's primary responsibility is to the students enrolled in its district schools. Aligning too closely with CSW risks creating conflicts of interest because every student who leaves a Red Clay school for CSW takes funding away from the district. Authorizing a charter isn't the same as partnering with it. The district's job is to hold CSW accountable, not to prioritize its expansion over the needs of Red Clay students. In fact, it behooves Red Clay to protect its public resources to ensure that its own schools stay strong, well-funded, and accessible to all students, not just those who gain admission to a selective charter.

And finally, if CSW—we've heard that they are very unhappy with our accommodations in the Cab building. Since they are their own separate entity, they can leave and perhaps break the lease if they want to go seek out another building. I just feel like that's the easiest thing that they could do.

The last thing I want to say is about the choice busing. I know we took that off the table, but I don't think a lot of people understand that when we talk about a hub bus stop, when you choice into a school, your hub bus stop is in that school's feeder pattern. So if you choice from the city of Wilmington—this is going to be a bad example, I'll just give you my example: My daughter choiced into HB, so her hub bus stop has to be in HB's feeder pattern. However, if you get into Conrad or Cab, you get a choice bus stop in your feeder pattern. Therefore, it's completely inequitable.

So like, my daughter didn't get selected for Conrad. So if she had gotten selected for Conrad, the Conrad bus comes to my neighborhood, and they call that a hub bus stop. Now, there are other hub bus stops in our feeder pattern, so it would be in this feeder pattern close to my home. But since she didn't get in there, and since I'm still choicing her to another school...

⏯1:55:15 Mark Pruitt: Just another 10 or 20 seconds. Sorry, Ms. Howard. Sorry, Ms. Howard, can you unmute?

⏯1:55:29 Jenny Howard (Red Clay parent): Oh, I think I got muted. Sorry. I'll wrap it up. I'm just saying that the hub bus stops—there is a way that we could make them more equitable by putting them in the feeder patterns that you're choicing from. Like, for my feeder pattern, if I'm choicing to HB, have the choice hub bus stop be in my feeder pattern, not in HB's feeder pattern. So essentially, I'm already driving her to HB practically because the choice hub bus stop is in their feeder pattern.

⏯1:56:04 Mark Pruitt: Ms. Howard, thank you very much for your comments. Do we have any other public comment online? No? All right. 

At this point, I'll take a motion to adjourn the meeting. 

[laughter] Lots of those, right? Yes. All right. Thank you very much for a great meeting, I appreciate it. 

🌐Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee webpage 

May 1, 2025 Meeting Materials 

📁Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee Meeting Rolling Slides May 1, 2025 

📹Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee May 1 Meeting Recording

📄Secondary Attendance Zone & Programming Committee May 1 Meeting Minutes For convenience, the full meeting minutes are typed below.

May 1, 2025 / 6:00 PM / RCCSD Board Rm, 1502 Spruce Ave, Wilmington, DE 19805 Zoom Meeting (For public only. Committee members are in person.) 

Attendance/Welcome Jason Bastianelli, Tawanda Bond, Emily Carroll, Dorrell Green, Antonio Gomes, Jose Matthews, Caitlin Merto, Mark Pruitt Jr , Jennifer Recchiuti, Madeleine Reitemeyer, Eric Sanford, Shawn Snyder, Reggie Worlds 

Dr. Bond made a motion to begin the meeting, seconded by Mr. Worlds. Motion passed. 

Agenda Items 

Opening Items

• Public Comment - None

• Approve Minutes from April 15th. Mr. Snyder made a motion to approve the minutes from April 15th, seconded by Mr. Sanford. Motion passed. 

New Business

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

• Meeting Norms - Mr. Pruitt 

• Tentative Timeline - Mr. Pruitt 

• Brainstorming Recap - All 

• Analysis & Discussion - All 

• Straw Poll Data Discussion - All 

• Discussion around an online school 6-12(students would have A-Z homeschool). Discussion of how this item aligns with the committee’s charge statement. The committee agrees the idea has merit and enough interest to recommend the board look at this as a separate topic at a future board meeting. 

• Narrowing Possibilities -Discussion started with options that garnered little to no response from the straw poll. 

  • Capping Conrad and Cab at smaller enrollments. This action did not receive any consideration via the straw poll and was removed from further consideration. 

  • Move AI middle to AI High to create one 6-12 A-Z program. This action received 2 Red Clay Consolidated School District 1 votes of interest to move forward. Discussion - this move would limit high school capacity enrollment at AI High. Not aligned with the committee’s charge. It was removed from further consideration. 

  • Reduce to 2 attendance zone high schools and relocate the Charter School of Wilmington to the open site- Mr. Pruitt made a motion to remove the idea due to not enough support by the committee. Discussion- what to put here? Motion seconded by Ms. Metro. Motion passed 11 yes 2 abstain. It was removed from further consideration. 

  • Mr. Pruitt made a motion to remove “provide equitable choice bussing for all students to all schools.” Discussion - available resources and funding to offer neighborhood bus stops to 26 schools for any Red Clay student who accepts a choice seat within the district is lacking. Mr. Gomes seconded the motion. Motion passed 11 yes 2 no. It was removed from further consideration. 

  • There was broad discussion on remaining ideas. 

Public Comment - Dr. Triebenbacher, Nate Bird, Jennifer Howard 

Adjourn - Mr. Matthews made a motion to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Ms. Merto. Motion passed. 

• Action Items Provide current enrollment statistics for Red Clay CTE programs. 

• Provide possible models for CTE center. 

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