Fredericksburg Families Raise Concerns about Staffing at Lafayette Elementary School Next Year
Also, division staff present more information about the proposed elementary behavior support classroom.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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A group of Lafayette Elementary School families raised concerns at Monday’s School Board meeting about how the opening of the new Gladys West Elementary in August could affect staffing at Lafayette.
Brittany Whitaker, the president of the Lafayette PTO, spoke on behalf of the families during public comments on Monday.
“The expansion reflects growth but raises urgent questions about staffing, equity and support during this transition,” Whitaker said. “By equity, we mean fair access to highly effective educators, qualified support staff, and consistent leadership regardless of what building the student is assigned to.”
Whitaker asked for “full transparency around current and projected staffing needs,” not only regarding general education but also in the areas of special education, gifted education, and English language instruction.
In an interview with the Advance, Whitaker said the families started hearing that a number of Lafayette teachers were planning to move to Gladys West, which will be housed in the current Walker-Grant Middle School.
Among teachers planning to leave for the new school are at least two mentor teachers and the novice teacher of the year, Whitaker said.
“We started to compile a list and confirmed with some staff members [about their plans],” Whitaker said. “The issue that we saw happening was that Lafayette was losing teachers in droves.”
According to information provided to Whitaker on Monday night by the division’s human resources office and shared with the Advance, there are 12 vacant general education teacher positions at Lafayette, compared to seven at Gladys West and five at Hugh Mercer.
“And that doesn’t include special area teachers or special education or English language teachers,” Whitaker said. “So we feel our concerns were valid.”
Roughly a third of the 77 elementary general education classroom teacher positions across the three schools are vacant, according to information provided to the Advance by Sue Keffer, the division’s chief human resources officer.
“We have several offers out, several interviews scheduled and are hopeful that some of the staff that were on one-year local licenses will become eligible for provisional licenses and able to fill some of these spots,” Keffer said in an email.
At Monday’s meeting, Courtney Wheeler—who has been the principal of Lafayette for several years and was appointed late last year to lead Gladys West when it opens—presented a graph showing the “initial” distribution of staff with different experience levels across the three elementary schools.
According to the graph, Gladys West will have 10 teachers with between one and three years of experience, as compared to Hugh Mercer and Lafayette, which will both have six.
There’s a fairly even distribution of teachers with between four and 10 years of experience across the three schools. Hugh Mercer will then have more teachers with 11 years of experience and up than the other two schools.
Wheeler stressed at the meeting that “staff changes are ongoing.” She said the three elementary principals are interviewing prospective teachers together and that “we are working to ensure buildings are staffed equitably.”
Whitaker said the Lafayette families have full confidence in Jacinta Calzada-Mayronne, who was hired in January as the school’s new principal.
“However, we must ask, has Dr. Mayronne been set up for success?” she asked during Monday’s meeting, noting that there is “a culture of competition that can arise when schools are compared.”
“We believe in our schools, teachers, and students,” Whitaker said. “But we need more than new buildings—we need to work together to build a culture that prioritizes supporting all students equally.”
Advocating for a behavior support classroom
Also during public comments, Jessica Kujala, who’s both a teacher in the division and the parent of students who attend city schools, spoke in support of the elementary behavior intervention classroom that is proposed for next school year.
“Data in our school shows that many of the same students continue to struggle significantly. These students are often the ones who consistently disrupt classrooms, hinder the learning of others, and place a signficant burden” on teachers, Kujala said. “Our test scores reflect this reality.”
She said the behavior support classroom would not be “a punitive space” but a “therapeutic structured environment” that would “help students develop the skills to return to the classroom setting.”
Lori Bridi, the division’s chief academic officer, presented more information about the proposed “Student Success Academy” during her instructional update. She said that as of April 9, six students alone were responsible for 128 student discipline referrals.
In response to a question from School Board member Malvina Kay, the Ward 4 representative, Bridi said none of the six students are special education students and that they include Black, White, and Hispanic students.
The goal of the Student Success Academy would be to keep these students in school and receiving grade-level instruction while helping them learn to regulate their behavior—as opposed to suspending them over and over.
Students would be referred to the program by teachers, administrators, or family members, and there would be an individualized plan for success for each student. The program could include specific supports from school counselors, behavior specialists, and social workers, and mentors if needed.
The School Board’s approved budget for next fiscal year includes $220,000 for the Student Success Academy, but City Council has not yet approved a final budget.
Matt Eberhardt, the division’s deputy superintendent, told the School Board that when he was a teacher, there would be one kid in 250 with “the unique skill set to destroy a classroom.”
“I mean climbing the walls, ripping everything off the walls, throwing things at people, just destroying,” he said. “I’m pretty comfortable in saying that we’ve got over 10 of those students in each grade level. Not the one kid that I knew back in the day—10.”
Eberhardt said the acceleration of these extreme behaviors started slightly before COVID-19 and isn’t showing signs of abating.
“Teachers are frustrated,” he said. “We need to do something different.”
Kay said she agrees that these extreme behaviors require some kind of intervention, but that she still has concerns about the potential stigma of separating students from their peers in a special classroom.
“It really needs to be looked at and talked through in its entirety,” she said.
Kay said she “[doesn’t] want to see data where the majority of the students in the success academy happen to be of color, because that sends a message as well.”
Other School Board members noted that the FCPS is a majority-minority school division.
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6 students responsible for 128 discipline referrals and none of them are receiving special education services? I hope they've been referred and evaluated for special education eligibility.